House Rules

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Solomoriah
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Re: House Rules

Post by Solomoriah »

So what, exactly, for those of us who do not buy those books, is this death save rule?
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leon
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Re: House Rules

Post by leon »

https://www.5esrd.com/gamemastering/combat/ under "Death Saving Throws" heading. Essentially, flip a coin every round until you get three heads or three tails. It strikes me as lacking flavor, but I can see some drama in drawing it out.

Our house rule for death tries to make character death spectacular, with increasing survival rates for character level and CON. 2d6 to determine type of injury. 1d100 for location. Permanent stat loss if you survive. https://emptyz.com/house-rules/death/

It's overly complex, but works well because PC death is relatively rare, and if a PC is killed, it's dramatic for everyone to stop to watch the roll. Then we get to make up a good story about the results. I did have to revise the hit location table after we had three cases of Severed Limb, Groin.
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Solomoriah
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Re: House Rules

Post by Solomoriah »

Ack.

No, too much for me.
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Dimirag
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Re: House Rules

Post by Dimirag »

For pc dead I like the idea of secretly rolling its HD+Con bonus as the amount of time left before death.
Maybe at higher levels rolling more HD, maybe every 4 or 5 levels.
Sorry for any misspelling or writing error, I am not a native English speaker
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tkdco2
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Re: House Rules

Post by tkdco2 »

The save vs. death in 5e as I remember it (I don't buy the books, but I borrowed a copy from a friend) is making a saving throw until you get 3 successes (your PC stabilizes) or 3 failures (your PC dies).

On the plus side, it avoids the automatic dead at zero hp and gives more chances to keep your character alive. On the other hand, it can involve a lot of dice rolling and may take a while to resolve.

You can use the AD&D rule where 0 hp = unconscious, and the character loses 1 hp/round until being healed or dying at -10 hp. Aside from the fewer dice rolls, it can take as long as the 5e method.

One method I came up with for MERP was the "3 strikes, you're out" rule. Your PC gets to cheat death twice, although recovering will take a long time, perhaps months or even an entire year. The third time, your PC is irrevocably dead.
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Re: House Rules

Post by Metroknight »

tkdco2 wrote: Wed Aug 24, 2022 1:55 pm The save vs. death in 5e as I remember it (I don't buy the books, but I borrowed a copy from a friend) is making a saving throw until you get 3 successes (your PC stabilizes) or 3 failures (your PC dies).

On the plus side, it avoids the automatic dead at zero hp and gives more chances to keep your character alive. On the other hand, it can involve a lot of dice rolling and may take a while to resolve.

You can use the AD&D rule where 0 hp = unconscious, and the character loses 1 hp/round until being healed or dying at -10 hp. Aside from the fewer dice rolls, it can take as long as the 5e method.

One method I came up with for MERP was the "3 strikes, you're out" rule. Your PC gets to cheat death twice, although recovering will take a long time, perhaps months or even an entire year. The third time, your PC is irrevocably dead.
I've used the bleedout also but if someone could get to the character to stop the bleedout, they became stablized at their negative hp. I've used a 3 strikes and you're out in a few games but I had it tied to the con mod so that if you had a +2, you got 2 chances. A +3 gave you 3 chances.

That bleedout rule was that at 0hp, PC is unconscious. At negative hp, the character started bleeding out at -1 per round and required Con stabilization rolls at -1hp (due to Con 0 mod), -3hp (due to Con +1 mod), -6hp (due to Con +2 mod), and -9hp (due to Con +3 mod). If you failed the roll, your character is dead. At -10 the character is dead. This was a house rule from back in my 1e era and I don't use it now.
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Re: House Rules

Post by Tree Ant »

I mostly use various published optional rules, but my one houserule is that I let the cleric add their wisdom modifier to turn undead checks.
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teaman
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Re: House Rules

Post by teaman »

I'm thinking of the following house death rule:

At 0 hp, you make a CONSTITUTION check (roll under for old school)
-SUCCESS: You are knocked out for the remainder of the fight (~10 minutes)
-FAILURE: You must get immediate attention from another character to stabilize you. If they can't help you at this time, you keep making CONSTITUTION checks on your turn. Any more failures andyou're dead. If they help you, you are stabilized at 0 hp until you get magical healing or a night's rest.

This puts some burden on the PC's not to get down to 0 hp since it will probably take another party member out of the fight to save you.
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Solomoriah
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Re: House Rules

Post by Solomoriah »

Classic Top Secret had a Fame Point/Fortune Point rule. Each character received 1 point of Fame each time a level was gained, and in addition the game master (Administrator) rolled a number of Fortune points for each character but kept the total secret. Whenever a character was reduced to 0 hit points, the player could spend one point (either kind) to survive it. No points left? Your luck just ran out.

I would warn a player if their character was reduced to less than half and had no points to spend; I think that happened once.
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teaman
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Re: House Rules

Post by teaman »

Solomoriah wrote: Fri Aug 26, 2022 10:19 pm Classic Top Secret had a Fame Point/Fortune Point rule. Each character received 1 point of Fame each time a level was gained, and in addition the game master (Administrator) rolled a number of Fortune points for each character but kept the total secret. Whenever a character was reduced to 0 hit points, the player could spend one point (either kind) to survive it. No points left? Your luck just ran out.

I would warn a player if their character was reduced to less than half and had no points to spend; I think that happened once.
I thought of something like this as well. Each character has three boxes on the bottom of their character sheet. Each time you reach 0 hp you check off a box. So basically you get three times when you are just knocked out, and the fourth time you're really most sincerely dead.

To use the Top Secret model, you could have a free box at character creation and then one more for each level.

This has the advantage of being pretty simple, yet a little less deadly.
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