So, this post is partially inspired by the one which was just made about save-or-die effects by Stephen Tannhauser. Due credit to him.
Personally, I really like mechanics which allow a character to be incapacitated in battle, without being instantly killed. Partially this is for verisimilitude reasons. In reality, there are very few wounds which cause a person to die instantly. More importantly though, the ability to mortally wound a person without instantly killing them opens up lots of possibilities for a campaign. More prisoners get taken. Characters now have a chance of being left for dead on a battlefield, with all the complications and possibilities that entails. PCs might have to rush to evacuate a wounded comrade or make a decision to leave them behind in a retreat.
The problem is that there are lots of different mechanics for this, but none of them totally satisfy. 5e's death saves are a good idea in principle, but the way they're applied is too generous. Fortune/Hero points are a bit too reliable, often serving as a "get-out-of-jail-free" card. Negative hit points on the other hand, tend to operate too quickly. The character usually either gets healed in the next couple rounds, or bleeds out long before the end of the fight.
I would like a system where a mortally wounded character has a chance to die instantly, survive for only a few moments, or possibly live on for hours, and I don't know of a game that has that built in. But what do you all favor, as far as death and dying systems go?
For my OD&D game, I borrowed the system from the first edition of WFRP. Basically, if you take more damage on than you have hit points, you roll on a chart. The difficulty of the chart depends on the amount of excess damage: if you take 5 damage and only have 4 hit points, you roll on the -1 column, if you take 5 damage but have 0 hit points, you roll on the -5 Column. I don't use negative hit points.
The result on this chart gives a Saving Throw value to stay conscious, any permanent effects (loss of limb, blindness, etc), as well as a bleed out turn. For bleeding out, this is a basic roll to determine the number of rounds before the character dies but this value is unknown to the players.
These rules resulted in two things: Firstly, players take any bleeding out result serious. They don't know if the roll was 1d4 rounds, 3d6 rounds, or 1d6 hours. This eliminated the "He'll be fine for the next five rounds" problem that I saw with using negative hit points.
Secondly, the ability to stay conscious despite being mortally wounded (or even dismembered) means that the player is still actively involved in the fight. In fact, a player with 0 hit points might even decide to keep on fighting even though he'll be more vulnerable to further attacks.
It worked really well for me.
Single death save - you might or might not die immediately. Also fun variants where you don't make the save until someone checks on you.
Whatever the checks are (death saves, medical help, heal spell, etc.) having a variable time chart. Maybe something like immediate, 1 minute, 10 minutes, 1 hour, 6 hours, 1 day, etc. Check for "bleeding out" each interval on the chart. If something doesn't kill you right away, there's time for someone to do something. If it doesn't kill you in the first 3 or 4 checks, there might be time for your friends to get you back to civilization. I like this when the means are limited and/or death saves are somewhat tough. Reason being that if the odds are appropriately tough, then check every round or every minute is effectively a death sentence in many situations. So if you want that, might as well just set the odds low of surviving instead of dragging it out.
A means to have the conditions affect the healing. I give boosts when characters have appropriate clothes, aren't wearing armor in bad conditions, are clean, dry, have the attention of a dedicated healer, etc. Or give penalties when it goes too far the other way. Down in the dungeon with little food, no warmth, etc. you might "bleed out" because even though you got bandaged, the environment is just too awful for you to make it. Gives a strong reason to set up a secure base camp near where the action is taking place, but not so close that it won't be secure when you retreat to it.
Last week I had a game session with some players new to this style. Starting characters were poor, and the game was set in early winter (before it gets too bad). First outing, a couple almost died. They tried to camp and heal. I explained that given some of them only had sandals and ragged tunics for clothes, and incomplete armor that wasn't much help, the only way they could heal at all was to have one of their healers make a fairly difficult check to care for them, but it was slow. If the weather turned worse, even that limited healing would disappear. They tried that for 2 days, then ran for an isolated inn a day away. Second outing? They moved heaven and earth with their funds and barter some old weapons they found to get cloaks and shoes. Mission accomplished. :D
Rolemaster has "hits per round" bleeding in its critical tables. Now, an average guy can go down to -50 hp but Rolemaster fights often see foes bleeding out.
GURPS has bleeding that is fairly slow and negative hit points. At zero hit points you start rolling your health to stay conscious. At each muliple of fully negative you roll to avoid dying. At -5 x Hp you die regardless.
Yeah, I was thinking Rolemaster too. I always needed a lot of house ruling to make it work for my group though, but it was fun.
I like systems with bleeding out (-1 hp per round) because suddenly players are trying to save one of their guys. It adds a sudden extra goal to the combat.
I dislike systems with bleeding out because it's boring to sit there and count down your death 1 hp at a time.
Here's an idea I had (or maybe stole from somewhere), but have yet to try. Everyone gets a death die (d6, d8, d10, or d12) based on your constitution. When you hit zero or less hp, you roll your death die every round. Roll a 6 or higher and you can stagger around or crawl. Roll a 1 and you die. If you receive first aid, you go to zero hp and no longer need to roll the death die, you're stabilized. No more tracking blood loss, but still with the excitement of trying to save a downed ally. Plus it's fun to roll dice.
I always liked the way The Riddle of Steel did it: basically, every Wound of varying severity and type you could take to a specific body part had a Blood Loss number attached to it. This number accumulated by the heaviest Wound taken to any one area -- e.g. if a Level 2 cutting wound to the forearm had BL 4, and a Level 3 wound of the same type had BL 6, you didn't take BL 10 if you got a Level 2 and a Level 3 wound to the forearm, only BL 6. If a Level 3 cutting wound to the leg had BL 6, however, and you were hit with that, you did now have BL 10. The final collective BL was a target number you rolled against with a d10 die pool based on your Endurance attribute; if you didn't get any successes, your Health attribute dropped by 1. When you hit HT 1, all your die pools halved; when you hit HT 0, you went into coma and had your original HT in minutes to be treated.
That said, I wanted my own system to be considerably simpler, so mine simply has a flat rule that Critical Wounds have to be treated within (Vitality score, typically 4-7 for human PCs) minutes or they become Mortal, and when you're Mortally Wounded you're incapacitated and have to be treated within (Vitality) minutes or you die. This is simpler, but lacks some of the tension associated with random survival intervals, so I have to admit I'm contemplating adding that in somehow.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on October 06, 2022, 05:55:10 PM
I always liked the way The Riddle of Steel did it: basically, every Wound of varying severity and type you could take to a specific body part had a Blood Loss number attached to it. This number accumulated by the heaviest Wound taken to any one area -- e.g. if a Level 2 cutting wound to the forearm had BL 4, and a Level 3 wound of the same type had BL 6, you didn't take BL 10 if you got a Level 2 and a Level 3 wound to the forearm, only BL 6. If a Level 3 cutting wound to the leg had BL 6, however, and you were hit with that, you did now have BL 10. The final collective BL was a target number you rolled against with a d10 die pool based on your Endurance attribute; if you didn't get any successes, your Health attribute dropped by 1. When you hit HT 1, all your die pools halved; when you hit HT 0, you went into coma and had your original HT in minutes to be treated.
That said, I wanted my own system to be considerably simpler, so mine simply has a flat rule that Critical Wounds have to be treated within (Vitality score, typically 4-7 for human PCs) minutes or they become Mortal, and when you're Mortally Wounded you're incapacitated and have to be treated within (Vitality) minutes or you die. This is simpler, but lacks some of the tension associated with random survival intervals, so I have to admit I'm contemplating adding that in somehow.
The Riddle of Steel sounds very much like what I'd look for, in spirit. But yeah, that does sound like too many tables. ditto with your system. Sounds like a good basis, but like you, I'd want to add in a random element.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on October 05, 2022, 10:24:01 PM
For my OD&D game, I borrowed the system from the first edition of WFRP. Basically, if you take more damage on than you have hit points, you roll on a chart. The difficulty of the chart depends on the amount of excess damage: if you take 5 damage and only have 4 hit points, you roll on the -1 column, if you take 5 damage but have 0 hit points, you roll on the -5 Column. I don't use negative hit points.
The result on this chart gives a Saving Throw value to stay conscious, any permanent effects (loss of limb, blindness, etc), as well as a bleed out turn. For bleeding out, this is a basic roll to determine the number of rounds before the character dies but this value is unknown to the players.
These rules resulted in two things: Firstly, players take any bleeding out result serious. They don't know if the roll was 1d4 rounds, 3d6 rounds, or 1d6 hours. This eliminated the "He'll be fine for the next five rounds" problem that I saw with using negative hit points.
Secondly, the ability to stay conscious despite being mortally wounded (or even dismembered) means that the player is still actively involved in the fight. In fact, a player with 0 hit points might even decide to keep on fighting even though he'll be more vulnerable to further attacks.
It worked really well for me.
Thanks for that, I'll have to go look at the WFRP1 chart and see if I can adapt from it. The game I'm currently running (Dragon Warriors) has death at -3 HP with a 1-in-6 roll every minute to pop back up at 1HP. Not a terrible system, but I'd like something more variable.
For me, it is largely depended on the base system for how best to handle bleeding. Generally, I like downed characters to be out for the rest of the encounter as to avoid the enemies smartly finishing them off before they can pop back up. Moreover, not knowing the characters state until someone checks on them and the probability and degree of recovery being dependent on prompt aid helps create tension. Rolling not to die every round does not, as there is no decisions to be made, perhaps if there was only one save vs death to be made and postponing the check incurred a penalty while receiving aid granted a bones there might be somethin to think about.
As for bleeding while active, it can add unnecessary overhead, but I have toyed with wounds-vitality, where wound damage would cause vitality/HP drain instead of penalizing all or most rolls.
Quote from: ForgottenF on October 05, 2022, 10:02:16 PMI really like mechanics which allow a character to be incapacitated in battle, without being instantly killed. Partially this is for verisimilitude reasons. In reality, there are very few wounds which cause a person to die instantly. More importantly though, the ability to mortally wound a person without instantly killing them opens up lots of possibilities for a campaign.
Agreed. I commonly run three systems, for medieval, modern and scifi play.
When running
AD&D1e, my rules are,
- on hitting 0HP, you are unconscious
- if rendered 0 or under HP by a blunt weapon, you remain on that HP for now
- otherwise, you bleed out at 1HP/round until you reach the negative of your Constitution, at which time you die
- anyone can stop your bleeding at any time by spending a round "stabilising" - bandages etc
- natural healing is 1HP/day, with the Con bonus each week.
- if brought above 0HP by magic you can now move about etc. If you do anything requiring a roll (attack, magic, open doors etc) you make a System Shock roll; on success you're fine, on a failure you burst your stitches and you're irrevocably dead.
This is a bit more generous than the AD&D1e rules-as-written, but still make the players think a bit and have to make decisions. It also explains why clerics use blunt weapons: the good clerics want to give them a chance to convert or stand trial, and the evil clerics want to enslave them or save them for later sacrifice to their evil gods.
In
Conflict (which I wrote), I based things on real-world data of wound and survival rates, the numbers mashed a bit to fit using 6-sided dice. Tactics, armour and prompt medical care become key. This encourages players to think and plan.
In
Classic Traveller there's no need to change anything. "Hit points" don't exist, you just ablate your attributes of Strength, Dexterity and Endurance. When one is reduced to 0 you're unconscious, and wake up 10' later halfway between 0 and your old stat; with two you're severely wounded, and wake up hours later again with stats in between; with three you're dead. In practice this means few die outright in a single blow or shot, giving players a choice whether to push on and risk death, and the opportunity to revive or tie up etc anyone fallen.
I'm using 5e Death Saves in a White Star (SF Swords & Wizardry) game, where a character needs to roll their Save number 3 times to not die, rather than a 10+. Since Saves start at 14-15 this is a good deal harder, and characters can die pretty easily. Also instant death if damage is +10 over remaining hp, rather than max hp over remaining hp, makes it deadlier too.
Quote from: ForgottenF on October 05, 2022, 10:02:16 PM
I would like a system where a mortally wounded character has a chance to die instantly, survive for only a few moments, or possibly live on for hours, and I don't know of a game that has that built in. But what do you all favor, as far as death and dying systems go?
Phoenix Command tracks wounds with Physical Damage (PD) points, and after adjusting for health and medical care available gives the chance of dying after the elapsed critical time period. A critically wounded character can die in a matter of seconds; one badly injured can bleed out over a period of hours, or succumb to infection after several days.
PC's masterstroke comes with using a character's Knockout Value (KV) to judge whether or not a character keeps on fighting after shock or injury, or runs away/surrenders/freezes. This adds a layer of interest to the proceedings, as we now have not just wounded on the battlefield, but cowards as well. It also models well that cowards tend to live longer because they give up at the first even slight injury, whereas toughies tough it out until sustaining a grave wound.
There are also hero rules modeling someone on an adrenalin/beta endorphine high who shrugs off most traumas and can find himself literally dropping dead as he bleeds to death while still fighting.
Twilight:2013. The rules for bleeding out make sense. If you've ever seen real footage of someone bleeding out, they are still combat effective for about 20 seconds after the fatal wound and then total collapse.
Here's a pretty famous one of a bank robber in Brazil. You can see him get shot in the neck and leak all over trying to shoot the security guard before collapsing in the rotating door.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfYDjOQF6J4
Twilit:2013's ruleset can simulate this.
Since you're only after different solutions to the bleed out rulings, I hope unpublished systems are ok.
As I made my own system, I felt I wanted it to simulate at least the sense of being realistic. But I also hate bookkeeping, so naturally I wanted to design something that let minor things be ignored and only the major stuff be recorded.
So there are 4 types of injuries: Scratches, Light wounds, Severe Wounds and Critical.
Only Critical injuries is something you might bleed out from.
If in the head, Dead (or coma for 3 months)
If in any of the extremities (arms, legs): Incapacitated and Bleed out in 1d6 + Con bonus minutes.
If in the body, Incapacitated and halve time for bleed out.
For every extra Critical injury, subtract 1 minute for each.
Saving an injured then requires two rolls. One to slow down the bleeding, one to stabilize the injury.
Medic/First Aid replaces the 1d6+con roll, but halving for body hit and extra criticals still apply. So it doesnt stop the bleeding, but it does give the character more time to get proper care. There is no difficulty to ovecome at this roll, as the result simply replaces the natural bleed out duration. Once that time is up, you can't reroll for "more time" unless you have access to blood transfusion in some way. (donor, plasma)
Medic/Surgery stabilizes the injured if a certain difficulty threshold is reached, and that difficulty increases with every extra non-fatal wound. Since each stabilizing attempt takes a minute, and can be rerolled until the patient stabilizes or dies, it does give characters a pretty good chance to survive. Healing time however, is a totally different matter.
An untested idea...
Use a usage die (from Black Hack, roll the die if result is a 1-2 you roll the next smaller die next time, 1-2 on a 1d4 means no die left.). So you have your HD (Fighter gets 1d10 per level so 1d10 usage die. When you hit zero you roll. Bad luck could mean you bleed out fast, good luck means you have more time. Stabilize could mean back to your HD value again, or it could mean just one die larger.
Might be best to have the usage die one lower than your HD to ensure nobody lingers too long.
For that kind of usage die, I'd just use the same size die for everyone, based on the odds you want. Changing sizes gets funky in a hurry. If you want to give particularly tough characters a boost, let them ignore the first failure or maybe two, which makes the odds more predictable.
I love usage dice in some cases, but they its easy to get too cute with them by being enamored of the mechanic.
Binge drinking.
I've always found bleeding out to be a kind of silly and frustratingly unrealistic idea. Bleeding out until you pass out is totally a thing, but bleeding out to the point of death from even grievous injuries takes minutes, and RPG rounds are typically only a few seconds long. Bleeding effects to fatality should practically be a rounding error. If the other PCs fail to immediately apply first aid after a combat is over, then you might have a case for bleeding out.
As such, it's generally my houserule that characters can only bleed when they are conscious and fighting back. When they keel over unconscious their blood pressure drops too much for it to matter, at least until combat ends.
Quote from: Fheredin on October 16, 2022, 03:41:37 PM
I've always found bleeding out to be a kind of silly and frustratingly unrealistic idea. Bleeding out until you pass out is totally a thing, but bleeding out to the point of death from even grievous injuries takes minutes
Earlier in the thread this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfYDjOQF6J4) was posted, which is a black and white film of a bank robber shot in the neck who collapses in 20 seconds and loses consciousness 10 seconds after that. He may or may not be dead for another few minutes, but he is taking no further actions after 20 seconds, and certainly not after 30 in all, and his wounds would not be survivable even if he'd fallen over in a trauma ward.
QuoteRPG rounds are typically only a few seconds long
This is commonly true, and is another example of RPGs being unrealistic. GURPS' one-second rounds are particularly comedic, and come from having watched too many action movies.
Now, if you want to emulate Jackie Chan movies, all good. One second combat rounds, fight on with blood pissing out of your neck, ten actions a round. But in your comment you're appealing to realism. Nup.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on October 17, 2022, 07:34:47 AM
Quote from: Fheredin on October 16, 2022, 03:41:37 PM
I've always found bleeding out to be a kind of silly and frustratingly unrealistic idea. Bleeding out until you pass out is totally a thing, but bleeding out to the point of death from even grievous injuries takes minutes
Earlier in the thread this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfYDjOQF6J4) was posted, which is a black and white film of a bank robber shot in the neck who collapses in 20 seconds and loses consciousness 10 seconds after that. He may or may not be dead for another few minutes, but he is taking no further actions after 20 seconds, and certainly not after 30 in all, and his wounds would not be survivable even if he'd fallen over in a trauma ward.
QuoteRPG rounds are typically only a few seconds long
This is commonly true, and is another example of RPGs being unrealistic. GURPS' one-second rounds are particularly comedic, and come from having watched too many action movies.
Now, if you want to emulate Jackie Chan movies, all good. One second combat rounds, fight on with blood pissing out of your neck, ten actions a round. But in your comment you're appealing to realism. Nup.
Well, let me put things this way: is it fun to wait several rounds and make several death saves only to die when you can't control anything? IMO, if it isn't particularly realistic and it isn't particularly fun, it has no purpose for being there.
The bank robber was incapacitated almost as fast as if he had his throat slashed. This is an extreme injury which isn't necessarily representative of most combat injuries. I'm not saying that injuries in combat aren't fatal, but that they are rarely fatal this quickly. One could equally argue the Miami Dade shooting is an example of the other end of the equation, where one of the perpetrators received an almost certainly fatal shot and continued to fight for well more than a minute.
Again, I just don't see the value of a bleeding out mechanic once a PC has gone unconscious.
Quote from: Fheredin on October 17, 2022, 11:57:53 AM
Again, I just don't see the value of a bleeding out mechanic once a PC has gone unconscious.
I think the value is that his friends get X rounds to save him. Maybe one of them has a magical bandaid if he can only get there in time
Quote from: Fheredin on October 17, 2022, 11:57:53 AM
Again, I just don't see the value of a bleeding out mechanic once a PC has gone unconscious.
It's intended to create tension and interest. It's not a simulationist thing.
Quote from: S'mon on October 17, 2022, 02:48:51 PM
Quote from: Fheredin on October 17, 2022, 11:57:53 AM
Again, I just don't see the value of a bleeding out mechanic once a PC has gone unconscious.
It's intended to create tension and interest. It's not a simulationist thing.
The original bleed out rules, from AD&D, were there mainly to reduce PC death. As before that, the only way for a character to be taken out of the fight and not be dead is for them to drop to exactly 0 hit points. The saving throw added in third edition D&D, where a successful save stabilized the character, just make it that much harder to die.
I will agree, however, that if you know the exact round that a character will die, it removes all tension from most situations.
Quote from: ForgottenF on October 05, 2022, 10:02:16 PM
I would like a system where a mortally wounded character has a chance to die instantly, survive for only a few moments, or possibly live on for hours, and I don't know of a game that has that built in. But what do you all favor, as far as death and dying systems go?
Phoenix Command rates a character's injuries with points of Physical Damage (PD), which are tallied and entered into the medical table, cross-indexed with the level of medical care available, yielding a Critical Time Period, and a Recovery Roll. The more serious the injury and the poorer the care, the shorter the time until a recovery roll is made to determine if the character lives or dies. It's left to the GM to determine whether this was due to infection, organ failure, or blood loss.