Quote from: S'mon;1019837I don't think it's at all easy IRL to break into someone's house while they're sleeping and slit their throat without them waking up.

Oh, no. I didn't mean that stealth rolls and the such would not be required. I just mean that you shouldn't need to roll for damage. If they don't wake up, and you're in a position to slit their throat, HP shouldn't really be involved.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1019816Heh.  Getting dropped to 0, then bouncing back up with full functionality the second you get any healing is one of the silliest aspects of 5e.  Turns the game into a total farce.  Doing the Lost Mine of Phandelver, had a PC bounce up twice and on the second recovery from healing just said "This is fucking retarded, shouldn't I at least need a Short Rest or something?"

Easy to fix, but still silly.

Well, at least in OD&D, it was magic healing; spells and potions.  So, you know, magic.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1019902Well, at least in OD&D, it was magic healing; spells and potions.  So, you know, magic.

Same in 5e

Quote from: S'mon;10198246 times seems incredible. Assuming she had tried and failed to take out felled PC with a massive damage CDG*, I'd have had her flee after the second or at most third time it happened. I'm also amazed they couldn't kill her in 6+ combat rounds.

*Eg if PC was healed up to single digit hp she could maybe take him/her down with one d6+3 & poison 7d6/DC 15 save for half shortsword blow; then use poisoned dagger Sneak Attack auto-critical CDG with (edit) second attack, doubling all damage dice for (using MM assassin): 2d6+3 (sword) + 8d6 (sneak attack) plus DC 15 CON save for 7d6 poison, halved on a save, with insta death if total equals PC max hp. (edit) Or I could be really mean & say the assassin gets 2 attacks normally & can use an off-hand bonus attack too, allowing 2 auto crits = 4 failed death saves = dead.

Certainly the PCs IMC learned to greatly fear the MM-statted CR 8 Black Sun Assassins, and certainly never let themselves get into a position like the PCs in your game.

The PC had around 45 hit points, and the assassin would do an average of 35 damage with each attack.

She wasn't able to coup de grace him since in 5e you have to put them at the negative max hit points (-45) in one attack. So what would happen is:

1) She takes down the PC with her first attack, out of two.
2) She has one attack left. She could use it on the PC to give him 2 death saving throws, or attack someone else and try to poison them.
3) Since attacking the downed PC a second time wouldn't kill him, and the next PC to go would immediately heal him, that attack would be wasted.
4) Therefore, she would attack another PC, and try to take out the healers, so she could finally finish them off.
5) But there were 4 healers, so it was too much.

The party didn't instantly kill her over the turns because she had cast Darkness. She could see through it, but they could not. So their attacks were mostly crippled, but she didn't have enough firepower to take them out immediately. She started wearing them down, but eventually had to escape.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1019902Well, at least in OD&D, it was magic healing; spells and potions.  So, you know, magic.

Quote from: S'mon;1019903Same in 5e

Well like Willy mentioned it's multiple factors.  They combine to make a Perfect Storm of Silliness.

Let's say you have 21 HPs.
You can be at 2 HPS, get hit for 20.  You go to 0, not -18.  A 1hp healing and you're at 1hp again and bounce up with full effectiveness.  Then you get hit for 20 again.  You go to 0.  A 1hp healing and you're at 1hp again and bounce up with full effectiveness.  

You'd have to be hit so you went to more than -21 in a single hit to worry about an instant kill.

This could literally happen a dozen times in a fight.  In fact you have people arguing that Clerics shouldn't even bother trying to heal people until they go down, because all that over-damage is healing you don't have to do.

It would make for some funny Penny Arcade or GitP comics, but that's about it.

A good houserule there would be that you get a rank of exhaustion for each time you go down.

I'm just hesitant to apply that one since it would make things much more lethal -- as you can see here, for these PCs.

That or slow the pace of the game down to a 5 minute adventuring day. "Oh I got downed once, time to Long Rest to get rid of this rank of Exhaustion."

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019923She wasn't able to coup de grace him since in 5e you have to put them at the negative max hit points (-45) in one attack.

Hmm. Either the poison damage counts as part of the CDG/crit attack, in which case you can easily get damage to 45 in one attack if you sneak attack while target at 0, or else it's an additional damage source thus causing an additional failed death save - in which case you get to 3 death saves. Either way, PC dead.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1019925Let's say you have 21 HPs.
You can be at 2 HPS, get hit for 20.  You go to 0, not -18.

Just counting negative hit points is more straightforward. What's the rationale or design intent for setting the HPs at 0 instead of at -18?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019928A good houserule there would be that you get a rank of exhaustion for each time you go down.

I'm just hesitant to apply that one since it would make things much more lethal -- as you can see here, for these PCs.

That or slow the pace of the game down to a 5 minute adventuring day. "Oh I got downed once, time to Long Rest to get rid of this rank of Exhaustion."

I went with level of exhaustion at zero hit points for some time.  When I started using exhaustion more fully, that was too much.  So I changed it to level of exhaustion every death save, and finally every failed death save (and otherwise quit tracking death saves past the immediate conflict).  That works fine for me.  

Remember, if your goal is to minimize Jack in the Box characters, it is not necessary to have a rule where they can't bounce back up with magical healing.  It is sufficient to have a rule such that the players really do not want to hit zero if they can help it.  Thus the healers in the group will try to anticipate things, and keep characters from going down in the first place.  That doesn't help at 1st and 2nd levels very much, but then you don't spend a lot of time there.  If your goal is to never have Jack in the Box, then you might as well cut to the chase and require a short rest to get back up, or something similar.

Quote from: Bren;1019934Just counting negative hit points is more straightforward. What's the rationale or design intent for setting the HPs at 0 instead of at -18?

1. Handling time, especially for monsters.  My guess is that the improvement is so negligible as to be worthless for most players, but I have 4 players across two large groups where it makes a noticeable difference.  Though now that I'm getting them to avoid it, even that advantage has evaporated.

2. I think it simplifies the surrounding rules somewhat.  If you can't go negative, you don't need special cases to handle different states of negative.  Plus, the negative points are rather pointless with Death Saves.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019928A good houserule there would be that you get a rank of exhaustion for each time you go down.

I'm just hesitant to apply that one since it would make things much more lethal -- as you can see here, for these PCs.

That or slow the pace of the game down to a 5 minute adventuring day. "Oh I got downed once, time to Long Rest to get rid of this rank of Exhaustion."

If you're houseruling, why not "a special type of exhaustion which can be remedied by a short rest?" That way, you get accumulating penalties in-combat, it can create another avenue to death (getting enough exhaustion levels), and it takes a serious investment to heal up multiple layers of it (multiple short rests is easier to do than multiple long rests, but still a commitment). That might disincentivize healing at the last minute.

Quote from: Bren;1019934Just counting negative hit points is more straightforward. What's the rationale or design intent for setting the HPs at 0 instead of at -18?

Simplicity. Always simplicity. Much like Dis/Advantage, it creates bizarre situations in the purported goal of simplicity.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1019902Well, at least in OD&D, it was magic healing; spells and potions.  So, you know, magic.

Quote from: S'mon;1019903Same in 5e

Sounds like it's very different in terms of availability, though, no? Doesn't 5e give something like a Lay On Hands healing ability to every level 3 or so cleric, which can be used every combat round?

I thought 0D&D tended to give out spells at random rather than player selection, and (oh heck I'll look it up in my 0D&D book I happen to have here!) only let them be cast once per adventure or per day, and let's see, we've got a 1/6 chance of learning Cure Light Wounds at level 1 for 1d+1 healing, but no revival. Then 1/6 chance of learning Cure Serious Wounds (2d+2) at level 4, and then 1/6 chance of learning Raise Dead at level 5, which raises Men, Elves or Dwarves (others are out of luck, bwahaha Halflings and half-orcs), and a nice two weeks of rest required after being raised.

Two weeks of being alive but bed-ridden, not "yohoho I have 1 HP and attack at full effectiveness immediately". Not "our party has a healer so no threat that only takes one of us to minimum hitpoints per turn can ever kill any of us because we lay hands on your victim every turn" (well, maybe 2 such healers, if the threat can target a healer, but that seems not to be much problem - in the example there were 4 such healers!).

Quote from: CRKrueger;1019925Well like Willy mentioned it's multiple factors.  They combine to make a Perfect Storm of Silliness.

Let's say you have 21 HPs.
You can be at 2 HPS, get hit for 20.  You go to 0, not -18.  A 1hp healing and you're at 1hp again and bounce up with full effectiveness.  Then you get hit for 20 again.  You go to 0.  A 1hp healing and you're at 1hp again and bounce up with full effectiveness.  

You'd have to be hit so you went to more than -21 in a single hit to worry about an instant kill.

This could literally happen a dozen times in a fight.  In fact you have people arguing that Clerics shouldn't even bother trying to heal people until they go down, because all that over-damage is healing you don't have to do.

It would make for some funny Penny Arcade or GitP comics, but that's about it.

Yes, and if I understand correctly, the 20-damage monster will never kill anyone who has a healer heal 1 HP each turn, but an extra 1-HP hit would cause a death check.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019928A good houserule there would be that you get a rank of exhaustion for each time you go down.

I'm just hesitant to apply that one since it would make things much more lethal -- as you can see here, for these PCs.

That or slow the pace of the game down to a 5 minute adventuring day. "Oh I got downed once, time to Long Rest to get rid of this rank of Exhaustion."

It seems to me that the generous healing is what leads to that mindset, because it's so generous. Getting "downed" instead of killed, and being able to heal any amount of damage in one day, lead to that making sense. Being able to heal so easily, and to avoid risk of death in combat, also leads to more lethal situations, because there is no challenge and it's not interesting to anyone with any stomach for actual risk unless there is some possibility of negative results. That leads to both the players and the GM escalating in search of something with some level of interesting risk, even if they are afraid/averse of any PC actually dying.

You can see yourself escalating in your example here: An assassin couldn't cause any lasting effect at all, so now they're going to try to hit a PC alone, which is liable to kill them off. If they are at all cautious and thoughtful, they'll tend to always stay together, escalating the situation to where something has to be able to take out all of their healers to be a threat. If there were the possibility of a PC being injured in any meaningful way, that would not require that much escalation to make things interesting. And as Willie the Duck rightly pointed out:

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1019835... I rabidly dislike it from a verisimilitude point-of-view in that it encourages very foolish IRL behavior (continuing to whack at a downed opponents while there are people actively trying to kill you still on the field of battle). And I think it leads to fewer single-PC deaths, and thus greater chances of TPKs (because you take on greater challenges, and tempt fate for a truly catastrophic SNAFU). ...

Notice that the generous death/healing/revival situation leads to MORE deadly play, by making it stupid not to finish off downed opponents who have a healer, and because both the players and the GM will tend to look for something which is an actual challenge even with all the healing, and the only available outcomes are "no effect on the party because all wounds get healed up easily within one 'long rest' at most" or TPK (or maybe "someone lived but all the healers died").

Consider how many miles you are away from the healing rule in 0D&D:
"On the first day of complete rest no hit points will be regained, but every other day thereafter one hit point will be regained until the character is completely healed. This can take a long time."

Don't know how it is in later editions, but Skarg is right that in OD&D Cure Light Wound is a clerical spell that is treated like all other spells.  And a first level cleric doesn't even get a spell.

I usually play it that clerics get all spells available rather than random ones like magic-users, it makes the cleric's life a bit easier and helps the whole party.  But as Skarg pointed out, things look WAY different when your cleric says "I can cure 2-7 points of damage, ONCE."

Quote from: Skarg;1020099Sounds like it's very different in terms of availability, though, no? Doesn't 5e give something like a Lay On Hands healing ability to every level 3 or so cleric, which can be used every combat round?

Not that I'm aware of - never seen anything like that in my games, even with a 13th-16th level Cleric in one.

A 5e Cleric-1 just gets 2 spell slots that can be used for curing, either cure wounds or healing word. This is less than a typical 1e AD&D Cleric gets - 3 with 2 bonus slots for WIS.

Checking the 5e SRD at http://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/SRD-OGL_V1.1.pdf I see the Life Domain Cleric can swap out turning undead once per short rest for healing 5 hp/level; once per short rest. A short rest is 1 hour.

Personally, IMC I use the one week long rest option from the 5e DMG, this means a Clr-1 IMC gets 2 cure spells per week. By default a LR is overnight so they get 2 cures per day, better than OD&D-Classic but less than 1e AD&D.

Quote from: markmohrfield;1019668My broader point here is that the tone of the campaign as set by the GM and players determines whether or not death at certain junctures is appropriate.

Of course. So?

QuoteObviously tastes vary, I'm just saying that precisely because tastes vary that there is a such thing as an inappropriate death in some circumstances. It may not suit your preferred style of play, but it still exists.

And my point is that my tastes run towards the "no inappropriate death".

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019675I ended up just deciding to go follow through on it. The enemy was an assassin, so it would render them a toothless danger if she couldn't ambush people.

However, I did do all the rolls and so forth.

The actual situation played out both better than I expected and easier on them than I had planned.

Ever heard of Leomund's Tiny Hut? It's a wizard spell that produces a room-shaped force field bubble that lets people you choose on casting enter or leave at their will. Everyone else can't enter. So it's great for casting at night and having the forcefield protect everyone. There's no need to have a watch or worry about random encounters.

This is where it gets beautiful. One of the PCs had been separated from the party. The assassin knows this, and has a Disguise Self spell. She approaches the party disguised as the PC, and I had the player of that PC play this part out, posing as the assassin pretending to be the PC. The rest of the party invites the assassin into the forcefield and to join them so they can all go to sleep.

Cue the assassin waiting for everyone to fall asleep, and beginning the assassination!

However, since they were all basically sleeping together, it meant they could get up and start to fight, heal each other, etc. The assassin put her target to 0 hit points six different times, but each time the other party members immediately healed him. So in the end the assassin fled and the party was fine.

You did it well. The system delivered a totally unexpected result, which might be a feature, or a bug.