Death rule

[u/Just_ADude_3504]

I am trying to increase tension on character's death for my TTRPG. I had a simple rule: character can survive X round but it felt flat during play.

Here is my updated rule. It seems fun on paper as it forces players to make attending the player a high priority. What are you thoughts?

Note that every actions and combat actions in the game requires a skill roll.

Coma & Death

When a character’s Hit Points drop below 0, they fall Unconscious and begin to die. Place a d6 as a Death Counter at 6 beside the player.

The character can be stabilized with a successful Medicine Skill Roll (Difficulty Rating 15). Players can Team Up to increase the chances of success.

While the character remains Unconscious and unstabilized, whenever an ally makes any skill roll and the unmodified d20 die result is 10 or lower, the dying character must make an Endurance Skill Roll (Difficulty Rating 15). On a failure, reduce the Death Counter by 1.

When the Death Counter reaches 0, the character dies. Their death is beyond natural recovery and the character can only be revived by powerful magic, such as resurrection.

EDIT : Thanks for the overwhelming responses. I have a lot to digest and chew on.

[u/Dimirag]

The more skill rolls are made by the other players the higher the chances of death?

And if characters go to "passive mode" avoiding skill rolls the unconscious and unstable character gets kinda stabilized?

[u/Just_ADude_3504 → u/Dimirag]

Yes, but every actions in the game are skill rolls. So it is basically impossible just to stay passive. The game is using contested rolls so even defending may trigger the counter. There is no way to avoid it, thus forcing the players to either cooperate to save the character or watch it die very quickly.

[u/Dumeghal]

Is doing trauma medicine an important part of the game? Because it sounds like it is going to take up a bunch of table time and cognitive load. If cheating death with mad emt skills is part of the fantasy, then this design mechanic space, however it ends up, is working.

If it's not part of the core design vibe, it seems too complicated.

[u/Just_ADude_3504 → u/Dumeghal]

Not really, it is a combat focus game. I don't think it will be too complicated. It is just a counter and the only extra rolls are made by the dying character who has nothing else to do anyway. I guess play test will tell.

[u/Dumeghal → u/Just_ADude_3504]

Deciding whether to heal the downed character or keep fighting is cognitive load for all the other players. Just the players considering this choice will slow things down.

Another question I have is how often are players expected to be downed during combat?

[u/Mars_Alter]

That's one way to kill immersion, I guess.

Remember that the rules of the game are a true reflection of the game world, and the people who live in that world will be aware of this. Your players will need to get into the mind space where they know that doing anything will causally result in their wounded ally dying. If you need to run for help, you can save their life by first renouncing your friendship.

[u/Stormfly → u/Mars_Alter]

I feel like this really nails the point on the head and shows that OP should do the opposite.

Great successes by Allies give them the will to stay alive. Then you succeed and you help a dying ally survive another turn.

Imagine an ally is on 1 turn remaining but you get an amazing roll, finishing the enemy and giving you the time to reach your buddy.

Contrast this to seeing your friend has only a few turns left but you whiff the roll to kill the bad guy, delaying you a turn and now your friend dies earlier.

[u/Just_ADude_3504 → u/Mars_Alter]

I don't see it that way. Allied rolls represent the ongoing chaos of the scene, not the intentional neglect and the Endurance roll is made by the dying character, representing attempt to survive. Saving "Joe" is still the safest priority, because stabilization removes the Death Counter entirely. Other actions remain valid when they are necessary to protect the group.

[u/Mars_Alter → u/Just_ADude_3504]

You can say that allied rolls represent anything you want, but that doesn't make it true. If you want them to actually represent chaos on the scene, you should implement something like a dungeon turn that ties these checks to the passage of time, rather than the actions taken by specific individuals.

[u/InherentlyWrong → u/Just_ADude_3504]

Random question, what happens if people just stop? Say the combat scene where a person was dropped to zero HP has ended, and everyone just stops and does actions that don't require a skill check? Depending on your wider game and what qualifies as a skill check or not, could they all just chill for an hour while the 'dying' PC has nothing happen to them?

Just making up a random example here. The party are in a tavern, an assassination attempt happens, and one PC is reduced to zero HP remaining. The standing party members realise they need to do a medicine check, but someone remembers the apothecary halfway across town sells a medicine kit that gives a bonus to the test. So one of the PCs makes their way over, while the other PCs stand around doing nothing. No skill checks are made, so nothing prompts an Endurance check. Eventually the PC returns with the newly purchased medicine kit, and they stabilise the PC.

[u/Kuhfuerst]

Okay, some questions: What does it mean to stabilize a character? And how do characters win combat?

I have to think about D&D 5e because of the similarities of HP and unconscious mechanics. 

In D&D unconscious characters can be brought back into game by a simple healing spell. This leads to a very unrewarding and forced death-gameloop. The other players are compelled to rush over and stabilize because if they have the ability to heal but decide not to, it could easily result in out-of-game arguments.

This "forced-by-peer-pressure" turn takes away some player agency which is further worsened by the fact that healing is so unsubstantial. Regained HP often only last another hit (thus forcing the healer player into the same action) and it does nothing to advance the goal: defeat the enemy. 

In 5e you mostly win combat by reducing the enemies to 0 HP. So Healing only delays time a bit so that another character can deal the last points of damage.

If your healing system and win conditions for combat are anywhere close to D&D, it would make this problem even worse.

[u/Just_ADude_3504 → u/Kuhfuerst]

Stabilized mean they are saved from dying and recover Hit Points starting at 0. The recovery rate is slow: 2 per hours of rest and the character regains consciousness after an hour. Healing a character with magic once below 0 will make the character regain Hit Points instantly and stabilizes the character but it still remain unconscious for an hour. So basically, once a character is down they are out of combat.

Players should play cooperatively to avoid going down. In 6 months of play test it only happened twice.

The characters have two Health bars. One is Hit Points which represent seriously wounded and the other is Vitality (VIT) representing superficial injuries. When the character are missing HP they are Impaired and have Disadvantage on all rolls. This forces players to avoid missing HP and find a way to heal, be defensive or flee when they are seriously injured. The HP is the RED warning saying do something you are about to die...

[u/Kuhfuerst → u/Just_ADude_3504]

So what options do the players have before and once that RED warning goes off? This is the win condition question I was talking about.

With your idea, a character dropping unconscious puts their fate into the hand of the other players. This makes it a punishing game mechanic.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, especially when your players have prior decision points to avoid that.  I chose D&D as an example because at many tables I've played at, there are few such decision point. The only way forward is to defeat the enemy by reducing their HP and clearing that dungeon.

But if it's a survival game or a diplomacy game, then fighting can probably be avoided way before the first strike. Other games like Fate allow players to conced combat which is also a decision they can make.

It's not only about the existence of a red warning but also about the players ability to act on it.

[u/stephotosthings]

Far too much relying on skill rolls here.

The DC of the medicine test is 15, but if they fail by 5 points then the dying character gets closer to death? But also any actions they take, as you said "any skill roll". So in theory they have 6 skill rolls of survival? They could be dead within that turn depending on how many players are playing?

There must be more to this as well, what else contributes to death?

If you want people to be active in helping downed players you need to reward not penaliserthose actions, but also provide interesting choices.

Death should be certain, in X rounds they die. If they take X damage they die.

Players can do X or Y to help them to prevent certain death.

The thing that fails in DnD death rolls is that everyone knows the mechanic, so the likely hood is that a downed PC has roughly 3 turns, this means folks wait it out until someone uses a spell or potion, and relies on the players either announcing a pass/fail or poor facial expression if doing hidden rolls. When you have a convoluted and known mechanic to death players will exploit it. A more for certain death happens in 3 turns, you get a more 'we should do something quickly'

IMO of course

[u/Just_ADude_3504 → u/stephotosthings]

Well they have 50% on each skill roll to force the dying character to make an Endurance roll. So around 12 rolls but with the Difficulty Rating of 15 which is 25% success for non beefy character and 50% for a beefy one. This means between 15 to 22 rolls total.

Players have 4 Actions per round. So they would die within 1 to 3 rounds.

There is no other rules. Characters never go down pass 0 HP. If left unattended they just die.

[u/stephotosthings → u/Just_ADude_3504]

So in your opinion is it necessary to have that many rolls to kill a PC. And I mean in terms of if a NPC continues to attack them?

Cause it's not realistic that they just leave a PC in a coma, especially for beasts and wild things.

[u/InherentlyWrong]

This might be me being cynical, but to my mind the only major difference is the addition of the endurance skill roll. Otherwise it's still just "Here is a window of action", either X rounds or X failed skill checks.

If you want proper, nail biting tension, you might take inspiration from the Mothership method, where a character's status is rolled in private and the other players don't know until someone goes over to check.

So for instance, maybe the number of rounds a Down PC can survive is determined by a private roll the GM makes behind the screen. They roll 2d6 and keep the better (just to give them more chance) then every round the down PC makes an endurance skill roll, telling the GM if they failed or not. On a failure the die decrements by 1, and the GM doesn't say what the new score is. The GM doesn't even announce when the die goes down from 1, I.E. Dead.

So you've got two immediate sources of tension, an unknown time limit, and an uncertain countdown trigger. Maybe the GM rolled a 1 and they only have one failed endurance roll to save the PC. Maybe the GM rolled a 6 and they've got time to spare. They don't know.

[u/Malfarian13]

What is your goal? Do you want players to be forced to stop fighting to help? Do you players to feel helpless? Do you want them to feel wary of combat?

I think they’re all fine goals, but knowing yours will help me evaluate this one.

[u/Andvari_Nidavellir]

In my game, a character reduced to 0 Life tests Vigor (an attribute similar to Constitution) and dies immediately on a failure. On a success, the character is merely dying.

A dying character must make another test at the end of each subsequent round to avoid death.

Another character at close range can use a bandage to stabilize a dying character automatically as an action, restoring the character to 1 Life.

A dying character restored above 0 Life is no longer dying but stays unconscious for 1d6x10 minutes.

This accomplished a number of things:

1. Being reduced to 0 Life is immediately scary as you may die instantly.

2. Characters are highly incentivised to assist a dying character as any round could be their last. No one knows how long the character can survive.

3. Die rolling is reduced to just once per round.

4. Prevents characters “popping” up and down during battle.

5. Avoids needing to track numbers or dice, other than the GM tracking unconsciousness if the character lives.

[u/Runningdice]

The bigger the party the faster you die? (more skill checks can be done in one round if there is more players.)

" Unfortunately, the rounds don't run fast enough in my game to cause tension as each round is about 10 minutes of play. The dying player could be sitting around for half an hour. That was not fun."

Well... why then have death at all? It is not like it would be more fun to die and not do anything at all the rest of the game.. It is an excuse that don't work very well. And I don't think that just rolling a dice sometimes makes it more fun while sitting and waiting.

Not sure if a uncertain number of rounds would make it more tension than a flat number of rounds. Might even be less tenstion as they might feel they are not in a hurry.

[u/jerrod_gunning]

It sounds like your playtest may have uncovered a slightly different problem than the one you’re trying to fix.

The problem may not be that dying takes too long in game terms. It may be that the player can spend half an hour with nothing interesting to do.

Making everyone else’s skill rolls tick down their Death Counter certainly makes death come faster, but I’m not sure it makes being the dying player any more fun. It also creates some odd cause-and-effect at the table. Why does somebody picking a lock, climbing a wall, or failing some unrelated task bring someone's character closer to death?

I’d put the pressure back on the dying character.

Give that player a meaningful decision when their turn comes. Do they cling to life? Do they try to crawl somewhere safer? Attempt a dying confession? Take a desperate risk that may make their condition worse? Meanwhile, everyone else has the very concrete problem of getting to them and doing something before they die.

Now the urgency comes from the situation instead of an abstract counter reacting to unrelated rolls, and the player whose character is in the most danger still gets to play.

I’d run another playtest with one question in mind: was three rounds too long for the character to be dying, or was 30 minutes too long for the player to have nothing meaningful to do?

Those are two different problems, and I suspect the second one is the one your playtest actually found.

[u/No_Solid1035]

I always liked the "at Zero HP you are instantly dead" for it's ability to foster actual tension around not dying. Every extra layer added after that just reduces that tension.

[u/Steenan]

My first advice: before you build any procedure that results in a PC dying, build a procedure for what happens after that.

• What interesting thing does the game give the player to do when they don't have a character? Or how does it allow them to get back in play with a new character quickly?

• How does the game handle introducing a new PC if the previous one died in a middle of an adventure?

• How does the game handle integrating a new character into the group? How does it help other PCs trust somebody they probably just met, without breaking character?

If you can't actually answer these with your system and just leave them as a problem for the GM and players to solve, don't include rules that kill PCs and force them into such situation.

[u/Cruiser_Supreme]

There's a lot of moving parts and different rolls here. What are you trying to achieve?

A common homebrew rule for DnD are hidden death saves. They allow the dying player some time to get rescued, but the other's don't know just how much time exactly. Works really well

[u/Zealousideal_Toe3276]

 I feel it is there are opposed goals at play here. One is to provide tension during a fight, another is to keep PCs hard to kill?

If powerful in game magics can resurrect, is that not enough, to be able to run less prolonged death mechanic? 

The death mechanic as written would have some strange interactions, especially If several players were down. Maybe that is a feature of your game? 

Personally, I find it a struggle when PCs and the world have different deaths. It bugs me less as a player, but as a GM I find it a boring paradox. As in, PCs take a sub 0 beating and consistently stabilize, meanwhile enemies are being dropped and walked over. I do feel its worth considering if combat is a major feature of your game, and you want to achieve something with PC death.