Alternative Unconscious & Dying Homebrew Rules?


Advice


Hello all, I am putting out feelers to see if any of you lovely people have come across any solid alternative rulings to the unconscious and dying mechanics of Pathfinder.

The current system seems to feel right at lower levels but scales horribly.

You have 30 out of 90 hp (decent enough) and 14 con (fair) Giant monster hits you for 44 damage and you go past the point of rolling saving throws and are permanently dead...

Having an ally in the state of "unconscious and dying" is a wonderful change in a combat. They are helpless and fragile, your party now loses precious actions in the turn economy, and another body on the field. It forces the party to adjust tactics for a few rounds to revive their ally, while keeping the enemy at bay.

I love putting PCs in this state, but don't like to fudge rolls and the worst is when you accidentally kill a PC that you didn't intend to.

My friend suggested simply using 5e's rules of death saving throws, but that seems a bit too simplified. Any suggestions?


We've been having a positive experience using the 5e death saving throw rules. The GMs like it because they don't have to pull any punches and players get to take more risks. Since you're less likely to die using this system people have been more willing to spend money on their characters and we all had custom Hero Forge miniatures made.

I don't think simplified is a bad thing but the main issue deciding how it should work with various spells and abilities. For example should the Stabilise cantrip instantly resuscitate or should it just count as one success? Then there's abilities such as the Life Anchor power of the Oblivion Inquisition which adds the inquisitor's wisdom modifier to stabilisation checks; should this be banned, rewritten or just apply the bonus to the roll? When I was GMing I let them apply the wisdom bonus to their rolls. It didn't save the inquisitor once the ghouls started eating him.


One idea I've toyed with, is increasing the range if disabled and dying, with level/con

At level 1 0 is disabled, and you can hit -con before dying

If you scale it with level

Diabled is a condition that happens when you run out if hp, but is now a range=to charectir level, one you do not track, you are at 0hp, another hit will drop you to negative, 1hp healing brings you to positive

so at level 5 if you have 5hp left, and take 5-10 damage, you will be disabled, and at 0hp

If you take 11 damage, you are diabled, and at negative 1 hp

You die when you reach negative con multiplied by charectir level, but when bleeding out, you take damage each round multiplied by charectir level.
(Bleeding out happens as fast as normal, but you could survive an AOE)

As far as penalty to stabilizing, you to take a minus 1 for each multiplier if your constitution rather then each -hp

Another housrule to try, is whatever strike would bring you to below 0hp, leaves you with zero hp and disabled, giving PC's and enemies alike, a chance to hobble away, or beg Mercy, but next blow is treated as normal


So in looking into a hybrid between Pathfinder's negative con hit point threshold rules and 5E saving throws I kinda came up with the following procedure below.

1) Once you fall below 0 hp, you are disable and begin dying.
2) Negative hp threshold increases as you level. It will equal your Con score, +2 per level. So if you have a Con score of 14 then by level 5, your negative hp is up to -24 and by level 10 it is -34.
3) While in negative hp you make a death saving throw saving throw (d20) each turn .
4) The goal is to achieve 3 saves (Better than 10) before you accrue 3 fails (1-10).
5) Now, if you are hit really hard (or fail to address your depleting hit points) and knocked below your negative hp threshold, then you follow the same saving throw procedure, but you have to accrue 3 saves before you accrue only 2 fails, adding to the urgency.

Magic healing and stabilizing spells essentially remove the need for death saving throws. And we'll address spells, magic items and such that have inconsistencies with this as they come up in game.

d20 re-roll effects like bit of luck, and GM granted bonuses like hero points are the only things players can do to give themselves bonuses to death saving throws.

Lemme guys know what you think.


I would still allow high con to give a bonus on those saves, there should be a bonus for Hardy charectors

Bjorn the barbarian has been knocked out!

Eh... he always gets up in the end

Hey guys...Waldo the wizard us down

Quick! He needs help!


Bjorn the barbarian hshoukd haven a better chance then Waldo wizard, in 5E they ignore this for the sake of "being fair"

But in my opinion, ignoring someone's advantages, just to put wizards in an even footing is a wizards if the coast move :)

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