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First level characters?
By the rules it is correct, and certainly it *does* happen. (is it any worse than if the npc had rolled 21 damage)
Would I let it happen in my game? I probably would let the player hold on till the end of the current round.
Now if they were all 6th level characters, and he let himself get down to 10 hps without doing something to protect himself, I'm not sure I would be as nice.
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Dead
When your character’s current hit points drop to a
negative amount equal to his Constitution score or
lower, or if he succumbs to massive damage, he’s dead.
Stable Characters and Recovery
On the character’s next turn, after being reduced to
negative hit points (but not dead), and on all subsequent
turns, the character must make a DC 10 Constitution
check to become stable. The character takes a penalty
on this roll equal to his negative hit point total. A
character that is stable does not need to make this
check. A natural 20 on this check is an automatic
success. If the character fails this check, he loses 1 hit
point.
Character's next turn. Not next round.
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Like I said before, it is no more nor less fair than if the NPC had done 21 damage.
You are welcome to wait for a Dev, but I will warn you that they are mostly at GenCon this week, so you may have a bit of a wait. You are also welcome to wait for someone with more stars than me. I gave you my take, by RAW, he is dead. In my game, I would have given you guys till 0 Init to bring him back. But that's cause I am a nice guy.
I think that you are not reading it correctly. I need a Dev to answer this. You wrote it correctly. The NEXT turn after being reduced to negative. There has to be a fair time for other players to act to try to
save him. A round is only 6 seconds. And be fair to the player involved.
Flite is correct and you don't need a dev to answer this. Next turn refers to that characters next turn, which just happens to be right after the enemy giving no one a chance to help him. The gm may allow the player to delay his turn, thus giving someone a chance to save him, but otherwise you're out of luck.
I'm pretty sure you could houserule that all "dying" characters automatically delay their initiative. It would make sense to me, it's not like they can just act out and choose to die sooner while unconscious.
If the enemy went on Init 19. And the player went on Init 18. Then there would be an entire round of actions before the player would make the stabilize turn, because the player's next turn would not come up until just before the enemy went again.
I think the problem here is that "Next" is a little vague. For example, if it was Monday, and you were doing something a week and a day later, you would say "We're going out NEXT Tuesday". Technically, THE next Tuesday would be tomorrow, but it's understood that "Next" Tuesday means a week from the following day, not the following day.
The wording in the rules seems similar. RAW, you certainly can read it literally as the very next action the character gets. However, in the English language, it CAN be read as "The following" as well.
Rando, I disagree. there is no vagueness here. Next is Next, not Nextnext. On the PC's next turn he stabilizes or bleeds. Init 18 was the PC's next turn, he failed to stabilize and bled. Done. Sometimes things happen very fast, and frail is the level one PC.
However, Master Marshmallow has a good idea. *Auto delay* all dying/unconcious PCs to Init (LAST). This is in the interest of fun, and many groups would see it as useful. I also doubt it would negatively impact the game :)
GNOME
I stand by my example. The word NEXT is inherently vague. If you're NEXT in line, are you first in line (i.e. your turn is next) or are you 2nd in line (there's FIRST in line and NEXT in line)? I've given two perfectly good examples of everyday usage of the word next that could mean either one of two things. I don't see how the usage in the rules is inherently different. It needs clarification.
Next means the next one that comes up. RAW, what happened was correct. In a home game, if this was a level 1 or 2 character, I probably would have either rolled it myself and fudged it, given them a free reroll if they did something amusing or helpful (e.g. You get a free reroll if you unload the dishwasher for me), or delayed one turn as people have been suggesting.
The spell Hideous Laughter also uses the phrasing "next turn" to describe when the target gets another save.
Are people suggesting that the target doesn't get a new save until his turn in the following round?
That would mean that if the target happens to have higher initiative than the caster, the target only looses one round worth of actions but if the caster has a higher initiative than the target, the target looses two rounds worth of actions.
This to me is silly.
I for one am certain that "next turn" universally means as soon as that characters initiative comes up. In this case that sucked for the PC but my take is that it was played exactly according to the rules.
- Torger
*edit* I'm more interested in why the DM was firing 20hp spells at 1st level characters. Unless that happened to be a crit (off a scorching ray or something) that's a pretty gloves off DMing style.
Has no one still noticed that the Player's init. was just before the bad guys? Which have resulted in the player doing a stabilize check just short of a full round later?
Of course technically, RAW, a dying PC losses his Dex modifier to init and has his Init further reduced to -5, b/c his Dex is considered to be 0 while dying. That could result in 5-12 Init reduction for most PCs. But I know of no DM's that impose that on dying Pcs.
Regardless of semantically parsing each individual word in the rules, as a GM I would have had the "bleed" occur at the end of the full round after every PC had a chance to try to intervene.
Because that's more dramatically compelling and more fun for the group.
OP doesn't say the PCs were first level - just that the character's 'current' HP was 10.
It would be a reasonable house rule that bleed type damage is inflicted exactly one round later - on the initiative of the person who inflicted the damage. The fort save to survive can still be on your own turn.
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Of course technically, RAW, a dying PC losses his Dex modifier to init and has his Init further reduced to -5, b/c his Dex is considered to be 0 while dying. That could result in 5-12 Init reduction for most PCs. But I know of no DM's that impose that on dying Pcs.
An already rolled initiative won't be affected by any change to Dex that happens after the roll.
You don't retcon earlier Dex/Init rolls any more than you turn previous misses into hits because of the reduced AC.
RAW, he died.
I've previously let a PC linger for a round, to give the other players a chance to help, but I was aware that I was using DM fiat, and so were my players.
Perhaps I'm too soft as a DM.
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I stand by my example. The word NEXT is inherently vague. If you're NEXT in line, are you first in line (i.e. your turn is next) or are you 2nd in line (there's FIRST in line and NEXT in line)? I've given two perfectly good examples of everyday usage of the word next that could mean either one of two things. I don't see how the usage in the rules is inherently different. It needs clarification.
Next is quite explicit. It is only ever ambiguous because we have lost our grammar.
If today is Monday the 1st, tomorrow, tuesday the 2nd is next tuesday, and tuesday the 9th is tuesday next.
:)
(No this is not universally accepted grammar, but it should be. It would save a lot of arguments.)
Next is a funny thing. If you had asked the player whos turn was after the monsters the victim would have said i am next. I think though it is intended that you bleed every round even the first. But as a house rule having a 1 rnd delay probably wont hurt.
