Proposed Rules and Session Changes

Dear All, I am still very busy but the time away from the game has clarified a few things and I see two major issues with Maladon as things stand: 1) Death is too rare! Why is this a problem? Because a game where PC death is not common loses it's 'edge'. This is not because I'm going easy on you all, it's because of 5e mechanics. I have 'downed' 30+ PCs in the 12 sessions I have run so far, but the only death was when I deliberately killed a character because my NPCs were not in combat and had the leisure to 'coup de grace'. The death saving throw malarkey makes it very unlikely anyone ever actually dies because you have 3-5 rounds of being unconscious before death is a real threat unless my monsters or NPCs start deliberately slaying downed characters. I am not in favor of doing this, because it makes the game feel like DM v Players. It also feels wrong because I don't think it makes good tactical sense if the monsters are still facing active PCs, to waste actions killing unconscious ones. So why don't I just up the CRs I hear you ask; well all that will do is cause more TPKs (total party kills) where everyone dies, because in 5e the way most PCs seem to die is when they are unconscious and there is no-one there to keep them alive or stop the monsters from killing them? I don't like TPKs because everyone in a party is then penalized for perhaps one player being slightly off their game and this does not reward creative play. I am therefore thinking of changing the death rules for Maladon. Here are the options; a) Death saving throws stay as they are AND you also die when your HP reach less than minus your character level; so a first level character dies at -2HP and a third level character dies at -4 HP etc. This means we will have to track negative HP like in previous versions of the game. This will result in many more 'instant kills', particularly at low level. At the moment, the chance of an instant kill in an encounter with a monster whose CR is the same as your character level is virtually zero. b) Only one death saving throw, and if you fail, you are dead. This will make death from unconsciousness very significant and will then mean that PCs will be forced to attend to downed colleagues immediately. This will lead to more deaths and more TPKs as PCs lose vital actions because of having to heal party members. c) both of the above; I think this is too harsh but would change the combat dynamic and make combat much more dangerous. 2) The second big issue is player participation I am unhappy with the levels of player participation. New players are having to wait weeks to get a game, resulting in them just leaving or never even creating a character. In addition, leads cannot be followed up on from one session to the next, because of the fact that sessions are booked up weeks in advance. Now I am not blaming my more active players; I LOVE you guys, as you are what is keeping the game going, but I need to balance your needs with opening the game out to more people for one very good reason; Maladon's endgame starts when the first PC party reaches a certain level. I am not going to reveal when that happens, but it means that the game will end more quickly if I don't control the levelling up process. Feat buys and other stuff are helping, but still.......... I propose to change the session scheduling rules as follows; sessions cannot be scheduled any longer. When I have time for a game, I will announce a slot 48 hours ahead of time. Players then indicate their desire to attend and I create a lottery randomly and the successful players then discuss where they are going and what they want to do. I then prep the session and we run. I am hoping everyone will get 1 session per week. This way, Maladon should last a lot longer and be a bit more satisfying. Anyway; none of this is set in stone. Please post your comments, ideas, reactions and suggestions.

On death option a): It is worth mentioning that there are mechanics that rely on the "when you drop to 0" mechanic. If you instead die outright those features would be much less useful. I believe the Barbarian has one for example. Option b) meanwhile allows for some more interaction, some reaction and allows you to attempt help; it is less unfair. It is worth mentioning that we so far seem to go down only on the frontlines and if you were to up the death rate then cheesy tactics from players to keep their characters alive are likely to become more common. Having some more diversity with how and where your monsters strike could be a good way to solve that problem though. I am especially concerned as I have been to one to go down historically and I can tell you I won't be trying to "tank" for people under option a) rules as I want Syvil to continue on his journey. On the issue of player participation I am very biased and will need more time to settle my mind on the topic.

Oh and I should say, that the suggestion for random scheduling came from a player who is currently one of the most active and has a level 3 character............

Whatever options we decide; those mechanics that talk about 0 HP will have to be modified so they are still useful, or replaced, otherwise the class will become less useful and that is not the purpose of this exercise. Can I just ask though; is lack of PC death a valid concern? I know is for some and not so much for other people. I just hate games where it's so rare as to be non-existent.

I like character death when you directly trace it back to a mistake you made. Something tangible, something that makes you feel like you could do better next time. I dislike it as an outcome of something you could not affect or something entirely random. I do agree that the current mechanics support the TPK rather than the single death. Unless the monster keeps beating on the downed guy; that would get people killed, and quickly. Does Maladon need more deaths? Maybe? I fear for my character's life every session we play.

Personally, I dislike games where the degree of danger is mostly down to random factors; that does not promote good play and is not what RPGs are about. But I also dislike games where danger is entirely controllable. There is a sweet spot though and we need to find it. Any other thoughts?

Would help with that but wouldn't know where to start ^^. My own GM skills are rudimentary and as I don't want to die I'm unlikely to create anything objective...

Maybe i'm just squeemish but im quite leery of instant deaths, though I agree 30 casualties to 1 death feels a bit too safe. My suggestion would be that a hit that downs a character works as normal, and doesnt take them into negetive, but the death saves could then start taking them into the negetive. Roll 1: instant death, 2-9: lose 2 hp, 10-19: lose 1hp, 20: you stabilise. Getting three fails or falling below a certain threshold would then mean death. I think this would make being downed a lot more dangerous since you do have a small chance of death each round, and even if you succeed on every roll you've only got a small chance to stabilise and are usually just buying yourself time in the hope a party member can get to you.

You die when you reach a negative HP equal to your max HP; in standard rules. Losing 2 HP would mean very little unless you don't go to 0 but to the negative you should have been put at. PHB p.197 Instant Death Edit: What would that mean for healing? Would you need to heal away the negative HP before you get someone up? This would again have serious ramifications for some abilities; most healing abilities for instance. Usually they would get people up but now they wouldn't. This is a major loss of power for such abilities and they could be used to unlock the unused resources of a downed player. I.e a healer might only have one single point of healing left but the downed PC might have 10. So getting that person up means a net benefit of 10 healing added to the group. This is a very common scenario with clerics and paladins who often stand on the front line and go down without spending all their healing. If you take the those factors into consideration then I think that the best way is to rule that; any healing still gets you up and that the damage you take should start from 0 but be scaled higher depending on your level and be tied directly to the roll. Thus healers don't get shafted out of their combat medic role and a low death save of, say a 2, could be more dangerous. It is important to remember that this shifts power to high Hit Die and Con characters; I'm looking at you barbarians. Edit: another crazy idea would be to use a reversed Hit Die expenditure to define the amount of damage you take. one Hit Die +Con on a fail and two Hit Dice +Conx2 on a severe fail.

Whatever changes we make must not alter the balance of power between classes. If we do go down the negative HP route, I think that the rule that even one point of magical healing gets you back on your feet HAS to remain or we'd have to alter every healing spell. Non-magical healing is a different matter though; that I think should have to heal the negative HP.....

The question for me is: When does death occur? When should it occur? Right now in the rules it is one of the 2 conditions: 1) unexpected damage (Falling off somewhere, trap, critical hit) 2) unexpected encounter (not seeing all the enemies, misjudging the strength of an encounter or e.g. pure stupidity) Especially the first one leads for low lvl chars with the standard instant death rule to a high chance of possible deaths. having less than 10 max hp is not uncommon, a crit of more than 10 is quite common. One of the first lessons the players in my current group had to learn was: don't attack what you don't know be ready to run if you can't win So that would be one way to go about it without changing the rules. If you want these things to stay as it is (because the rate of downing chars is high enough) and instead make potential downing more fatal (but the rate of dying ones is low) I think the Zil is quite good. Instead of having to have 3 successes or failure: 3 rolls, if no 20 -> dead This reflects that when you are bleeding on the floor it is very unlikely to come back from this unless someone helps you. It is not that you were just knocked out. You've been cut, perhaps bones cracked or broken... internal bleeding and external bleeding don't just vanish in thin air. the proposals: 1) only 1 save Why I don't think the 1 role solution is good: it gives the party in some situations no chance to react. if the opponent that caused the downing is directly before the downed char it is now or never. You will have to look at your initiative: Is there someone that can heal me between me and and the opponents in initiative or not?  2) -HP change The excess -HP thing could work but it is very difficult to balance. For level 1 fighters it means that they will always be extremely scared of getting anywhere where they could  be hit. One crit means very likely a dead character (for any class). It is possible to counter balance that with e.g. having to reach -(10+lvl*2). So in early levels it helps a bit your survivability and with higher lvls you have to be able to judge your abilities better. If  as a tank I only have 10 hp left and I am facing sth that can dish out 30 dmg with luck... i might have already done my job or need to call for healers 3)change of encounters to target soft targets I think this is partly already done. In Marokin's first adventure he got attacked by two wolf riders and I feared I get taken out straight away by being stupid enough and casting on one of them, not expecting a 2nd to arrive. Being surrounded would be worse of course. Maybe having once in a while an opponent that is very unlikely to be beaten is a good idea. I was scared that that skeleton in the tomb could have been that and that the cube would block our way out and we would have to fight our way free possibly leaving sb behind... 4) change healing for getting away from 0 hp. That requires some more thought but I just thought that perhaps having to spend more time on somebody that is unconscious than on somebody that i conscious does not sound to implausible. Marokin had two cases so far in which he had to jump to lvl 1 chars to cure wounds them. They got up and immediately continue their thing as did Marokin. If it takes more time to awake them or if they cannot instantly do thing it will be making the decision making much harder for everyone who can heal. I expose myself for a longer time and yes, I save a friend, but I also forsake the still living for that time... It makes healers a bit weaker but mainly it forces the tanks to respect their limits and causes them to call out for help while they are still standing. 5) the backline All these will not change the general issue that exists so far afaik: It is very unlikely for the backline to get hurt and it is always the same that will go down and risk their death. The usual possibility is to have surrounding enemies, ambushes, AoE spells... If the backline fears more for their life it makes them more hesitant to help the frontline if they need help 6) death thorugh social encounters here is a completely new vector of death. If I screw up badly outside a session by having my character doing something stupid or having done something in a session that might cause a volatile reaction at any point in a so called save spot... there might be a possibility that I get targeted by an assassin or something similar. It will be a real havoc though to play this out and to do it without the player feeling like: Oh DM decided I do, what to do... commenting on the scheduling thing at another time bt it seems good for me... forces more  RP while waiting for sessions ;)

Hmm; thanks for your thoughts PK. Where do you stand on the issue of threat level in Maladon? Is the game dangerous and  it's just that everyone is being smart or is it slightly too easy?

To answer your questions PK; When does death occur; 1) if someone eats a crit that reduces them to minus the value of their max HP total . After 2nd-3rd level with the way damage scales in 5e, this is very unlikely, even with a critical hit unless the monster is way above your CR (and god knows I've rolled enough of them; 4 in one combat the other day). At 2nd level you usually have ~16-17 HP as a front liner and at 3rd it's 20+. Few monsters dish out 40+ damage in a single hit even with poison. So unless they hit you for 20+ damage when you are already on 1 HP...........you are just going to go into death save mode. And death from death saves never happens unless the party loses the fight and flees; there's always enough time to heal the downed party member unless a player rolls a 1 on their death save....... So my argument is that 5e is too protective of players. Yes I can up the CR but then everyone will die no matter what they do; and that doesn't feel fair.

Here is an idea; for every 10 damage left after you are reduced to 0 you 'fail' a death save. So someone with 5 HP who gets hits for 25 damage drops to 0 and loses two death saves immediately........ I just think that the current mechanic insulates PCs from really big hits because the moment you go to 0 then damage doesn't matter unless it is more than your HP max, and that is too big a number to matter after level 2.

The number of fringe cases where that damage interacts with an ability are few as well; as you technically don't go below 0 hp and thus avoids breaking any such rules. There are still some implications, that I can see, of this but they are somewhat minor.

To be fair there would have been 3 deaths if Syvil did not use his special fate point so a 1/10 instead of a 1/30 seems about right. And I am up for anything just make sure it does not turn into a meat grinder for the new characters.

On Death For the death issue you could pick any 2/3 of these options to make things more difficult. A.) Raise the number required for a success on a Death Saving Throw to a number higher than 10. How much you would want to raise it will tilt the odds. For example raising it to 16 or higher for a success would mean there's a 75% chance a character left unattended will die. This makes going down a bit more risky. B.) Force the character to make their first Death Saving Throw the second they reach 0 HP, and then on their turn as well.  C.) Only give the character two death saving throws. A and C would likely be the most generous change A and B would likely be somewhere in the middle B and C would likely be the most brutal without straight up lowering the number down to 1 Death Saving throw. Depending on initiative it could potentially give a player a 25% chance of death without anyone being able to react (as opposed to 50% chance which could occur with 1 Death Saving Throw). I guess the questions I have are 1.) How quickly do you want someone to die after getting downed? Potentially that turn? 1 round? 2 rounds? 2.) What do you want the odds of death to be during that window? Not accounting for monsters stomping them of course. 3.) Do you want the party to have a chance to react? ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ On the Lotto As far as the lottery goes my only concern would be the possibility of certain players not getting picked enough (we are talking about random chance here). A solution to this would be the classic World of Warcraft pity timer. Basically every time you join the lotto and don't win you could gain 1 point of pity. At 3 points (or whatever number you fancy) you would have increased priority for 1 game. Obviously winning the lotto would reset you to 0 pity regardless. I don't know if this would be a major problem though it depends on how many people you have competing for slots. If there's a small number of people this would almost never come up, but with a larger player base the odds of someone getting unlucky are larger as well.

Elee makes some excellent points...

As for the slots I really like that idea since there is nothing guaranteed about it I have some ideas for possible guidelines For the first game Stephen would post the slot time like 4 days ahead of time players have 2 days to accept and get put on the list. After the 2 days are up Stephen selects the players from the list 9 people d9 d8 d7 d6 for the main players and down to d1 for reserve order for everyone else. He posts the winners and they decide what mission to do and if they want extra players; if any other players are needed they are taken from the reserve order. So a six player party would consist of d9 d8 d7 d6 and reserves d5 d4. To make sure everyone gets a turn and no one gets screwed by rng all the time after the first session the first three slots would only be open to those who were not in the previous session and the fourth or more will be open to everyone. So if me Sivil and Josh were in a game together and we along with 4 new people signed up for the next session the first three slots would go to the new guys and the fourth+ slots between me, Syvil, Josh, and the fourth person that got left out. Its a little complicated but what do you guys think of this?

I REALLY like Elle's idea with A and possibly in combination with B Edit: I mistook B for C a combo with A and B would be great it would put much more time pressure to get over to and heal someone so far I have never been in a situation where I was worried about not getting there in time. That rule set is nice for increased cause of death being bad play instead of possible bull rng.

deaths  i like zills idea but i think nat roll 20 is to hard i think if you roll a 9 or less you die if you roll a 10 or more you lose -1hp if you reach your player lvl so like 3 hp for me you die this way it keeps people in a stat of death and it kinda shows people bleeding out slowly instead of just rolling above 10 it knida keeps you in the game i feel and if a npc hits you for -hp it should increase the hp losed on a death roll so in stead of losing -1hp on a 10 or more you lose -2hp depending on how fatal the final blow was just to show bleeding out and how it effects your pc i think this way would make people have to work together more instead of just doing what ever and would make people buy healing more so they can save someone faster instead of just waiting it would make people think more in a battle in stead of just doing what ever player booking   i dont  like this random idea or the lotto although i do think something should be done i have said this before and i stick to it maybe have it so if you book a game one week you can't book or be in a game until the next set of booking is around and if you do want to be in a game after you have played then you can only go in the reserve but maybe only a max of 3 people and new players are first choice but know booking for that week unless DM say so and no booking advance games either people can only book for that week not another also i do think the game has gotten easier when we had our first game in our face to face we came across a troll that could of killed us  we have not come across any large or dangerous monsters i think upping the threat level wouldn't hurt you no last game we faced a water snake it died in like 3 hits then we almost got owned by goblins so i think up the random monster level and have higher monsters just randomly walk about to if we go into the forest of bones we might meet a troll or a horde of skeletons coming up from the ground these are my thoughts

Syvil told me to tell you that the giant spider was terrifying :F That's all XD / \( '' '' )/ \

OK; on the session scheduling front; I don't want any system to be too focused on newbies because a lot of newbies aren't that committed and only play once or never. I have seen that hold true in a lot of games, not just this one. If you try and base your game on these, more casual players, the game 'cools down'. So if you bias the scheduling too much in their direction, you just lose momentum, since the drivers of the game are always the committed players. Making the experience less good for the regulars is just silly. I just think the current session balance is slightly too favoured for the regulars.

@everyone I think the idea with 2 saving throws is more gracious than e.g. giving them 3 to roll a 20.  So far (as I have seen) the situation is usually that a downed character is immediately taken care of by the party. A change of saving throws will not change it that much unless there is the chance of instant death which again may make people feel treated randomly... I might be trying out some of the things said here also with the group I am running. Generally I think stabilizing someone by non magical means should take longer than one action. (I can visualize somebody touching a downed char with divine energy, but I cannot see somebody fixing a bandage, treating a severe wound or similar things in 6(!!) seconds).  It will partly force the clerics to hold onto their healing spells and be less buff/offensive oriented, but well...  I'll let you know if I find this makes things more interesting @Stephen: To your question whether it is to easy: I guess it could be a slightly harder, especially for the backline. e.g. the ancient tombs session there was a lot of opportunity for people to dash out all their abilities and then to rest. Had we not had that opportunity some of the fights might have been harder. (Marokin e.g. saved 2 spell slots, expecting that the mission is sort of urgent and that there will be few possibilities to rest, whereas Erolith blew everything on the two crabs and forced the party to rest.) If there are less opportunities to rest, thus the party having to handle their limited resources more carefully, it will become a bit trickier on its own. Do I gamble and say we will win this fight anyway and that party member can use its hit dice to recover afterwards, or do I want to be on the safe side and heal it/use a spell to finish of the opponent quickly?  Dungeon Master Guide information below! If you don't want to know it skip this post! My experience is that the recommendations on the DMG for creating proper encounters are a bit too light. My party of 2 lvl2 players and 4 lvl 1 characters managed to easily wipe out 5 cultists and about 10 kobolds (they fled because 4 of them died in the first round and 2 cultists) CR would be according to DMG 25xp*15 =375XP and adjusted for group size: 11-14=*3 (15+=*4) ->  375xp*3 = 1125XP or 375xp*2.5= 937.5xp when adjusting for a party size of 6. According to DMG Medium encounter would be between 300 and 600 and deadly should be 800 and above. It was not even close to deadly... Another encounter of the same party was 2 acolytes, 7 cultists and 1 guard ->  8*25+2*50 = 300 -> size adjustement 600XP it proofed to be more of a challenge and what I expect of a hard encounter on the rather lighter side of hard encounters. Partly it was more difficult due to one character basically being at 1 hp (paladin) when the encounter started (walked into a trap...) This proofed to be much more difficult for the group (partly because they were split up, partly because I rolled a crit that insta downed the fighter) I had forgotten that the acolytes had used bless on themselves+4 cultists, that might have changed things a bit... The Paladin got downed twice in that battle and the fighter once, but there was enough time for the cleric to take care of everything. I am looking at a way to adjust this CR thingy for myself in a better way and I feel it is more about the HP and potential dmg in comparison to HP of the party than anything else. So it does make 0 sense that kobolds and cultists have the same CR unless you can guarantee that the kobolds either have an advantage in being ranged or the cultists a disadvantaged at being mele... it is just almost always one additional hit that they take. Also the multiplier table is rather weird. Does a Adult White Dragon fall to the rating of an abominable yeti because of 1-2 additional party members? Does basically adding one character make a party that is normally quite engaged with such a dragon capable of defeating 2 of those? Maybe this gets better at higher levels but at the early levels at least I feel that the CR rating is not doing the job it is supposed to be doing very well.  I totally share your view on the idea that you do not want to play vs the players. I am just curious what they do and how they hang in there, but yeah, without chances of failure they will be bored and so will I.

PK; entirely agree about the CR system. It just doesn't work. What makes my game a bit harder to judge is that the sessions are quite short and with shorter sessions the party don't tend to get their resources taxed so much. Hmm; much food for thought..........

P K. said: @everyone I think the idea with 2 saving throws is more gracious than e.g. giving them 3 to roll a 20.  So far (as I have seen) the situation is usually that a downed character is immediately taken care of by the party. A change of saving throws will not change it that much unless there is the chance of instant death which again may make people feel treated randomly... I might be trying out some of the things said here also with the group I am running. Generally I think stabilizing someone by non magical means should take longer than one action. (I can visualize somebody touching a downed char with divine energy, but I cannot see somebody fixing a bandage, treating a severe wound or similar things in 6 ( !!) seconds).  It will partly force the clerics to hold onto their healing spells and be less buff/offensive oriented, but well...  I'll let you know if I find this makes things more interesting @Stephen: To your question whether it is to easy: I guess it could be a slightly harder, especially for the backline . e.g. the ancient tombs session there was a lot of opportunity for people to dash out all their abilities and then to rest. Had we not had that opportunity some of the fights might have been harder. ( Marokin e.g. saved 2 spell slots, expecting that the mission is sort of urgent and that there will be few possibilities to rest, whereas Erolith blew everything on the two crabs and forced the party to rest.) If there are less opportunities to rest, thus the party having to handle their limited resources more carefully, it will become a bit trickier on its own. Do I gamble and say we will win this fight anyway and that party member can use its hit dice to recover afterwards, or do I want to be on the safe side and heal it/use a spell to finish of the opponent quickly?  Dungeon Master Guide information below! If you don't want to know it skip this post! My experience is that the recommendations on the DMG for creating proper encounters are a bit too light. My party of 2 lvl2 players and 4 lvl 1 characters managed to easily wipe out 5 cultists and about 10 kobolds (they fled because 4 of them died in the first round and 2 cultists) CR would be according to DMG 25xp*15 =375XP and adjusted for group size: 11-14=*3 (15+=*4) - >  375xp*3 = 1125XP or 375xp*2.5= 937.5xp when adjusting for a party size of 6. According to DMG Medium encounter would be between 300 and 600 and deadly should be 800 and above. It was not even close to deadly ... Another encounter of the same party was 2 acolytes, 7 cultists and 1 guard ->  8*25+2*50 = 300 -> size adjustement 600XP it proofed to be more of a challenge and what I expect of a hard encounter on the rather lighter side of hard encounters. Partly it was more difficult due to one character basically being at 1 hp ( paladin ) when the encounter started (walked into a trap...) This proofed to be much more difficult for the group (partly because they were split up, partly because I rolled a crit that insta downed the fighter) I had forgotten that the acolytes had used bless on themselves+4 cultists, that might have changed things a bit... The Paladin got downed twice in that battle and the fighter once, but there was enough time for the cleric to take care of everything. I am looking at a way to adjust this CR thingy for myself in a better way and I feel it is more about the HP and potential dmg in comparison to HP of the party than anything else. So it does make 0 sense that kobolds and cultists have the same CR unless you can guarantee that the kobolds either have an advantage in being ranged or the cultists a disadvantaged at being mele ... it is just almost always one additional hit that they take. Also the multiplier table is rather weird. Does a Adult White Dragon fall to the rating of an abominable yeti because of 1-2 additional party members? Does basically adding one character make a party that is normally quite engaged with such a dragon capable of defeating 2 of those? Maybe this gets better at higher levels but at the early levels at least I feel that the CR rating is not doing the job it is supposed to be doing very well.  I totally share your view on the idea that you do not want to play vs the players. I am just curious what they do and how they hang in there, but yeah, without chances of failure they will be bored and so will I. i agree with you but so you no when we were fighting the crabs i didnt blow all my spells but our paladons   didnt  have any spells and needed to rest i didnt  force the group 

If we are talking specifics then it is because I almost died; again XD and wasn't really up to snuff going into a tomb from which the red light had been glowing. Cain had also blown a few of his spell slots.

There is another suggestion about death saves that deserves some discussion; how about if: a) the GM makes all death saves in secret; so that PCs have to deal with downed PCs immediately. I like this idea because that player is then not sitting out the entire fight but either dies or gets straight back up. b) the chance of failing two death saves on one roll (i,e, rolling a 1) is changed from from 5% (1 in 20) to 20% (a roll of 1-5 on a d20 is now two failures). In the above system we keep the 3 death saves system so that things remain fairer. This only increases the tension and chance of death from death saves and does not change the chance of an insta-kill; and I like that because insta-kills tend to just be random criticals that players can do nothing about. Basically, with this system, players need to use teamwork more and that encourages good play and resource management. Thoughts?

yeah; the tomb isle session was an odd one. There are some nasty monsters that live on that isle and it was pure luck you weren't all murdered sleeping outside..........................don't try that one again.

I like it. But with how much you crit me I am scared of anything you do.

haha; yes you and Syvil are crit magnets. I rolled 4 in one battle last week.....................

And ya I need to start watching my slots better in the crab fight I used one to protect Syvil and the other two on smites because Cain has a ferocious need to crush things to smithereens.

@Erolith my bad, I was not trying to criticise the playstyle but just pointing out another angle that can be tackled :) apology should that have offended you Generally I have the feeling that some people just expect they have the possibility to rest, when maybe they should not ;) Nothing is more terrifying when your part is thinking: oh gosh we should rest to charge up and then you get woken up because your camp is attacked and you haven't recharged your resources yet ;) @stephen: totally fan of the secret rolls :) (I will immediately adapt that for my group :D) I don't know about the sessions where I did not play, but in those people were immediately treated. If that was not the case in other sessions a change of saving throws might do it. :) Just to make this discussion more transparent: How often were there cases where chars were downed and stayed downed for more than 1 round without being treated?? @Sloth: I mean if that is how your character acts, that is how he works ;) But then he has to live with the consequences of his party might not being a big fan of that

Syvil has gone down, and been down until he rolled all his saves at least two times now. And if the party has issues with Cain spending his resources; which they do not know exist. Yet leave characters who do evil things be then I suggest the party needs to look long and deep at its priorities.... I for one am behind Cain all the way and as the one who was actually in danger of dying I am very grateful that he fought hard for my sake. Or that's Syvil sees things anyway.

Thats why I suggested hiding death saves to Stephen, by knowing exactly how many saves you succeeded and failed at, it was obvious whether it was optimal or not to fight on/disengage to try and stabilise.

To be clear; if we change the death saves to the system above where a roll of 1-5 is two failures and the rolls are in secret; there will be a lot more deaths. Not just from death saving throws but from people taking actions to save downed characters;and then getting killed. But I personally think the balance will be better because there will be something the players can do about it in most cases.

I agree about hiding the rolls. This just puts allot more pressure on the party to save the character who has been downed. This would make the odds of dying in two turns roughly 12.5%. So a little more than 1/10 characters who don't get treatment in one turn will die. This makes leaving your buddy on the ground a pretty big risk since you won't know rather the first roll was a critical failure or not.

I think the above will result in what I want; which is not more deaths, but more efforts not to go down in the first place. At the moment, I think people are accepting it too easily and it is happening too often because it is not that bad, apart from losing that party member's actions. That to me, is neither realistic nor acceptable.

Speaking for me I have only once gone down to due to taking a risk consciously. That would be the Cider Boy's brawlers in the back alley where I instigated a fight a little too soon. The other times have gone "Ooooh... Meaty; that's a crit." By no means do I feel Syvil has taken risks too lightly; the opposite actually, and he's been going down a lot, if not the most... Edit for numbers: Search for Torigg: no down; not focused. Blackspire: down; focused. Cider Boys: downed twice; not focused but poor decision making and the second one falls under the meaty crit territory. Hunter's Inn: no down; stayed at range as that seemed (and still does) more safe. Amber Downs: down; not focused and I think critted. The Cave under the Hanging Tree: almost down; focused, critted. I say almost as I believe I did not actually go down, but almost had an instant death; nasty poison with crit is nasty... Ancient Tombs: down; focused, critted. So I count 4.5/7 and only one was a really poor decision on my part. In those 7 sessions I recall only one ranged character ever going down and that was Joshua's Mindartis I consider myself a careful player, though that is a subjective opinion. The things I could have done to avoid most of these is use my party as a shield; have someone else stick their grape out, have them be the front line or have them be the one to investigate that noise. Frankly I've been moving in that direction (see last session in the tombs) and it's not who I want to be. That's how I see it anyway. All this said I am not too unhappy with how things have been going and I am trying hard to become better at taking punishment rather than dishing it out. In the future I hope to better fill the role of "grape" by becoming "The Grape in Plate" or some such funny term :D Edit 2: I've realized that I like to have Syvil actually taunt the enemies - my going down might be more my fault than I thought...

I think Cain might be worse for going down; if you factor in that he's been in fewer sessions. But tbh, both of you have just been unlucky. I mean, how many criticals have you survived between you?

A few, and at the rate you, sir, are rolling; we'll have plenty more coming our way! ;) But if you look at the amount of hits taken my point about play style and back liners would probably still stand. If I wanted Syvil to survive the way to go is not to put him in heavy plate, with a shield and healing abilities. It would be to make him a ranger with some long range weapon, decent armor, a shield and some more limited healing; simply because this makes him less likely to be attacked by anything. It is worth arguing that as a back liner being attacked is *a lot* worse though, and I am not trying to paint them up as targets by asking you to attack them more; it is Syvil's job to make sure of the opposite. Rather I'm trying to say that if no one takes the front line then it would all fall like a house of cards. This is all in the context of the proposition that we should display: "...more efforts not to go down in the first place." And the only, more general and practically applicable, solution I can see for my part is acting from the back ranks; not beefing up defensive statistics nor to reign in reckless behavior as I'm trying hard to armor up yet go down, most commonly, without the needless risk-seeking. Again, this is in itself is not a problem; but I don't agree with how you perceive the causes of the downs as I see them mostly as the bad guys critting about twice as often as we do rather than as us doing dangerous things and taking unnecessary risks. Be aware that I might suffer from Negativity Bias in this matter and that this should be taken with a few grains of salt. Edit: I've realized that I like to have Syvil actually taunt the enemies - my going down might be more my fault than I thought...

@simon 2 things 1: Resources thingy: well you do not see the slots as a character but you can see that they use up their energy/get a bit more exhausted or whatever. At least that is how I assume it. And even if you don't, a person that will often be like : Oh no I need to rest now a.s.o. will eventually be viewed as someone slowing the party down ;) 2:  I did not know about these cases. partly probably because my first action when somebody was going down was to cure their wounds. That was also how my group was usually handling it, however today I saw the first time what is apparently more the topic here. A paladin in the group did not bother to heal because the first save of the monk was a success... only after a fail he was like: meh, ok then i'll spend those resources... (I was not the dm so no hidden saves...) @all If it is about less going down maybe the excess dmg having an effect is a good idea. the -(10+lvl) being insta death basically forces the healers to keep the frontline healthy and the frontline knows they have to retreat when they get low. Also an idea would be to add exhaustion if you were down. @focus That is also what I think sivil needs to learn. :) It might still happen that you get 100-0d in one turn... but that means that there was focus. maybe the construction of the party is then also an issue and people need to check who they want on their missions? If there is always one person taking the hits and therefore gets downed, maybe that is not good? Maybe you need 2 frontliners or more... the tomb group was quite balanced: 2 tankier characters, 2 support fighters, 2 back liners...

I'm argumentative ass, no really I'm like the pig in that story about arguing with an engineer, only difference is that unlike the pig I understand that others might not enjoy it as much; feel free to let me know if I'm going overboard. For now - here are my arguments: 1) Going down is usually not due to focus over several rounds; rather it is one crit and the secondary attack to 0 in one turn; party composition is unlikely to make much of a difference as only a reaction from a friendly or a weightier buff, like Warding Bond 2nd level spell, would interrupt such an event. 2) I agree that hidden saves are a good idea, they will up the ante on getting to downed members and create lots of tension; awesome! Focus) Random group composition is becoming a thing; forget picking your companions. I agree that the Tomb group did really well because of our great composition, without first Cain to deal the heavy damage, then Marokin to by pass the socially inept water elemental and finally Beldak to fix those traps... The rest did a few pretty neat things too; Mindartis' plot for that gelatinous cube was a sweet one and Meren, though level 1, held his own in all the battles. I doubt such a dream team will come together anytime soon. Also; I've realized that I like to have Syvil actually taunt the enemies - my going down might be more my fault than I thought...

I am not sure we have decided about how to deal with group composition yet; merely that the current system is slightly too biased towards the very active players; though I think the bias is only a little over what is ideal, for reasons that I have outlined above. As for individual characters going down etc; I will point out that one of the reasons for so few deaths so far is that I roll who many of the monsters attack randomly, which is a non-optimal tactic; if I start using 'focused fire' it might be a very different story..............I just don't like players to feel the DM is trying to kill their characters. What I am trying to do now, is reset the system slightly, to counter the advantage I am giving your characters over that which they would normally enjoy. I just prefer the passive aspects of the system to balance rather than me having to take active steps to do so.

Agreed; intelligent focus would have us die like flies. Imagine if the Cider Boys had gone for our back row in that alleyway... All Talia would have needed to do is slip past us and set daggers in their backs and the entire thing would have been a TPK.

It is a quandary; I just know we have many new players, but perhaps the time is right to use tactics rather than mechanics to even things up? I can do that; I really can do that.............

Is not sure that you got the whole "TPK will occur" part of the above and now worries he has woken the bear. Oh and I'll be sleeping real soon so don't expect anything outta me for a a good 7+ hours; I like mud wrestling but do get oh so tired by it XD

But I do like that characters own some fights; that is just how it should be.....

Oh don't worry; I get it. I originally scaled back using my best tactics against players in the 3.5 era because I could kill most parties 80% of the time with an encounter that the book said was -2 CRs below theirs and was 'undemanding'. Now I am much better at tactics in 3.5 than 5th, but still............

I think I have only been downed twice so far and that was because the bossman in the downs crit me for each down. Outside of that I really can not remember a situation where I was downed otherwise there have been close calls like at the Cider fight I was at one then healed. Also I have my character set up to be a nuke to where I let the tank take the aggro at first run in and do ~20 damage with smite use I am thinking about taking the Great weapon feat just to make a followup hit after that smite kill for more damage after my current feat is learned.

I believe the lack of deaths are odd. If the way Dorn died was the only way people died though it wouldn't be very great because, you are right, it would seem like you are trying to kill us. The problem with both your solution ideas though is that at low levels the enemies get a lot crits, most of the attacks I remember hitting me have been really high rolls or crits which resulted in an instant downing. I haven't been around much lately so I do not know how that is still going. Going off the experience I've had so far, I believe the best way to fairly add in the danger of death would be using slightly more tactics from the enemies. As you said you know how to TPK a party with an encounter that should not kill them. If you added in a little more tactics then the danger of death would certainly increase. This method would also require the party to use more tactics as well, so I see it as a win win, unless I am totally misunderstanding something, or missed one of the posts (too many to catch up on). As for player participation... Elee's idea seems like a good one with a point system that resets. I do hate lotteries since they are based too much on luck IMO, so the point system would probably help solve that problem. Trust me, I'm an engineer.