| Snickersnax |
Here is a alternative plan for getting knocked and dying.
1) You die at the beginning of your next turn after you have reached negative your maximum hit points.
2) If you get knocked to zero hit points or below you are knocked unconscious and suffer a persistent damage effect equal to the number below zero that you got knocked (bigger hits below zero kill you faster).
3) If you take additional damage while dying, it adds to the persistent damage effect.
4) If you are healed or stabilize, you stop the persistent damage.
5) On your turn you have a chance to stabilize which ends the persistent damage. DC = 10
6) When you are healed to 1 hit point you become conscious with Slow 1. This gives you enough actions to pick up your sword and stand up or crawl away and stand up or pick up your sword and attack once from a prone position.
The benefits of this system are:
1) It avoids the weirdness of someone taking a huge hit that would have knocked them to negative BIG numbers and then being healed for 1 hit point and is back to conscious.
2) Because it may require more healing than the current system to bring someone back to the fight, it puts a soft brake on Whack-a-Mole.
3) Dying quickly happens from taking a big hit that knocks you significantly below zero not from a high monster DC
4) It avoids having to track the DC of the creature that knocked a PC down and revealing the monster level to the PCs.
5) It avoids shifting the initiative order.
6) Automatically incorporates Death From Massive Damage . No specific rule about death from massive damage needs to be added.