[3.5] Small houserule idea

[Gandariel]

So, watching the last OOTS and reminding a few more of them i thought Nale was lucky, being sent exactly in the negatives and not killed outright (Also happened to Roy a few strips ago)

That's obviously for the narration, but that gives a cool idea for a new houserule:

When fighting and something (a damaging spell, an attack) would kill you, it instead sends you to -5 hp and unconscious.

Finger of Death, Vorpal, Death Attack and similar still kill you outright, but apart those instant-death things, normal attacks knock you unconscious first.


The main advantage of this is less PC deaths, of course.
That 1st level Fighter that got critted by a charging Orc? nah, he's dying at -5.
He has the chance to be healed by his mates.

Some of you would say "Well, a monster who has 3 attacks/round drops you with one of his attacks, then kills you with his next one".
Unlikely, actually.
If the party is fighting a monster and it manages to drop the fighter, i doubt he would waste more attacks on his dying body, instead he'd better get to killing the others first!

So this sounds a quick and easy houserule to get less PC deaths, while feeling more safe throwing strong monster at them: you don't have to worry anymore that the monster will accidentally kill half the party before it dies.
It may DROP half the party before dying, which is waay easier to fix.

So what does the Playground think of this?

[Silva Stormrage]

Personally I think it would be a fine house rule, I think it might be slightly better to drop them to -8. But thats just me being a bit harsher. I think it would be a fine house rule though.

[Telonius]

Would this work for enemies, too? (i.e. the evil Wizard doesn't actually get killed, he's at -5). I generally don't like it when rules function differently for the PCs than for the enemies. Expect lots of alignment questions/issues about healing fallen enemies, taking prisoners, etc.

This rule would make the Diehard feat very, very powerful.

[Eldonauran]

Personally, I like it. :smallbiggrin:

Realistically? I'd make critical hits put a character to -8 or -9, just so you have a shot at saving the character, if you act swiftly. Critical hits need to be an OMG moment, whether thats good or bad for you (IMHO).


This rule would make the Diehard feat very, very powerful.

Yes, that might be a problem. :smallconfused:

[Gandariel]

Sure, -5 or -8 is no big deal. -8 is actually better, now that i think of it. You can't just wait around, then get to heal him when you have time. He's DYING, RUN!

The Diehard feat.. well, it does have a feat requisite. Two feats for acting once more when knocked out (which shouldn't happen too often)? meh

[HunterOfJello]

I think that a lot of DMs avoid using abilities against players that would result in insta-deaths via a single bad roll. This nerfs a lot of enemies, but allows for a bit more continuity in the game.

I feel conflicted about the whole idea, but I think that an option of what you've suggested could work well for PCs. In my games, if a spell kills a PC by doing damage, the PC is going to die. If the PC is targeted by some sort of instant death attack, then I usually change things around slightly.

It really depends on the group and how the players regard their characters, but I dislike the idea of a PC walking into a room, making 1 bad roll, and getting an instant death from some random Finger of Death spell.

[LTwerewolf]

For Diehard, make it so that if the attack would have outright killed the character, then they're fatigued (even if immune). If the attack wouldn't have killed them but put them in negatives, it works as regular.

[Silva Stormrage]

Another problem with diehard is that if they get dropped to -5 they are still standing... So the enemy is just going to attack them again to make sure they stay dead and not spend the rest of their attacks on other enemies.

[Kelb_Panthera]

As an alternative, you could expand the window for a character to be dying (normally -1 to -9) to something like 10 + level, or if you prefer tougher characters to take longer to bleed out something like 5 + con mod + level, or even just straight up constitution score + level.

I like that last one. Dying is -1 to -(constitution score + level.)

[Gamer Girl]

So what does the Playground think of this?


I don't get it?

Ok, so you don't want the characters to die, right? Well, how about just not keeping track of Character Hit Points? Then no character would die. Or if you still want to play with the numbers, just give each character ''100 awesome bonus hit points'' or such.

[Eldonauran]

I don't get it?

Ok, so you don't want the characters to die, right?

:smallconfused: No.


The main advantage of this is less PC deaths, of course.
...
He has the chance to be healed by his mates

Less PC deaths =/= No PC deaths.

This house rule appears to limit the unexpected critical that takes out a character and allows the character a chance to be healed before they die.

So, pure damage =/= one hit kill / auto-kill (spells/effects still can do this).

[Silva Stormrage]

I don't get it?

Ok, so you don't want the characters to die, right? Well, how about just not keeping track of Character Hit Points? Then no character would die. Or if you still want to play with the numbers, just give each character ''100 awesome bonus hit points'' or such.

Thats slightly harsher then you needed to be on this. Its not a system where character death is impossible, nor is it a houserule that increases the survivability all that much anyway. What it does do is make it so that less player deaths are from "Oh look that orc with a greataxe crit me looks like I died" and more are from being overwhelmed by the encounter or bad rolls.

[Gamer Girl]

Thats slightly harsher then you needed to be on this. Its not a system where character death is impossible, nor is it a houserule that increases the survivability all that much anyway. What it does do is make it so that less player deaths are from "Oh look that orc with a greataxe crit me looks like I died" and more are from being overwhelmed by the encounter or bad rolls.

Well, if characters had more HP they would not be overwhelmed or have to worry about a bad roll (DM-The Orc Super Crit you for 125 damage! Player-Woah, well I'm down to just 546 hit points now!)

There are other Options:

1.Disney Danger: If you feel like a character is 'close' to death, just have the foes 'take it easy on them'. (Gork the Orc Lord puts down his awesome double bladed axe and picks up a rock to hit you with for...2 damage!)

No rolls: Don't roll for any NPC, just decide what they roll. (16 Stormtroopers are standing just ten feet from you and they all fire at the same time and all get ones to hit you!)

3.Disney Saves: Just save the players. (The Orc lord looks down at you and says ''me win!'', and just then the host of angles shows up and everyone is saved!)

[Coidzor]

Certainly gives some greater incentive to use certain abilities. Have to admit that something a bit similar was bouncing around in my head at one point.

[lsfreak]

This is pretty much exactly how a wound system treats death. You lose vitality and start taking wounds, which are Real Damage™. Once you hit zero wounds, you have to make a save for disabled-dying, and then when dying, every round is another save for dead-dying-stable-disabled. One-hit deaths are essentially non-existent outside of genuine save-or-die effects.

@Gamer Girl:
I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic or not. This is not about arbitrarily saving the players with not-even-thinly-veiled zero-threat campaigns, this is about limiting arbitrary deaths.

[elonin]

One place where role master gets it right is how they handle character deaths. You are knocked out at 0 as usual but death occurs at negative con. Their stats are based on a d100 but so are their attack/damage rolls.

[TuggyNE]

The already-mentioned "die at negative Con" is a houserule I always like for this sort of thing; it doesn't make much difference, true, but every little helps.

Using one of the various Healer fixes going around might also be good — if I recall correctly, T.G. Oskar's version allows spending immediate actions to burn healing pool charges or spells, which combos well here.

[Karoht]

City of Heroes had something called the 1 shot rule.
Lets say your character has 1000 hitpoints.
Something happens, the damage is 1,000,000.
Instead of being instant dead, you are left with 1 hit point and standing.

There were some rules to this. You had to be at full health before the 'killing hit' lands. So if for some reason you took 1 HP before the 1 million hit, you would be dead.


A DnD varient of this rule shouldn't be too hard to whip up. In fact, such a rule has been in the back of my head for a while now.

[Fitz10019]

I think both -5 and -8 are less than ideal for being known. I suggest 1d4+5. This could cost an action point, or some other resource.

[prufock]

I personally dislike random character death, so I use my own houserules.

1. You can go as far into negatives as you have points of Constitution. 14 con, you can go -14.

2. While in negatives, you make Fort saves to stay conscious (DC = 10+how far below 0 you are). You can only take one standard action.

3. Even once you hit -Con, you get a save vs death. You're auto-unconscious at this point, though, and can be hit with a CDG.

This makes games less fatal, which is what I want most of the time (I don't always use this rule; sometimes I WANT deadly games). Deaths can still happen, but it's less common and you have plenty of buffer room.

[RFLS]

Well, if characters had more HP they would not be overwhelmed or have to worry about a bad roll (DM-The Orc Super Crit you for 125 damage! Player-Woah, well I'm down to just 546 hit points now!)

There are other Options:

1.Disney Danger: If you feel like a character is 'close' to death, just have the foes 'take it easy on them'. (Gork the Orc Lord puts down his awesome double bladed axe and picks up a rock to hit you with for...2 damage!)

No rolls: Don't roll for any NPC, just decide what they roll. (16 Stormtroopers are standing just ten feet from you and they all fire at the same time and all get ones to hit you!)

3.Disney Saves: Just save the players. (The Orc lord looks down at you and says ''me win!'', and just then the host of angles shows up and everyone is saved!)

So, to clarify: he wants to make it harder for the PCs to outright die to lucky rolls. There's absolutely no reason to be unpleasant or to deride his preferred mode of play; maybe he prefers story-driven campaigns.