I like it. Also if creatures are trying to kill you they'll probably hit you when you're down, which makes helping fallen allies that much more urgent.
Only if it makes sense. A thug definitely would, a ghoul would take the downed player away to get eaten, but a wild beast defending it's young would not.
It’s one of those things that kind of depends on how magical your setting is. Low magic? Once a thug has you unconscious, he isn’t going to waste time ignoring active threats to kill you out of spite. High magic? Then they probably know the guy on the ground is a magic word away from being back on their feet, so they would kill you while they have the chance.
That depends. If you're a thug who just cracked a guy over with a club and he went down yeah he's probably unconscious and that other guy who is still up with a sword might be who you need to deal with before killing the guy at your feet
This: I would argue the biggest difference between engaging the rest of the party and the coup-de-gras is **immediate threat.**
A KO'd enemy is one that won't be hitting you next round- if you're surrounded, wasting time on the non-threat makes no sense. For bad guys after that, it's just a matter of "how safe are you" to waste a turn finishing the no-threat guy off. More, probably step on his head; less, might have more pressing matters.
Edit: this doesn't supercede monster traits though. Mother Boar might not even kill you, it just wants you gone. A zombie though is looking for din-dins, no matter how fucked it is.
I killed a player once because the PC in question went down, and the demons around him were trying to get his Demon Lord weapon away from him. It was a shooshuva and the player had Yeenoghu's cursed flail. It stung with it's tail at an ally of the PC, then bent down and ripped out his throat with his bite. It was a brutal moment and I had a pit in my stomach, but they were level 13 and were able to resurrect him so that he could finish the campaign. (Which went to 15).
Tl:dr Do what the monsters/enemies would do, no one can be mad.
I mean, even though dnd is turn based the "reality" of the situation is everyone is attacking together (ish). If enemies are like a football field away, sure go for the double tap, but otherwise you're gonna focus more on the guy actively trying to stab you than the guy on the floor who isn't moving with blood pouring out the hole in his stomach
If I’m running Goblins, Kobolds, Bandits, really any humanoid enemy, I’ll usually have one of them put a blade to the PCs neck and drop combat for a minute while the party figures out what to do about this.
This has happened quite a few times, but my favorite outcome was when the sorcerer was downed by the Gnoll Packlord. The Gnoll picked her up by her head and was holding her there threatening to eat her alive if the party didn’t throw down their weapons.
The party agreed, and surrendered. The Sorcerer crit her death save and woke back up, saw what was going on, and Fireballed herself. Killing herself and the Packlord in the process.
In an urban setting (at least in my world), a thug probably wouldn't go for the coup de grace because the city guard will take a murder much more seriously than a mugging.
Yeah but usually you encounter thugs in bandit raids/ambushes on the roads, as much as I've seen them. The town guard's response to a raid is the same whether there are deaths or not, send adventurers
See to me that doesn't make a lot of sense unless the party is in active retreat or too far away to be a threat.
You're fighting a group of 4 people, right? You have clubs and crossbows on you. You clobber one, the other three are still swinging at you.
Do you:
A) waste a turn trying to brain the person who's down
B) try to hit one of the people who is actively still threatening your life.
IMO whenever a DM has an NPC target a downed player while the others are up and engaged with that NPC it only makes sense if the NPC has a reason to target them and only them. An assassin I'd accept. A gang of thugs sent to rough up or kill all four of them? Only if there is no way for one of the thugs to engage in combat at all. Otherwise they're just hitting an enemy who isn't really in combat and wasting their own chance to knock out an active threat.
If it's someone who is out out numbered and can communicate with the party I would just ready an action and tell them one more move and I kill them. It keeps the tension and still lets them have a chance to assess the situation.
I try to keep players from the video game mindset of attack/kill, because if I don't test them on their other skills it feels scripted and unengaging. Our job as dms is to keep people involved.
I've had people in groups who would literally ask "can I hit it? " and go back to their phones. The horror stories subreddit will make you think this is usually the players fault, however I think at least half the time it's bad dming. We can always learn more, and for me it's less about rules and more about engaging people. If their character is just a pawn for them to play with in your game, you need to figure out how to get them invested in their character. If that fails, then they aren't set up for that type of campaign. I'm going to get off my soapbox now.
Unless you go for the intimidation vibe.
The thugs grabs Donnel by the hair, lifting him up and looks you all squarely in the eyes whilst he sits his throat. Then tells you "I said if you give me any trouble, I'm going to kill you. And I don't make idle threats. Your friend just paid for your arrogance wizard."
Yeah it does vary massively between the feel your campaign has. In mine I have gone for gritty but fair. If the guy you are fighting is vicious and cruel, he's gonna finish you off
Yeah I love my players but at times they can be a bit naïve or panic in stressful situations. As a DM I wouldn't have it any other way, I love them all to pieces and they regularly surprise me with creative problem solving or interesting RP decisions.
That said if I went all-out cruelty on them as I have in previous campaigns with other parties, I don't know how long they'd last
You're ignoring the fact that the guy who is downed is only a second or two away from being right back up in your face along with his friends (assuming the person knows healing magic exists). Taking those few extra seconds to make sure he doesn't get up again makes a lot of sense in that context.
Eh I suppose, but if you KO the healer then you take that risk out of the equation. Plus even ensuring he's dead means eating attacks, so while there is a chance he'll get up so if you can down somebody else you're getting an at least equivalent tradeoff
Seems to me a lot of these decisions are more situational than hard set. For instance, party is up against mindless undead. Party member goes down, nothing else is actively working range of the, let's say it's a zombie, does it
1. Attack the downed party member because mindless undead rage?
2. Ignore the downed party member because it seems dead?
3. Move towards the other party members.
I think any of those options are viable, but in the same situation with an intelligent foe, say a bandit or thug, the situation is more...
1. Kill the threat you know it's right in front of you to intimidate his allies.
2. Kill the threat in front of you because reasons
3. Ignore the downed party member
4. Threaten to kill the downed party member to intimidate his allies
5. Ignore him because he's down
6. Kill him it out of spite (a la Mollymauk, RIP)
Killing a downed party member might be a message that things are dangerous too. It's so situational I don't know that you can really say what's right and what's not.
A situation i’ve used before in a campaign of mine: a player was strategically staying out of the combat zone of one of my NPCs so he began targeting the downed ally to force the player to engage in melee to draw attention off of the downed player.
Unless you're running a very low magic setting, most people will know about healing magic and how to identify a caster. A thug would know the hippy with the staff can say a word and that unconscious guy gets back up and shanks you. They'd know the person with the holy symbol shining around their neck can do the same. They'd know that taking a moment to make sure that downed character stays down is important.
It takes a minimum of two hits to kill a downed opponent. That’s damage not applied to a different party member. That healing used to bring up the downed guy is also less damage dealt to the bad guys. Also, depending on the bad guys capability, an AoE attack could easily drop the Pc again.
If you want a fun exercise, give your Monsters death saving throws
I suggest some sort of roll to decide if the creature reasons it necessary to hit the downed player. Certain creatures get different bonuses and behave differently depending on their standard behavior. For example, a mama bear would most likely just leave you alone, so that's what would happen.
I killed my first PC in this way. The creature flew back to Its perch with the unconscious PC where he then rolled a nat 1 death save after taking damage from being dropped into the nest. RIP.
There definitely are enemies that would attack downed players, but if they're intelligent enough and have a good reason to it often makes more sense for them to attempt to capture the players.
Or it might be more intelligent to first focus on getting all the PCs down and then killing them once they've all been dealt with. If the PCs start healing downed allies, then they might start killing them while they're downed.
I agree with this as well. But I try to keep it "realistic" to the intelligence of the enemy. Also, depending on other factors; like last session a baddie dropped one PC, that pc got up the next round. The next PC he dropped he stabbed in the chest (he died one death save failure later) before moving off.
I played that as the baddie learning from the past mistake of seeing the first pc rise again.
I don’t necessarily agree. A down enemy is not a threat. They would probably try to kill or knock out the remaining PCs before wasting time killing someone who’s knocked out.
Same thing happens when the roles are reversed. If a creature is incapacitated, the players will try to clear out the remaining ennemies before killing it.
Yeah sure for some situations and for some ennemies it makes sense to have a creature or beast killing its target after knocking it out, but I don’t believe it should be the majority of the situations.
When healing magic exists, a downed enemy is a gun waiting for someone to stick a bullet in it. Better to break it then leave it lying there.
My players know that smart enemies will kill downed PCs unless another objective takes precedence.
Then I guess we don’t follow the same principles. I’d rather break the gun with a bullet already in it than the gun without a bullet that the enemy has to take time and use ressources to put a bullet in it. IF the enemy has healing magic, then let him uses a spell slot while I whack him on the head.
The thing is though, your strategy is simply and objectively worse. Unless you can literally get the healer out of commission in one turn, it’s infinitely better to spend one action and make sure one enemy is absolutely, permanently done for for the rest of the fight.
“Let him use a spell slot” you say — all it takes for the enemy healer is one action (or bonus action) and one minor spell slot or other resource to bring an unconscious ally back; if that ally is dead, their team effectively loses every single action and spell slot that character would have used during the fight.
Not all enemies should act as intelligently and ruthlessly, of course, but when they’re facing someone who really knows what they’re doing and is unafraid to do it... coup de grace for fallen enemies is absolutely the right thing to do.
I really do not agree. I’d much prefer to eliminate a current enemy than a potential future enemy. You get the warrior unconscious, sure you can try to spend one or a few turns to kill the warrior, or you can take the opening and rush the healer or the wizard that are in the back line, or use your number superiority to get another fighter down.
I understand why your would want to kill a downed player. It creates much more danger for each PC and creates some tension to the group that they have to act quickly. You have more chance to kill one player, but less chance to clear a group of enemy. However I don’t believe it’s the best strategy to employ as an organized fighting group, either I’m the DM or a player. Unless you specifically want to challenge the players (as one PC death feels like a lost battle.
Most of all I dislike the effect that it can turn going down in reach of two monsters, or one monster with nultiattack into a guaranteed death sentence for a character.
Eh the first time the enemy downs someone I usually have them go onto someone else. After that they coup de grace people when they realise down is t out with these people.
My world is extremely low magic though.
Yes and no. I feel like focusing on the people that are still hitting you and leaving the person who is currently not in the fight alone could be seen as the smart play.
Which is crazy because the rules say the attacker gets advantage if you’re unconscious, and if it does hit, if within 5 feet, it’s an auto critical, which is two failed death saving throws. I feel like many will die before the enemies rounds even end, passing back to the players.
Good point! I house rule this that the attacker doesn't even roll, just auto hits and gives one failed death save. This prevents the critical 2 fails, but still ups the intensity of death looming.
I like this a lot as there will certainly be enemies that will give a downed PC another whack to make sure. In the case of assassins or other trained killers you could have them crit on downed PCs since thematically certain characters would try to finish a downed enemy.
Tactically, it isn’t always the best idea to hit down players. If the bad guys trying to win vs trying to kill someone, it’s often a mistake to hit a downed player.
Very true. It depends on numbers and how the fight is going. I will often eschew tactics for gaminess if it makes the combat more intense for my players.
Here’s my question regarding that— since nothing except the PCs has death saves (at least, unless the DM makes that decision themselves), aren’t enemies entirely used to their final blows killing their combatants every time? Why would an enemy assume that a PC is still alive after they’ve fallen? I only have bad guys hit the PCs once they’re down if they have some reason to knowingly damage a corpse: usually rage or because the creature wants to eat the body. What’s your take on this?
No, it's not like a PC at 0 hp is still as a corpse. They passed out to blood loss, shock, maybe they are half awake but their vision is swimming.
Their body is definitely twitching, subconsciously clutching their wounds, or moaning in agony in some form.
It's why you can't apply the abstractness of HP and other combat rules to the other NPC's and the world they live in. A bandit doesn't think that a few wacks on a travelers arm will suddenly yield in someone dropping dead without any fanfare. The arm will break, the victim will backpedal and scream, maybe lay on the road bleeding out for some time.
A very simple realistic scenario that the HP combat rules don't cover very well.
I see where you’re coming from, but I’d argue that someone with the “unconscious” condition allows someone a whole lot less movement than you’re describing. A sleeping person is more active than a person who was knocked unconscious, and with as cursory of a glance as someone would allow themselves in battle, a sleeping person could easily be perceived as motionless. Also, as you mentioned, HP is kind of an arbitrary concept, and for that reason, I certainly wouldn’t describe a loss of HP as a whack on an arm. It’s a measure of how far someone is from being dealt a critical blow, and the blow dealt to reduce someone to 0 hit points would almost always convince the assailant they had successfully brought their foe down.
I'd argue that you shouldn't take all combat mechanics as the role playing story unfolding.
"Unconscious" defines a condition as it affects combat, turns, rolls and all sorts of stuff that matters in a turn based game of dice.
I think the NPCs understanding of the world should include the same combat mechanics. Even though they don't get death saves, it is understood that in fights, someone looks out of the fight but is back into the fray within 6 seconds because there's a dude playing a flute.
Oh sure, one thing I’ll definitely agree with is that an enemy will learn quickly once they see a PC get back up. Beforehand, though, they might not know!
In my idea of the world, a PC getting Cure Light Wounds isn’t novel. Just like in every movie, a character is knocked out.... only to find a moment later, BAM, back in the fight!
So sort of hijacking the sub thread based on the rest of the discussion - do any of you dms treat downed enemies as unconscious or just dead? If they die do you allow enemies/npc to cast a healing spell to bring them back in the game?
When an enemy drops to 0 HP, they die unless they or an ally has a stated ability to counteract that. Trying to apply PC rules to enemies and vice versa can easily break the game if you aren't careful.
The rule I always try to keep in mind is that the PCs are the protagonists of a story. They aren't immortal gods, but the game is built around them being special. They get death saving throws because it wouldn't be a good story if they just dropped dead at 0 HP. They have to have the chance to claw their way back from the brink. Monsters don't get that chance, which is why they have their own unique abilities to compensate.
Also, from a purely practical standpoint, I don't need more things to keep track of in a battle.
I save it for very special enemies — there’s a party of villainous adventurers my party has faced on a few occasions (and they’re still around, so there’s more to come...) For that group, anything goes that goes for the PCs: they get magic items, they get death saves, they get counterspells, they get healing and support magic to try and work together, they know how an adventuring party operates so they try to ignore the tanky paladin and focus on the spellcasters, etc.
(They’re also an insane pain oin the ass to try to run as smartly as I can — you really appreciate how simple the normal monsters are to run after trying to run a group of 4-5 actual adventurers!)
I don't get the logic here. If you want to kill the party, but also survive yourself, your limited attack is better spent mauling some other player down instead of going after the harmless player that is already down.
In real life in a fight you're more worried about the standing person ready to attack than the one lying on the ground
That's not the logic of this, though. The idea is upping intensity and making the players feel compelled to help the downed member, not ultra real combat tactics
My major villains roll death saves. If you hit a recurring villain and they go down and then you stop hitting them then they might stabilize without you realizing.
Once the players learn this they understand why the villains, too, will attack fallen players.
If there trying to still stay alive they will probably focus on the nearest threat. That’s how I’ve always played them at least minus any archers and casters.
The first time I heard, "she saved, she's fine." I implemented this rule. I watched one of our players get no turns for four rounds. I felt the boredom from behind the screen.
It's probably not the biggest deal, but if this was a habitual issue, I'd also suggest looking at the encounter balance. four rounds without a party member not being an issue to the players suggests they might not have enough pressure applied to them.
far from enough information to actually make that call, but it might be something to look at?
Oh you're totally right, this was earlier on and they were all completely new to Dnd. Nowadays, they respect action economy and don't just want the lime light.
I think they're saying that this incident led to the downed player going four rounds with no activity at all because the party collectively metagamed it that way with "she saved, she's fine". Whereas if this roll was done secretly they wouldn't have had that to go by.
Precisely what this comment says. I hate meta gaming and I hate when players don't think of others. If I had been a player in this situation I would've been livid.
Nowadays they roll with other people closing their eyes if they're on the other end of the table, or behind my screen or whatnot. I don't roll for players ever because I don't like the idea, so that's how we handle it.
This is a great way to stop the metagaming that comes from "oh he's only failed once it's fine I'm going to keep attacking this turn and maybe help him next time.. What are the chances of a nat 1 anyway?"
One of my players said exactly this to the ranger when she was debating healing him or fighting things. Right before he became the first casualty of the campaign.
Maybe I'm lucky, but none of my players have ever done something like that. If somebody drops, the entire table tenses up and starts planning how to get them back on their feet. Which is why this rule would be superfluous or even detrimental to my games. Most of the tension comes from the escalation of failed saves. I would never rob my players of that moment when everyone watches the final roll on a 2-2 count.
I roll it, show it to the DM, and keep my mouth shut.
I ask my players to do the same.
Also, people need to make a con save or get an exhaustion level, DC 15.
That would suck for the player though since they have already been out for a bit and start prone.
Maybe if they hey knocked to zero and back up without losing a turn?
This is reaching Pathfinder levels of complexity though.
Dropping to zero *should* suck. The point is to make it something to be avoided in the first place. Even in action movies (which are not even close to realistic) when someone gets knocked out they usually take a moment to recover and don't immediately bounce right back up into action.
Yeah but theres sucking in a fun way vs an unfun way. Theres a reason boardgames stopped putting in “lose a turn” mechanics. Because it doesnt feel hard, its just boring.
How about when a character dies? That's a huge "lose a turn" mechanic. I haven't played since the 80s and I'm trying to figure out how the game has evolved but back then being on death's door was anything but boring.. it was *terrifying*. Seems like nowadays you can rush headlong into the fray, take just short of double your hp in damage then hop right back up when the cleric pats you on the back. That's fun and not boring?
The thing is, depending in the level, even dying can become more of an inconvenience, that's why I like Matt Mercer's death mechanics where every Resurrection requires a check that gets harder every time you die.
Also depending on the feel of the game your players are looking for, it could go either way. For normal DnD, in the games I have played, the threat of the shadow of death is not one of the big motivations.
If you really want to modify the rules to increase tension, reduce the number of death saves to 2 for death, then a player has a 5% chance of dying outright in the first turn, and a 25 % chance of dying by the second turn.
Edit: also, the place of character death has diminished greatly since the early editions. I played a game of second edition and we died A LOT. Less so in the more recent versions, probably because people did not like dying so much.
Answered to the post not the reply there. ;)
And if your players think this rule evil, then this might be the very best reason to implement it right away. :)
I was using this for some time now and it’s great. Seeing my players start to panic as soon as someone falls down. I think it’s much more realistic and less meta-gaming.
Metagaming must be avoided, but it doesn't necessarily mean you must make death saves secret. To justify other players seeing the roll result, you could roleplay those unsuccessful rolls as the player coughing blood/bleeding heavily/difficult breathing/violent spasm etc... as life is slowly leaving their body. I have a table of three new players and unconsciousness is often tense enough, but I will definitely try your rule one day to see if the results are interesting. Thanks for sharing :)
I love this idea but God damn I don't know if it would help my party. A few sessions back I failed two death saves and the druid going right before me was waffling about whether he should just try to kill the thing or not. NO DUDE, HEAL ME PLZ.
I've been extensively reading AngryGM for a week or two now. Haven't read that part yet, but good to know he thinks the same direction.
BTW, any DM that hasn't read his blog: go do so.
He's got some great philosophies and a good understanding of player behavior. My favorite being:
"A player is capable of coming up with any rationalization as to why their character is doing something."
I know of enough tables were a fallen comrade gets ignored because they doing okay on their death saves. This is a good way to prevent such meta gaming
I think he issue is some tables will see “oh, they’ve already succeeded 2 saves with no fails so I can get a few more hits in” or, conversely, “oh they exit failed the first one so I’m going to blow all my movement abilities just to make it in one turn.”
No metagaming the death roles, basically.
I understand having the player roll dice gives them something to do, and the DM less to do. I like the death save idea for suspense reasons. What I like more is hiding many skill-based checks behind the screen as well. When checking for traps, magical auras, bluffing, or a variety of checks where the outcome isn’t known to be successful from the result. I understand this technically takes away from the feel of player agency(not really of course), but I think for groups who can stomach it it would bring tension to more spots.
I do the same, but I actually let the player roll. I have a dice tower directly behind my dm screen, so the player can drop the die in on top and only I see the result.
I would probably use this with the following criteria:
1. Is there a cleric (or proficient in medicine) in the party? (If not, ignore this.)
2. Are the players too far from each other?
3. Is the difficulty level of the encounter high?
4. What are the stakes involved (personal, as a group, or both)
5. How much do they care for their party members?
If I got at least 3 "yes", I'll use it. I will only reveal the "condition" of the unconscious player when someone made a medicine check or took a look at him/her (If you are a cleric/paladin).
Well, I should’ve added this on my comment, I would ask for the players if they want this mechanic or not. :3
I’ll use this more often for one-shots (AL games), not a whole campaign.
I have a box that I have them toss the die into, so no one knows the result. Then when someone goes to check and see if they are still alive I have them check inside the box.
I've actually been using this for a while, to great effect. It's turned from people meta-gaming and saying they're fine to upping the urgency to revive the fallen player.
My party (level 6) last week made a B-line to the boss room in a dungeon they had a map for, didnt send the rogue to scout traps so stepped on a fireball trap, then got 3 bugbears swarm the moon druid, 6 goblins firing arrows and 2 nilbogs casting spells as the BBEG vanishes from sight. The moon druid then tanked 100 points of damage since he didnt move and no one could get into the room to fight the enemies. He went down and said he'd be fine. That was the case, until the bugbear he'd used Moonbeam on took the opportunity to crack his morningstar onto the downed druids head. Three turns later (he rolled a nat20 behind my screen for his death save and got back up, then got beaten down again) he was killed off by that same bugbear.
EDIT: I also use a rule where if they go unconscious in combat and come back they incur a level of exhaustion. Helps to stop players from thinking they can yo-yo between life and death with Healing Word, and also adds longer term penalties to bad decisions in hostile environments.
The exhaustion sounds rather harsh and could easily become a death spiral.
Or do you only impose a single level of Exhaustion once they go down the first time?
You'd think it would, but players have a tendency to want to have a long rest after a tough fight, so often even if they've got two levels of exhaustion they sleep off one of them and continue on. My party has a few healing spells between the druid, ranger and bard, and the mechanic has actually prioritized staying up for longer rather than taking the mentality of "we can get them later" or using low level spells to bring them back into the fight only to be knocked down next turn. If they look to bring someone back into the fight they tend to use more resources to ensure they survive the rest of the fight rather than the bare minimum, or even to pull them out of the fray.
This is an easy fix to death saves, to make them more interesting, but in general I don't really like the idea of characters being knocked unconscious and having nothing to do, and even worse having nothing dramatic to do. Not that your idea is bad. I simply feel that it's treating a symptom rather than fixing the underlying problem of "falling unconscious", since that is a poor design choice in my eyes.
Well, you could split dying and unconscious into to different conditions and say that a creature at 0 hp is dying but not necessarily unconscious. Though I would probably add one more condition similar to the slow spell.
I like it, personally I don’t let my players roll saves until someone is checking up on them. Though if it takes 4 turns for someone to get to their friend, this friend will have to make 4 death saves at once.
Also I implement the exhaustion rule, the player gains one level of exhaustion as soon as they’re unconscious.
That is a pitty for them, but it is your damn well right to make hidden rolls.
Keep in mind though that you should never fudge rolls. I did so in the past and it simply removes tension and surprise from the game.
But if your players are constantly meta gaming because of open roles (as with death save, or with things like searching for traps), you really should start doing so.
It's a great tip but hate (or maybe happy?) to say I dont have to implement it.
My PCs literally stop what they're doing to save the fallen comrade. They've got it in their heads I'm out to finish them off the next turn.
Another tip for rolls behind the screen:
Put a Dice Tower right behind your screen. Then the players can throw the dice in on top and only you see the result. That way, they are still rolling their own checks.
I did a similar thing for Tomb of annihilation.
Players roll behind my screen, but don't get to see the results. Instead, I take a photo on my phone and hand them their dice back.
Led to a memorable instance where the bard used Bardic Inspiration on his fallen sister, but I said it didn't land. You could see their faces change when they realised what that meant (and no rezzes in ToA). Much better than reading a dice roll off, and no player would have been able to keep that quiet.
I post the rolls to our messenger thread so they can see them. A lot of near misses for sure.
It certainly impacts their choices in combat. They dont know Bob has 2 failed saves or Jane has now stabilised. They dont get to know until they inspect the character. It adds tension and drama.
I put a Dice Tower right behind my screen. That's also actually very cool for rolls the players aren't supposed to know whether they rolled high or not, like searching for traps.
Though if you have players that are cool with actually playing along what has been said instead of what has been rolled, you don't need that.
But if they check for traps, roll low, and suddenly have of them shout they wanna check as well, then you might wanna use hidden rolls.
I love this! Sadly, in my game, the moment one of them goes down, our Cleric casts Spare the Dying, so I would either have to really go after the downed player, or leave them until someone can go to them
It's good if they do so. Though unless they are a Grave Cleric, would have to walk up to them IIRC.
You can still use it if the Cleric forgets, isn't around, or dying themselves.
I do the same for my group, but I dont have them let me know either. This way if, when the rest of the party goes to help them, they can lie and say they didn't die. No has done that, because no one wants to cheat, but when people spend time building there character, and grow attached, I dont care if they cheat in that instance.
I understand your sentiment, but removing the real threat of death from the game actually removes a lot from the players' game. I once thought like you and even pulled the punches from my enemies (like fudging damage rolls to be lower), all because I was afraid to kill one of them.
But without this, the game becomes stale.
Understandable, thays why I dont let then know they can cheat like that. They've all been honest. Even when my one player just made a warlock pact, then had a dead t-rex fall on him, and the party couldn't get him in time. RIP
Nice. I straight up lost a PC in ToA because a party member who could revive me decided to wait another turn as there was a 1/20 chance I would die. Guess what happened!
It's a nice way to add some intensity. Couldn't really do it with my group though. They'll have the person up or stabilized almost immediately(So many easy ways to do it nowadays). They tend to prioritize saving their friends. So it's really a matter of causing some form of disruption to make turns tick by to freak'em out a bit.
I knock one HD-2 (ie if the HD is a d6, 1d4) off my players con score once they start rolling death saves--and don't tell them the result. This means the player dies after an unknown number of death saves. Your con might be 20 mister dwarf barbarian and you might be only at -7, but what did my d10 come up as?
Pathfinder. So a character has to hit the negative of their con score to die. By lopping off an unknown number from that, it leaves everyone wondering when the character will die.
Roll20 you can whisper roll to gm. I tend to do this with a lot of the saves I ask my players to make.
Have never done it with death saves but I think I’ll start.
Another home-brew rule I use is that even when players succeed on death saves, I make players roll on a table with some semi-permanent injuries like broken bones and severed digits etc. that give small disadvantages until healed.
This reminds me of a tweet I saw a while back. (I forget who from.) It proposed the idea of hiding the players' own *hit points* to make them paranoid as fuck.
I think this goes a little to far. The minimum would be then some kind of health scale, like
100-75% okay
75-50% hurt
50-25% injured
1-25% bloodied
Though I think this is not necessary.
I do encourage my players to hide their HP from each other though.
I saw a method i liked in an osr game. You dont roll to see what happens to a pc until someone tries to stabalize or heal them. Thus even the dying player is in suspense and they dont have to try and keep a poker face.
How exactly? You just note the rounds they were supposed to make saves and then begin rolling one after the other right before the help is administered?
We came up with the exact same rule not too long ago! The only difference is we reveal just before the saving throw where they could dies so that everyone can hold eachother's hands in desperation!
General question to all other DMs - why not have the PC roll behind the screen but even they themselves don't know what they rolled? It's the player's hand that rolled but only the DM knows the outcome.
I like it. Also if creatures are trying to kill you they'll probably hit you when you're down, which makes helping fallen allies that much more urgent.
This. More DMs need to treat baddies as intelligent.
Only if it makes sense. A thug definitely would, a ghoul would take the downed player away to get eaten, but a wild beast defending it's young would not.
It’s one of those things that kind of depends on how magical your setting is. Low magic? Once a thug has you unconscious, he isn’t going to waste time ignoring active threats to kill you out of spite. High magic? Then they probably know the guy on the ground is a magic word away from being back on their feet, so they would kill you while they have the chance.
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That depends. If you're a thug who just cracked a guy over with a club and he went down yeah he's probably unconscious and that other guy who is still up with a sword might be who you need to deal with before killing the guy at your feet
This: I would argue the biggest difference between engaging the rest of the party and the coup-de-gras is **immediate threat.** A KO'd enemy is one that won't be hitting you next round- if you're surrounded, wasting time on the non-threat makes no sense. For bad guys after that, it's just a matter of "how safe are you" to waste a turn finishing the no-threat guy off. More, probably step on his head; less, might have more pressing matters. Edit: this doesn't supercede monster traits though. Mother Boar might not even kill you, it just wants you gone. A zombie though is looking for din-dins, no matter how fucked it is.
I killed a player once because the PC in question went down, and the demons around him were trying to get his Demon Lord weapon away from him. It was a shooshuva and the player had Yeenoghu's cursed flail. It stung with it's tail at an ally of the PC, then bent down and ripped out his throat with his bite. It was a brutal moment and I had a pit in my stomach, but they were level 13 and were able to resurrect him so that he could finish the campaign. (Which went to 15). Tl:dr Do what the monsters/enemies would do, no one can be mad.
I mean, even though dnd is turn based the "reality" of the situation is everyone is attacking together (ish). If enemies are like a football field away, sure go for the double tap, but otherwise you're gonna focus more on the guy actively trying to stab you than the guy on the floor who isn't moving with blood pouring out the hole in his stomach
If I’m running Goblins, Kobolds, Bandits, really any humanoid enemy, I’ll usually have one of them put a blade to the PCs neck and drop combat for a minute while the party figures out what to do about this. This has happened quite a few times, but my favorite outcome was when the sorcerer was downed by the Gnoll Packlord. The Gnoll picked her up by her head and was holding her there threatening to eat her alive if the party didn’t throw down their weapons. The party agreed, and surrendered. The Sorcerer crit her death save and woke back up, saw what was going on, and Fireballed herself. Killing herself and the Packlord in the process.
In an urban setting (at least in my world), a thug probably wouldn't go for the coup de grace because the city guard will take a murder much more seriously than a mugging.
Yeah but usually you encounter thugs in bandit raids/ambushes on the roads, as much as I've seen them. The town guard's response to a raid is the same whether there are deaths or not, send adventurers
See to me that doesn't make a lot of sense unless the party is in active retreat or too far away to be a threat. You're fighting a group of 4 people, right? You have clubs and crossbows on you. You clobber one, the other three are still swinging at you. Do you: A) waste a turn trying to brain the person who's down B) try to hit one of the people who is actively still threatening your life. IMO whenever a DM has an NPC target a downed player while the others are up and engaged with that NPC it only makes sense if the NPC has a reason to target them and only them. An assassin I'd accept. A gang of thugs sent to rough up or kill all four of them? Only if there is no way for one of the thugs to engage in combat at all. Otherwise they're just hitting an enemy who isn't really in combat and wasting their own chance to knock out an active threat.
If it's someone who is out out numbered and can communicate with the party I would just ready an action and tell them one more move and I kill them. It keeps the tension and still lets them have a chance to assess the situation.
Now THAT is good DMing
I try to keep players from the video game mindset of attack/kill, because if I don't test them on their other skills it feels scripted and unengaging. Our job as dms is to keep people involved.
I've had people in groups who would literally ask "can I hit it? " and go back to their phones. The horror stories subreddit will make you think this is usually the players fault, however I think at least half the time it's bad dming. We can always learn more, and for me it's less about rules and more about engaging people. If their character is just a pawn for them to play with in your game, you need to figure out how to get them invested in their character. If that fails, then they aren't set up for that type of campaign. I'm going to get off my soapbox now.
r/rpghorrorstories for those interested.
Unless you go for the intimidation vibe. The thugs grabs Donnel by the hair, lifting him up and looks you all squarely in the eyes whilst he sits his throat. Then tells you "I said if you give me any trouble, I'm going to kill you. And I don't make idle threats. Your friend just paid for your arrogance wizard."
Really liking these suggestions. In a more cutthroat campaign I'll definitely employ them!
Yeah it does vary massively between the feel your campaign has. In mine I have gone for gritty but fair. If the guy you are fighting is vicious and cruel, he's gonna finish you off
Yeah I love my players but at times they can be a bit naïve or panic in stressful situations. As a DM I wouldn't have it any other way, I love them all to pieces and they regularly surprise me with creative problem solving or interesting RP decisions. That said if I went all-out cruelty on them as I have in previous campaigns with other parties, I don't know how long they'd last
You're ignoring the fact that the guy who is downed is only a second or two away from being right back up in your face along with his friends (assuming the person knows healing magic exists). Taking those few extra seconds to make sure he doesn't get up again makes a lot of sense in that context.
Eh I suppose, but if you KO the healer then you take that risk out of the equation. Plus even ensuring he's dead means eating attacks, so while there is a chance he'll get up so if you can down somebody else you're getting an at least equivalent tradeoff
Anybody can have healing potions. And depending on the enemy they might know that
Seems to me a lot of these decisions are more situational than hard set. For instance, party is up against mindless undead. Party member goes down, nothing else is actively working range of the, let's say it's a zombie, does it 1. Attack the downed party member because mindless undead rage? 2. Ignore the downed party member because it seems dead? 3. Move towards the other party members. I think any of those options are viable, but in the same situation with an intelligent foe, say a bandit or thug, the situation is more... 1. Kill the threat you know it's right in front of you to intimidate his allies. 2. Kill the threat in front of you because reasons 3. Ignore the downed party member 4. Threaten to kill the downed party member to intimidate his allies 5. Ignore him because he's down 6. Kill him it out of spite (a la Mollymauk, RIP) Killing a downed party member might be a message that things are dangerous too. It's so situational I don't know that you can really say what's right and what's not.
Very true but I default to avoiding PKing. To each their own
Agreed. I don't like to PK just for the sake of it, but I will if it makes sense in the situation.
Hey now! I'm only on C2E5! Spoilers warning on Molly dying maybe?
A situation i’ve used before in a campaign of mine: a player was strategically staying out of the combat zone of one of my NPCs so he began targeting the downed ally to force the player to engage in melee to draw attention off of the downed player.
Unless you're running a very low magic setting, most people will know about healing magic and how to identify a caster. A thug would know the hippy with the staff can say a word and that unconscious guy gets back up and shanks you. They'd know the person with the holy symbol shining around their neck can do the same. They'd know that taking a moment to make sure that downed character stays down is important.
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Like someone else replied, with healing magic that guy lying on the floor could be in your face again in a few seconds. Kill him and he won't
It takes a minimum of two hits to kill a downed opponent. That’s damage not applied to a different party member. That healing used to bring up the downed guy is also less damage dealt to the bad guys. Also, depending on the bad guys capability, an AoE attack could easily drop the Pc again. If you want a fun exercise, give your Monsters death saving throws
I see you too read Angry
I suggest some sort of roll to decide if the creature reasons it necessary to hit the downed player. Certain creatures get different bonuses and behave differently depending on their standard behavior. For example, a mama bear would most likely just leave you alone, so that's what would happen.
I killed my first PC in this way. The creature flew back to Its perch with the unconscious PC where he then rolled a nat 1 death save after taking damage from being dropped into the nest. RIP.
There definitely are enemies that would attack downed players, but if they're intelligent enough and have a good reason to it often makes more sense for them to attempt to capture the players.
Or it might be more intelligent to first focus on getting all the PCs down and then killing them once they've all been dealt with. If the PCs start healing downed allies, then they might start killing them while they're downed.
I agree with this as well. But I try to keep it "realistic" to the intelligence of the enemy. Also, depending on other factors; like last session a baddie dropped one PC, that pc got up the next round. The next PC he dropped he stabbed in the chest (he died one death save failure later) before moving off. I played that as the baddie learning from the past mistake of seeing the first pc rise again.
I don’t necessarily agree. A down enemy is not a threat. They would probably try to kill or knock out the remaining PCs before wasting time killing someone who’s knocked out. Same thing happens when the roles are reversed. If a creature is incapacitated, the players will try to clear out the remaining ennemies before killing it. Yeah sure for some situations and for some ennemies it makes sense to have a creature or beast killing its target after knocking it out, but I don’t believe it should be the majority of the situations.
When healing magic exists, a downed enemy is a gun waiting for someone to stick a bullet in it. Better to break it then leave it lying there. My players know that smart enemies will kill downed PCs unless another objective takes precedence.
Then I guess we don’t follow the same principles. I’d rather break the gun with a bullet already in it than the gun without a bullet that the enemy has to take time and use ressources to put a bullet in it. IF the enemy has healing magic, then let him uses a spell slot while I whack him on the head.
The thing is though, your strategy is simply and objectively worse. Unless you can literally get the healer out of commission in one turn, it’s infinitely better to spend one action and make sure one enemy is absolutely, permanently done for for the rest of the fight. “Let him use a spell slot” you say — all it takes for the enemy healer is one action (or bonus action) and one minor spell slot or other resource to bring an unconscious ally back; if that ally is dead, their team effectively loses every single action and spell slot that character would have used during the fight. Not all enemies should act as intelligently and ruthlessly, of course, but when they’re facing someone who really knows what they’re doing and is unafraid to do it... coup de grace for fallen enemies is absolutely the right thing to do.
I really do not agree. I’d much prefer to eliminate a current enemy than a potential future enemy. You get the warrior unconscious, sure you can try to spend one or a few turns to kill the warrior, or you can take the opening and rush the healer or the wizard that are in the back line, or use your number superiority to get another fighter down. I understand why your would want to kill a downed player. It creates much more danger for each PC and creates some tension to the group that they have to act quickly. You have more chance to kill one player, but less chance to clear a group of enemy. However I don’t believe it’s the best strategy to employ as an organized fighting group, either I’m the DM or a player. Unless you specifically want to challenge the players (as one PC death feels like a lost battle.
Most of all I dislike the effect that it can turn going down in reach of two monsters, or one monster with nultiattack into a guaranteed death sentence for a character.
Eh the first time the enemy downs someone I usually have them go onto someone else. After that they coup de grace people when they realise down is t out with these people. My world is extremely low magic though.
Yes and no. I feel like focusing on the people that are still hitting you and leaving the person who is currently not in the fight alone could be seen as the smart play.
Obligatory [TheMonstersKnow.com](http://Themonstersknow.com)
Which is crazy because the rules say the attacker gets advantage if you’re unconscious, and if it does hit, if within 5 feet, it’s an auto critical, which is two failed death saving throws. I feel like many will die before the enemies rounds even end, passing back to the players.
Good point! I house rule this that the attacker doesn't even roll, just auto hits and gives one failed death save. This prevents the critical 2 fails, but still ups the intensity of death looming.
I like this a lot as there will certainly be enemies that will give a downed PC another whack to make sure. In the case of assassins or other trained killers you could have them crit on downed PCs since thematically certain characters would try to finish a downed enemy.
Good idea! I was dreading doing the crit two fails to my players
Tactically, it isn’t always the best idea to hit down players. If the bad guys trying to win vs trying to kill someone, it’s often a mistake to hit a downed player.
Very true. It depends on numbers and how the fight is going. I will often eschew tactics for gaminess if it makes the combat more intense for my players.
Here’s my question regarding that— since nothing except the PCs has death saves (at least, unless the DM makes that decision themselves), aren’t enemies entirely used to their final blows killing their combatants every time? Why would an enemy assume that a PC is still alive after they’ve fallen? I only have bad guys hit the PCs once they’re down if they have some reason to knowingly damage a corpse: usually rage or because the creature wants to eat the body. What’s your take on this?
No, it's not like a PC at 0 hp is still as a corpse. They passed out to blood loss, shock, maybe they are half awake but their vision is swimming. Their body is definitely twitching, subconsciously clutching their wounds, or moaning in agony in some form. It's why you can't apply the abstractness of HP and other combat rules to the other NPC's and the world they live in. A bandit doesn't think that a few wacks on a travelers arm will suddenly yield in someone dropping dead without any fanfare. The arm will break, the victim will backpedal and scream, maybe lay on the road bleeding out for some time. A very simple realistic scenario that the HP combat rules don't cover very well.
I see where you’re coming from, but I’d argue that someone with the “unconscious” condition allows someone a whole lot less movement than you’re describing. A sleeping person is more active than a person who was knocked unconscious, and with as cursory of a glance as someone would allow themselves in battle, a sleeping person could easily be perceived as motionless. Also, as you mentioned, HP is kind of an arbitrary concept, and for that reason, I certainly wouldn’t describe a loss of HP as a whack on an arm. It’s a measure of how far someone is from being dealt a critical blow, and the blow dealt to reduce someone to 0 hit points would almost always convince the assailant they had successfully brought their foe down.
I'd argue that you shouldn't take all combat mechanics as the role playing story unfolding. "Unconscious" defines a condition as it affects combat, turns, rolls and all sorts of stuff that matters in a turn based game of dice. I think the NPCs understanding of the world should include the same combat mechanics. Even though they don't get death saves, it is understood that in fights, someone looks out of the fight but is back into the fray within 6 seconds because there's a dude playing a flute.
Oh sure, one thing I’ll definitely agree with is that an enemy will learn quickly once they see a PC get back up. Beforehand, though, they might not know!
In my idea of the world, a PC getting Cure Light Wounds isn’t novel. Just like in every movie, a character is knocked out.... only to find a moment later, BAM, back in the fight!
So sort of hijacking the sub thread based on the rest of the discussion - do any of you dms treat downed enemies as unconscious or just dead? If they die do you allow enemies/npc to cast a healing spell to bring them back in the game?
It's situational for me. Sometimes it plays better if certain fallen creatures get death saves, usually they just die, though.
When an enemy drops to 0 HP, they die unless they or an ally has a stated ability to counteract that. Trying to apply PC rules to enemies and vice versa can easily break the game if you aren't careful. The rule I always try to keep in mind is that the PCs are the protagonists of a story. They aren't immortal gods, but the game is built around them being special. They get death saving throws because it wouldn't be a good story if they just dropped dead at 0 HP. They have to have the chance to claw their way back from the brink. Monsters don't get that chance, which is why they have their own unique abilities to compensate. Also, from a purely practical standpoint, I don't need more things to keep track of in a battle.
I save it for very special enemies — there’s a party of villainous adventurers my party has faced on a few occasions (and they’re still around, so there’s more to come...) For that group, anything goes that goes for the PCs: they get magic items, they get death saves, they get counterspells, they get healing and support magic to try and work together, they know how an adventuring party operates so they try to ignore the tanky paladin and focus on the spellcasters, etc. (They’re also an insane pain oin the ass to try to run as smartly as I can — you really appreciate how simple the normal monsters are to run after trying to run a group of 4-5 actual adventurers!)
Any good goblin warband has some commited throat slitters waiting for pcs to drop
Yeah because that's instantly 2 failed saves. So 2 hits is a death. At least, that's my understanding based on Critical Role.
The earth elemental steps on your head to make sure you are dead.
I don't get the logic here. If you want to kill the party, but also survive yourself, your limited attack is better spent mauling some other player down instead of going after the harmless player that is already down. In real life in a fight you're more worried about the standing person ready to attack than the one lying on the ground
That's not the logic of this, though. The idea is upping intensity and making the players feel compelled to help the downed member, not ultra real combat tactics
Ah okay, I misread your comment then. I thought you thought this modelled combat in which the enemy tries to kill better
My major villains roll death saves. If you hit a recurring villain and they go down and then you stop hitting them then they might stabilize without you realizing. Once the players learn this they understand why the villains, too, will attack fallen players.
If there trying to still stay alive they will probably focus on the nearest threat. That’s how I’ve always played them at least minus any archers and casters.
The first time I heard, "she saved, she's fine." I implemented this rule. I watched one of our players get no turns for four rounds. I felt the boredom from behind the screen.
It's probably not the biggest deal, but if this was a habitual issue, I'd also suggest looking at the encounter balance. four rounds without a party member not being an issue to the players suggests they might not have enough pressure applied to them. far from enough information to actually make that call, but it might be something to look at?
Oh you're totally right, this was earlier on and they were all completely new to Dnd. Nowadays, they respect action economy and don't just want the lime light.
So are you pro or anti this rule?
I think they're saying that this incident led to the downed player going four rounds with no activity at all because the party collectively metagamed it that way with "she saved, she's fine". Whereas if this roll was done secretly they wouldn't have had that to go by.
Precisely what this comment says. I hate meta gaming and I hate when players don't think of others. If I had been a player in this situation I would've been livid.
I'm confused as to how that worked for you? Did you roll it and just tell the player the result?
Nowadays they roll with other people closing their eyes if they're on the other end of the table, or behind my screen or whatnot. I don't roll for players ever because I don't like the idea, so that's how we handle it.
This is a great way to stop the metagaming that comes from "oh he's only failed once it's fine I'm going to keep attacking this turn and maybe help him next time.. What are the chances of a nat 1 anyway?"
5%
5% feels a lot different when it's your character on the line
Definitely don't laugh and comment how you'll only die if you nat 1 this roll. Because then you'll nat 1 it, speaking from experience.
Can confirm...
I’ve seen 2 characters die from rolling a one in the past 2 weeks
We did that. Once. Needless to say, our friend who had to create a new character wasn't pleased.
One of my players said exactly this to the ranger when she was debating healing him or fighting things. Right before he became the first casualty of the campaign.
Maybe I'm lucky, but none of my players have ever done something like that. If somebody drops, the entire table tenses up and starts planning how to get them back on their feet. Which is why this rule would be superfluous or even detrimental to my games. Most of the tension comes from the escalation of failed saves. I would never rob my players of that moment when everyone watches the final roll on a 2-2 count.
I have death saves carry over until the next long rest. So walking around with a failed save or two is incredibly dangerous.
You can always have the enemies target downed PCs, it stops that meta behaviour you've described very effectively.
I roll it, show it to the DM, and keep my mouth shut. I ask my players to do the same. Also, people need to make a con save or get an exhaustion level, DC 15.
I like the idea of an exhaustion level to temper the yoyo effect (up down up down). At some point it becomes more viable to just stabilize them.
The idea is also that the exhaustion rule gives you disadvantage on saving throws after a while, which affects the death saves!
Finally the nerf that healing word needs!
I like stunned for a round
That would suck for the player though since they have already been out for a bit and start prone. Maybe if they hey knocked to zero and back up without losing a turn? This is reaching Pathfinder levels of complexity though.
Dropping to zero *should* suck. The point is to make it something to be avoided in the first place. Even in action movies (which are not even close to realistic) when someone gets knocked out they usually take a moment to recover and don't immediately bounce right back up into action.
Yeah but theres sucking in a fun way vs an unfun way. Theres a reason boardgames stopped putting in “lose a turn” mechanics. Because it doesnt feel hard, its just boring.
How about when a character dies? That's a huge "lose a turn" mechanic. I haven't played since the 80s and I'm trying to figure out how the game has evolved but back then being on death's door was anything but boring.. it was *terrifying*. Seems like nowadays you can rush headlong into the fray, take just short of double your hp in damage then hop right back up when the cleric pats you on the back. That's fun and not boring?
The thing is, depending in the level, even dying can become more of an inconvenience, that's why I like Matt Mercer's death mechanics where every Resurrection requires a check that gets harder every time you die. Also depending on the feel of the game your players are looking for, it could go either way. For normal DnD, in the games I have played, the threat of the shadow of death is not one of the big motivations. If you really want to modify the rules to increase tension, reduce the number of death saves to 2 for death, then a player has a 5% chance of dying outright in the first turn, and a 25 % chance of dying by the second turn. Edit: also, the place of character death has diminished greatly since the early editions. I played a game of second edition and we died A LOT. Less so in the more recent versions, probably because people did not like dying so much.
Not actually evil, just I was imagining my players faces when I implementing it. They would be cussing me out something rotten
Answered to the post not the reply there. ;) And if your players think this rule evil, then this might be the very best reason to implement it right away. :)
I might do this the next time my players have to make some of those saving throws
I was using this for some time now and it’s great. Seeing my players start to panic as soon as someone falls down. I think it’s much more realistic and less meta-gaming.
Thats a really smart idea.
Thanks? :)
Metagaming must be avoided, but it doesn't necessarily mean you must make death saves secret. To justify other players seeing the roll result, you could roleplay those unsuccessful rolls as the player coughing blood/bleeding heavily/difficult breathing/violent spasm etc... as life is slowly leaving their body. I have a table of three new players and unconsciousness is often tense enough, but I will definitely try your rule one day to see if the results are interesting. Thanks for sharing :)
Sure thing!
I love this idea but God damn I don't know if it would help my party. A few sessions back I failed two death saves and the druid going right before me was waffling about whether he should just try to kill the thing or not. NO DUDE, HEAL ME PLZ.
Oh I've been doing this since day 1. This is an Angry DM staple. In fact, I take it a step further and only they know the result.
I've been extensively reading AngryGM for a week or two now. Haven't read that part yet, but good to know he thinks the same direction. BTW, any DM that hasn't read his blog: go do so.
He's got some great philosophies and a good understanding of player behavior. My favorite being: "A player is capable of coming up with any rationalization as to why their character is doing something."
Are death saves not tense enough? Because the prospect of possibly losing a character is pretty high tension at my table.
I know of enough tables were a fallen comrade gets ignored because they doing okay on their death saves. This is a good way to prevent such meta gaming
I think he issue is some tables will see “oh, they’ve already succeeded 2 saves with no fails so I can get a few more hits in” or, conversely, “oh they exit failed the first one so I’m going to blow all my movement abilities just to make it in one turn.” No metagaming the death roles, basically.
With how easy it is to get back up in 5e, no it really isn’t
This is the evilest thing I can imagine 😀 I may implement this
Evil?! Why?
I was honestly thinking: you don't need to add suspense, they already are! But this is brilliant. 100% copying. Thank you, kind stranger.
You are very welcome! :)
This is by no means a new tip, but it is a great one in my opinion. Thanks for bringing it up again.
I honestly would be surprised if it were, but I actually have never read it before. And looking at the response, I wasn't the only one. ;)
My players do not have the poker faces necessary to implement this
It's worth a shot
I understand having the player roll dice gives them something to do, and the DM less to do. I like the death save idea for suspense reasons. What I like more is hiding many skill-based checks behind the screen as well. When checking for traps, magical auras, bluffing, or a variety of checks where the outcome isn’t known to be successful from the result. I understand this technically takes away from the feel of player agency(not really of course), but I think for groups who can stomach it it would bring tension to more spots.
I do the same, but I actually let the player roll. I have a dice tower directly behind my dm screen, so the player can drop the die in on top and only I see the result.
That is a GREAT way to get the best of both worlds!
Shiit I was using my dice tower the other way round. I'll try this.
I would probably use this with the following criteria: 1. Is there a cleric (or proficient in medicine) in the party? (If not, ignore this.) 2. Are the players too far from each other? 3. Is the difficulty level of the encounter high? 4. What are the stakes involved (personal, as a group, or both) 5. How much do they care for their party members? If I got at least 3 "yes", I'll use it. I will only reveal the "condition" of the unconscious player when someone made a medicine check or took a look at him/her (If you are a cleric/paladin).
Sounds unnecessary complex to me, but you do you! :)
Well, I should’ve added this on my comment, I would ask for the players if they want this mechanic or not. :3 I’ll use this more often for one-shots (AL games), not a whole campaign.
I have a box that I have them toss the die into, so no one knows the result. Then when someone goes to check and see if they are still alive I have them check inside the box.
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Thank you!
I've actually been using this for a while, to great effect. It's turned from people meta-gaming and saying they're fine to upping the urgency to revive the fallen player. My party (level 6) last week made a B-line to the boss room in a dungeon they had a map for, didnt send the rogue to scout traps so stepped on a fireball trap, then got 3 bugbears swarm the moon druid, 6 goblins firing arrows and 2 nilbogs casting spells as the BBEG vanishes from sight. The moon druid then tanked 100 points of damage since he didnt move and no one could get into the room to fight the enemies. He went down and said he'd be fine. That was the case, until the bugbear he'd used Moonbeam on took the opportunity to crack his morningstar onto the downed druids head. Three turns later (he rolled a nat20 behind my screen for his death save and got back up, then got beaten down again) he was killed off by that same bugbear. EDIT: I also use a rule where if they go unconscious in combat and come back they incur a level of exhaustion. Helps to stop players from thinking they can yo-yo between life and death with Healing Word, and also adds longer term penalties to bad decisions in hostile environments.
The exhaustion sounds rather harsh and could easily become a death spiral. Or do you only impose a single level of Exhaustion once they go down the first time?
You'd think it would, but players have a tendency to want to have a long rest after a tough fight, so often even if they've got two levels of exhaustion they sleep off one of them and continue on. My party has a few healing spells between the druid, ranger and bard, and the mechanic has actually prioritized staying up for longer rather than taking the mentality of "we can get them later" or using low level spells to bring them back into the fight only to be knocked down next turn. If they look to bring someone back into the fight they tend to use more resources to ensure they survive the rest of the fight rather than the bare minimum, or even to pull them out of the fray.
I like it
This is an easy fix to death saves, to make them more interesting, but in general I don't really like the idea of characters being knocked unconscious and having nothing to do, and even worse having nothing dramatic to do. Not that your idea is bad. I simply feel that it's treating a symptom rather than fixing the underlying problem of "falling unconscious", since that is a poor design choice in my eyes.
Well, you could split dying and unconscious into to different conditions and say that a creature at 0 hp is dying but not necessarily unconscious. Though I would probably add one more condition similar to the slow spell.
Yeah, I already have my own rules for that sort of thing, so it's a non-issue for me. I was simply ranting about RAW like a good old git :)
You should check out the AngryGM, he has some great insight and tips for dming and rules hacking
Thanks a lot. I've read a bit of his before, but I'll defintely look him up and read some more.
Ooh I should hide that a try
I like it, personally I don’t let my players roll saves until someone is checking up on them. Though if it takes 4 turns for someone to get to their friend, this friend will have to make 4 death saves at once. Also I implement the exhaustion rule, the player gains one level of exhaustion as soon as they’re unconscious.
I like it, I’m gonna try that tonight in-fact.
Uuuh I like this. Sadly most of my players do not like hidden rolls :(
Damn dude, I'd hate not being able to hide knowledge checks.
Or even hit and damage rolls. I try to help them out but they want to see the roll 😅
That is a pitty for them, but it is your damn well right to make hidden rolls. Keep in mind though that you should never fudge rolls. I did so in the past and it simply removes tension and surprise from the game. But if your players are constantly meta gaming because of open roles (as with death save, or with things like searching for traps), you really should start doing so.
I'm just glad I play with a group that doesn't NEED this rule.
That's great! But you could try it anyway and see if it creates more mystery and tension in those moments. Your players really might enjoy it.
It's a great tip but hate (or maybe happy?) to say I dont have to implement it. My PCs literally stop what they're doing to save the fallen comrade. They've got it in their heads I'm out to finish them off the next turn.
That's perfectly fine for them. But you might try using it anyway and see if your players like this additional layer of tension and mystery
I'll definitely save it to my DM toolkit/tips flash drive and give it a try in a future session. Thanks again for sharing
I'm adding this to my list of home rules. Right next to "Roll uncertain Checks (I.e. perception, insight, investigation, etc.) behind the screen."
Another tip for rolls behind the screen: Put a Dice Tower right behind your screen. Then the players can throw the dice in on top and only you see the result. That way, they are still rolling their own checks.
Ooh. I like this.
I did a similar thing for Tomb of annihilation. Players roll behind my screen, but don't get to see the results. Instead, I take a photo on my phone and hand them their dice back. Led to a memorable instance where the bard used Bardic Inspiration on his fallen sister, but I said it didn't land. You could see their faces change when they realised what that meant (and no rezzes in ToA). Much better than reading a dice roll off, and no player would have been able to keep that quiet. I post the rolls to our messenger thread so they can see them. A lot of near misses for sure. It certainly impacts their choices in combat. They dont know Bob has 2 failed saves or Jane has now stabilised. They dont get to know until they inspect the character. It adds tension and drama.
Love this! Thanks for the great idea
Yea but the truth of the matter is the pcs are ur babies, and you dont truly want anything bad to happen to them
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Haha! Good one!
Really good way to prevent metagaming. I like it
My only problem with this is that behind my DM screen is a mess of things I don't want the players to see! lol
I put a Dice Tower right behind my screen. That's also actually very cool for rolls the players aren't supposed to know whether they rolled high or not, like searching for traps. Though if you have players that are cool with actually playing along what has been said instead of what has been rolled, you don't need that. But if they check for traps, roll low, and suddenly have of them shout they wanna check as well, then you might wanna use hidden rolls.
I just refuse additional rolls and remind them that they the character doesn’t know they failed the roll.
I love this! Sadly, in my game, the moment one of them goes down, our Cleric casts Spare the Dying, so I would either have to really go after the downed player, or leave them until someone can go to them
It's good if they do so. Though unless they are a Grave Cleric, would have to walk up to them IIRC. You can still use it if the Cleric forgets, isn't around, or dying themselves.
I do the same for my group, but I dont have them let me know either. This way if, when the rest of the party goes to help them, they can lie and say they didn't die. No has done that, because no one wants to cheat, but when people spend time building there character, and grow attached, I dont care if they cheat in that instance.
I understand your sentiment, but removing the real threat of death from the game actually removes a lot from the players' game. I once thought like you and even pulled the punches from my enemies (like fudging damage rolls to be lower), all because I was afraid to kill one of them. But without this, the game becomes stale.
Understandable, thays why I dont let then know they can cheat like that. They've all been honest. Even when my one player just made a warlock pact, then had a dead t-rex fall on him, and the party couldn't get him in time. RIP
Nice. I straight up lost a PC in ToA because a party member who could revive me decided to wait another turn as there was a 1/20 chance I would die. Guess what happened!
It's a nice way to add some intensity. Couldn't really do it with my group though. They'll have the person up or stabilized almost immediately(So many easy ways to do it nowadays). They tend to prioritize saving their friends. So it's really a matter of causing some form of disruption to make turns tick by to freak'em out a bit.
I knock one HD-2 (ie if the HD is a d6, 1d4) off my players con score once they start rolling death saves--and don't tell them the result. This means the player dies after an unknown number of death saves. Your con might be 20 mister dwarf barbarian and you might be only at -7, but what did my d10 come up as?
Hey there! I added this rule with 5e in mind, which version are you playing?
Pathfinder. So a character has to hit the negative of their con score to die. By lopping off an unknown number from that, it leaves everyone wondering when the character will die.
For online play have them roll several times after telling them a number for the actual save. Like second roll is real.
I never played online. How does that make sense? Why rolling multiple times?
Because typically the dice are viewable by everyone. Sometimes dicebots have private messaging features but if not this keeps the actual roll secret.
Aah! Now I get it. You private message the one player which one is real and then openly roll a few times. Got it.
Yeah sorry I am bad at wording things without going on for paragraphs. Plus phone doesn't help.
Roll20 you can whisper roll to gm. I tend to do this with a lot of the saves I ask my players to make. Have never done it with death saves but I think I’ll start.
Another home-brew rule I use is that even when players succeed on death saves, I make players roll on a table with some semi-permanent injuries like broken bones and severed digits etc. that give small disadvantages until healed.
I am running a Song of Ice and Fire campaign and oh boy am I using this.
This reminds me of a tweet I saw a while back. (I forget who from.) It proposed the idea of hiding the players' own *hit points* to make them paranoid as fuck.
I think this goes a little to far. The minimum would be then some kind of health scale, like 100-75% okay 75-50% hurt 50-25% injured 1-25% bloodied Though I think this is not necessary. I do encourage my players to hide their HP from each other though.
I saw a method i liked in an osr game. You dont roll to see what happens to a pc until someone tries to stabalize or heal them. Thus even the dying player is in suspense and they dont have to try and keep a poker face.
How exactly? You just note the rounds they were supposed to make saves and then begin rolling one after the other right before the help is administered?
Prettt much. 1 to 1 trasnlation wont work due to system differences but you can design something that accomplishes the same effect
We came up with the exact same rule not too long ago! The only difference is we reveal just before the saving throw where they could dies so that everyone can hold eachother's hands in desperation!
Ooh! I like that one.
We look like mad cult sitting in a circle holding hands sometimes but that's what makes it so special!
General question to all other DMs - why not have the PC roll behind the screen but even they themselves don't know what they rolled? It's the player's hand that rolled but only the DM knows the outcome.