One thing that's always bugged me about the D20 dying rules, is how difficult it is to fall into that "disabled" category. Either you're fully capable, or your unconscious, or your dead. Very rarely, do you have that "mortally wounded, but struggling on to accomplish something, before dying tragically in a friend's arms" sort of scenario. Even when you do, the wounded character is going from 0 hps to -1, and is by no means in immediate mortal danger... Haven't died yet, and so long as you don't sit there moping over them for the next minute, they'll likely recover.

Blah.

While Iron Hero's Death's Door rules help out a bit, it still doesn't satify me. The rule did gave me an idea, however. Tell me what you think...

QuoteDEATH'S DOOR:

At 0 hit points or lower, you're disabled, and dying.

Each round, when dying, your character loses 1 hit point, and then makes Fortitude saving throw with a Difficulty Class equal to your negative hit point total. If this save fails by 9 or less, you fall unconscious and can take no actions, but you survive for a short while longer. If this save fails by 10 or more, you die. If it succeeds, you remain disabled, and survive for a short while longer. This continues until the character dies or becomes stable.

While disabled, you can take only a single move or standard action each round, but not both. If you are stabilized, you can take move actions without further injuring yourself, but performing any standard action (or other strenuous activity) makes your character dying. Immediately after performing the standard action, you lose 1 hit point, and must make a Fortitude save as if you were dying.

Healing that raises the dying character's hit points to 1 or more makes him fully functional again, just as if he'd never been reduced to 0 or lower.

Stabilizing rules would work as normal... 10% chance per round of stabilizing on your own, or a friend can stabilize you with an action.

What do you think?

Is an interesting idea which i quite like (mainly cos i hate dying), but hands up anyone who's first action wouldn't be to take a potion of healing or some such.

I think it'd be a very rare situation that you would use this opportunity for something other than self healing (unless there was someone else in desparate need of healing/help and you were playing LG or somesuch) but as i say, it's an interesting concept which would at least give the opportunity for a more heroic hollywood type death rather than just bleeding out.

It works in Iron Heroes because there aren't any magic potions to heal yourself with so you can only use it for escape or heroic last actions. As Deree has pointed out in standard D&D, every player will use it to drink healing potions. So it effectively just increases the number of hitpoints.

Quote from: dereeIs an interesting idea which i quite like (mainly cos i hate dying), but hands up anyone who's first action wouldn't be to take a potion of healing or some such.

The only problem is that retrieving a stored item is a Move Equivalent action that provokes an attack of opportunity.  Unless you've got the potion already in hand, it's going to take you two rounds to drink that potion -- one ME action to retrieve it, and one Standard action to drink, both of which provoke attacks of opportunity.

I think the typical action would be to make a single move action to exit melee combat, if possible, and get as close as possible to the party Cleric.


As Bagpuss said, my intent is to use this for an IH game...  I'm less certain how well it would work in D&D.

Quote from: CyclotronThe only problem is that retrieving a stored item is a Move Equivalent action that provokes an attack of opportunity.

Unless you have a masterwork potion belt or a HHH.  And who doesn't?

You could make the "dying" range be a number from 0 to negative (character's level) or something. And "unconscious and bleeding" the next 10 points beyond that.

Doesn't VP/WP do something like this?  Provide a range of disabled but not unconcious?

Quote from: Hastur T. FannonUnless you have a masterwork potion belt or a HHH.  And who doesn't?

 Not every DM allows for MW potion belts, and errataed HHH's still take a ME action to retrieve something (though you don't invoke an AoO).

Quote from: Name LipsYou could make the "dying" range be a number from 0 to negative (character's level) or something. And "unconscious and bleeding" the next 10 points beyond that.

I thought about that...  But I wanted to try something a little bit different.

I like the fact that the house rule is pretty much a single rule for having negative hit points, rather than one rule for 0 hitpoints, another rule -1 to -9 hit points, and a third rule for -10 and fewer hit points.

On top of that, I like the idea that someone who is lucky, or very tough, can potentially hold off unconsciousness or death for a long time.

Quote from: blakkieDoesn't VP/WP do something like this?  Provide a range of disabled but not unconcious?

Yes, but in a different way that's a little more complicated, and would be quite a bit more invasive to the basic D20 rules.

The house rule as written, I believe, could be dropped into D&D, for example, without any other changes to the game.  Even the Diehard feat could be used as-is, though it would certainly be less useful than normal.


So is this idea worth persuing?

Quote from: Cyclotron

Quote from: blakkieDoesn't VP/WP do something like this? Provide a range of disabled but not unconcious?

Yes, but in a different way that's a little more complicated, and would be quite a bit more invasive to the basic D20 rules.

Just drop the special handling of the Critical Hit, I found that actually problematic unless you wanted to make your game a lot more deadly with a much higher emphasis on Critical Hits.

But that asides I think Name Lips is on the right track.  Having that 9 point unconcious but alive ranges is good.  I might be inclined to just have the disabled but still going range from positive character level to 0, and keep -1 to -9 unconcious with -10 being death.  A little easier to keep track of then 0 to negative character being the disabled and negative (character level + 1) to negative (character level + 9) being unconcious. But then the former is a little rougher on the characters so it is really a tone preference.

Quote from: blakkieBut that asides I think Name Lips is on the right track.

Okay, I know there are those other sorts of options... I've used some of them before, and they work to a degree. Right now, that's not what I'm looking for. Right now, this is just a thought exercise to see if we can make this particular house rule work, or if it's a completely worthless idea.

Iron Heroes already uses almost this exact same idea for characters that have fallen to -10 hps or lower. The idea was to first, extend the rule all the way up to 0 hps, and then drop the death penalty to the save DC -10 to include unconsciousness on a failure of -9 or less. (Incidentally, I made a typo to the rule above: The DC should be negative hit point total, not negative hit point total plus ten... I'll fix that.)

Running this past my wife, it has a few ramifications, if you are using this in IH...

The first chance you have of going unconscious is when your negative hit points are equal to your character level + Constitution modifier + 2 (or your Fort save bonus + 2). Once you reach negative hit points equal to your character level + Constitution modifier + 20 (or your Fort save bonus + 20), you can only stay conscious on a roll of a natural 20. Between those two, the chance slowly increases.

The first chance you have of dying is when your negative hit points are equal to your character level + Constitution modifier + 12 (or your Fort save bonus + 12). Once you reach negative hit points equal to your character level + Constitution modifier + 30 (or your Fort save bonus + 30), you can only stay alive on a roll of a natural 20. Between those two, the chance slowly increases.

Plus, stabilizing someone using the Heal action is a standard action... Feasibly, a character who is still conscious, but not yet stabilized could try to stabilize themselves with a DC 15 Heal check (in addition to the 10% chance every round).

So a 5th level IH character with a Constitution of 14 (Fort save of +7) would be disabled from 0 to -8 hit points, would have an increasingly difficult chance of staying conscious from -9 to -27 hit points, and an increasingly difficult chance of staying alive from -19 to -37 hit points. All along, they'd be losing 1 hit point per turn, unless they stabilized.

That character, assuming they never stabilize, could feasibly take up to 4 minutes to die from a mortal wound.

And a 15th level IH character with a Constitution of 14 (Fort save of +17) would be disabled from 0 to -18 hit points, would have an increasingly difficult chance of staying conscious from -19 to -37 hit points, and an increasingly difficult chance of staying alive from -29 to -47 hit points. All along, they'd be losing 1 hit point per turn, unless they stabilized.

The one down side I can see, especially with IH characters, is that higher level characters could become exceptionally difficult to kill... Though near death experiences would be a bit more common, the characters would have lots of time, relatively, to bring themselves back from the brink of death.

I had another suggestion from someone to include self-stabilization checks with the Fort save itself...  Instead of having a flat 10% chance to self-stabilize every turn, have a character stabilize if they succeed at the Fortitude save by 10 or more.

On average, it would make it easier for characters to self-stabilize.  How easy it would be to stabilize would depend on the severity of the wound, the character's level and the the character's Con mod.  It means, for higher level characters, there would be a very small range in which you would automatically stabilize, but it also means that there is an upper threshold beyoind which you cannot possibly self-stabilize, and only a trained medical professional could help you.

To use our 15th level example above (with a +17 fort save)...  This character would automatically stabilize at 0 to -8 hit points.  But has no chance to self-stabilize at -28 hit points or lower.

I'm not sure of that's better or worse (I'm kind of leaning toward it), but it would certainly eliminate an extra dice roll.

Generally in our group any suggested death/raise type house rule that depends on a Fortitude save has been ruled out because it effectively penalises none warrior classes who have a low fortitude save and already have less hit points so are more likely to die anyway.

We tend to use a character level check instead.

Good point, Bagpuss.  Although in this instance, I don't think it penalizes low-Fort save classes as much as it benefits everybody (and just benefits high-Fort save classes A LOT).

Anyway, this is another instance in which the possible problem for D&D isn't really a problem for IH...  All saving throws in IH are simply Character level + relevant modifier (Con, Dex or Wis).

Interesting.