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2021-11-14, 04:36 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2019
- Location
- Iceland
- Gender
I don't like watching my friends play while I'm dying.
Hi, I'm a DM.
Although this might be mostly a 4e issue, I always found rolling death saving throws an unengaging experience. Three times have I just have to watch a player sit there, for the majority of a combat encounter, watch his character slowly fade away into nothingness. Now, you could always just rip of the band-aid and have a character die instantly, but if you are all for the drama like me, you might want to make dying a bit more interesting.
Solving this problem was one of the first houserules I made, and boy did I have some bad ones at first. Now I think I have finally landed on something that works just as well in practice as it does in theory!
The first change we'll make is that you don't go unconscious when your down. You instead gets stunned. There's an important distinction, mainly that you can still talk and interact with your environment, although you still can't take actions. This prevents a lot of immersion breaking scenarios, the worst of which is the ranger-beast interaction at 0 HP.
Stunned
- A stunned creature is incapacitated (see the condition), can’t move, and can speak only falteringly.
- The creature automatically fails Strengthand Dexterity Saving Throws.
- Attack rolls against the creature have advantage.
You recover one failed Death Saving Throw at the end of a Long rest.
Last Stand
When a dying character rolls a successful death saving throw on his turn he can choose to make his Last Stand. Roll a DC 13 Constitution saving throw. On success, your character can take a single action, or use his movement, on that turn. On a fail, you gain one failed death saving throw.
Note: like usual, the DM can impose Disadvantage on the save if the narrative calls for it, for example if the character is taking ongoing damage, drowning, or in other situations that are less "I just need my anime flash-back"
Now, this gives DSTs a lot more milage, especially since a lot of abilities can be used to boost that Con save. They are most likely to use that action to chug a potion, or run away from whatever's killing him, preferably towards someone with a Healer's Kit. This is why we made DST recharge slower.
Now, why would you choose this instead of just handing out scrolls of revivify like candy on Halloween? DRAMA. With a spell scroll, there's no tension because the result is consistent. I have had much more success with creating tension by being stingy on my resurrection scrolls, and even have my players make a coin flip whether a diamond for the spell is even available at their current location.
Hope someone finds this interesting, cheers, and happy homebrewing!Last edited by Bjarkmundur; 2021-11-14 at 05:12 AM.