Hit Points - Dead at Zero

[philotomy]

In my experience, PCs tend to "go down fighting." They rarely surrender or feign incapacitation. I think part of that is because I allow negative hit points, so they have a buffer. I'm thinking about removing my negative hp house-rule, and emphasizing to players that if they reach zero, the PC is dead, so they need to take that into account when they're deciding what actions to take. My hope would be that this would encourage PCs to look at combat differently, and view low hit points as serious business.

Men & Magic says that hit points are "...the number of points of damage the character could sustain before death. Whether sustaining accumulative hits will otherwise affect a character is left to the discretion of the referee."

Usually, house-rules on hit points get applied to the state of zero hit points, or for allowing negative hit points (i.e. they usually change the "dead at zero" rule). However, the quote, above, suggests applying effects before zero (death) is reached. Does anyone do this?

For example, one could rule that characters and monsters reduced to 1 hp must make a saving throw or be incapacitated, or simply that being reduced to 1 hp means incapacitation. (Note that this would only apply to being reduced to 1 hp, not merely having 1 hp. If you start with 1hp, it doesn't mean you're in a coma.)

Thoughts?

[calithena]

I did dead at zero for the first few years I played. I made up a house rule that you were unconscious at one. At some point we picked up stupid 'death's door' as an alternative, which, well, there are better solutions even if you think death at zero is too tough.

[Finarvyn]

I think you can achieve the same effect if you get rid of death altogether and assume that they are knocked out at zero or below. Players would wake up to find themselves in some sort of tricky situation or jail cell.

Of course, if your intent is to make them actually surrender maybe you need to chat with the players and make sure they are aware of their options. I've often hoped to get players to surrender but they almost always pull the "do or die" option out and act upon it.

Frustrating, to be certain.

[korgoth]

I prefer "unconscious at zero, dead at -1". I suppose that I like there being a chance of incapacitation, but still a very real possibility of death.

To me, have an unconsciousness threshold feels more real than going straight from hale to dead. However, I don't mind that threshold being 1 point (i.e. the point of zero). If you let people go too far into negatives, you're just giving them an extra buffer.

I can hardly fault player characters for never surrendering. After all, there is usually a decent chance of pulling the battle out. Also, most monsters don't seem like they'd be particularly kind to captives.

[coffee]

philotomy said:

In my experience, PCs tend to "go down fighting." They rarely surrender or feign incapacitation.

I had a magic-user who tried that. We were fighting Giants, in the open, and he took a boulder, dropping him to about 3 hit points. I knew I couldn't take another, so without a word I reached onto the table and laid my figure down.

The rest of the party got real serious and even the DM looked abashed. One of the Giants wandered over to me and peered down at my 'dead' body.

That's when he took a Magic Missile right in the face.

Didn't kill him, but you shoulda heard the war-whoops from the rest of the party. They talked about that for months.

None of them ever emulated it, though.

[philotomy]

coffee said:

The rest of the party got real serious and even the DM looked abashed. One of the Giants wandered over to me and peered down at my 'dead' body.

That's when he took a Magic Missile right in the face.

That's great! I love it!

[Deleted]

IMC, when a character reaches 2hp (or suffers instataneous damage equal to 1/2 his total hp amount), they are considered "stunned" (suffering penalties to AC, attack, saves & magic). This effect can be removed after time (1 turn), or a Cure Light Wounds spell. Once the PC reaches 1hp (or suffers instantaneous damage greater than 1/2 their hp total), they are considered "knocked-out" [suffering the appropriate penalties]). It works pretty much the same if PC's or NPC's want to try to "subue" somebody as well. In any event, when they reach 0hp, well, they die. I've played in numerous campaigns with even more numerous "threshold" rules, but I've always favored this one the best (for me)--my players have always been OK with it, too. IMHO, characters die. It's just part of the fun. It keeps it gritty, & makes a higher level character that much more important. I guess I would characterize myself as a somewhat harsh taskmaster, but also extremely fair & impartial.

And yes, PC's always go down fighting (even my own ).

[Finarvyn]

korgoth said:

I prefer "unconscious at zero, dead at -1".

I like your idea in concept, but not so much in actual play. The problem is that the odds of getting a character to exactly zero HP aren't that high, so the rule hardly ever comes into play. A possible modification might b e "unconscious at zero, dead at -N" where N is the level of the character. For example, a 3rd level fighter would die at -3 HP. At least that would spread out the unconscious range a little bit more...

[dwayanu]

As Finarvyn said (the chance being 1/s if you're rolling an s-sided die for damage).

Cutting into positive HP works much better IMO when you've got a few more than 3 or 4 to start (e.g., as in Chaosium's games with 11 or 12 being typical). If it takes just 2 points to down a combatant, that's almost automatic (5/6) with d6 per hit -- and what about the folks and foes who previously could take 2 points and now are down automatically with incapacitation at 1?

You'd be reducing most 1st-level play to either (a) practical pacifism, (b) reckless gambling or (c) waiting in ambush.

It's not such a problem for PCs if you give them maximum HP. How about the monsters, though? (Kiss kobolds goodbye!)

One might start with a negative HP allowance for incapacitation, and shift it at 1 point per level into the positive range until the bottom is at 1. Thus, if it started as 0/-1, it would be 1/0 at second level and 2/1 from third on.

Or, one could just add an HP bonus across the board. That's effectively the same as adding a zero- or negative-HP buffer, but some folks may have something against negative numbers per se.

[philotomy]

It's not just the possibility of surrender that I'd like to see. I often see front-line fighters staying engaged until they drop, rather than pull back to let a cleric or second-line fighter take their place. I think it's because they don't have much fear of death; in the absence of poison or death effects, they know they have a buffer. (The buffer I've been allowing is based on level, so this doesn't really manifest until levels start to rise.)

I like for combat to be tough and dangerous. I also like the idea of a state in between "up and fighting" and "stone cold dead." I'm beginning to wonder if a "buffer" (either positive or negative) is really the way to go, though. Perhaps a saving throw (death/poison) at zero hit points would serve better. That's simple, scales with level, and is not as much of a sure thing as a buffer of "extra" hit points.

[dwayanu]

A save could work. My big point in my last post is that survival chances are pretty slim to start.

How many fights do you expect a character to survive before attaining second level? If he's got a 50% chance each fight, that's only 1 chance in 32 of surviving five. A 1/3 base cuts that down to 1 in 243, 1/6 to 1 in 7,776. You can translate that from fights to hits, and consider the chances of doing unto the monster before it does unto thee.

[philotomy]

dwayanu said:

A save could work. My big point in my last post is that survival chances are pretty slim to start.

Yeah, I agree.

[ffilz]

One trick is that any unconsciousness rule needs to make it a significant risk (in the players eyes, 10% might be enough) of death if you keep fighting to the end.

I would expect players to very rarely surrender. It's generally much more fun to have your character die and get to start a new one, and all too often, surrender is something pushed by a GM to get the PCs into some scenario where they get to fight without all their goodies, or just to strip the PCs of goodies.

I have seen PCs feign death. The trick to encouraging this is to not have all monsters coup de grace unconcsious PCs (though that should be a risk).

I have rarely seen PCs not swap out of the front line so they can get healed, of course that requires that there be reasonable healing (which probably means magic items, a cleric can't keep up with the accelerating hit points and damage).

Frank

[mauricio]

Just two marginal points:

First, if you pay attention, characters don't die at "0" h.p, that's how much they can sustain before dieing.

Second, the concept of h.p. in those booklets is a bit different than what's usually used - h.p. is the damage not the vitality, so they actually go up with time, not down.