By RAW, palace guards could spend all their actions forever seeking. (I think that doing so should probably make them fatigued by RAI and following other implied logic about using encounter mode actions repeatedly during exploration, but I don't think it would by RAW.)Nah. Not only most exploration modes don't get you fatigued, they've even removed this from some activities now: repeating spells now doesn't make you fatigued by default. Only "repeating a spell that requires making complex decisions, such as figment, can make you fatigued, as determined by the GM". So basically Sustain-like and such.
So now mostly only Hustle can make you fatigued.
It's another thing that most guards everywhere probably won't be and aren't very alert to be considered always Seeking/Searching. But elite or motivated very well could be.
Improvising New Activities, GM Core pg. 42, still notes that if "PCs are using the equivalent of 2 actions every 6 seconds" that they can't do that indefinitely and says Hustle is a good example of an activity of this. The reason Cast a Spell generally doesn't fatigue is that it doesn't fall under the 2 actions every 6 seconds as it alternates between a single stride on round and a cast spell [up to 2 actions] the next and it seems they are willing to round this down.
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Can you imagine trying to follow every rule for every NPC? It would make the game terrible and hard to run. A GM should know how to use the rules to make the game fun, interesting, and challenging without letting them bog down play or subvert imaginative play.
I mean, that kind of sounds really cool to me.
Immersive sims have their specific appeal precisely because of that "rules are rules" fairness.
In seeming contradiction to the inflexibility and absolute enforcement of rules, the notion that the NPCs ragdoll the same as the player does ends up encouraging zany and elaborate player schemes.
Because consistency is the key. If the player is treated differently, then at best they have to experiment on NPCs to learn their rules.
And the more that NPCs are "blank checks" with unique rules, instead of being consistent foe-to-foe, that only pushes players into boring safe approaches because they can't rely on much at all. (Which IMO does affect pf2e a fair amount right now. Creative combat is generally punished by action cost.)
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Keeping it more pf2e focused, IMO there are plenty of "player rules" that if applied to NPCs would make the game waaaay more strategic, fun, and immersive.
The first one I cite is that IMO all foes should use PC dying rules by default.
It's a *big* change to combat and player decision-making, while simultaneously not making a single difference in most combats (such as all combats vs solo foes).
Knowing that by default foes can be healed off dying adds an entirely different layer to strategy when the possibility is threatened.
That outside-HP consideration can genuinely encourage non-flowchart actions which breaks the habitual routine.
Example: A foes is dying, and you're not certain if you need 1 or 2 hits to finish them off. If left alone, maybe one of the highwaymen will heal them, though none are wearing caster robes.
You are thinking about spending an extra action to double-tap. But as soon as this "getting back up" concern is big enough that you are willing to spend an action, you realize that maybe you should instead spend 1A to Seek at all the highwaymen at once, asking: "do they have any healing potions or scrolls?"
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There are really not many possible ways for it to feel "natural" spending combat actions on off-script actions like that, and IMO all the known unknowns around dying (such as all their death saves being hidden) makes it the perfect spot to add a simple to understand, non-numeric complication to combat.
A whole lot of player options become get more valid for use over raw damage: AoEs, low damage plinking, the caster's Strike, and even the death dag now carry value for PCs.
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Combat dynamics aside, universal dying rules help to maintain world verisimilitude, gives the GM more room to express different foes behavior/personalities, adds a pseudo-balance lever for the GM, etc.
And this change *increases* consistency. Right now, it's ambiguous if or when the GM will choose to "turn on the dying rules" for NPCs. So it's not adding to any confusion.
To top all that off, dying is just 1 flat check per round, and an incrementing counter. While it does add more work for the GM, IMO it's about as small of an additional load as it could be, resulting in a very lopsided cost-benefit.
Universally applying the dying rules would be a significant PC nerf. The asymmetry there does a shocking amount of work to rig the game in the PC's favor, because of just how action-inefficient finishing someone off actually is.
Can you imagine trying to follow every rule for every NPC? It would make the game terrible and hard to run. A GM should know how to use the rules to make the game fun, interesting, and challenging without letting them bog down play or subvert imaginative play.I mean, that kind of sounds really cool to me.
Immersive sims have their specific appeal precisely because of that "rules are rules" fairness.
In seeming contradiction to the inflexibility and absolute enforcement of rules, the notion that the NPCs ragdoll the same as the player does ends up encouraging zany and elaborate player schemes.
Because consistency is the key. If the player is treated differently, then at best they have to experiment on NPCs to learn their rules.
And the more that NPCs are "blank checks" with unique rules, instead of being consistent foe-to-foe, that only pushes players into boring safe approaches because they can't rely on much at all. (Which IMO does affect pf2e a fair amount right now. Creative combat is generally punished by action cost.)
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Keeping it more pf2e focused, IMO there are plenty of "player rules" that if applied to NPCs would make the game waaaay more strategic, fun, and immersive.
The first one I cite is that IMO all foes should use PC dying rules by default.
It's a *big* change to combat and player decision-making, while simultaneously not making a single difference in most combats (such as all combats vs solo foes).
Knowing that by default foes can be healed off dying adds an entirely different layer to strategy when the possibility is threatened.That outside-HP consideration can genuinely encourage non-flowchart actions which breaks the habitual routine.
Example: A foes is dying, and you're not certain if you need 1 or 2 hits to finish them off. If left alone, maybe one of the highwaymen will heal them, though none are wearing caster robes.
You are thinking about spending an extra action to double-tap. But as soon as this...
That doesn't sound immersive at all.
Immersive sims don't follow the same rules. Never have. Monsters even in immersive sims have abilities and act in a way players can't equal because they're trying to build something interesting and immersive. Monsters and enemies are filling roles, not trying to follow the same rules the players follow. So not sure why you stated this.
There are clear examples that Mr. Raid boss isn't at all following the same rules at Mr. Warrior in a game. He's built to be a raid boss and the warrior is built to be a warrior. There is some attempt to balance player vs. player, but not real attempt to balance or require the same rules for player versus environment.
That's why even in video game simulations, the developers don't follow the same rules as the players. No DM trying to run a quality game should do so either.
The monsters or enemy is there to serve the narrative and its purpose in the narrative or encounter, not to follow the same rules the players follow.
Fairness is a subjective word overused by people that think they can somehow measure it.
Universally applying the dying rules would be a significant PC nerf. The asymmetry there does a shocking amount of work to rig the game in the PC's favor, because of just how action-inefficient finishing someone off actually is.
It is possible for universal dying rules to make combats more difficult, but it can also make them easier.
In that example of a group of highwaymen, if dying rules are turned on, then Brute B spends all 3 actions to Stride, Draw, Feed a healing potion to dying Brute A.
Wizard's turn. Electric Arc, targets Brutes A & B. If B, A, or both drop dying, that healing attempt is in the PC's favor.
With dying rules: off, then Brute B's course of action is instead to Stride, Stab, Stab that Wizard.
Shifting a plan to add AoE, or simply whenever AoE was already the plan, often makes healing a wasted turn.
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The main goal is to increase player incentives in PC builds and strategies. Right now, the system waaay over-emphasizes single target damage to the exclusion of nearly all else.
Because when a party does build for raw damage, combat turn counts are incredibly low, which further makes buffs & debuffs far less valuable.
Which then makes raw damage even *more* incentivized in a low turn-norm. It's a toxic feedback loop that leads directly to rocket tag.
Electric Arc actually does more damage than Live Wire, but you'd never know it based on the community's reaction. To them, the single-target nature of Live Wire is an upgrade, when that's really not true.
I've personally benefited from EA's ability to "last hit" a foe to 0 while contributing damage elsewhere, many more times than I have lost out due to there being 1 target remaining. EA has always had a different use case to LW, in my opinion. (Live Wire *does* cause powercreep issues VS spells like Telekinetic Projectile though)
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Overall, I'm not at all opposed to the possibility of increased difficulty. Especially when this would still be completely under the GM's control.
If the GM does not want healing to be a threat, then the highwaymen simply don't carry healing potions, and the Occult caster didn't prepare a Soothe, etc.
I think it's precisely this "no suspension of disbelief required" binary of having/not having healing that is a huge point in favor of the mechanic.
I have participated in combat with a surprise foe healing the dying moment, and everyone at the table enjoyed it. Was fun, do recommend.
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Universal dying rules are a PITA for the GM.
Party vs. lots of monsters.
Tracking each ones Dying level adds a ton of extra non-PC facing rolls, and bookkeeping for the GM for no appreciable gain.
For a given encounter, it might be useful. For every fight in a campaign, it's just a massive amount of extra work for the GM, as anyone who GMed in older editions of PF/D&D will know.
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I have a more philosophical objection, which is it's less morally 'clean.' It just makes it that much extra murdery to have the PCs constantly going around offing downed but alive opponents after every fight. Someone dies in combat? Okay. They don't, so you kill them as they lie there defenseless afterwards? Makes the PCs that much more murderhobo-y. The "no reason why we can't be civil" scene in 300 was amusing, but I wouldn't want that to be every combat scene in my tabletop game.
Hunh, I see that as the exact opposite.
With base dying rules, it means that the PCs are "certain" that every normal attack and spell are lethal, that every downing hit is a kill shot.
from my PoV, this makes them *incredibly* murder happy in a way that stretches suspension of disbelief very far.
If there was ambiguity, and NPCs could possibly stabilize, that dramatically removes the "certain to kill" aspect from PC actions.
The complication I don't think you are accounting for is that rules for non-lethal exist. Any time a foe is low HP, a player could just Strike w/ a -2 and avoid the act of killing another person. Right now, when they *don't* take that -2, they are "certain" they will kill.
If the dying could stabilize, then PCs would be much more "justified" in not taking that -2.
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IMO, the reason NPCs don't use dying by default is entirely out of convenience. And while I think it's worth saying that I think the GM tracking burden is being seriously over-blown, the real "inconvenience" starts when combat ends.
I think the real "reason" for NPC dying rules to not be the default is because too many people do not want to have to "waste time" dealing with survivors once combat ends. If everyone's dead, you can loot the bodies "guilt free" and move on.
What sucks is that while that situation is guaranteed to cause some party bickering the first time, each repeat will get resolved faster and faster, until the players simply tell the GM they're doing "the usual" with the survivors.
IMO, that kind of "situation role-playing" is what ttrpgs are all about (half about: I think it's fair to at least split the "fun" into a combat/mechanical half, and a narrative/RP half).
While I have desensitized a little to it by now, it honestly still breaks my immersion with the insane body counts parties are expected to pile up in APs. *Especially* when the AP is themed like Strength of Thousands.
I honestly struggle to take the writing seriously when the party of magic students confront some petty criminals, they try to kill us on sight, and fight to the death.
And when my PC *does* go non-lethal, the GM audibly needs a moment. The AP never thought that was possible, so the captive can provide literally 0 information while being completely convinced that what just happened was rational.
The unexpected dingle-berry atop that s#@! sundae was when we found the stolen gold, explicitly knew which pile was the gold that had been stolen, and the AP expected us to take it for ourselves instead of return it. Like hooooly s@$%, how does something like that get published. It was immersion-breaking when the AP expected us to steal everything of value that the petty crooks held, but stealing the victim's gold we were there to recover was certainly on another level.
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Back on track,
Soooo many damn times does this "you *are* going to kill them all" assumption kick the "narrative half" of my fun in the balls.
In character, I kind of have to pretend that Merciful runes don't exist, because that one cheap item (often with 0 property slot competition) would cause so much table conflict. Not exactly because the GM or players disagree, but because we *all* know that surviving NPCs would mean playing russian roulette where the AP might implode its thin shell of plausibility.
Universal dying rules are a PITA for the GM.
With the spreadsheet tool that I use to track combat, the extra effort to shift enemies in initiative order, track their dying condition, and roll their stabilize checks is nominally intrusive.
It does impact the players' decision making and tactics. It makes the cleric think twice about three-action heals, for instance.
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With base dying rules, it means that the PCs are "certain" that every normal attack and spell are lethal, that every downing hit is a kill shot.
from my PoV, this makes them *incredibly* murder happy in a way that stretches suspension of disbelief very far.
I agree with you, though as a GM I also don't track dying in most encounters.
IMO, the reason NPCs don't use dying by default is entirely out of convenience.
That's definitely why I don't bother with it, even though I don't like the "tone" that skipping it sets.
And while I think it's worth saying that I think the GM tracking burden is being seriously over-blown, the real "inconvenience" starts when combat ends.
I'm going to disagree with you that the tracking burden is seriously overblown. If I were still a kid, with tons of time to play in long, easy-to-schedule sessions, it would be much easier to devote extra time and mental bandwidth to tracking the Dying condition on every NPC, but running a game as an adult, that's a pretty easy compromise to make to the gods of scheduling.
Also, while I get that this isn't what you mean, tracking dying for NPCs often adds at least one round to most combats, during which the PCs have to tend to (in whatever way that means) the dying enemies. Combat is already a major (real world) time sink in Pathfinder 2E, and adding even a couple minute to each combat adds up.
When I ran Agents of Edgewatch I used the optional rule that allowed the PCs to simply deal nonlethal damage on any attack, and my players basically went with that in any encounter wherein nonlethal wasn't useless, which bypassed spending rounds stabilizing enemies, but I did that because I didn't want to run a game where cops were running around killing people as a matter of course. I would prefer not to run a game where any set of PCs is running around killing people as a matter or course, but I don't find it as objectionable in a more "standard" campaign frame.
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Universal dying rules are a PITA for the GM.With the spreadsheet tool that I use to track combat, the extra effort to shift enemies in initiative order, track their dying condition, and roll their stabilize checks is nominally intrusive.
I'm starting an urban campaign in a couple weeks, and I'm considering tracking Dying for NPCs as a matter of course. We'll see whether I pull the trigger, and if so, how long I keep it up.
It does impact the players' decision making and tactics. It makes the cleric think twice about three-action heals, for instance.
This is part of why I'm interested in trying it. I'm curious to see how it impacts PC tactics and decision making.
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I don't really bother unless it's a reoccurring villain (which will likely escape regardless) or a mook that the PCs specifically declared they want to spare for the time being (likely for questioning or justice).
In the latter case, I just make the rolls once the PCs' intent is known, even catching up a bit if the mook has been down for a couple rounds. I then inform the players if said mook (or any of his companions) are still alive and could be stabilized.
That way I'm not wasting time tracking things that don't need to be tracked.
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I'd be happy with an unrealistic-but-maybe-better-for-the-game change to make it no penalty at all. That way players don't have to feel like they're being penalized for trying to save enemies. Then it really becomes just a matter of choice.
I don't think it's an unreasonable house rule to allow nonlethal damage to be freely selected. Like I said, I did that in Agents of Edgewatch.
I do think the choice to deal nonlethal is less interesting when it carries no cost, but that doesn't necessarily make it less desirable. In the AoE, I felt that the unfortunate implications of incentivizing police to kill strongly outweighed giving up an interesting choice. In a more "traditional" campaign frame, I like that nonlethal involves a trade-off. That said, If a table collectively told me, as GM, they'd rather just have noon-lethal freely available, I'd go easily go along with that, and I'd happily play at a table where that rule was in effect.
I have a more philosophical objection, which is it's less morally 'clean.' It just makes it that much extra murdery to have the PCs constantly going around offing downed but alive opponents after every fight. Someone dies in combat? Okay. They don't, so you kill them as they lie there defenseless afterwards? Makes the PCs that much more murderhobo-y. The "no reason why we can't be civil" scene in 300 was amusing, but I wouldn't want that to be every combat scene in my tabletop game.
Hunh, I see that as the exact opposite.
With base dying rules, it means that the PCs are "certain" that every normal attack and spell are lethal, that every downing hit is a kill shot.
from my PoV, this makes them *incredibly* murder happy in a way that stretches suspension of disbelief very far.
If there was ambiguity, and NPCs could possibly stabilize, that dramatically removes the "certain to kill" aspect from PC actions.
The complication I don't think you are accounting for is that rules for non-lethal exist. Any time a foe is low HP, a player could just Strike w/ a -2 and avoid the act of killing another person. Right now, when they *don't* take that -2, they are "certain" they will kill.
If the dying could stabilize, then PCs would be much more "justified" in not taking that -2.
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IMO, the reason NPCs don't use dying by default is entirely out of convenience. And while I think it's worth saying that I think the GM tracking burden is being seriously over-blown, the real "inconvenience" starts when combat ends.
I think the real "reason" for NPC dying rules to not be the default is because too many people do not want to have to "waste time" dealing with survivors once combat ends. If everyone's dead, you can loot the bodies "guilt free" and move on.
What sucks is that while that situation is guaranteed to cause some party bickering the first time, each repeat will get resolved faster and faster, until the players simply tell the GM they're doing "the usual" with the...
You don't need them alive unless you plan to do something with them. Why are you even bothering with that?
This isn't a simulationist game trying to mirror the real world. It's a game of cooperative storytelling with combat rules.
You don't need to care about NPCs living unless you want them to. Even if they live, for all intent and purposes to your group they are dead unless the DM wants to do something with them.
Universal dying rules are a PITA for the GM.With the spreadsheet tool that I use to track combat, the extra effort to shift enemies in initiative order, track their dying condition, and roll their stabilize checks is nominally intrusive.
It does impact the players' decision making and tactics. It makes the cleric think twice about three-action heals, for instance.
Cleric should think twice about three action heals even if the enemies are still on their feet. We don't use them very often because they heal the enemy.
Unless we're fighting undead of course as that's just too much good in one spell.
I miss-ran that aspect in an early encounter in my campaign.
The cleric did an area heal and I applied the healing to the boss they just brought to 0 hp. battle was basically over and I didnt make the boss up and in fighting condition, just alive.
It did provide me an opportunity to have the authorities arrest him instead of drag off a dead body. That leaves it open for that boss to become reoccurring.
If I was running that normally the boss should not have been healed by the aoe right?
I'd be happy with an unrealistic-but-maybe-better-for-the-game change to make it no penalty at all. That way players don't have to feel like they're being penalized for trying to save enemies. Then it really becomes just a matter of choice.I don't think it's an unreasonable house rule to allow nonlethal damage to be freely selected. Like I said, I did that in Agents of Edgewatch.
I do think the choice to deal nonlethal is less interesting when it carries no cost, but that doesn't necessarily make it less desirable. In the AoE, I felt that the unfortunate implications of incentivizing police to kill strongly outweighed giving up an interesting choice. In a more "traditional" campaign frame, I like that nonlethal involves a trade-off. That said, If a table collectively told me, as GM, they'd rather just have noon-lethal freely available, I'd go easily go along with that, and I'd happily play at a table where that rule was in effect.
The trade-off can be interesting in campaigns where it matters. My SoT group wants to avoid killing when they can, and will take the penalty unless they find themselves hard-pressed. This does help the Monk shine in terms of capture, as they don't take that penalty. They will resort to lethal force if they're in sufficient danger, but it gets them thinking about it.
As for dying... if it seems like they want to be able to question an NPC or otherwise capture them alive, I'll use dying rules for them. If the PCs are slinging around 3 action heals with no regard for what they're hitting, I'll use the dying rules. If the enemies have a healer, I'll use the dying rules.
The net result of that is... I rarely use the dying rules, because when they're trying to capture someone alive they tend to go with nonlethal anyway, and the other two cases just aren't that common.
Its a pretty good shortcut rule because if the enemy has no way to get back up anyway, there's no need to spend time rolling or tracking it. My players don't seem to mind it since it's not actually changing any outcomes: it's just faster.
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I miss-ran that aspect in an early encounter in my campaign.
The cleric did an area heal and I applied the healing to the boss they just brought to 0 hp. battle was basically over and I didnt make the boss up and in fighting condition, just alive.
It did provide me an opportunity to have the authorities arrest him instead of drag off a dead body. That leaves it open for that boss to become reoccurring.
If I was running that normally the boss should not have been healed by the aoe right?
No. The rules for NPC healing are up to the DM like most of the game. They recommend using PC rules for NPCs as little as possible and only if it is meaningful.
If you want the boss to be reoccurring or get up during the battle, then that is your call.
I've used PCs rules for NPCs, but only when I want the enemy to feel that way. There are no hard rules in these games. The rules are tools for the DM to make the game fun. You should use them as you think best for a given encounter.
One thing I feel PF2 and 5E wanted to move away from was rules lawyering. PF1/3E was full of rules lawyers trying to chain DMs with rules text to exploit the game. PF2 uses plenty of text to indicate the GM uses the rules as they wish to make the encounters work the way they want them to work.
You don't need to have the boss get up, but if you do that is absolutely fine. Just like it is fine if you leave them down. The monsters and rules serve the narrative you are running and you should makes things feel the way you want them to feel for the players. A boss or even an NC that survives and keeps coming back can be a great part of the narrative.
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Universal dying rules are a PITA for the GM.With the spreadsheet tool that I use to track combat, the extra effort to shift enemies in initiative order, track their dying condition, and roll their stabilize checks is nominally intrusive.I'm starting an urban campaign in a couple weeks, and I'm considering tracking Dying for NPCs as a matter of course. We'll see whether I pull the trigger, and if so, how long I keep it up.
It does impact the players' decision making and tactics. It makes the cleric think twice about three-action heals, for instance.This is part of why I'm interested in trying it. I'm curious to see how it impacts PC tactics and decision making.
The house rule I've been using (which was suggested somewhere on these forums a year or so ago) is that NPCs die at Dying 2.
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I'd be happy with an unrealistic-but-maybe-better-for-the-game change to make it no penalty at all. That way players don't have to feel like they're being penalized for trying to save enemies. Then it really becomes just a matter of choice.I don't think it's an unreasonable house rule to allow nonlethal damage to be freely selected. Like I said, I did that in Agents of Edgewatch.
I do think the choice to deal nonlethal is less interesting when it carries no cost, but that doesn't necessarily make it less desirable. In the AoE, I felt that the unfortunate implications of incentivizing police to kill strongly outweighed giving up an interesting choice. In a more "traditional" campaign frame, I like that nonlethal involves a trade-off. That said, If a table collectively told me, as GM, they'd rather just have noon-lethal freely available, I'd go easily go along with that, and I'd happily play at a table where that rule was in effect.
Merciful runes are cheap -- most of my characters have a backup weapon with a Merciful rune on it for just such an emergency.
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You don't need them alive unless you plan to do something with them. Why are you even bothering with that?
This isn't a simulationist game trying to mirror the real world. It's a game of cooperative storytelling with combat rules.
You don't need to care about NPCs living unless you want them to. Even if they live, for all intent and purposes to your group they are dead unless the DM wants to do something with them.
Some people are combat gamers, and that's fine. I do think ttrpgs and their unique appeal of long-form narrative is rather important, and when the systems cause problems with the ability to make a narrative, it's worth discussing (improving).
The issue with your murder-hobo suggestion is that most players, and APs, construct the cooperative story as if the PCs are "good" people, motivated to help others.
95/100, combat is the means toward an objective, and is not the goal itself. If the mission is to kill Mr. Evil in disguise, you don't have reason to kill the two goons he hired as bodyguards, let alone the other manor staff.
How PCs handle sapient people willing to fight is a great source of narrative tension that the players must act out and resolve.
Which is to say, what the PCs will do that is contrary and against their own self interest to uphold their morals.
As well as how much "effort" is enough before they stop restricting their actions and abandon their morals.
That was why older fantasy worlds had "actually, they are all born evil" species.
But in Golarion, it's pretty common knowledge that a "created evil" succubus broke an other-worldly level of predetermination to become a benevolent goddess.
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I do want to be blunt and restate this earlier point.
In much of the AP content that I have played, much of the lethal combat should be considered a damn plothole.
I'm not a ttrpg vet, so when my PCs are killing sapient mortals, that's a serious affair. My PCs are built so that they can deal with all the killing, but even a daemonic plague rat of a PC cannot "want" to resolve these situations by "killing them all" as APs often assume. It's far too "wasteful" of a mortal life.
It's just immersion-breaking as hell when an AP has enough detail that a petty criminal goon keeps her cookbooks in a chest rig, but will not so much as attempt to survive, and will instead murder you on-sight, and swing on you until she's killed.
And it's all the worse when the "cooperative story" of the magic school AP, where you are expected to care about random strangers enough to chase down and solo a mercenary army, also has you kill anyone who dares to do exactly what your PCs do, and resort to violence.
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The reason why IMO this is a break in the foundation and not a cosmetic issue is the hypocrisy as to which specific randos you quest to help/save, and which randos are on the other end of your murder-hoboing, is so arbitrary that it genuinely turns the narrative into nonsense.
Because none of us players have a way to make logical sense of our PCs running *this* petty errand, killing *these* people, but not killing *that* anti-social individual, etc.
I was able to do some serious backflips to construct a bizarre psychology for my SoT PC that mostly worked for a time, but the absurd dissonance, which almost entirely comes from the pile of corpses, has left that campaign in a place where I disregard the "collective story" to preserve my fun.
SoT is a "do what the book says, because it says so" campaign. Sometimes it makes a big song and dance so your PCs don't kill an animal, and sometimes you're supposed to kill everyone and steal the gold that you were sent to recover.
I can still get some appreciation out of it in a "what they were trying to do" kind of way, but it has become impossible to get any of the real "narrative investment" from SoT that is the secret sauce of ttrpgs and long-form storytelling.
In contrast, I don't think I'll ever forget my table's specific Abomination Vaults story, and that's because that AP (and GM) spent the effort on things like this murder-hobo issue.
IMO an often unnoticed detail of why Abomination Vaults was/is so successful to outsiders is that it is pretty dang clear of the "written murder hoboing" issue that many people often find repulsive. Every time there was a faction/group that we may not have wanted to kill, the books gave the GMs all they needed to make that happen, and the consequences of those effort-requiring choices enriched the collective story.
I've been trying to pay attention to how tables handle the Miflit situation as a windsock for that. (King backstabbed us, the one Miflit that was King-slapped for trying to help us was adopted by the party, I think over half the Miflits survived, fleeing out of the narrative once the King was down (was chaotic as the River Drake joined the fight))
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The death and dying rules are a terrible way to add moral dilemma narrative into PF2. They are super gamey rules designed to give players breathing room around characters that are too complicated to kill off multiple times a session. "Let's mostly dead our foes and then save them at the last possible second" is not "good guys"/heroic game play. You need a morale/surrender mechanic to play that way and not "fight till unconscious, but magically just don't die."
I have no idea how that take is being formed out of the existing system rules.
It is far *more* gamey for opposition to go from conscious and fully fighting at 1 HP, to instantly dropping dead-dead at 0 HP.
*That* "fighting fit or dead-dead" binary is absurdly gamey, when some degree of KOed and bleeding out is far less so.
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Lethal combat, using the force you have to in order to survive, *for as long as you have to* is narratively harmonious as well. (what you call mostly-deading the foes and saving them at the last minute)
It's "fight until the fighting stops," because it is quite reasonable that many people cannot be talked into surrendering, and must be physically subdued. While also being true that PCs don't *want* to kill every such combatant.
But when the fight is over, the danger to you is over, and you therefore switch modes. Maybe the goal is to kill them all, so you pull out a dagger and finish the job. Maybe the party knows their foes were being tricked into the fight, so they render life-saving aid to those they can.
The point of turning on the dying rules would be to add proper *possibility* into that presently-sealed space. And just because the system lacks possibility, does not somehow erase the narrative consequence/ PC guilt.
If the system sets that the very same line at which foes "stop fighting" is the same line where foes drop dead-dead, that makes the PCs into killers by default.
They'll need to restrict their Strikes, and pay a heavy price with spells, to not kill everyone they fight. Which might be appropriate in some specific story, but again, lacks the possibility space added by the dying rules.
Because, again, most players (and APs) do not want their PCs to kill more people than is necessary. And because there are clear and easy ways to get the non-lethal tag, all piles of corpses *are* completely avoidable, in just about every AP.
Because the Merciful rune and Non-lethal Spell exist, that narratively means that our PCs are a bunch of uncaring murder hobos that won't sacrifice 1d6 elemental damage to avoid killing that guard who's just doing his job.
If you use the dying rules, then there is actually space for the PCs to not be thoughtless killers, because NPCs can theoretically stabilize on their own. It also adds huge moral drama such as if/when PC cleric may choose to make the fight more risky by spending 2A to cast Rousing Splash on the dying NPC that's on fire.
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Repeating one last time:
just because foes drop dead at 0 HP in the right-now rules does not morally absolve the PCs of killing people!
Many players, especially ttrpg newbies, do not see mechanics justifying killing like that. Especially not after they learn about the non-lethal options (which literally function as your "shouldn't-add" "magically just don't die" mechanic).
The as-is rule makes PCs into murder hobos, even when that is opposite to the story that many players want to create.
The "dying on" version at least gives the players & PCs the agency to choose to or not to run around with a medkit after the fighting has stopped.
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** spoiler of awesome off-topic rant omitted **...
I'm imagining just how differently my Extinction Curse campaign might have gone if the PCs, upon entering the first serious dungeon, said "Oh, this long abandoned place is now occupied by sapient species? Let's pack up, go home, and leave them be!"
Sensible on the surface, sure, but also would have lead to the doom of the entire isle. :P
If no one ever pokes their noses into the affairs of others, the terrorists win. XD /jest
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** spoiler of awesome off-topic rant omitted **...I'm imagining just how differently my Extinction Curse campaign might have gone if the PCs, upon entering the first serious dungeon, said "Oh, this long abandoned place is now occupied by sapient species? Let's pack up, go home, and leave them be!"
Sensible on the surface, sure, but also would have lead to the doom of the entire isle. :P
If no one ever pokes their noses into the affairs of others, the terrorists win. XD /jest
And "poking your nose" into one's affairs is on a whole other level from what APs are written to have happen.
Stuff like: "oh hey, sapient people live here and are using force to keep us out? Let's kill every single one and take everything of value!"
And then the writing (sometimes) does retroactive backflips to later say it was actually a morally good thing to kill them all. Like the PCs find a "how to sacrifice innocents and summon demons" folio on the caster, with a murder-room deeper inside. Just don't think about how the PCs didn't know that at the time.
Ooooof, that dissonance is painful, lol.
If anyone shows an interest in being less of a bunch of murderhobos, I'm happy to just houserule nonlethal as taking no penalty. I think the current rules don't so much provide a "tradeoff" as just tell you that nonlethal damage is strictly worse and that you won't have much fun trying to do nonlethal damage outside of very specific builds.
The rules for nonlethal always struck me as a simulationist choice: very "yeah, it is kind of hard to nonlethally stab someone, guess that should take a -2" vibes. But your table isn't beholden to any particular view of violence in its storytelling. You could prefer an aesthetic that handwaves the lethality of actual combat until someone is dramatically dying, and stylizes the violence into exchanges of looking cool—and I think PF2E is closer to that by default, particularly in combats against non-sapient creatures. If the stories you want to emulate don't involve characters making hard choices about whether or not they should kill, I don't think the nonlethal penalty does a ton of work for your table's storytelling.
There is honestly a bit of a tension in the DnD lineage between combats against monsters and combats against NPCs, anyways. Many of the stories fantasy d20 systems emulate narrate combat against creatures and combat against humans in different ways and give each different moral considerations, but the games treat them completely the same.
You don't need them alive unless you plan to do something with them. Why are you even bothering with that?
This isn't a simulationist game trying to mirror the real world. It's a game of cooperative storytelling with combat rules.
You don't need to care about NPCs living unless you want them to. Even if they live, for all intent and purposes to your group they are dead unless the DM wants to do something with them.
Some people are combat gamers, and that's fine. I do think ttrpgs and their unique appeal of long-form narrative is rather important, and when the systems cause problems with the ability to make a narrative, it's worth discussing (improving).
The issue with your murder-hobo suggestion is that most players, and APs, construct the cooperative story as if the PCs are "good" people, motivated to help others.
95/100, combat is the means toward an objective, and is not the goal itself. If the mission is to kill Mr. Evil in disguise, you don't have reason to kill the two goons he hired as bodyguards, let alone the other manor staff.
How PCs handle sapient people willing to fight is a great source of narrative tension that the players must act out and resolve.
Which is to say, what the PCs will do that is contrary and against their own self interest to uphold their morals.
As well as how much "effort" is enough before they stop restricting their actions and abandon their morals.That was why older fantasy worlds had "actually, they are all born evil" species.
But in Golarion, it's pretty common knowledge that a "created evil" succubus broke an other-worldly level of predetermination to become a benevolent goddess.
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** spoiler omitted **...
There is nothing in these rules that doesn't allow a person to modify them to make the narrative they desire. Once again you seem to ignore that no one is forcing you to play a murder hobo style of play in PF2. The fact you're doing it is you're own behavior.
I do not run the game that way and never have. Narratives are built not on rules, but by a DM using them in the way he wants to to drive the narrative.
You are attempting to shove a paradigm on the rules that doesn't exist just as many others do when they to make these games seem like they are hard coded and you have to follow them the way the rules say.
You don't. These games have always had guidelines to use the rules as needed to play the game your players want. There is always someone like yourself trying to impose upon the game their worldview.
Why you do this I don't know. Why you think the rules do things they don't do, I don't know.
I run the game using the rules to build the narrative I want including modifying or ignoring them as needed.
My players deal with all types of situations and don't murder everything. You somehow trying to make the entire game feel like some game where people never much kill things is up to you. You can do that if you want to. Nothing in these rules is preventing it.
You're making up that this is the case.
** spoiler of awesome off-topic rant omitted **...I'm imagining just how differently my Extinction Curse campaign might have gone if the PCs, upon entering the first serious dungeon, said "Oh, this long abandoned place is now occupied by sapient species? Let's pack up, go home, and leave them be!"
Sensible on the surface, sure, but also would have lead to the doom of the entire isle. :P
If no one ever pokes their noses into the affairs of others, the terrorists win. XD /jest
And "poking your nose" into one's affairs is on a whole other level from what APs are written to have happen.
Stuff like: "oh hey, sapient people live here and are using force to keep us out? Let's kill every single one and take everything of value!"
And then the writing (sometimes) does retroactive backflips to later say it was actually a morally good thing to kill them all. Like the PCs find a "how to sacrifice innocents and summon demons" folio on the caster, with a murder-room deeper inside. Just don't think about how the PCs didn't know that at the time.
Ooooof, that dissonance is painful, lol.
Write your own module that way. No one is stopping you from doing this. No one. You're making this stuff up.
If your players like this, do it.
My players have done alternate ways of solving a battle many times. When they tell me they want to do it, I modify the narrative so they can. It's not hard to do.
There was even a campaign everyone read about like it was a novel that was about redeeming a succubus. The players loved it. It was a great read.
No one is stopping you from doing this. Rules in these games don't create the narrative, you do.
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You need a morale/surrender mechanic to play that way and not "fight till unconscious, but magically just don't die."
I don't know that you need a mechanic for morale/surrender. Some rp guidance, both general and specific can do the job. Something like "barring extraordinary circumstances, Animals attempt to flee if reduced to half their hit point total" might be and example of the general, and "Something has twisted this wolf's mind, and it will continue to fight until rendered incapable" might be an example of the specific.
Quite a few published scenarios include morale info for NPCs and monsters, but I think that "X fights to the death" is more than a little too common.
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There is honestly a bit of a tension in the DnD lineage between combats against monsters and combats against NPCs, anyways. Many of the stories fantasy d20 systems emulate narrate combat against creatures and combat against humans in different ways and give each different moral considerations, but the games treat them completely the same.
When we think about the lineage of D&D, though, it's worth remembering that the original "Little Brown Books" included a morale system that, if used, made creatures at least somewhat less likely to just stand there and fight to the death, presumably a remnant of D&D's war game roots, where morale checks were fairly baked in. I'm not sure how long the morale system stuck around through the various later editions, though.
See this blog post for some thoughts on the early morale system
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Because the Merciful rune and Non-lethal Spell exist
Non-lethal spell is wizard only. It functionally does not exist for many of my spell casters (some of them have Int+2 at reasonably low levels so they COULD buy it for the fairly huge cost of 2 class feats and quite often the totally not in character action of becoming a wizard, many of them have Int +0 for pretty much their entire career).
So no, my Druid does NOT have the option of being a competent combatant who can deal non-lethal damage at will. Not unless we're using the PC dying rules on at least those occassions when I want to take prisoners.
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Non-lethal spell is wizard only.
It's unfortunate that the feat is only available for Wizards. It should probably be a class feat for every spellcasting class. I doubt it would be a game-breaking house rule to open it up.
Additionally, or in the alternative, it probably wouldn't hurt anything to allow spell attacks to be made at -2 to deal nonlethal damage.
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Non-lethal spell is wizard only.It's unfortunate that the feat is only available for Wizards. It should probably be a class feat for every spellcasting class. I doubt it would be a game-breaking house rule to open it up.
Additionally, or in the alternative, it probably wouldn't hurt anything to allow spell attacks to be made at -2 to deal nonlethal damage.
I've used that as a house rule for quite awhile with no issues (spell attacks at -2, saves against a spell DC of -2).
I also have a fuzzy house rule "If the PCs indicate through their efforts that they want to take somebody alive then the NPC gets PC dying rules". Most of this time it means they do "substantial" non lethal damage. "Substantial" is ill defined. 1d6 to a creature with 200 points does NOT count, anything at about 20% of hit points or so DOES count. But I don't waste time actually tracking the non lethal vs lethal damage, I just use my best judgement. But even then there is some risk if the final blow is something like a Great Pick Critical to a 2nd level monster :-).
Means the PCs have to pay a small cost to have a high chance of taking somebody alive and pay a larger cost if they want to guarantee taking the person alive. Has worked quite well IMO.
There is nothing in these rules that doesn't allow a person to modify them to make the narrative they desire. Once again you seem to ignore that no one is forcing you to play a murder hobo style of play in PF2.There's nothing in these rules that don't allow a person to just assume they get a natural 20 rather than actually rolling a die when they make a check, either, but the game doesn't really support that style of play.
But the game does support allowing NPCs to use the dying rules or be taken alive or you to adapt the narrative to take someone alive or deal with a group without fighting them. It supports all of this. Provides all the tools to do so and even guidance on how to run it.
The murder hobo style of play is common because many people want a fun, fantasy combat game without complex moral decision making.
If you want a different style of play, it is easy to implement in these games. If your players want this, then do it. No one is stopping you. But don't try to pretend it's not possible when it clearly is.
And if the DM says you roll a 20, you roll a 20. That's the game. If that's the narrative you and your players want in the game, you can certainly have it.
The game supports what you want it to support. It has a default mode of play that no one is compelled to follow. This idea the default game rules should be built because one player or group wants it a certain way is purely self-centered criticism.
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Non-lethal spell is wizard only.It's unfortunate that the feat is only available for Wizards. It should probably be a class feat for every spellcasting class. I doubt it would be a game-breaking house rule to open it up.
A feat that should be a class feat for all classes (or even a significant subset of classes) should just be a General Feat.
Personally, I like that nonlethal attacks take a commitment from the players. It at least makes the choice significant.
“Nonlethal violence” is, in and of itself a bit of an oxymoron, and not simulationist in the least. If your goal is to”make sure I don’t kill this person” then you do not attack them. Less lethal weapons kill people all the time in the real world.
IMO, it is not really heroic fantasy if the players can just choose never to risk killing anyone with their attacks, and I wouldn’t even use such a variant in a game with children because choosing to respond with violence is a choice that should have real consequences.
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A feat that should be a class feat for all classes (or even a significant subset of classes) should just be a General Feat.Non-lethal spell is wizard only.It's unfortunate that the feat is only available for Wizards. It should probably be a class feat for every spellcasting class. I doubt it would be a game-breaking house rule to open it up.
I agree it should probably be available to all casters, but I personally rankle at it taking a general feat slot. I would almost prefer it to be a skill feat for arcana/nature/occultism/religion; at least that way, you're giving up less significant power levers to take it.
Personally, I like that nonlethal attacks take a commitment from the players. It at least makes the choice significant.
“Nonlethal violence” is, in and of itself a bit of an oxymoron, and not simulationist in the least. If your goal is to”make sure I don’t kill this person” then you do not attack them. Less lethal weapons kill people all the time in the real world.
IMO, it is not really heroic fantasy if the players can just choose never to risk killing anyone with their attacks, and I wouldn’t even use such a variant in a game with children because choosing to respond with violence is a choice that should have real consequences.
Not all simulations need to simulate the real world. Personally, for me, the point of making nonlethal more available is to make the combat narrative better emulate the combat narratives you might see out of a stage play, or a PG movie, or even just a night at the Medieval Times.
If I wanted a narrative with heroes who intentionally struggle against the ease of killing, and don't want to kill even when it's dangerous or costly—it's an ancient example by now, but I admittedly think of someone like Vash from Trigun—then I'd keep the nonlethal penalty.
Believe me, I am aware the real world functions quite differently. """Nonlethal""" munitions are quite terrifying, and just knocking someone out could give them brain damage that lasts for lifetime. But storytelling doesn't always care about or aim for realism. And the rules are a tool to shape the storytelling, so I'll make them care about nonlethal penalties and the difficulty of nonlethal damage to the degree that I find appropriate for the story the table wishes to tell.
If I wanted a narrative that emphasized how horrific violence was, I could always start running systems with hit locations and wound tables and the like instead. I've certainly played other games where my characters had cracked ribs and jaws on the regular, and permanent disfigurement was on the table. One player's character had a single limb that wasn't a prosthesis at the end of that game.
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Personally, I like that nonlethal attacks take a commitment from the players. It at least makes the choice significant.
“Nonlethal violence” is, in and of itself a bit of an oxymoron, and not simulationist in the least. If your goal is to”make sure I don’t kill this person” then you do not attack them. Less lethal weapons kill people all the time in the real world.
IMO, it is not really heroic fantasy if the players can just choose never to risk killing anyone with their attacks, and I wouldn’t even use such a variant in a game with children because choosing to respond with violence is a choice that should have real consequences.
I use the -2 rule myself when they want to use nonlethal. Fortunately, I've had a lot of monks in my groups. They can handle nonlethal easily.
Some of the nonlethal spells are admonishing ray or daze. Usually soften up the targets, then let the martials knock them out.
Casters have plenty of means to shift the battle in the favor of the martials to make nonlethal possible.
I did not use the nonlethal damage rule they implemented in Agents of Edgewatch, but I still made sure the players knew they were cops and had to take people alive. So they shifted to nonlethal damage when targets got low or took specific actions to stabilize them.
That's why I don't understand the statements on this game requiring the PCs to kill. They don't have to at all. There are plenty of ways to play the game in a nonlethal manner. You adjust your spell lists some. Carry weapons like saps. Take the -2 to hit like the PCs are using the flats of their blades. If the PCs take the actions to stabilize someone they just knocked down, you let them.
My players use these methods all the time. Almost every single group we have has a good social skills to allow for noncombat encounter resolution.
You don't need to track who lives and dies for every encounter. You focus on the players doing heroic fantasy working in other elements as you desire. If you want someone to live for some reason, make them live.
If the players want to engage a group so avoid combat or solve a problem without combat, you let them.
Game doesn't force anyone to act a certain way. Some players do the murder hobo style because it's easy and simple and the GM runs the game in a simple, straightforward fashion in combat.
Most funny game I've ever seen that my friend ran was with his daughter and her friends. Entire group wanted to talk to everything. They wandered around making friends with NPCs and protecting them like they were their close friends. They wanted to talk to everything first and only fight if they couldn't make friends. Definitely a different experience for my buddy who is himself a combat gamer. He really had to modify the encounters and gaming style to suit his daughter and her friends sensibilities.
I shouldn't have said Nonlethal Spell specifically, because it is more costly / less appealing than the alternatives. (I also actually really like the idea of making it a general feat, IMO meta magic as a concept works best as PC-build investment choices, but should also be more accessible than it currently is, so that concept squares the circle.)
A fair number of spells can do non-lethal damage, like Illusory Creature.
There's the generic spell wand mod of Wand of Mercy (for GMs to hand out, because damn wands are expensive)
But the main "keep a scroll" tool for Divine & Occult casters is the spell Forced Mercy, which allows willing targets to take the crit fail on purpose, turning it into a once per fight party buff. While it only works on physical damage, it makes all forms of physical, spells included, nonlethal for a minute.
Another spell would of course be Sleep. The R1 works on the last foe, and the R4 gives you another turn to sleep / KO Strike them all.
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Deriven, you are willfully ignoring the point. When someone is explicitly criticizing a module, saying that they can "write their own module" is not a counterargument.
The official APs sold to players have what was/is honestly a surprising amount of variance in their murder hoboing.
My reaction is partially due to not knowing that my first AP, "the deadly megadungeon AP" out of all of them, seems to be an exception that does a great job of avoiding the problem.
The other 3 APs thus far sometimes remember to cater to care-bear players, and other times... do things like that SoT example. Honestly, it's the whiplash of the APs doing both that really just knocks me loose.
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Systems encourage and discourage different player behaviors, and like it or not, the book-instructed default, where foes blip between fighting fit and dropping dead-dead is significantly responsible for the murder hobo-y norm.
If the default dying rules were switched, with the book saying that "sometimes is fine to not track the foe dying state" not only does that make for a more mechanically interesting engagement, but it also would retroactively make the existing AP content less murder hobo-y to play.
And being able to retroactively improve APs like that is something that's all but impossible, (has there been any other AP errata besides Abm Vlts?) IMO making this simple rule change even more worth the GM effort.
And again, the existing default is the default. Telling people to not play that default does not address, let alone dispel, criticisms of that default.
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The main issue I end up having with vanilla nonlethal is the playstyle change it mandates. Not everyone wants to roll a monk, use a sap, pick up admonishing ray, etc. It's fine by me if someone wants to use a huge d12 sword but doesn't want to kill people and doesn't want the mechanical baggage of taking a -2 in a tight game.
Doing lethal until they're low and switching to nonlethal risks critting them down, which a lot of people are unhappy about.
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That's why I don't understand the statements on this game requiring the PCs to kill.“Require” overstates the situation. The game disincentivizes the nonlethal combat and assumes the PCs will kill. Yes, you’re right, there are workarounds, but they are workarounds.
I understands the default game doesn't spend much time thinking about nonlethal.
These games attract all types of people who play for different reasons. I mainly play to tell a story. I take the APs and use them to build on the existing story. I view a base AP as a toolbox of NPCs, maps, a plot, and everything necessary to run an adventure. You have the option to run it mostly as written, but I would think most DMs take this adventure toolbox and put together what they and their group want.
It seems some people criticize these games based on what they want rather than looking at what it is. A lot of people don't want the baseline someone like Trip H is looking for. They want a default out of the box simple game of heroic fantasy with fun combat they don't have to think too much about. So Paizo sets that as the default, then provides lots of guidelines with the ultimate guideline being, "The GM can make the game they want."
That's how these games are built because the ruleset is built for a very wide audience with an easy to run and play default. If you want more complex storytelling with moral roleplaying, you have to do the work to make it happen.
I've learned this over the years. I wanted more robust stories, more realism, more difficult combats, and other things specific to myself and my group. You have to put the work in yourself to make it happen because the default setting is very easy, very generic, and you can put as much into it to make it fit your group as you want.
That's how these games work.
So if someone like Trip H has a problem, it's his and his group's problem and he should fix it in a way that suits his group, not try to pretend Paizo needs to do anything other than they've done: provide a generic rules system with a simple default you can modify as you wish.
Personal play preferences are very subjective and Paizo trying to build a game to suit everyone's sensibilities is impossible. So I would not expect it.
You want something different, put the work in to make what you want using the ruleset if this is the ruleset you like to use for whatever reason.
I use the PF2 ruleset for its balanced combat and strong adventure support. I can modify the things I like a different way myself, which is I'm sure what Paizo expects.
One thing I've learned over the years is a perfect game to suit everyone doesn't exist, so if you want something you modify it yourself.
It seems some people criticize these games based on what they want rather than looking at what it is. [...]
So if someone like Trip H has a problem, it's his and his group's problem and he should fix it in a way that suits his group, not try to pretend...
The irony is that I've been attempting to communicate that the current default *shuts down* possibilities, limiting player expression both mechanically and narratively. But because it's the default, it is not seen as a "restriction" (until you play pf2 with that default reversed).
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I have a lot of opinions as to how pf2e could be changed for the better.
I've have been mindfully advocating for this specific one, because I think it to be the absolute smallest change in terms of disruption/difficulty, while having maximal benefit, including helping pf2e appeal to a wider audience.
It is only possible for this small change to have that degree of outsized effect because the narrative significance of who and when a character kills others is both "technically irrelevant" to the game's progression, while also being incredibly important from a character personality/morality PoV. The additional combat depth that becomes available to GMs via added foe-ally-healing is more or less a serendipitous coincidence that adds to the total benefit.
And again, I struggle to find a single actual counterpoint within your various oppositions. You have only attacked the speaker or premise over and over again, slinging weak and hollow accusations at me while avoiding the proposal itself.
This thread's actual counterarguments to my proposal, such as ~"the GM tracking every foe's dying value is more of an ask / effort than you are presenting" have not been coming from you.
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A large reason why I find this dying default change to be the perfect change/proposal to dig in on and wave a flag for is that existing tables and PC dynamics are as unaffected by this real system change as could be possible (if they even elected to make this swap, because there's 0 chance of the actual book-rule changing guys, cmon).
I think it's safe to say that over 3/4 of AP combats do not involve foes that possess ally-healing. So for parties that oppose the idea of foes standing up from 0, that's not going to be a disruption. And because the existing default presently involves killing the opposing force, there are no "extra sins" being placed upon PCs that instead allow foes to bleed out, nor is there any "care-bear" ethos being forced upon those "presently all-kill" groups. (An example genuine complaint would be for the PCs that have spent the significant cost for nonlethal options having the that spend be diluted via easier nonlethal combat.)
While the GM would need to track the dying state, the difference between dying and dead NPCs can be impressively invisible to the player-side experience.
When the uncommon use of the 3A Heal spell seems the most likely case of unexpected disruption, yeah, I'm very happy with how few "problems" this causes.
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At the end of the day, all I can do is give other readers pause to consider, and perhaps mention, this default-dying-swap at their own table.
I'm only doing so because I have played both versions, find it to be a noticeable improvement, and know that being exposed to an idea is a prerequisite for it to be capable of improving one's fun.