Massive Damage & Death Houserules?

[Amaril]

I'm wondering if I can get some evaluation on a couple houserules I came up with for dying from negative HP and death from massive damage in 3.5e. These are intended to make things at least a bit more lethal--just wondering if it's too much.

1 or More Hit Points: As long as you have 1 or more hit points, you remain fully functional.
0 Hit Points: Whenever you take damage that would reduce your hit points to below 0, they are reduced to 0 instead. When you have 0 hit points, you are unconscious and dying. Each round you are dying, you lose 1 hit point at the start of your turn. If this would put your negative hit point total higher than your Constitution modifier, you die (if your Constitution modifier is 0 or lower, you die immediately at the start of your next turn unless you stabilize). Every round, before you lose the hit point, you must make a DC 10 Constitution check to become stable. This check suffers a penalty equal to your negative hit point total. If you succeed, you stabilize and stop losing hit points, although you are still unconscious. Every hour you remain stable, you must make another DC 10 Constitution check (with a penalty equal to your negative hit point total) to become conscious again. If you fail, you lose 1 hit point. If you succeed, you regain consciousness, but do not regain any hit points and can take no actions until your hit points are restored to above 0. If you take any damage while your hit point total is 0 or lower, you die.
Healing: You can stabilize a dying character with a DC 15 Heal check. If any form of healing, magical or otherwise, would restore even 1 hit point to a dying character, they instead immediately become stable--further healing is required to restore hit points.
Whenever a creature takes damage equal to half their maximum hit points or more from a single attack, they must immediately make a Fortitude save with a DC equal to the amount of damage taken. If they fail this save, they die.

[Gemini476]

Well, the massive damage rule is a lot more lethal. Especially since the DC scales as a Coup the Grace rather than just being a flat 15.
On the other hand, the "injury and death" rule is a lot less strict than the standard one. Now people actually bleed out rather than going straight from positive to -10.

I'm somewhat unsure on the DC of the massive damage check, to be honest. Damage scales a lot faster than saves do.

[Zanos]

Injury and Death seems pretty good. It makes stabilizing dying characters actually an urgent thing to do, with people probably only having 2-3 rounds to stabilize before they die. Massive damage seems excessive and the saving throw DC scales very poorly. At low levels taking 10 damage from an attack is a lot, so if you have any saving throw modifier you'll pass the save most of the time. At high levels for massive damage to trigger at all you're going to be taking so much damage that there's no way for you to pass the save except on a natural 20.

Also at level 1 people will be making massive damage saves every round. You did say it was meant to be more lethal, but that seems excessive considering how squishy everything is at low levels anyway.

[Amaril]

Well, the massive damage rule is a lot more lethal. Especially since the DC scales as a Coup the Grace rather than just being a flat 15.
On the other hand, the "injury and death" rule is a lot less strict than the standard one. Now people actually bleed out rather than going straight from positive to -10.

I'm somewhat unsure on the DC of the massive damage check, to be honest. Damage scales a lot faster than saves do.

Not totally sure what you mean by "going straight from positive to -10", since I've never seen that happen, but it sounds like you're saying my version is good, so thanks :smallsmile:

How would you recommend scaling the massive damage save, then? My logic was that the massive damage rule, as it stands, will rarely come into play until mid-to-high levels, when one attack is capable of dealing 50 damage or more, but if I make the threshold half of maximum HP while keeping the DC 15 Fortitude save, no wizard would ever make it past 1st level. What would be a good way to do this?

[JBarca]

How would you recommend scaling the massive damage save, then? My logic was that the massive damage rule, as it stands, will rarely come into play until mid-to-high levels, when one attack is capable of dealing 50 damage or more, but if I make the threshold half of maximum HP while keeping the DC 15 Fortitude save, no wizard would ever make it past 1st level. What would be a good way to do this?

The way I do it is as follows:

If you take damage > 50% of your max HP, you have to make a Fort Save, DC = Amount of Damage above 50% or drop to -1 and dying (or whatever the damage total would have left you at, whichever is lower). So if you have 20 HP, and you take 18 damage in one hit, Fort Save DC 8 or die.

I feel that this scales relatively well with level, until you get pretty high. I don't have a ton of experience with upper levels, so I don't know what it looks like up there.

Just my way of doing it.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Not totally sure what you mean by "going straight from positive to -10", since I've never seen that happen, but it sounds like you're saying my version is good, so thanks :sm

Somewhere around level five attacks that do 20 plus damage become more common than single digit damage making you more likely to die outright when hit rather than end up in low negatives bleeding for six or more rounds before dieing.

Around level six, you're looking at Fighters needing natural twenties to survive massive damage, that's a much bigger deal than wizards having a rough time.

[Renen]

I would just never use the massive damage rule.
Being hit hard is bad enough. But being hit hard and possibly dying as a bonus effect? Thats just cruel. Dont do this to your players.

[Amaril]

I would just never use the massive damage rule.
Being hit hard is bad enough. But being hit hard and possibly dying as a bonus effect? Thats just cruel. Dont do this to your players.

But there are injuries so severe that they should be instantly fatal to a creature, regardless of how many hit points it has. Hit points are supposed to be more about battle fatigue and ability to avoid getting hurt than actual physical trauma sustained, but that kind of ability can't protect you from everything. Maybe the rule shouldn't come into play in a fair fight, but say, for example, that you had a high-level fighter in heavy armor falling off a tall cliff. Because that fighter has so many hit points, according to the rules, he has a much better chance of surviving the fall than a less resilient character, but realistically, a fall from more than a certain height will kill anyone. I guess the DM could just rule that they die in that kind of case, but considering how many rules there are for things like fall damage, I feel like that might bother some players.

If I use a variant of massive damage, I'll definitely use the version JBarca suggested--that does seem to scale a lot better.

[Renen]

The said fighter will take 20d6 fall damage and... walk away, because if he has decent CON score and level, rules of physics dont matter anymore.

I am just saying that if you imagine your players: Say they are crit by the BBEG, the crit is already a bad bad thing for them. But having to pass a Save or die check is just so much worse. I consider Massive Damage as bad as the milticlassing xp penalty rule.

[Curmudgeon]

I go the other way for massive damage, largely because I like higher-level games where the characters have more options. A hit dealing 50+ points is increasingly common at higher levels, while the chance of rolling a 1 on the Fortitude save doesn't go down. So my house rule is that a massive damage hit must deal 50+ points of damage while also exceeding half the character's remaining HP.

Wizards deal with the chance of being hit repeatedly by avoidance (concealment, Mirror Images, & c.) while melee combatants basically have to tough it out. A rule which reduces the survival of the martial types and rarely impacts the spellcasters doesn't seem like a good idea.

[Amaril]

The said fighter will take 20d6 fall damage and... walk away, because if he has decent CON score and level, rules of physics dont matter anymore.

And this doesn't bother you? :smallconfused: That's exactly why the massive damage rule exists in the first place. I know a lot of people will claim that it's silly to ask for realism from D&D, but I don't hold with that argument. I'm aware that any form of massive damage rules will make things a lot more lethal for the players, but if that's what the group prefers (I'm not such a jerk as to run something like that without consulting the players first), then they should be allowed to have it. Besides, the BBEG would be subject to the same rules.

[Zanos]

It would kill anyone mortal. High level d&d characters are anything but. Making massive damage more lethal for a high lethality caimpain is fine, but trying to say it helps versemilitude is laughable.

I was thinking of a base DC of 10 + half the damage dealt, but JBarcas version is much better.

[Amaril]

It would kill anyone mortal. High level d&d characters are anything but. Making massive damage more lethal for a high lethality caimpain is fine, but trying to say it helps versemilitude is laughable.

I was thinking of a base DC of 10 + half the damage dealt, but JBarcas version is much better.

Fair enough on the thing about high-level characters being more than mortal. I personally prefer lower-level games partly for that reason, but that's just me.

I really can't speak to the laughability of the verisimilitude of massive damage at high levels, since I don't have enough experience with the game to know whether it helps or not--that's why I'm asking the Playground about it.

[Renen]

Well, if the PLAYERS want it, then not much can be argued against GM allowing it.
But at high levels Wizards have contingency spells like "teleport away when below 1/2 HP" but if they just got ubercharged and died to massive damage, then the player will be very upset. Sure, there are ways around that, but if for every time that an enemy dies to Massive Damage, a player also dies, then the players will start hating the rule really fast.

And really, looking at HP as a "luck" meter is best. No matter what damage they take, they dont actually take it. They are "doging" it with their luck. And the hit that reduces them to or below 0 is the one that actually connects and does said harm. So falling for 20d6 or getting hit for a tonn of damage and not dying can be explained by "He came thiiiiis close to being hit/He landed juuuust right".

[Amaril]

And really, looking at HP as a "luck" meter is best. No matter what damage they take, they dont actually take it. They are "doging" it with their luck. And the hit that reduces them to or below 0 is the one that actually connects and does said harm. So falling for 20d6 or getting hit for a tonn of damage and not dying can be explained by "He came thiiiiis close to being hit/He landed juuuust right".

Yeah, I look at it something like that. When you're still at high HP, you're uninjured and still pretty much okay, but you won't be able to rely on getting lucky dodges much longer. At middling damage, you're starting to get tired out, a few bruises and scrapes, still nothing really incapacitating. Low HP means you're fatigued, off-balance, possibly a couple fractured bones or lacerations, and generally pretty well on the ropes. It's only when you go to 0 and lower that you've taken a real, telling injury.

I just think it can help to have some way to represent things like (to use the same example again) falling off a cliff, where there's pretty much no way to avoid getting seriously injured or killed. Talking about it here, though, I'm more inclined now to just decide those things by DM fiat rather than having massive damage rules that apply in all cases--so an attack in a fair fight that deals critical damage is survivable if you have enough HP (i.e. are good enough in a fight to block or avoid a hit like that), but a surprise, unblocked knife between your shoulder blades will be just as fatal to you as any other mortal. Of course, this is still on the assumption that everyone involved is mortal, and things will change in other cases.

Anyway, does the negative HP houserule seem good to everybody?

[Renen]

Yeh negative HP rule is cool.

Btw, i remember reading a thread here a while back, when they were talking about a situation where a person is caught by city guard and has a craptonn of crossbows pointed at em. In real world you would surrender. In D&D you just go "Hmm... I have enough AC to block 80% of those shots, I have enough HP to survive like 10 rounds. Ah **** it, you all gonna die!!" So yeh, some rules are just not realistic.

[Gemini476]

Yeah, I look at it something like that. When you're still at high HP, you're uninjured and still pretty much okay, but you won't be able to rely on getting lucky dodges much longer. At middling damage, you're starting to get tired out, a few bruises and scrapes, still nothing really incapacitating. Low HP means you're fatigued, off-balance, possibly a couple fractured bones or lacerations, and generally pretty well on the ropes. It's only when you go to 0 and lower that you've taken a real, telling injury.

I just think it can help to have some way to represent things like (to use the same example again) falling off a cliff, where there's pretty much no way to avoid getting seriously injured or killed. Talking about it here, though, I'm more inclined now to just decide those things by DM fiat rather than having massive damage rules that apply in all cases--so an attack in a fair fight that deals critical damage is survivable if you have enough HP (i.e. are good enough in a fight to block or avoid a hit like that), but a surprise, unblocked knife between your shoulder blades will be just as fatal to you as any other mortal. Of course, this is still on the assumption that everyone involved is mortal, and things will change in other cases.

Anyway, does the negative HP houserule seem good to everybody?

I am a Barbarian 20. I have 18 Con, and thus an average of 215 HP.
A dastardly Wizard teleports me into low orbit, and I fall until I reach the ground at terminal velocity. I take 20d6 damage - an average of 70. I only need to roll to save against massive damage if it does 107 damage, which it does at such a low rate that my usual methods for figuring out such statistics won't tell me. Less than 0,01% of the time, at least.

A Fighter 20, meanwhile, reaches the magical number of 141 with 12 Con. He reaches 144 HP, actually.

Here's the tricky bit: if the Fighter takes 71 or less damage from the fall (63% chance) then he walks it off relatively unharmed. He can heal it off with three nights of sleep, I guess, or just have someone cast Heal. If he takes one more damage, however, then he only has a 5% chance of surviving.

Oh, and if they're at 1hp before this and fall from orbit and take damage equal to less than half their maximum, they just end up at 0hp anyway. That's a bit weird, and kind of related to what I said earlier about skipping from >0 to -10 happening a lot.

This takes the old problem of being completely fine at 1 hp and dying at -1 and extends it to all damage in general.

One suggestion I'd maybe make is to change it from being "massive damage=save vs. the damage" to "massive damage=you are dying". Just drop them straight to 0hp; this'll actually be easier to survive than the current system, believe it or not, while still being very lethal.