Balance check: consequences of changing the death threshold

[magic9mushroom]

I'm not 100% sure if this should go here or in Homebrew, but it's really simple so eh.

Suppose that instead of dying at -10, you die at -(Con score).

The idea here is that there's a bit more of a cushion at high levels between "dying" and "dead", and that Diehard is a little less useless.

Have I missed anything that would make this problematic?

[Clementx]

Nope, been doing it for years. Makes PCs slightly less likely to die in a fight they are going to end up winning. This is a good thing.

[Elves]

I wonder if this wasn't going to be the rule originally since undead/constructs already work that way.

[NigelWalmsley]

Sure, go for it. I would be surprised if the specific death threshold has mattered more than a single-digit number of times across all the games I have played.

[Thurbane]

Its a fairly common house rule, and shouldn't cause any real balance issues.

It will hurt players with a Con score lower than 10 a little, but that is pretty uncommon, barring players with Con as a non-ability(and then the rules are different anyway).

We did have one crazy player who has a 6 Con Illusionist once - didn't last very long. :smalltongue:

[Biggus]

Sure, go for it. I would be surprised if the specific death threshold has mattered more than a single-digit number of times across all the games I have played.

If you're starting at level 1 it matters: the difference between dying at -10 and -18 is pretty big at that stage. By mid-levels, it's not likely to matter unless you have a reeeally high Con score.

[Powerdork]

It's worth remembering that balance is about the kind of challenge the players are being presented with, and if "it's easy to bleed out on the floor during a large melee or in a dark corner" is a challenge that's not in the genre you want the adventure to carry, then you're perfectly okay removing that challenge by whatever means seem reasonable. You might decide that PCs are the resolute sort that are able to wake back up later with 0+ hit points, for instance.

Have you asked your players about this?

[sleepyphoenixx]

I don't think it'd be problematic but i also don't think it will do what you want it to.
I can see it making a difference at low levels, yes, but at mid-high levels a cushion of 6-10hp more before death wouldn't do all that much i think.

At least in my experience players who die from hp damage tend to take big hits or full attacks where having 10hp more wouldn't have changed anything.

[Rynjin]

Given this is literally how Pathfinder works, I don't imagine you'd run into any issues.

[Psyren]

Given this is literally how Pathfinder works, I don't imagine you'd run into any issues.

^ This; thousands if not millions of people have been playing it this way for years, it's fine.

[NigelWalmsley]

If you're starting at level 1 it matters: the difference between dying at -10 and -18 is pretty big at that stage. By mid-levels, it's not likely to matter unless you have a reeeally high Con score.

It's not really that big of a deal at low levels. At low levels, damage values are low enough that you'll rarely get knocked to less than -3 or -4 initially. If your allies can't save you with that much time, they aren't going to save you with an extra eight rounds.

[Glimbur]

If you want people to die less, have death happen at the lower of -10 or -(half max hp). That gives a more comfortable cushion at mid to higher levels. Might make death too rare, unless you start counting dying folks in AoE attacks or deliberately attacking them. Depends on the tone of the game you want to run.

[Biggus]

It's not really that big of a deal at low levels. At low levels, damage values are low enough that you'll rarely get knocked to less than -3 or -4 initially. If your allies can't save you with that much time, they aren't going to save you with an extra eight rounds.

Critical hits aren't an especially rare occurrence...

[Aotrs Commander]

Really, the major change is that it means the PCs won't have to burn as much gold on ressing and a bit higher survivabilty at lower level. That said, a buffer of an extra 2 to maybe 20, tops at max level for a Con-focussed character hit points isn't likely to have a huge impact; barbarians aside, most folk are only going to be dead at -12 to -14 or so; meaningful at low single digits, but less so higher up. It helps marginally with extending bleed-out time, but I think as the damage gets higher, the major causes of hit point death is going to be damage that takes you from positive to dead in one hit, rather than to the bleed-out range.



I'd argue that PF didn't go far enough; I went a step further to "half your maximum hit points or your Con stat, which ever is higher," (bearing in mind I just use max hit points) considering the amount of damage being thrown around at our mid-levels is sufficent that even, like, -20 is barely a single decent hit's worth from anything likely to clonk you.

(For the same reason I massively buffed healing spells, on the basis that bare minimum they ought to heal slightly more than what damage can be dealt out at that level.)

(Heck, you could go full Rolemaster and go to full -hit points for death if you wanted and it wouldn't make a huge difference to balance; character mortality rate would just be lower and if that is something you wanted...)



There is also the landmine principle to consider. Landmines are intended to wound, not kill, because a dead dead is one soldier down, but a wounded soldier is two soldiers down - the wounded guy and the one who has to help him. A dead PC is one PC out of the fight, but a downed PC is other PCs having to break off to to something to stop him dying. So more bleeding out PCs than dead PCs has some in-combat merit and is better in ratcheting the tension up; but on the other hand, if it's so generous that it would takem the ages to bleed-out, the players might start to ignore it. So if you were going to go really generous with the death threshold, you might also consider increasing the rate of bleed-out. (I haven't, as I have found that the landmine effect still works on my players as it is.)



(That said, with my houserules on the death threshold, I wouldn't consider doing what later D&D editions did and have any healing take you up to zero and go up from there; the price of not being dead is you do have to likely stay down longer!)

[Elkad]

It's fine.

It's nothing more than a death cushion for fights the party wins, and it ages out by midlevel.
1st level wizard with 14 con dies with 16 damage. With the houserule he dies at 20. 25% more hitpoints.
At 7th level it's 43 vs 47. Only 10%.

And he becomes a non-combatant at the exact same point, so it doesn't change combat balance at all.

If someone goes out with a 6 con, he's already decided to play hard-mode. (or doesn't mind rerolling often) So this just adds more challenge for him.

[Thurbane]

Would this apply to monsters too? Because some creature have pretty high Con scores.

[Psyren]

Would this apply to monsters too? Because some creature have pretty high Con scores.

Generally monsters should just die at zero, however PF does suggest using the PC dying rules for bosses or other unique opponents and NPCs (e.g. a rival adventuring party or a cohort/hostage)

[RatElemental]

There is also the landmine principle to consider. Landmines are intended to wound, not kill, because a dead dead is one soldier down, but a wounded soldier is two soldiers down - the wounded guy and the one who has to help him. A dead PC is one PC out of the fight, but a downed PC is other PCs having to break off to to something to stop him dying. So more bleeding out PCs than dead PCs has some in-combat merit and is better in ratcheting the tension up; but on the other hand, if it's so generous that it would takem the ages to bleed-out, the players might start to ignore it. So if you were going to go really generous with the death threshold, you might also consider increasing the rate of bleed-out. (I haven't, as I have found that the landmine effect still works on my players as it is.)


This reminded me of final fantasy tactics, of all things. In that game when a unit goes down they have 3 turns before they get killed off for good, during which time you can prevent that from happening by either reviving them or winning the battle. A similar system could be adapted rather than one based on negative hp if that's the sort of feel the DM is going for, perhaps you get con bonus rounds before you die when you hit 0 hp or something.


Generally monsters should just die at zero, however PF does suggest using the PC dying rules for bosses or other unique opponents and NPCs (e.g. a rival adventuring party or a cohort/hostage)

Once combat is over and all the monsters are on the floor bleeding out you can just assume the pcs go around coup de grace-ing them all, unless they want to take prisoners.

[Elves]

Generally monsters should just die at zero

Eh, there are a lot of places where 3.5 goes overboard, but this feels too videogamey or aphysical, like they're just poofing into coins. It's telling that the creatures who die at 0 hp, undead and constructs, are the dehumanized/non-living ones.

[Linearblade]

A house rule we’ve been playing with recently:

Negative infinity is fine, but you have to heal that to -9 before their next turn.

[Psyren]

Eh, there are a lot of places where 3.5 goes overboard, but this feels too videogamey or aphysical, like they're just poofing into coins. It's telling that the creatures who die at 0 hp, undead and constructs, are the dehumanized/non-living ones.

I mean, you can track every mook goblin and gnoll going into negatives if you want, I certainly won't stop you :smalltongue:

[Rynjin]

I mean, you can track every mook goblin and gnoll going into negatives if you want, I certainly won't stop you :smalltongue:

You don't have to; just in combats with healing on the enemy side.

This could be Fast Healing, Regeneration, a Neutral Cleric (or just one with healing spells), etc.


But monsters do effectively die at -1 (not 0; 0 is Disabled but not quite out of the fight) if there's no healing around, since it's almost impossible to stop yourself from bleeding out naturally.

[Aotrs Commander]

I mean, you can track every mook goblin and gnoll going into negatives if you want, I certainly won't stop you :smalltongue:

Concur.

I've certainly never bothered, myself; zero is dead or combat ineffective, that's the bit that matters.

It doesn't add anything to the game once they're down (aside from important NPCs, does it cosmically matter if Stone Giant 3 stabilises or bleeds to death?) except extra busy-work for me as DM as far as I can see, personally, especially when you're dealing with larger encounters for having 6-8 player characters.

The only time I give it any thought is if the monsters had some healing spells they might use on downed creatures, or, as mentioned for important creatures, when you can deal with on a case-by-case basis.

(Notably, the only computer game adaption that ever bothered with it was Temple of Elemental Evil.)


Once combat is over and all the monsters are on the floor bleeding out you can just assume the pcs go around coup de grace-ing them all, unless they want to take prisoners.

That as well.

(I suppose someone might theohetically say "but that's not a Good action," but that means on top of everything else, a Good party would then need to find a way to deal with each and every creature who happened to not be killed outright after every combat, which sounds like a whole lot of massive faff for everyone. Much easier if it's splortched by default, and you can move on to the stuff that is more interesing, in my opinion.)

[NigelWalmsley]

I mean, if you really wanted to simplify things, you could just make it "when HP goes below 0, make a Fortitude save, success means you last until the end of the fight, failure means immediate death". There's no need to track individual negative hitpoints for anyone if you think that's annoying.


Critical hits aren't an especially rare occurrence...

Crits that are big enough to take you from healthy to -10 are. Low-CR creatures don't deal that much damage, and the ones that do deal enough that those crits will be OHKOs under either rule. Particularly if characters have taken damage previously. This houserule only makes a real difference in very specific circumstances approximating "the party frontliner is at full health and takes a high-damage crit from an Orc". That's rare enough to not be relevant.


Once combat is over and all the monsters are on the floor bleeding out you can just assume the pcs go around coup de grace-ing them all, unless they want to take prisoners.

Yeah. The fact that PCs are expected to win more than accounts for the difference in behavior between PCs and NPCs in this regard. No need to introduce verisimilitude-breaking exceptions.

[Falontani]

I have had a player stabilise at -9 hp during a larger fight. I rolled some percentiles to determine if the fight continued where it was, if one of the enemies attempted to loot the player, etc. Miraculously nothing happened to the player. He survived, cast cure minor wounds on himself (his last spell slot) grabbed the other players bags of holding and a finger from each of them, and limped off into the night. The party lost the battle and the war, but the bard successfully brought the party back from the closest tpk I'd ever seen.

I would not do away with the bleed out system, but I could see dropping to -con mod % total hit points (capped at ten con mod granting -100% of your hp) and taking 5% of your total hp in bleed after dropping unconscious.

[Rynjin]

Crits that are big enough to take you from healthy to -10 are. Low-CR creatures don't deal that much damage, and the ones that do deal enough that those crits will be OHKOs under either rule. Particularly if characters have taken damage previously. This houserule only makes a real difference in very specific circumstances approximating "the party frontliner is at full health and takes a high-damage crit from an Orc". That's rare enough to not be relevant.

It's not THAT rare. There are plenty of common low CR creatures (Orcs, Redcaps, Ogres, etc.) that can slap a level 1-3 PC down in one hit fairly easily (all having access to x3 or above crit ratio weapons; the Greataxe, Scythe, and Ogre Hook respectively), and plenty others that can one round (though not one SHOT) kill an unwary level appropriate PC (like a Hydra).

[NigelWalmsley]

It's not THAT rare. There are plenty of common low CR creatures (Orcs, Redcaps, Ogres, etc.) that can slap a level 1-3 PC down in one hit fairly easily (all having access to x3 or above crit ratio weapons; the Greataxe, Scythe, and Ogre Hook respectively), and plenty others that can one round (though not one SHOT) kill an unwary level appropriate PC (like a Hydra).

Really big crits don't make it meaningful either, they just go off the other end. An Orc Warrior wielding a Greataxe deals 31 points of damage on an average crit. That one-shots a 1st level 16 Constitution Fighter from full under either set of rules. I'm not saying this rule would literally never matter, just that it would be very rare.

[magic9mushroom]

That as well.

(I suppose someone might theohetically say "but that's not a Good action," but that means on top of everything else, a Good party would then need to find a way to deal with each and every creature who happened to not be killed outright after every combat, which sounds like a whole lot of massive faff for everyone. Much easier if it's splortched by default, and you can move on to the stuff that is more interesing, in my opinion.)

Maybe being Good is hard and legitimate temptation (i.e., temptation for the players, not for the PCs in-character, because very few players will go out of their way to RP failing an obvious moral challenge) is an interesting thing to have in an RPG.

(If anybody knows Monmusu Quest, I think Angel Halo was a massive crutch for basically this reason; it totally obviates almost every moral dilemma Luka faces because he can non-lethally neuter anyone with ease.)

[Sutr]

I'm kinda with magicmushroom on this, I've definitely had random giant get away and prepare the big bad and then become big bad, a hobgoblin who stabilized blow a horn as the PC's were coup de gracing his friend alerting the fort and a guild thief escape and say the PC's were attacking the docks killing everyone. I think it added to verisimilitude, and only happened due to me tracking their results according to the rules. The PC's gained a villainous reputation due to bad PR in that game.

One PC found it super amazing one hated it. I also have humanoid opponents surrender at low HP if they can't win including a doppelganger who didn't hit a pc during the first 3 rounds of a whif fest. The same people had the same results.

On topic I use con at my table, and have used half HP as well. It works fine.

[Psyren]

You don't have to; just in combats with healing on the enemy side.

This could be Fast Healing, Regeneration, a Neutral Cleric (or just one with healing spells), etc.

In a fight where enemies can heal (and where said enemies would tactically try to heal each other, in the caster case) I'd be more inclined to track HP past zero, but that's not most of them.


Really big crits don't make it meaningful either, they just go off the other end. An Orc Warrior wielding a Greataxe deals 31 points of damage on an average crit. That one-shots a 1st level 16 Constitution Fighter from full under either set of rules. I'm not saying this rule would literally never matter, just that it would be very rare.

What about a 2nd-level one? With an average HP roll of 5 he's still dead in 3.5 but only dying in PF, seems like a crucial distinction to me.

[sleepyphoenixx]

(I suppose someone might theohetically say "but that's not a Good action," but that means on top of everything else, a Good party would then need to find a way to deal with each and every creature who happened to not be killed outright after every combat, which sounds like a whole lot of massive faff for everyone. Much easier if it's splortched by default, and you can move on to the stuff that is more interesing, in my opinion.)

Someone could theoretically say that (and they wouldn't be wrong by the letter of their argument), but it's all but spelled out that good creatures are allowed to kill and aren't required to spare their enemies without violating their alignment (because it's not an Evil action either).
And that those rules only apply to non-evil humanoids anyway, most of the time, with anything else being fair game. And not even all of those either.

Killing orcs, goblins and similar races is pretty much regarded as pest control in most established settings, with the same rules applying to worshippers of evil gods, demon cultists, anyone dealing with the creation of undead and a whole lot of other exceptions.

Not even the super-saintly gooder than good Vow of Nonviolence requires you to spare anything but humanoids and monstrous humanoids, and then only from direct damage or death effects which leaves plenty of options for someone with access to magic.

Life is cheap in D&D land, and anyone bringing up this argument needs to be reminded that Good and Evil need to be viewed through the lens of magical fantasy murderland, not our modern sensibilities.

[Aotrs Commander]

Maybe being Good is hard and legitimate temptation (i.e., temptation for the players, not for the PCs in-character, because very few players will go out of their way to RP failing an obvious moral challenge) is an interesting thing to have in an RPG.

There is a place for that sort of moral dilemma, but the default result from combat in a standard game is not it. In a game that is explictly set up to be focussed around something other than combat primaritly, so they are few and far between 1 so you want when the PCs have to get their swords out to have big consequences? Then, yes, maybe I can see the point.

In your average run through an Adventure Path or something? It seems like a very quick way to annoy the FRACK out of your players.




Someone could theoretically say that (and they wouldn't be wrong by the letter of their argument), but it's all but spelled out that good creatures are allowed to kill and aren't required to spare their enemies without violating their alignment (because it's not an Evil action either).
And that those rules only apply to non-evil humanoids anyway, most of the time, with anything else being fair game. And not even all of those either.

Killing orcs, goblins and similar races is pretty much regarded as pest control in most established settings, with the same rules applying to worshippers of evil gods, demon cultists, anyone dealing with the creation of undead and a whole lot of other exceptions.

Not even the super-saintly gooder than good Vow of Nonviolence requires you to spare anything but humanoids and monstrous humanoids, and then only from direct damage or death effects which leaves plenty of options for someone with access to magic.

Life is cheap in D&D land, and anyone bringing up this argument needs to be reminded that Good and Evil need to be viewed through the lens of magical fantasy murderland, not our modern sensibilities.

I wouldn't make that hypothetical arguement myself; as should be evident from above that if the assumption that all bleeding out enemies are coup-de-grace'd at the end of combat off-screen saves faffing about, I'd be all for it (except for the fact I just have the splorched during combat for it to never be an issue).



1I won't suggest using a different system like some would if you wanted to do that, because whatever I'm doing, I'm going to be doing it in some form of either 3.Aotrs or Rolemaster so I extend the same curtursy to everyone else.

[RatElemental]

I also have humanoid opponents surrender at low HP if they can't win including a doppelganger who didn't hit a pc during the first 3 rounds of a whif fest. The same people had the same results.


Actually ran an encounter based on this once. The party was traveling with a trade caravan to get where they needed to go, and they passed through the territory of a goblin tribe. The goblins would have been (effectively) infinitely respawning, the party was meant to get them to back down by using a big enough show of force and some intimidate checks. Funnily enough, there was a goblin in the party who had built to be good at intimidation. The caravaners were the only ones coup de grace-ing unconscious goblins, and retrieving the dead and wounded was the only thing the goblins who had joined the fray cared about once the tribe backed down. The party even had some conflict with the caravan guys over getting them to stop killing the goblins once it was over.

I'm a big fan of the concept that if there are two orcs, and in a single round of combat the party turns one of them into a reddish smear on the ground, the other orc is going to soil himself and call for help instead of angrily charging in (unless he's a barbarian in a rage I guess).

[NigelWalmsley]

What about a 2nd-level one? With an average HP roll of 5 he's still dead in 3.5 but only dying in PF, seems like a crucial distinction to me.

And what if he's taken a hit from the Orc? An average damage greataxe hit is 10 points, which is enough to put either Fighter into the rare where a crit is an instant-kill. Or what if he took Toughness? Even three points of extra HP means either Fighter ends up bleeding out instead of dead.

But yes, you can construct a situation where the distinction matters, I've never claimed you can't. But it seems fairly obvious that those situations are not going to come up with any meaningful frequency. It's like having a houserule for what happens if you roll a natural 20 on your critical confirmation roll. Does it have some effect? Sure. But whatever effect it does have is relevant less than once per four hundred rolls.

[Psyren]

And what if he's taken a hit from the Orc? An average damage greataxe hit is 10 points, which is enough to put either Fighter into the rare where a crit is an instant-kill. Or what if he took Toughness? Even three points of extra HP means either Fighter ends up bleeding out instead of dead.

But yes, you can construct a situation where the distinction matters, I've never claimed you can't. But it seems fairly obvious that those situations are not going to come up with any meaningful frequency. It's like having a houserule for what happens if you roll a natural 20 on your critical confirmation roll. Does it have some effect? Sure. But whatever effect it does have is relevant less than once per four hundred rolls.

The point though is there are many more games happening at any given time than just yours; hundreds, if not thousands in fact. A rules distinction that only rarely comes up at your table (if it ever does) is still something designers need to think about, because it's going to happen multiple times when enough people are playing their game.