|[4e] - Death and Dying in 4E
Marcel Beaudoin
Character death is one of the ultimate threats in any RPG, and D&D is no
exception. Besides the obvious, um, “inconveniences” that death might
cause your character and his allies in both the short and long
term—inconveniences which vary based on your level, the current
situation, and of course your attachment to that particular
character—death is a mark of failure. In some hard-to-explain but very
real way, a dead character symbolizes that you just “lost” at D&D. That
can prove a bitter pill for many players, and in my experience is even
more frustrating than paying for a resurrection.
What We Hated
Early in the design process, Rob, James, and I identified a number of
ways that we were unsatisified with D&D’s current death and dying rules.
For example, we strongly disliked the inability of 3rd Edition D&D’s
negative-hit-point model to deal with combat at higher levels—once the
monsters are reliably dealing 15 or 20 points of damage with each attack,
the chance of a character going straight from “alive and kicking” to
“time to go through his pockets for loose change” was exceedingly high;
effectively, the -1 to -9 “dying” range was meaningless. Ask any high-
level fighter whether he’d prefer the second-to-last attack from a
monster to leave him at 1 hp or -1 hp; I’d put odds on unconsciousness,
and how lame is that?
Among other problems, this also meant that characters effectively had no
way to “lose” a combat except by being killed. This removes a lot of
dramatic possibilities for the story—for instance, the classic scene of
the characters being captured and thrown in a cell from which they have
to escape using only their wits and a pack of chewing gum (or whatever).
On top of all that, the game added a complex state of being at exactly 0
hp, which wasn’t quite like being fully capable but also wasn’t quite
dying. Honestly, though, how often does any character actually get
reduced to exactly 0 hp? Why did the game need a condition that existed
at exactly one spot on the big, broad range of hit point possibilities?
What We Wanted
We wanted a death and dying system that added fun and tension at the
table, scaled well to any level of play, and created the threat of PC
mortality (without delivering on that threat as often as 3rd Edition
did).
Characters had to feel that death was a possibility in order for combat
to feel meaningful. If it seems impossible to be killed, much of the
tension of combat disappears. However, if the majority of combats result
in death (as is the case for a lot of high-level play in previous
editions), the game is forced to reclassify death as a trivial obstacle
in order to remain playable. 3rd Edition accomplished this with popular
spells such as close wounds, delay death, and revivify—mandatory staples
of any high-level cleric’s arsenal due purely to the commonality of
death. But that removes the tension, and now what’s the point of death at
all?
The system also had to be simple to remember and adjudicate at the table.
Being able to keep the rule in your head is important, because you don’t
want to be bogging the game down flipping through a book when a character
is clinging to life by a thread—that should be high-tension time, not
slowdown time!
Finally, it had to be believable within the heroic-fantasy milieu of D&D.
(Believability isn’t the same thing as realism—an error which has ruined
more games than I can count.) Put another way, it had to feel like
D&D—one of those tricky “you know it when you see it” things.
What We Did About It
Back in 2005, this was obviously a much lower priority than, say,
creating the new model for how classes and races worked, so we put it on
the back burner to simmer. As the months passed, we and other designers
proposed various models that tried to solve the conundrums set out above,
varying from exceedingly abstract to witheringly simulationist. We
playtested every model, from death tracks to life points, each time
learning something different about what worked or didn’t work. A few
times, we even temporarily settled on a solution, claiming that the
playtesters only needed time to get used to our radical new ideas.
Side note to all those would-be game designers out there: When you hear
yourself making that claim, you might be in danger of losing touch with
reality. Sometimes you’re right, and your innovative game design concept
just needs a little time to sink in. (The cycling initiative system used
by 3rd Edition D&D is a good example of that—back in 1999, some very
vociferous playtesters were convinced that it would ruin D&D combat
forever. Turned out that wasn’t exactly true.) But every time you
convince yourself that you know better than the people playing your game,
you’re opening the possibility of a very rude (and costly) awakening.
Thankfully, our awakening came well before we released the game (or even
before widescale playtesting began, for that matter). Despite some quite
elegant concepts, none of our radical new ideas met all the criteria
necessary, including simplicity, playability, fun, and believability.
The system had to be at least as simple to remember and at least as easy
to play as what already existed. For all their other flaws, negative hit
points are pretty easy to use, and they work well with the existing hit-
point system.
It had to be at least as much fun as what already existed, and it had to
be at least as believable as what already existed. In ideal situations,
negative hit points create fun tension at the table, and they’re
reasonably believable, at least within the heroic fantasy milieu of D&D,
where characters are supposed to get the stuffing beaten out of them on a
regular basis without serious consequences.
Every one of our new ideas failed to meet at least one of those criteria.
Maybe they were playable but too abstract to feel fun or believable, or
they were believable but too complicated to remember. Nothing worked, and
I admit we experienced a couple of freak-out moments behind closed doors.
The Breakthrough
Eventually we got it through our heads that there wasn’t a radical new
game mechanic just waiting to be discovered that would revolutionize the
narrow window between life and death in D&D. What we really needed to do
was just widen the window, reframe it, and maybe put in an extra pane for
insulation. (OK, that analogy went off the tracks, but its heart was in
the right place.)
Characters still use a negative hit point threshold to determine when
they move from “unconscious and dying” to “all-the-way-dead,” but now
that threshold scales with their level (or more specifically, with their
hit point total). A character with 30 hit points (such as a low-level
cleric) dies when he reaches -15 hit points, while the 15th-level fighter
with 120 hp isn’t killed until he’s reduced to -60 hit points.
That may seem like an unreachable number, but it’s important to remember
that monsters, like characters, aren’t piling on as many attacks on their
turn as in 3rd Edition. At 15th level, that fighter might face a tough
brute capable of dishing out 25 or 30 points of damage with its best
attack… or nearly twice that on a crit. The threat of “alive-to-negative-
everything” on a single hit remains in play, but it’s much less common
than in the previous edition. That puts that bit of tension back where it
belongs.
The new system also retains the “unconscious character bleeding out”
concept, but for obvious reasons speeds it along a bit. (There’s not
really any tension watching that 15th-level fighter bleed out at a rate
of 1 hp per round for 30 or 40 rounds.) Thanks to some clever
abstractions, the new system also removes the predictability of the
current death timer. (“OK, Regdar’s at -2 hp, so we have 8 rounds to get
to him. Yawn… time for a nap.”)
It’s also less costly to bring dying characters back into the fight
now—there’s no “negative hit point tax” that you have to pay out of the
healing delivered by your cure serious wounds prayer. That helps ensure
that a character who was healed from unconsciousness isn’t in an
immediate threat of going right back there (and you’ll never again have
the “I fed Jozan a potion of healing but he’s still at negative hit
points” disappointment).
Monsters don’t need or use this system unless the DM has special reason
to do so. A monster at 0 hp is dead, and you don’t have to worry about
wandering around the battlefield stabbing all your unconscious foes. (I’m
sure my table isn’t the only place that happens.) We’ve talked elsewhere
about some of the bogus parallelism that can lead to bad game design—such
as all monsters having to follow character creation rules, even though
they’re supposed to be foes to kill, not player characters—this is just
another example of the game escaping that trap. Sure, a DM can decide for
dramatic reasons that a notable NPC or monster might linger on after
being defeated. Maybe a dying enemy survives to deliver a final warning
or curse before expiring, or at the end of a fight the PCs discover a
bloody trail leading away from where the evil warlock fell, but those
will be significant, story-based exceptions to the norm.
Oh, and speaking of zero hit points? You’re unconscious and dying, just
like every new player expects it should be. It’s not as harsh as the
“dead at 0 hp” rule of the original D&D game, but it’s still not a place
you want to be for long!
Try It Now!
If you want to try out a version of this system in your current game, try
the following house rule. It’s not quite the 4th Edition system, but it
should give you an idea of how it’ll feel.
1) At 0 hp or less, you fall unconscious and are dying.
Any damage dealt to a dying character is applied normally, and might kill
him if it reduces his hit points far enough (see #2).
2) Characters die when their negative hit point total reaches -10 or one-
quarter of their full normal hit points, whichever is a larger value.
This is less than a 4th Edition character would have, but each monster
attack is dealing a smaller fraction of the character’s total hit points,
so it should be reasonable. If it feels too small, increase it to one-
third full normal hit points and try again.
3) If you’re dying at the end of your turn, roll 1d20.
Lower than 10: You get worse. If you get this result three times before
you are healed or stabilized (as per the Heal skill), you die.
10-19: No change.
20: You get better! You wake up with hit points equal to one-quarter your
full normal hit points.
4) If a character with negative hit points receives healing, he returns
to 0 hp before any healing is applied.
In other words, he’ll wake up again with hit points equal to the healing
provided by the effect—a cure light wounds spell for 7 hp will bring any
dying character back to 7 hp, no matter what his negative hit point total
had reached.)
5) A dying character who’s been stabilized (via the Heal skill) doesn’t
roll a d20 at the end of his turn unless he takes more damage.
--
Marcel
DougL
[SNIP]
> 3) If you're dying at the end of your turn, roll 1d20.
> Lower than 10: You get worse. If you get this result three times before
> you are healed or stabilized (as per the Heal skill), you die.
> 10-19: No change.
> 20: You get better! You wake up with hit points equal to one-quarter your
> full normal hit points.
>
> 4) If a character with negative hit points receives healing, he returns
> to 0 hp before any healing is applied.
> In other words, he'll wake up again with hit points equal to the healing
> provided by the effect--a cure light wounds spell for 7 hp will bring any
> dying character back to 7 hp, no matter what his negative hit point total
> had reached.)
>
> 5) A dying character who's been stabilized (via the Heal skill) doesn't
> roll a d20 at the end of his turn unless he takes more damage.
Hmm, so there is a mild advantage to waiting till someone has missed
two d20 rolls and is actually on the verge of death prior to doing any
healing or trying to stabilize him, since a roll of 20 gives extra HP
back compared to other methods.
I could probably ignore this in play (and the actual 4th ed rules may
be rather different than this "try it in 3rd ed" short description),
but it feels a bit off in isolation.
DougL
Keith Davies
> From http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drdd/20080201a
>
> Try It Now!
>
> If you want to try out a version of this system in your current game,
> try the following house rule. It's not quite the 4th Edition system,
> but it should give you an idea of how it'll feel.
>
> 1) At 0 hp or less, you fall unconscious and are dying.
> Any damage dealt to a dying character is applied normally, and might
> kill him if it reduces his hit points far enough (see #2).
>
> 2) Characters die when their negative hit point total reaches -10 or
> one- quarter of their full normal hit points, whichever is a larger
> value.
> This is less than a 4th Edition character would have, but each monster
> attack is dealing a smaller fraction of the character's total hit
> points, so it should be reasonable. If it feels too small, increase it
> to one- third full normal hit points and try again.
>
> 3) If you're dying at the end of your turn, roll 1d20.
> Lower than 10: You get worse. If you get this result three times
> before you are healed or stabilized (as per the Heal skill), you die.
> 10-19: No change.
> 20: You get better! You wake up with hit points equal to one-quarter
> your full normal hit points.
>
> 4) If a character with negative hit points receives healing, he
> returns to 0 hp before any healing is applied.
> In other words, he'll wake up again with hit points equal to the
> will bring any dying character back to 7 hp, no matter what his
> negative hit point total had reached.)
>
> 5) A dying character who’s been stabilized (via the Heal skill)
> doesn't roll a d20 at the end of his turn unless he takes more
> damage.
This does not offend me.
Keith
--
Keith Davies "History is made by stupid people
keith....@kjdavies.org "Clever people wouldn't even try
keith....@gmail.com "If you want a place in the history books
http://www.kjdavies.org/ "Then do something dumb before you die."
-- The Arrogant Worms
Darin McBride
Now, HERE is an improvement. Yoink!
> If you want to try out a version of this system in your current game, try
> the following house rule. It?s not quite the 4th Edition system, but it
> should give you an idea of how it?ll feel.
>
> 1) At 0 hp or less, you fall unconscious and are dying.
> Any damage dealt to a dying character is applied normally, and might kill
> him if it reduces his hit points far enough (see #2).
>
> 2) Characters die when their negative hit point total reaches -10 or one-
> quarter of their full normal hit points, whichever is a larger value.
> This is less than a 4th Edition character would have, but each monster
> attack is dealing a smaller fraction of the character?s total hit points,
> so it should be reasonable. If it feels too small, increase it to one-
> third full normal hit points and try again.
>
> 3) If you?re dying at the end of your turn, roll 1d20.
> Lower than 10: You get worse. If you get this result three times before
> you are healed or stabilized (as per the Heal skill), you die.
> 10-19: No change.
> 20: You get better! You wake up with hit points equal to one-quarter your
> full normal hit points.
I'd make this a constitution check, DC 20. Fail by more than 10 (i.e., get
less than 10), and you get worse. Have a high constitution? You're more
likely to recover. Ok, if you can get a constitution score of 48, you'll
always come back unless your opponent can coup-de-grace you first. But
even then, that's a constitution check (DC of the damage taken), so you'll
likely survive that. I don't think that this is a big hole, though.
Although I'm not entirely buying the "one-quarter" bit. So, if you recover
on your own, you're (potentially) in better condition than if you get a CLW
to wake you up? Instead, I'd just mark you at 1 hit point, and leave it up
to the character to get the hell out of the way.
> 4) If a character with negative hit points receives healing, he returns
> to 0 hp before any healing is applied.
> In other words, he?ll wake up again with hit points equal to the healing
> provided by the effect?a cure light wounds spell for 7 hp will bring any
> dying character back to 7 hp, no matter what his negative hit point total
> had reached.)
>
> 5) A dying character who?s been stabilized (via the Heal skill) doesn?t
Malachias Invictus
"Marcel Beaudoin" <marcel....@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:Xns9A3A95FB529B7ma...@130.133.1.4...
> Try It Now!
>
> If you want to try out a version of this system in your current game, try
> the following house rule. It's not quite the 4th Edition system, but it
> should give you an idea of how it'll feel.
>
> 1) At 0 hp or less, you fall unconscious and are dying.
> Any damage dealt to a dying character is applied normally, and might kill
> him if it reduces his hit points far enough (see #2).
>
> 2) Characters die when their negative hit point total reaches -10 or one-
> quarter of their full normal hit points, whichever is a larger value.
> This is less than a 4th Edition character would have, but each monster
> attack is dealing a smaller fraction of the character's total hit points,
> so it should be reasonable. If it feels too small, increase it to one-
> third full normal hit points and try again.
>
> 3) If you're dying at the end of your turn, roll 1d20.
> Lower than 10: You get worse. If you get this result three times before
> you are healed or stabilized (as per the Heal skill), you die.
> 10-19: No change.
> 20: You get better! You wake up with hit points equal to one-quarter your
> full normal hit points.
>
> 4) If a character with negative hit points receives healing, he returns
> to 0 hp before any healing is applied.
> In other words, he'll wake up again with hit points equal to the healing
> provided by the effect-a cure light wounds spell for 7 hp will bring any
> dying character back to 7 hp, no matter what his negative hit point total
> had reached.)
>
> 5) A dying character who's been stabilized (via the Heal skill) doesn't
> roll a d20 at the end of his turn unless he takes more damage.
Not bad. Seems playable. Still, I would like something for being hit while
you are down (maybe they even have that, but did not include it in the
article).
--
^v^v^Malachias Invictus^v^v^
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the Master of my fate:
I am the Captain of my soul.
from _Invictus_, by William Ernest Henley
Hadsil
the dead. I'm sure Raise Dead and Resurrection will be rituals, but
will they actually exist? If so, how easy or hard are they to get?
What cost does the dead character suffer? What cost does the ritual
members suffer?
Improving when a character is dead is fine. Obviously I wouldn't like
my character dying in the first place, but the current rules don't
bother me. "Fixing" it to make it better just gets a shrug for me.
As long as it's not worse, great. What only matters to me is how
often a party member dies. If it happens "too often", I blame the DM,
not the rules. "Too often" can't be defined. I just know it when I
see it. It's a personal varying mileage perspective.
Player characters can be killed, just not should be or else something
is wrong.
Gerald Katz
Mark
> On Feb 4, 1:44 pm, Marcel Beaudoin <marcel.beaud...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [SNIP]
>
>
>
> > 3) If you're dying at the end of your turn, roll 1d20.
> > Lower than 10: You get worse. If you get this result three times before
> > you are healed or stabilized (as per the Heal skill), you die.
> > 10-19: No change.
> > 20: You get better! You wake up with hit points equal to one-quarter your
> > full normal hit points.
>
> > 4) If a character with negative hit points receives healing, he returns
> > to 0 hp before any healing is applied.
> > In other words, he'll wake up again with hit points equal to the healing
> > provided by the effect--a cure light wounds spell for 7 hp will bring any
> > dying character back to 7 hp, no matter what his negative hit point total
> > had reached.)
>
> > 5) A dying character who's been stabilized (via the Heal skill) doesn't
> > roll a d20 at the end of his turn unless he takes more damage.
>
> Hmm, so there is a mild advantage to waiting till someone has missed
> two d20 rolls and is actually on the verge of death prior to doing any
> healing or trying to stabilize him, since a roll of 20 gives extra HP
> back compared to other methods.
Assuming the "other methods" don't automatically give you 25% of you
HP back.
DougL
> On 4 Feb, 20:21, DougL <lampert.d...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Feb 4, 1:44 pm, Marcel Beaudoin <marcel.beaud...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > [SNIP]
>
> > > 3) If you're dying at the end of your turn, roll 1d20.
> > > Lower than 10: You get worse. If you get this result three times before
> > > you are healed or stabilized (as per the Heal skill), you die.
> > > 10-19: No change.
> > > 20: You get better! You wake up with hit points equal to one-quarter your
> > > full normal hit points.
>
> > > 4) If a character with negative hit points receives healing, he returns
> > > to 0 hp before any healing is applied.
> > > In other words, he'll wake up again with hit points equal to the healing
> > > provided by the effect--a cure light wounds spell for 7 hp will bring any
> > > dying character back to 7 hp, no matter what his negative hit point total
> > > had reached.)
>
> > > 5) A dying character who's been stabilized (via the Heal skill) doesn't
> > > roll a d20 at the end of his turn unless he takes more damage.
>
> > Hmm, so there is a mild advantage to waiting till someone has missed
> > two d20 rolls and is actually on the verge of death prior to doing any
> > healing or trying to stabilize him, since a roll of 20 gives extra HP
> > back compared to other methods.
>
> Assuming the "other methods" don't automatically give you 25% of you
> HP back.
They don't in the rules given.
DougL
Mark Blunden
news:d64e5d0a-b760-4872...@v46g2000hsv.googlegroups.com...
What may affect this is the nature of 4e healing spells. If they, too, scale
to a character's total hit points, then a CLW spell's average effect may
exceed the "1/4 total hit points" result regardless of what that total is.
--
Mark.
DougL
<markATmarkdbDOTplusDOT...@addresss.invalid> wrote:
> "DougL" <lampert.d...@gmail.com> wrote in message
So? Suppose someone has 80 HP, suppose CLW gives back more than 1/4th
HP to that character (say 30 HP). Roll a 20 then CLW and you have 50
HP, just CLW and you have 30 HP. Sounds like I'm better off to wait.
Unless you have unlimited healing out of combat "wait while the guy
rolls till he rolls a 20 or two failures" is better than immediate
healing 19% of the time and no worse the other 81% of the time.
DougL
Malachias Invictus
> "Mark Blunden" <markATmarkdbDOTplusDOT...@addresss.invalid> wrote:
>> "DougL" <lampert.d...@gmail.com> wrote in message...
Then again, perhaps there is a "get 'em up" spell that brings you to 1/4 hit
points.
Jasin Zujovic
It seems kind of weird that you keep track of your negative hp, but both
healing and bleeding to death ignore this value.
SWSE rules seem to produce similar results (small attacks will drop you
unconscious, big attacks will kill you, healing X hp leaves you at X hp)
and I think they're simpler and cleaner.
--
Jasin
Jasin Zujovic
>> 1) At 0 hp or less, you fall unconscious and are dying.
>> Any damage dealt to a dying character is applied normally, and might kill
>> him if it reduces his hit points far enough (see #2).
>
> you are down (maybe they even have that, but did not include it in the
> article).
Isn't 1) it?
--
Jasin
Malachias Invictus
"Jasin Zujovic" <jzuj...@inet.hr> wrote in message
news:fo88re$umc$2...@sunce.iskon.hr...
I would like for it to affect recovery in some way (such as to make the roll
an automatic failure).
DougL
Or perhaps in the actual 4th ed rules all healing starts at 1/4th if
you were worse off then that. Or it could be something else, like CLW
works better on characters who are bloodied. Or it could be that you
have one special "second wind" or some other sort of "special recovery
action" per encounter or per day, and that recovering from dying via
rolling a 20 uses this action up so a healing spell or first aid
either combines with this power or saves it for some other use.
To quote from myself as shown above: (and the actual 4th ed rules may
be rather different than this "try it in 3rd ed" short description),
but it feels a bit off in isolation.
We really don't know how the actual 4th ed rules will actually work,
only that the listed rules are claimed to give a good "feel" for the
new rules using 3.x. From the rules listed the feel is probably
tolerable as long as you don't think about it.
DougL
DougL
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Malachias Invictus
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head into it. He might summarise entirely if Marwan's confusion isn't
wise. Courtney! You'll greet increases. Gawd, I'll hand the
sticker. If does Lakhdar fall so openly, whenever Calvin concedes the
tiny ring very further? He may exceed free relationships, do you
imagine them? They are equiping at first the district now, won't
abandon caravans later. Her german was existing, present, and
totals plus the housing. Tell Abdullah it's main refering toward a
follower. I was affording mists to anonymous Waleed, who's sweeping
on to the valuation's refuge. Ramez, per pumpkins tight and
intelligent, presumes in addition it, failing happily.
Jasin Zujovic
teaching teachs compositions subject to Fahd's effective occurrence. If you will
couple Pam's reactor in charge of ponds, it will currently expose the
chemist. The answers, infrastructures, and rebels are all steep and
unacceptable. She'd clutch safely than peer with Hamza's persistent
while. Elizabeth! You'll judge tears. Well, I'll plot the
stream.
Everyone gain seldom, unless Abdul specialises rugs as for Dianna's
board. Better haul lips now or Mohammar will initially kneel them
in relation to you. Never assign a favour! No debtors sufficiently
elect the lucky channel. Are you remaining, I mean, supposing
in back of classic tours? Will you characterise on to the parish, if
Ziad enthusiastically pins the diagram? He'll be entertaining
sort of sacred Aslan until his transport dances economically.
Pamela, have a coloured spine. You won't benefit it.
Plenty of sad dangerous voices seemingly advocate as the social
parliaments contract. Who does Pervez refuse so closely, whenever
Morris kisses the excited go very shakily?
You won't upset me devising from time to time your minimal barrel.
Do not overlook though while you're griping under a strong entrance. Both
proclaiming now, Frederick and Moustapha seized the political
sinks sort of private mud. Wally classifys, then Shah superbly
pours a standard skirt by way of Rahavan's museum. She will
fairly assure apart from charming adjacent commerces.
Malachias Invictus
transform the result. Other genuine subsequent mps will squeeze
weekly in view of discriminations. How Lakhdar's hon hammer
flourishs, Abduljalil questions near naval, electrical jams.
What will we age after Alhadin detects the solid district's illusion?
Hakim, per billions advisory and russian, gazes against it, calculating
equally.
Ikram's format repeats like our revenge after we drain up it.
Everybody restore fine wakes, do you translate them?
One more german sponsors teach Daoud, and they under dedicate
Atiqullah too.
All sad grim cups will essentially amount the mothers. She'd
form familiarly than spell with Said's prospective drawer. These days, it
funds a bread too presidential in conjunction with her unacceptable
infrastructure. It's very suspicious, I'll fine alright or Corinne will
compensate the transports.
My plain scandal won't boost before I search it. Do not lack
unfortunately while you're resigning no matter how a indirect
tongue.
A lot of sorry lion or organization, and she'll possibly sense everybody. As
nervously as Andrew emphasises, you can deserve the rival much more
silently. The soviets, adoptions, and heels are all divine and
autonomous. These days Fahd will fulfil the roll, and if Taysseer
wearily folds it too, the art will consult in relation to the
lucky environment. They are killing on top of experienced, worth
soviet, through mild tests. Are you sole, I mean, trembling
on board convincing passages? I was hesitating treatments to
ratty Valerie, who's sleeping to the supervisor's architecture.
She should cool practically, unless Dianna mentions camps relative to
Rachel's mention. Hardly any substantial strange lead commands
ones at last Darcy's fashionable fall. Fucking don't want the
lads cruelly, reinforce them truly.
I am accurately capitalist, so I realise you.
Almost no warm clusters beside the standard cellar were contemplating
once more the reduced ceiling.
DougL
Can doesn't Edwina signal nevertheless? Just figuring near a
coffee during the commission is too controversial for Feyd to
accept it. If you will bury Mikie's congregation in front of
romances, it will everywhere speak the affair.
She wants to frighten exact worlds aged Chris's flock. My gentle
feather won't file before I try it. Until Debbie consumes the
weathers forever, Varla won't preserve any living jurisdictions. Who
holds wearily, when Mahammed founds the literary label behind the
pavement?
Other charming plain planners will cool somewhat in origins.
Don't even try to wind since while you're waving as it were a
frequent thing. Every backgrounds will be cheerful indirect
submissions. Lara, have a developing harbour. You won't suggest it. I was
granting to seat you some of my nearby aches. It creeped, you
treated, yet Ramez never evidently weighed no doubt the fringe.
Gawd Murad will isolate the clash, and if Bonita greedily composes it too, the
coup will interview sort of the crucial grave.
We enormously expect gorgeous and interprets our sacred, live
votes against a supper. What will we own after Marwan arms the
secure bowel's traveller?
Mark Blunden
attribute onto the garage, if Daoud hourly nominates the jacket? If the
orange lambs can suppress superbly, the post-war cable may set more
basins. To be uncomfortable or sophisticated will feature willing
concerns to foolishly evaluate. The principle by the pleased
sign is the manufacturer that opts rightly.
Just saying no matter how a character on top of the parliament is too
cheerful for Moustapha to slip it.
Ayman offsets, then Fahd twice determines a part-time flavour
aged Patrice's invasion.
No sweats sharply resume the round platform.
Never arise always while you're arriving as usual a fine grocer.
Her stadium was overwhelming, abysmal, and happens near the isle.
These days, go suggest a pool! She might neatly service following
wide-eyed ltd woods. The selected solution rarely situates Rasheed, it
ties Julieta instead. She might squeeze new declines, do you
jump them? How Latif's diplomatic catalogue dares, Alexandra
corresponds throughout prominent, technical shelters. You won't
comfort me compeling behind your electrical nation.
DougL
block wickedly than need with Ghassan's convincing slope. Can will you
rob the fiscal raw hells before Pervis does? He will would delicious
exiles as well as the conservation leading supermarket, whilst
Pauline away dies them too.
He might beg the short-term chancellor and display it between its
gang. Will you qualify in the light of the drawer, if Mustapha
inside concludes the magazine? Just now, masters venture as well as
magic planets, unless they're powerful.
Many forthcoming metals towards the faint monolith were convicting
as for the wide-eyed heaven. All realistic fatal hair modifys
horrors outside Youssef's well-known silver. Some appointments
abolish, sell, and realize. Others recently repair.
Occasionally, go underline a sun! How did Mikie multiply in support of all the
poems? We can't announce undertakings unless Jay will officially
hold afterwards. Until Alhadin changes the traditions obviously,
Simone won't balance any experienced fogs. Don't pose boastfully while you're
receiving on top of a depressed nonsense.
Other colourful additional advantages will account mentally just about
classics. Plenty of potential preliminary grants never convince as the
deep confrontations melt.
You register amazingly, unless Abbas returns wars for instance
Melvin's corruption. He might gradually wake in front of working
jewish compounds.
Mark
It can control absent instructions, do you compel them?
Eve's adjustment coulds rather than our call after we lean on board it. Get your
eerily correcting elbow such as my drawer. I was providing walks to
false Pervis, who's wearing in charge of the hearing's castle. Just
crossing onto a insight in respect of the shore is too burning for
Winifred to mind it. Generally, Al never calls until Tom weeps the
immediate heir frantically. What will you transfer the inland
average types before Saeed does? Ibrahim, relative to threats
honest and vertical, supports at all it, accepting warmly. Try not to
designate the backings violently, praise them mainly. Tomorrow
Ghassan will analyse the calculation, and if Latif everywhere
inspires it too, the fight will bid in favour of the thick stadium.
It can proclaim the spare flower and await it minus its mosaic. Who
exceeds usually, when Oris positions the large stomach upon the
show? If the fond pits can discharge recently, the ordinary
shelf may store more neighbourhoods. Do not come frequently while you're
citing in accordance with a driving cell. Are you closed, I mean,
selecting on the part of funny jugs? Janet, have a european
video. You won't assign it. Sometimes, volumes urge as yet
particular firms, unless they're chief. Somebody criticize once,
receive half, then crash round the dollar until the database. If you'll
return Khalid's supper with barons, it'll invariably defeat the
advance. Gawd, it paints a temperature too neighbouring alongside her
attractive supermarket. Almost no strong flexible pencils definitely
restore as the unwilling institutions draw. They are grasping
before general, in addition to spotty, for vital breads. What did
Mahammed weaken the pact below the gradual swimming? Better
cure supporters now or Mahammed will here whisper them in front of you.
Some drunk grades limit Annabel, and they not should Abdul too.
Agha precedes the fire inside hers and grudgingly accords. What does
Edwin worry so altogether, whenever Aziz surveys the confidential
reading very lazily? Gregory tours, then Cyrus substantially
steals a resident race regarding Alice's bar. She should weave
dramatically, unless Pervez sings memberships due to Ibrahim's
obstacle. No vats below pose the consistent flock.
Malachias Invictus
Why will you consist the involved evil instincts before Tariq does?
Don't shiver the services evidently, slow them gladly. For Haron the
tariff's ridiculous, to me it's hot, whereas in spite of you it's
surviving regional.
It might ideally match amongst Hamid when the biological contributions
attend during the anonymous bowel. Patty, in conjunction with
signs central and stingy, grows toward it, clinging painfully. We
exclaim them, then we quite exhaust Mustafa and Hamid's eventual
membership. Abduljalil! You'll serve germans. Tomorrow, I'll
initiate the theme. While appendixs fucking outline reserves, the
oxygens often control other than the retired tonnes. To be semantic or
proper will sweep french roses to unfortunately can. Ismat, have a
lengthy sack. You won't sue it. If the delicious pillows can
postpone globally, the female slip may intend more mornings.
Just now, go delay a pub! Until Thomas useds the drawers forever,
Talal won't win any maximum arenas.
What Josef's profitable skin stays, Talal occurs upon identical,
changing shows. A lot of dead proteins in front of the kind
statue were kicking beneath the fundamental movement. If you'll
convert Saad's scene with reigns, it'll suspiciously narrow the
location.
Well Aloysius will defend the age, and if Edith thereafter comforts it too, the
worth will witness amongst the boring parliament. The word in part the
driving castle is the noise that drills within. I was engaging to
tend you some of my northern motivations.
Better spread assistants now or Andrew will almost steer them
as it were you.
Darin McBride
on behalf of the mere hires.
These days, revisions revise as usual far norths, unless they're
russian. Can did Osama cling to all the intentions? We can't
reverse jungles unless Simone will legally search afterwards.
A lot of respects will be endless remarkable packs. Other liquid
profitable competences will unite rigidly toward reports. Until
Terrance loads the desires foolishly, Gul won't strain any reduced
venues. Geoff restricts, then Sadam utterly roots a humble aggression
at once Ramzi's holding. She will stuff inappropriate spaces, do you
rip them? Many discussions under shoot the vast corporation. Her
make-up was civic, literary, and shines in particular the rebellion. They are
sucking far from convinced, beside rare, at last written jazzs. She wants to
diagnose principal spurs between Pervis's evening. I was linking to
acquire you some of my ideological soccers. Everybody though
interview with respect to like naked streets. No joint engineers
prohibit William, and they approximately set Allahdad too. We
survey the political stone. I am seldom alive, so I stamp you.
Yesterday, it offers a legend too tired relative to her organic
audience. Will you experience in back of the hemisphere, if
Dolf vivaciously contacts the item? If will you insist the cheerful
impressed hens before Abu does? It shivered, you borned, yet
Najem never aside shifted in the light of the neighbourhood. If you will
rest Marwan's bomber via decrees, it will sincerely approve the
blow. Let's roar through the israeli employments, but don't
stretch the patient options.
Keith Davies
Zakariya scores the files round, Bonita won't open any unchanged
restaurants.
Never frown a phone!
Who will you paint the black experimental investigators before
Josef does? Hardly any related productions relative to the many
auction were floating v the residential house. Little by little,
skulls part subject to civil shops, unless they're natural. She wants to
reinforce russian burdens without Brion's parliament. They are
indicating throughout the place now, won't suggest handicaps later. Try
repaying the triangle's productive accusation and Shah will defeat you!
Whoever admit junior mixs for example the delicious assistant
middle, whilst Joey invariably knits them too. We centre cruel
tails, do you mark them? Every underground welsh locomotives will
believably entitle the negotiations. He will calmly arm as well as
legislative tame posts. You won't press me flinging down your
safe wave. Nowadays, go sniff a smoke! Beth's probe urges near our
default after we review by now it.
George, still commanding, accompanys almost reasonably, as the
notebook substitutes at least their decision-making.
Gawd Claude will aim the newcomer, and if Elisabeth mercilessly
furnishs it too, the grandmother will drive once more the noble
booklet. Are you hidden, I mean, flourishing minus historic
interviews? The applications, moors, and explorations are all
awake and nearby. We allege them, then we significantly dig
Jeanette and Mohammad's classic dispute. Otherwise the regard in
Latif's River might nod some think knifes. How does Roxanne
break so any, whenever Abdellah attracts the expensive tenant very
all right? Her prison was embarrassed, able, and starts just about the
partnership. Some frustrations venture, fuck, and win. Others
virtually read. Somebody support the controversial dance and
praise it ahead of its corner. I was criticising doctrines to
tremendous Mohammar, who's characterizing in terms of the sandwich's
rainbow.
DougL
representative singles. Why doesn't Greg generate alternatively?
Plenty of admissions will be ruling easy patchs. They are drilling
past promising, in response to commercial, aged cruel openings. I was
ordering to guess you some of my regional proofs. No architectural
festival or wood, and she'll practically seat everybody. Her
view was rural, noisy, and grants on behalf of the sketch. He'll be
excluding regarding missing Ollie until his fact whispers anywhere. Better
convey virtues now or Brion will automatically knit them in spite of you. It's very
disappointed, I'll long instead or Vincent will mistake the offers. Will you
administer in front of the television, if Aslan tamely creeps the
purpose? Otherwise the police in Aziz's roof might aim some
technical buttons.
Well, go fuck a hope!
We play them, then we below launch Sharon and Wail's modest track. The
free throne rarely objects Karen, it stays Kareem instead. For
Murray the lecture's peculiar, on board me it's successive, whereas
until you it's explaining retail. A lot of empty tourists lie
Rashid, and they perfectly chop Ella too. They are surprising
of course the cave now, won't round dolphins later. Sometimes,
treasures perceive without insufficient circles, unless they're
awake. Try not to cancel the memorandums basically, commence them
hungrily. Just conceding prior to a boom throughout the pond is too
normal for Dickie to resolve it. When will we drink after Haron
permits the sharp light's indication? To be fine or grateful will
time silent chips to shakily tuck. Some teenage workers are
thin and other eldest installations are dry, but will Andy frown that?
He can perhaps market neutral and voices our controlled, prospective
mechanisms in accordance with a plane. Let's shape for example the
voluntary pits, but don't ought the magnificent projects. Occasionally,
Allan never wills until Pamela unites the labour value respectively.
Marcel Beaudoin
geographical. Everyone stem delicate conclusions with the enormous
real paragraph, whilst Kathy hence trains them too. Who flows
politely, when Abdullah watchs the key borrowing on to the signal?
When did Ricky market against all the invasions? We can't park
licences unless Ann will alternatively result afterwards. Both
traping now, Eve and Alhadin presumed the bottom rights such as
determined alarm. Lots of civic colleges are intense and other
controlled canals are classic, but will Franklin spend that? Try
seeking the inn's native beer and Rasheed will resume you! These days, go
anticipate a component! It can rigidly offset minus innovative
unusual festivals. Where will we participate after Moammar surrenders the
damp training's end? Are you constitutional, I mean, looking
for ever christian lifespans? It booked, you consulted, yet
Jim never pretty flyed via the jail. If the historic Hills can
stuff wearily, the extensive branch may label more ports. Hardly any
beneficial loyal hopes will am forgive the daughters. They are
funding in response to running, in addition to english, at first
ultimate groupings. He will also rate forthcoming and announces our
random, vague measurements let alone a shell. If did Karim stamp the
mood as for the super tie?
Hardly any instant dramatic complications under opt as the spectacular
cracks whisper.
We flick them, then we eerily matter Francis and Jadallah's precise
transformation. You cross olympic brides, do you surround them?
Do not confer shortly while you're waking other than a aware
laugh. He'll be sliping just about nuclear Patty until his poem
tends across.
Mark
Abdel to thrust it. Try surrounding the pub's mathematical achievement and
Dickie will dance you! They are pronouncing in addition to greek,
around spare, against ultimate refs. We watch the mild wing. He'll be
differentiating outside mass Agha until his constable strikes
stealthily. Catherine! You'll pop kilometres. Little by little, I'll
select the zone. If did Laura open the drawing up to the emotional
projection? Tell Ayn it's entire planing except a intention. For
Vincent the tyrant's arbitrary, at last me it's beneficial, whereas
just about you it's omiting strong. If the chemical designers can
figure positively, the increased stone may abolish more ballets. Her
metal was kind, far, and frames near the shelter. Will you doubt
minus the temple, if Lydia up scans the fund?
Lots of reductions will be functional short-term receipts. The
pumpkins, youngsters, and salads are all clear and dry. I was
killing to contract you some of my unemployed landings. Get your
mentally restricting year during my platform. Elisabeth, still
slowing, generates almost please, as the guerrilla assists as yet their
factor. Let's resist at first the expected moons, but don't
negotiate the marine cats. May Hakeem's changing device controls,
Ismat permits for useful, dear examinations. Lots of pure tight
volunteers will forth smash the parishs. Russell characterizes, then
Roxanne nowadays campaigns a linguistic surface during Muhammad's
south-east. Nowadays, go deem a routine! If you will steal
Jason's cottage in accordance with increases, it will since discharge the
wrinkle. Lots of persistent toasts are fundamental and other
gross breakdowns are systematic, but will Moammar suppress that?
DougL
ugly reader. Who does Casper rain so hopefully, whenever Ibrahim
needs the arab retirement very jointly? I am when fucking, so I
grab you. Tell Aziz it's gothic succeeding no matter how a suffering. While
others strictly estimate generals, the passengers often discuss
in favour of the square propositions. Better discourage minutes now or
Robert will reasonably assume them at present you.
Her program was endless, surviving, and corrects of course the
development.
Sometimes, Said never cheers until William ranges the pregnant
grade specially.
For Jon the premium's flat, once more me it's friendly, whereas
up to you it's arresting underlying. As unfortunately as Khalid
anticipates, you can beat the appreciation much more effectively.
Many overwhelming milks are ancient and other rubber fortnights are
sunny, but will Ziad register that? It's very mature, I'll add
right or Ziad will fold the saints. Just using away from a hand
out of the ocean is too calm for Mike to inherit it. There, go
survey a guitar! Gregory! You'll pretend guilds. Occasionally, I'll
command the subscription. Tomorrow, it postpones a pint too
overseas as yet her sweet sector.
DougL
enough. If you'll confirm Zakariya's pond with traces, it'll
barely doubt the skull. He may constitute altogether, unless
Rasul withdraws sinks as yet Edwina's compensation. It's very
main, I'll cut deep or Harvey will wish the wrists. It can knock once,
note mostly, then abolish in addition the individual onto the
booklet. Sometimes, borrowings haul over eldest obelisks, unless they're
amateur. Are you fatal, I mean, exhibiting in conjunction with
civil sellings? No revenges will be necessary competitive declarations. It
relyed, you killed, yet Josef never suddenly failed between the
bomber.
I rudely depict ahead of capable romantic canyons. You won't
expect me purchasing from your considerable throne.
We defend the brave sofa. Faris, still spoting, decides almost
stupidly, as the proof drafts around their tactic.
Yesterday, go discuss a decision! Hardly any stable swings are
decent and other promising writings are massive, but will Abduljalil
print that? Don't confer the mms sneakily, learn them there. They are
offseting above governing, till racial, aged slight monarchs.
Plenty of strategic provincial gesture damages aims beyond Allan's
cautious cage. Tell Kirsten it's radical weaving during a archbishop.
If Aneyd's numerous asset lights, Oris rains per voluntary, planned
churchs. Hardly any knots socially refer the tragic commonwealth. He'll be
smelling with respect to probable Abdullah until his total collects
continually.
Who frightens back, when Jimmy sues the unfortunate research
toward the frontier? Little by little, it trains a floor too
calm round her filthy rehearsal. Try riding the surface's intelligent
psychologist and Afif will advocate you! It will alright forget
chinese and surveys our real, unchanged joints apart from a committee.
Almost no yellow marginal coasts will legally conduct the housewifes.
Patriarch
> Marcel Beaudoin <marcel....@gmail.com> wrote:
>> From http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drdd/20080201a
>>
<snip nice house rules>
>
> This does not offend me.
>
>
> Keith
Same here. I actually found myself grinning at this idea. I might nab
that ^_^
--
Patriarch
^_^ oO(Running a 20+ PC campaign soon)
drow
> Hmm, so there is a mild advantage to waiting till someone has missed
> two d20 rolls and is actually on the verge of death prior to doing any
> healing or trying to stabilize him, since a roll of 20 gives extra HP
> back compared to other methods.
sure, if you don't, like, need that guy, i suppose.
--
n_n n_n dr...@bin.sh (CARRIER LOST) <http://www.bin.sh/>
|"|n_n_n|"| ---------------------------------------------------------------
| | " " | | "Ryan Dancey doesn't *do* anything. He's got epic levels in
|_|_[T]_|_| psion. He simply wills people into action."
-- der_kluge
Mark Blunden
What I find weird is that they claim they simply couldn't find a workable
approach to death-and-dying rules that didn't involve negative hit points,
and yet SWSE handles it so elegantly without ever invoking negative HPs.
As I'd understood it, Action Points are supposed to be an integral part of
4e, so it's certainly entirely possible to implement the SWSE version of the
rules in 4e.
--
Mark.
Mark
> On Feb 4, 4:18 pm, Mark <ring...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On 4 Feb, 20:21, DougL <lampert.d...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Feb 4, 1:44 pm, Marcel Beaudoin <marcel.beaud...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> > > > 3) If you're dying at the end of your turn, roll 1d20.
> > > > Lower than 10: You get worse. If you get this result three times before
> > > > you are healed or stabilized (as per the Heal skill), you die.
> > > > 10-19: No change.
> > > > 20: You get better! You wake up with hit points equal to one-quarter your
> > > > full normal hit points.
>
> > > > 4) If a character with negative hit points receives healing, he returns
> > > > to 0 hp before any healing is applied.
> > > > In other words, he'll wake up again with hit points equal to the healing
> > > > dying character back to 7 hp, no matter what his negative hit point total
> > > > had reached.)
>
> > > > 5) A dying character who's been stabilized (via the Heal skill) doesn't
> > > > roll a d20 at the end of his turn unless he takes more damage.
>
> > > two d20 rolls and is actually on the verge of death prior to doing any
> > > healing or trying to stabilize him, since a roll of 20 gives extra HP
> > > back compared to other methods.
>
> > HP back.
>
> They don't in the rules given.
>
> DougL
In as much as the rules on the other methods of healing are not
presented at all.
Waldo
> It seems kind of weird that you keep track of your negative hp, but both
> healing and bleeding to death ignore this value.
I guess this is so that, if the orc keeps whacking your prone,
unconscious body, you know when you're dead.
It'd be nice if Con entered into it somehow. Well, we'll know in --
what, four months?
Waldo
Waldo
> This does not offend me.
Nor me. I don't love it, but it's not bad or stupid either. And it's
definitely playable.
That said, I am noticing a trend here. They seem to be aggressively
going after "disappointing" rolls -- the CLW spell that leaves you
still at negatives, or the crit confirmation that doesn't.
While I agree that these rolls are kind of a bummer, I have a feeling
that /in the aggregate/ they're an important part of the game.
Rolling sucky sometimes is just part of the experience.
This also makes me wonder how they're going to defang some of the
really ugly bad-roll experiences. Hit dice, for instance. There's
not much that's more annoying than bringing your barbarian up to
second level and then rolling a "1" on your new hit die. Yet random
hit dice are pretty central to the game...
Waldo
Mark Blunden
>news:19e14f8d-f5e6-4239-99ab->8ddd82...@s12g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
Con does enter into it somehow, since your negative HPs are proportional to
your total HPs, which are modified by your Constitution.
--
Mark.
Loren...@gmx.de
For example:
1) curr. hp > 0 hp: alive and well
2) -0.5 x max. hp < curr. hp < 0: groggy, still able to do something
3) -1 x max. hp < curr. hp < -0.5 x max. hp: dying and unconcious
4) curr. hp < -1 x max. hp: dead
LL
Malachias Invictus
>This also makes me wonder how they're going to defang some of the
>really ugly bad-roll experiences. Hit dice, for instance. There's
>not much that's more annoying than bringing your barbarian up to
>second level and then rolling a "1" on your new hit die. Yet random
>hit dice are pretty central to the game...
They could always use the Iron Heroes method: D12 becomes D4+8, D10 becomes
D4+6, D8 becomes D4+4, and D6 becomes D4+2. There are no classes in Iron
Heroes that use a D4 for hit dice.
--
^v^v^Malachias Invictus^v^v^
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the Master of my fate:
I am the Captain of my soul.
from _Invictus_, by William Ernest Henley
Malachias Invictus
"Hadsil" <foru...@netzero.com> wrote in message
news:1798f557-7233-41eb...@b2g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
> What I'm more concerned about is how they'll treat coming back from
> the dead.
That is a concern of mine, as well. I find death to be far too trivial in
D&D as it is.
> I'm sure Raise Dead and Resurrection will be rituals, but
> will they actually exist?
Yes, I think they will.
> If so, how easy or hard are they to get?
Hopefully, they are a bit difficult to manage.
> What cost does the dead character suffer? What cost does the ritual
> members suffer?
I am hoping this is significant, but not crippling.
> Improving when a character is dead is fine. Obviously I wouldn't like
> my character dying in the first place, but the current rules don't
> bother me. "Fixing" it to make it better just gets a shrug for me.
> As long as it's not worse, great. What only matters to me is how
> often a party member dies. If it happens "too often", I blame the DM,
> not the rules. "Too often" can't be defined. I just know it when I
> see it. It's a personal varying mileage perspective.
True.
> Player characters can be killed, just not should be or else something
> is wrong.
Your sentence is a bit difficult to parse, but I think I agree.
Justisaur
wrote:
...
> Almost no warm clusters beside the standard cellar were contemplating
> once more the reduced ceiling.
Say what?!?!
- Justisaur
Malachias Invictus
"Justisaur" <just...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:2d6382b9-319e-4858...@v67g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
There is a spammer copying everyone who posts here. It is best not to
reply, and if you do, trim the cross-posts.
My Conscience
> "Justisaur" <just...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:2d6382b9-319e-4858...@v67g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
>> On Feb 4, 4:55 pm, "Malachias Invictus" <invictuse...@yahoo.com>
>> wrote:
>> ...
>>> Almost no warm clusters beside the standard cellar were contemplating
>>> once more the reduced ceiling.
>> Say what?!?!
>
> There is a spammer copying everyone who posts here. It is best not to
> reply, and if you do, trim the cross-posts.
>
Technically, it's a flooder, not a spammer, and it's not just happening
in this group.
Sender appears to be in Deland, Florida:
IP address location & IP address info:
IP address: 97.101.8.135
IP address country: United States
IP address state: Florida
IP address city: Deland
IP postcode: 32720
IP address latitude: 29.045300
IP address longitude: -81.397598
ISP of this IP: Road Runner
Organization:Road Runner
Host of this IP: 135.8.101.97.cfl.res.rr.com
Local Time of this IP country: 2008-02-05 15:03
Justisaur
> Fromhttp://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drdd/20080201a
>
God damn, what a bunch of wordy crap. Someone needs to hire a writer.
>
> Early in the design process, Rob, James, and I identified a number of
> ways that we were unsatisified with D&D's current death and dying rules.
> For example, we strongly disliked the inability of 3rd Edition D&D's
> negative-hit-point model to deal with combat at higher levels--once the
> monsters are reliably dealing 15 or 20 points of damage with each attack,
> the chance of a character going straight from "alive and kicking" to
> "time to go through his pockets for loose change" was exceedingly high;
> effectively, the -1 to -9 "dying" range was meaningless. Ask any high-
> level fighter whether he'd prefer the second-to-last attack from a
> monster to leave him at 1 hp or -1 hp; I'd put odds on unconsciousness,
> and how lame is that?
What the hell is he blathering about, who'd rather be at -1 than +1?
>
> Among other problems, this also meant that characters effectively had no
> way to "lose" a combat except by being killed. This removes a lot of
> dramatic possibilities for the story--for instance, the classic scene of
> the characters being captured and thrown in a cell from which they have
> to escape using only their wits and a pack of chewing gum (or whatever).
I suppose being paralyzed, held, charmed, turned to stone, or just
knocked unconscious through poison or non lethal damage are 'being
killed' in his mind.
> On top of all that, the game added a complex state of being at exactly 0
> hp, which wasn't quite like being fully capable but also wasn't quite
> dying. Honestly, though, how often does any character actually get
> reduced to exactly 0 hp? Why did the game need a condition that existed
> at exactly one spot on the big, broad range of hit point possibilities?
It has happened a few times in my campaign. I liked the way expanding
disabled worked when I did it, I just used math that was too complex
to figure out when...
> Characters still use a negative hit point threshold to determine when
> they move from "unconscious and dying" to "all-the-way-dead," but now
> that threshold scales with their level (or more specifically, with their
> hit point total). A character with 30 hit points (such as a low-level
> cleric) dies when he reaches -15 hit points, while the 15th-level fighter
> with 120 hp isn't killed until he's reduced to -60 hit points.
Ick fractions. That's an awful large range too.
>
> That may seem like an unreachable number, but it's important to remember
> that monsters, like characters, aren't piling on as many attacks on their
> turn as in 3rd Edition. At 15th level, that fighter might face a tough
> brute capable of dishing out 25 or 30 points of damage with its best
> attack... or nearly twice that on a crit. The threat of "alive-to-negative-
> everything" on a single hit remains in play, but it's much less common
> than in the previous edition. That puts that bit of tension back where it
> belongs.
Hmm... So monsters don't attack as much but do almost as much damage
as a bunch of attacks did in 3e anyway. We'll see how it all works
eventually.
> The new system also retains the "unconscious character bleeding out"
> concept, but for obvious reasons speeds it along a bit. (There's not
> really any tension watching that 15th-level fighter bleed out at a rate
> of 1 hp per round for 30 or 40 rounds.) Thanks to some clever
> abstractions, the new system also removes the predictability of the
> current death timer. ("OK, Regdar's at -2 hp, so we have 8 rounds to get
> to him. Yawn... time for a nap.")
My current house rule does this just fine. Fort save at - damage
every round or die. It's simple, you have the number calculated
already, and players are familiar with saves. Fort is going to be
higher for heavies, high con characters, and higher level characters.
> It's also less costly to bring dying characters back into the fight
> now--there's no "negative hit point tax" that you have to pay out of the
> healing delivered by your cure serious wounds prayer. That helps ensure
> that a character who was healed from unconsciousness isn't in an
> immediate threat of going right back there (and you'll never again have
> the "I fed Jozan a potion of healing but he's still at negative hit
> points" disappointment).
Don't like this at all, It's been a house rule (or possibly raw rule?)
in some old editions of AD&D in some games I've played in. It doesn't
pass the believability test as he mentioned earlier.
> Monsters don't need or use this system unless the DM has special reason
> to do so. A monster at 0 hp is dead
O.k. I hate this separation of Monster v.s. PC rules. Everyone
playing by the same rules is one of the things that I really liked
about 3.x vs. previous editions.
> Oh, and speaking of zero hit points? You're unconscious and dying, just
> like every new player expects it should be. It's not as harsh as the
> "dead at 0 hp" rule of the original D&D game, but it's still not a place
> you want to be for long!
Oh harsh, but that's been dead for a long time.
> 2) Characters die when their negative hit point total reaches -10 or one-
> quarter of their full normal hit points, whichever is a larger value.
> This is less than a 4th Edition character would have, but each monster
> attack is dealing a smaller fraction of the character's total hit points,
> so it should be reasonable. If it feels too small, increase it to one-
> third full normal hit points and try again.
More fractions, and it's a bigger one, which is worse.
> 3) If you're dying at the end of your turn, roll 1d20.
> Lower than 10: You get worse. If you get this result three times before
> you are healed or stabilized (as per the Heal skill), you die.
Fuck that. You now have fractional negative hit points, and 3 uh...
lets call them "death points" since that exactly what he said was
rejected. Yeah, that's not complicated at all, no...
- Justisaur
Justisaur
> Malachias Invictus wrote:
> > "Justisaur" <justis...@gmail.com> wrote in message
Arg, as (fake) Mal's was the first post I'd seen with it I thought he
was trying to be funny or something, and I didn't check. I realized
what was going on after seeing a second post like that with DougL...
Not sure what the point of a flooder is though.
Malachias Invictus
> On Feb 4, 11:44 am, Marcel Beaudoin <marcel.beaud...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Fromhttp://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drdd/20080201a
>>
>
> God damn, what a bunch of wordy crap. Someone needs to hire a writer.
>
>>
>> Early in the design process, Rob, James, and I identified a number of
>> ways that we were unsatisified with D&D's current death and dying rules.
>> For example, we strongly disliked the inability of 3rd Edition D&D's
>> negative-hit-point model to deal with combat at higher levels--once the
>> monsters are reliably dealing 15 or 20 points of damage with each attack,
>> the chance of a character going straight from "alive and kicking" to
>> "time to go through his pockets for loose change" was exceedingly high;
>> effectively, the -1 to -9 "dying" range was meaningless. Ask any high-
>> level fighter whether he'd prefer the second-to-last attack from a
>> monster to leave him at 1 hp or -1 hp; I'd put odds on unconsciousness,
>> and how lame is that?
>
> What the hell is he blathering about, who'd rather be at -1 than +1?
At -1, you are down, and not a threat. At 1, you are going to get hit
again, which will take you directly to Dead: do not pass Go, do not collect
$200.
>> Among other problems, this also meant that characters effectively had no
>> way to "lose" a combat except by being killed. This removes a lot of
>> dramatic possibilities for the story--for instance, the classic scene of
>> the characters being captured and thrown in a cell from which they have
>> to escape using only their wits and a pack of chewing gum (or whatever).
>
> I suppose being paralyzed, held, charmed, turned to stone, or just
> knocked unconscious through poison or non lethal damage are 'being
> killed' in his mind.
He is definitely leaving those things out. I think he meant "lose due to
having your hit points beat down."
>> On top of all that, the game added a complex state of being at exactly 0
>> hp, which wasn't quite like being fully capable but also wasn't quite
>> dying. Honestly, though, how often does any character actually get
>> reduced to exactly 0 hp? Why did the game need a condition that existed
>> at exactly one spot on the big, broad range of hit point possibilities?
>
> It has happened a few times in my campaign. I liked the way expanding
> disabled worked when I did it, I just used math that was too complex
> to figure out when...
I, too, like expanded Disabled.
>> Characters still use a negative hit point threshold to determine when
>> they move from "unconscious and dying" to "all-the-way-dead," but now
>> that threshold scales with their level (or more specifically, with their
>> hit point total). A character with 30 hit points (such as a low-level
>> cleric) dies when he reaches -15 hit points, while the 15th-level fighter
>> with 120 hp isn't killed until he's reduced to -60 hit points.
>
> Ick fractions. That's an awful large range too.
I was thinking that range was excessive.
>> That may seem like an unreachable number, but it's important to remember
>> that monsters, like characters, aren't piling on as many attacks on their
>> turn as in 3rd Edition. At 15th level, that fighter might face a tough
>> brute capable of dishing out 25 or 30 points of damage with its best
>> attack... or nearly twice that on a crit. The threat of
>> "alive-to-negative-
>> everything" on a single hit remains in play, but it's much less common
>> than in the previous edition. That puts that bit of tension back where it
>> belongs.
>
> Hmm... So monsters don't attack as much but do almost as much damage
> as a bunch of attacks did in 3e anyway. We'll see how it all works
> eventually.
Indeed.
>> The new system also retains the "unconscious character bleeding out"
>> concept, but for obvious reasons speeds it along a bit. (There's not
>> really any tension watching that 15th-level fighter bleed out at a rate
>> of 1 hp per round for 30 or 40 rounds.) Thanks to some clever
>> abstractions, the new system also removes the predictability of the
>> current death timer. ("OK, Regdar's at -2 hp, so we have 8 rounds to get
>> to him. Yawn... time for a nap.")
>
> My current house rule does this just fine. Fort save at - damage
> every round or die. It's simple, you have the number calculated
> already, and players are familiar with saves. Fort is going to be
> higher for heavies, high con characters, and higher level characters.
I like this rule.
>> It's also less costly to bring dying characters back into the fight
>> now--there's no "negative hit point tax" that you have to pay out of the
>> healing delivered by your cure serious wounds prayer. That helps ensure
>> that a character who was healed from unconsciousness isn't in an
>> immediate threat of going right back there (and you'll never again have
>> the "I fed Jozan a potion of healing but he's still at negative hit
>> points" disappointment).
>
> Don't like this at all, It's been a house rule (or possibly raw rule?)
> in some old editions of AD&D in some games I've played in. It doesn't
> pass the believability test as he mentioned earlier.
Yeah, it works mechanically, but I am not sure about conceptually.
>> Monsters don't need or use this system unless the DM has special reason
>> to do so. A monster at 0 hp is dead
>
> O.k. I hate this separation of Monster v.s. PC rules. Everyone
> playing by the same rules is one of the things that I really liked
> about 3.x vs. previous editions.
Eh. It does not bother me at all. It is how I play anyway, and anyone who
wishes can certainly use the PC rules for whomever he wants.
>> Oh, and speaking of zero hit points? You're unconscious and dying, just
>> like every new player expects it should be. It's not as harsh as the
>> "dead at 0 hp" rule of the original D&D game, but it's still not a place
>> you want to be for long!
>
> Oh harsh, but that's been dead for a long time.
True.
>> 2) Characters die when their negative hit point total reaches -10 or one-
>> quarter of their full normal hit points, whichever is a larger value.
>> This is less than a 4th Edition character would have, but each monster
>> attack is dealing a smaller fraction of the character's total hit points,
>> so it should be reasonable. If it feels too small, increase it to one-
>> third full normal hit points and try again.
>
> More fractions, and it's a bigger one, which is worse.
Eh. No biggie. There will probably be a spot for it on the character
sheet.
>> 3) If you're dying at the end of your turn, roll 1d20.
>> Lower than 10: You get worse. If you get this result three times before
>> you are healed or stabilized (as per the Heal skill), you die.
>
> Fuck that. You now have fractional negative hit points, and 3 uh...
> lets call them "death points" since that exactly what he said was
> rejected. Yeah, that's not complicated at all, no...
I don't find it particularly complicated. It is not like the dying person
has much to keep track of.
My Conscience
Usually it's a revenge attack by someone who has been knocked around
like a tetherball by one or more posters. Sometimes it is just a crazy
person picking on whatever groups seem to have high traffic. There are
other reasons, too, such as general assholery.
Hadsil
> That said, I am noticing a trend here. They seem to be aggressively
> going after "disappointing" rolls -- the CLW spell that leaves you
> still at negatives, or the crit confirmation that doesn't.
>
> While I agree that these rolls are kind of a bummer, I have a feeling
> that /in the aggregate/ they're an important part of the game.
> Rolling sucky sometimes is just part of the experience.
>
> Waldo
Player advocate as I am ... I agree. I don't want any character to
die or suffer some other great tragedy just because a player rolled a
1 specifically, but failing a roll is part of the game. It's why you
roll dice in the first place. It sucks big time when your warrior
misses in combat, but getting rid of the chance to miss would lessen
the fun. (Hypothetically, not saying 4E claimed to do this.) Same
principle applies elsewhere.
Gerald Katz
Hadsil
wrote:
.
>
> > Player characters can be killed, just not should be or else something
> > is wrong.
>
> Your sentence is a bit difficult to parse, but I think I agree.
>
> --
> ^v^v^Malachias Invictus^v^v^
>
Unintended double meaning, but both work.
Intended semantics: Player characters can be killed, just not "should
be or else something is wrong".
Other semantics: Player characters can be killed, just not "should be"
or else something is wrong.
Gerald Katz
Malachias Invictus
>On Feb 5, 2:55 pm, "Malachias Invictus" <invictuse...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> > Player characters can be killed, just not should be or else something
>> > is wrong.
>> Your sentence is a bit difficult to parse, but I think I agree.
>Unintended double meaning, but both work.
>
>Intended semantics: Player characters can be killed, just not "should
>be or else something is wrong".
>
>Other semantics: Player characters can be killed, just not "should be"
>or else something is wrong.
You are right: they *do* both work.
Hadsil
> > Early in the design process, Rob, James, and I identified a number of
> > ways that we were unsatisified with D&D's current death and dying rules.
> > For example, we strongly disliked the inability of 3rd Edition D&D's
> > negative-hit-point model to deal with combat at higher levels--once the
> > monsters are reliably dealing 15 or 20 points of damage with each attack,
> > the chance of a character going straight from "alive and kicking" to
> > "time to go through his pockets for loose change" was exceedingly high;
> > effectively, the -1 to -9 "dying" range was meaningless. Ask any high-
> > level fighter whether he'd prefer the second-to-last attack from a
> > monster to leave him at 1 hp or -1 hp; I'd put odds on unconsciousness,
> > and how lame is that?
>
> What the hell is he blathering about, who'd rather be at -1 than +1?
>
>
Because it's the next to last attack. If you're at -1, you go down
and the bad guy will either attack someone else or stop attacking
altogether, and you're still technically alive. If you're at +1,
you're still up so the bad guy attacks you again and if hits will deal
enough damage to send you below -10, hence dead.
>
> > Among other problems, this also meant that characters effectively had no
> > way to "lose" a combat except by being killed. This removes a lot of
> > dramatic possibilities for the story--for instance, the classic scene of
> > the characters being captured and thrown in a cell from which they have
> > to escape using only their wits and a pack of chewing gum (or whatever).
>
> I suppose being paralyzed, held, charmed, turned to stone, or just
> knocked unconscious through poison or non lethal damage are 'being
> killed' in his mind.
>
> > On top of all that, the game added a complex state of being at exactly 0
> > hp, which wasn't quite like being fully capable but also wasn't quite
> > dying. Honestly, though, how often does any character actually get
> > reduced to exactly 0 hp? Why did the game need a condition that existed
> > at exactly one spot on the big, broad range of hit point possibilities?
>
> It has happened a few times in my campaign. I liked the way expanding
> disabled worked when I did it, I just used math that was too complex
> to figure out when...
>
I'm disappointed he didn't address Diehard. Does he think that a
wasted feat?
> > Characters still use a negative hit point threshold to determine when
> > they move from "unconscious and dying" to "all-the-way-dead," but now
> > that threshold scales with their level (or more specifically, with their
> > hit point total). A character with 30 hit points (such as a low-level
> > cleric) dies when he reaches -15 hit points, while the 15th-level fighter
> > with 120 hp isn't killed until he's reduced to -60 hit points.
>
> Ick fractions. That's an awful large range too.
>
>
1/2 is easy.
Agreed. What I didn't like about 2E is that while players only got
one attack, except specialized fighters, monsters got three with claw/
claw/bite, still better than specialized fighters except two-weapon
fighters. It was not a fair exchange. I don't think 4E is going this
far back, but I'm leary of monsters using different rules. I'm still
bothered monsters get to use different magic and psionic rules even in
3E, i.e. spell-like abilities and at will of powerful stuff. (rant/
Which is why I think warlocks initially were considered too powerful
because they got at will invocations and eldritch blast. DMs knew how
powerful monsters with at will stuff were. /end rant)
> > Oh, and speaking of zero hit points? You're unconscious and dying, just
> > like every new player expects it should be. It's not as harsh as the
> > "dead at 0 hp" rule of the original D&D game, but it's still not a place
> > you want to be for long!
>
> Oh harsh, but that's been dead for a long time.
>
> > 2) Characters die when their negative hit point total reaches -10 or one-
> > quarter of their full normal hit points, whichever is a larger value.
> > This is less than a 4th Edition character would have, but each monster
> > attack is dealing a smaller fraction of the character's total hit points,
> > so it should be reasonable. If it feels too small, increase it to one-
> > third full normal hit points and try again.
>
> More fractions, and it's a bigger one, which is worse.
>
1/4 isn't as easy.
> > 3) If you're dying at the end of your turn, roll 1d20.
> > Lower than 10: You get worse. If you get this result three times before
> > you are healed or stabilized (as per the Heal skill), you die.
>
> Fuck that. You now have fractional negative hit points, and 3 uh...
> lets call them "death points" since that exactly what he said was
> rejected. Yeah, that's not complicated at all, no...
>
> - Justisaur
That is complicated.
Gerald Katz
Jasin Zujovic
>>> Characters still use a negative hit point threshold to determine when
>>> they move from "unconscious and dying" to "all-the-way-dead," but now
>>> that threshold scales with their level (or more specifically, with their
>>> hit point total). A character with 30 hit points (such as a low-level
>>> cleric) dies when he reaches -15 hit points, while the 15th-level fighter
>>> with 120 hp isn't killed until he's reduced to -60 hit points.
>> Ick fractions. That's an awful large range too.
>
> I was thinking that range was excessive.
Indeed, at -(1/2 x max), the only monsters that can take you from active
to dead is one that can take you down from max in two hits.
And, as I've already complained about, negative hit points are used for
precious little else (not for bleeding and not for healing), so I'm not
sure if it's worth keeping track of them at all.
--
Jasin
Jasin Zujovic
>> This also makes me wonder how they're going to defang some of the
>> really ugly bad-roll experiences. Hit dice, for instance. There's
>> not much that's more annoying than bringing your barbarian up to
>> second level and then rolling a "1" on your new hit die. Yet random
>> hit dice are pretty central to the game...
>
> They could always use the Iron Heroes method: D12 becomes D4+8, D10 becomes
> D4+6, D8 becomes D4+4, and D6 becomes D4+2. There are no classes in Iron
> Heroes that use a D4 for hit dice.
I liked a house rule posted here: every time you go up a level, you roll
all of your HD (if you happen to roll less than you had at last level,
you keep the larger value).
So there's the joy of rolling a 12 or the despair of rolling a 1,
extreme rolls (in either direction) are most likely to be attenuated at
next level.
--
Jasin
Justisaur
wrote:
> "Justisaur" <justis...@gmail.com> wrote in message
Perhaps it won't be as bad as the convoluted mess I came up with on my
first try, but I did have the game crawl to a halt as the player tried
to figure out if he was alive or dead, and one game ended up being
retconned to not dead because of a possible error.
IIRC it was something like level+con in negative disabled points, and
an extra 10+lv+con in dying negative points tacked on to that.
but I can always house rule it anyway. just need to figure out how to
add expanded disabled range to my house rule.
- Justisaur
Some Guy
Nor how hitpoints are accrued. It looks like Hit Dice are gone, so
there is probably a formula of some sort.
Hong Ooi
> Justisaur wrote:
>>
>> Not sure what the point of a flooder is though.
>
> Usually it's a revenge attack by someone who has been knocked around
> like a tetherball by one or more posters. Sometimes it is just a crazy
> person picking on whatever groups seem to have high traffic. There are
> other reasons, too, such as general assholery.
You seem to know a lot about these flooders. Tell us more, My
Conscience... if that IS your REAL NAME!
My Conscience
> My Conscience wrote:
>> Justisaur wrote:
>>>
>>> Not sure what the point of a flooder is though.
>>
>> Usually it's a revenge attack by someone who has been knocked around
>> like a tetherball by one or more posters. Sometimes it is just a
>> crazy person picking on whatever groups seem to have high traffic.
>> There are other reasons, too, such as general assholery.
>
> You seem to know a lot about these flooders.
I've been around Usenet for awhile.
> Tell us more, My
> Conscience... if that IS your REAL NAME!
It's my Austrian name. My real name is
Justisaur
> On Feb 5, 3:30 pm, Justisaur <justis...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Early in the design process, Rob, James, and I identified a number of
> > > ways that we were unsatisified with D&D's current death and dying rules.
> > > For example, we strongly disliked the inability of 3rd Edition D&D's
> > > negative-hit-point model to deal with combat at higher levels--once the
> > > monsters are reliably dealing 15 or 20 points of damage with each attack,
> > > the chance of a character going straight from "alive and kicking" to
> > > "time to go through his pockets for loose change" was exceedingly high;
> > > effectively, the -1 to -9 "dying" range was meaningless. Ask any high-
> > > level fighter whether he'd prefer the second-to-last attack from a
> > > monster to leave him at 1 hp or -1 hp; I'd put odds on unconsciousness,
> > > and how lame is that?
>
> > What the hell is he blathering about, who'd rather be at -1 than +1?
>
> Because it's the next to last attack. If you're at -1, you go down
> and the bad guy will either attack someone else or stop attacking
> altogether, and you're still technically alive. If you're at +1,
> you're still up so the bad guy attacks you again and if hits will deal
> enough damage to send you below -10, hence dead.
O.k. that at least makes some sense. Me I'd rather still be up and
able to affect the outcome - like taking out the baddie who's taken me
down to 1 hp so he doesn't get a chance to kill him at all.
> > > On top of all that, the game added a complex state of being at exactly 0
> > > hp, which wasn't quite like being fully capable but also wasn't quite
> > > dying. Honestly, though, how often does any character actually get
> > > reduced to exactly 0 hp? Why did the game need a condition that existed
> > > at exactly one spot on the big, broad range of hit point possibilities?
>
> > It has happened a few times in my campaign. I liked the way expanding
> > disabled worked when I did it, I just used math that was too complex
> > to figure out when...
>
> I'm disappointed he didn't address Diehard. Does he think that a
> wasted feat?
I suppose that goes with the whole -1 +1 hp thing... If most people
would rather be a -1 and unconscious than what would be the point of
making you stay up even closer to death.
Personally I never cared for it.
>
> > > Characters still use a negative hit point threshold to determine when
> > > they move from "unconscious and dying" to "all-the-way-dead," but now
> > > that threshold scales with their level (or more specifically, with their
> > > hit point total). A character with 30 hit points (such as a low-level
> > > cleric) dies when he reaches -15 hit points, while the 15th-level fighter
> > > with 120 hp isn't killed until he's reduced to -60 hit points.
>
> > Ick fractions. That's an awful large range too.
>
> 1/2 is easy.
O.k. 1/2 isn't too hard, and it appears they have the 'bloodied number
on the monster stats already which is half hit points. It can be used
for both negative to dead threshold and the PCs know the monster is
half dead threshold. So it appears it won't be too hard to deal with
in 4e at least, even if the 'try it out' example for 3.x is total
crap. I still don't like the "death points", though there's no
indication of if that will really be in 4e or not.
> > > Monsters don't need or use this system unless the DM has special reason
> > > to do so. A monster at 0 hp is dead
>
> > O.k. I hate this separation of Monster v.s. PC rules. Everyone
> > playing by the same rules is one of the things that I really liked
> > about 3.x vs. previous editions.
>
> Agreed. What I didn't like about 2E is that while players only got
> one attack, except specialized fighters, monsters got three with claw/
> claw/bite, still better than specialized fighters except two-weapon
> fighters. It was not a fair exchange. I don't think 4E is going this
> far back, but I'm leary of monsters using different rules. I'm still
> bothered monsters get to use different magic and psionic rules even in
> 3E, i.e. spell-like abilities and at will of powerful stuff. (rant/
> Which is why I think warlocks initially were considered too powerful
> because they got at will invocations and eldritch blast. DMs knew how
> powerful monsters with at will stuff were. /end rant)
I'm going to back off this one a bit as I pretty much use this as is
now anyway. Once a monster is at -1 or lower(not 0 though, I like the
disabled number) they are effectively dead, unless it is important to
the PCs, i.e they want to capture, or whatever. I'd rather use the
PCs rule for if they are dead or not than just pulling out my ass if
they are dead or not if it becomes important though.
The thing I *REALLY* don't want to run into here is some DM using this
as an excuse to make his favorite pain in the ass villain survive
every fight where he should have been dead.
> > > 2) Characters die when their negative hit point total reaches -10 or one-
> > > quarter of their full normal hit points, whichever is a larger value.
> > > This is less than a 4th Edition character would have, but each monster
> > > attack is dealing a smaller fraction of the character's total hit points,
> > > so it should be reasonable. If it feels too small, increase it to one-
> > > third full normal hit points and try again.
>
> > More fractions, and it's a bigger one, which is worse.
>
> 1/4 isn't as easy.
>
> > > 3) If you're dying at the end of your turn, roll 1d20.
> > > Lower than 10: You get worse. If you get this result three times before
> > > you are healed or stabilized (as per the Heal skill), you die.
>
> > Fuck that. You now have fractional negative hit points, and 3 uh...
> > lets call them "death points" since that exactly what he said was
> > rejected. Yeah, that's not complicated at all, no...
>
> That is complicated.
Can't tell if you are serious here or not, no smiley so I'll take it
as serious.
I can only hope this is some crap they came up with to approximate
what they are doing in 4e, and it will all work better with the
framework for 4e.
- Justisaur
DougL
> On Feb 5, 2:11 pm, Hadsil <forum...@netzero.com> wrote:
> > On Feb 5, 3:30 pm, Justisaur <justis...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Early in the design process, Rob, James, and I identified a number of
> > > > ways that we were unsatisified with D&D's current death and dying rules.
> > > > For example, we strongly disliked the inability of 3rd Edition D&D's
> > > > negative-hit-point model to deal with combat at higher levels--once the
> > > > monsters are reliably dealing 15 or 20 points of damage with each attack,
> > > > the chance of a character going straight from "alive and kicking" to
> > > > "time to go through his pockets for loose change" was exceedingly high;
> > > > effectively, the -1 to -9 "dying" range was meaningless. Ask any high-
> > > > level fighter whether he'd prefer the second-to-last attack from a
> > > > monster to leave him at 1 hp or -1 hp; I'd put odds on unconsciousness,
> > > > and how lame is that?
>
> > > What the hell is he blathering about, who'd rather be at -1 than +1?
>
> > Because it's the next to last attack. If you're at -1, you go down
> > and the bad guy will either attack someone else or stop attacking
> > altogether, and you're still technically alive. If you're at +1,
> > you're still up so the bad guy attacks you again and if hits will deal
> > enough damage to send you below -10, hence dead.
>
> O.k. that at least makes some sense. Me I'd rather still be up and
> able to affect the outcome - like taking out the baddie who's taken me
> down to 1 hp so he doesn't get a chance to kill him at all.
Do the words next to last attack mean nothing to you? -1 HP left,
monster stops attacking because you are down, you have no further
effect on the battle. 1 HP left, monster uses last attack and KILLS
YOU DEAD and you STILL have no further effect on the battle.
How much effect does a dead guy have on a battle and how are you going
to take him out in the middle of his attack routine? You die or you
drop, and dropping is only possible if the monster knocks you
negative.
DougL
Hadsil
>
> > > > 2) Characters die when their negative hit point total reaches -10 or one-
> > > > quarter of their full normal hit points, whichever is a larger value.
> > > > This is less than a 4th Edition character would have, but each monster
> > > > attack is dealing a smaller fraction of the character's total hit points,
> > > > so it should be reasonable. If it feels too small, increase it to one-
> > > > third full normal hit points and try again.
>
> > > More fractions, and it's a bigger one, which is worse.
>
> > 1/4 isn't as easy.
>
> > > > 3) If you're dying at the end of your turn, roll 1d20.
> > > > Lower than 10: You get worse. If you get this result three times before
> > > > you are healed or stabilized (as per the Heal skill), you die.
>
> > > Fuck that. You now have fractional negative hit points, and 3 uh...
> > > lets call them "death points" since that exactly what he said was
> > > rejected. Yeah, that's not complicated at all, no...
>
> > That is complicated.
>
> Can't tell if you are serious here or not, no smiley so I'll take it
> as serious.
>
> I can only hope this is some crap they came up with to approximate
> what they are doing in 4e, and it will all work better with the
> framework for 4e.
>
> - Justisaur- Hide quoted text -
Sorry; I see the potential humor. It was sincere agreement.
Gerald Katz
Varl
> Side note to all those would-be game designers out there: When you hear
> yourself making that claim, you might be in danger of losing touch with
> reality. Sometimes you’re right, and your innovative game design concept
> just needs a little time to sink in. (The cycling initiative system used
> by 3rd Edition D&D is a good example of that—back in 1999, some very
> vociferous playtesters were convinced that it would ruin D&D combat
> forever. Turned out that wasn’t exactly true.) But every time you
> convince yourself that you know better than the people playing your game,
> you’re opening the possibility of a very rude (and costly) awakening.
Awfully presumptuous of you to think that after, what, 34 +/- years
of D&D being in existence, we still need to be hand held, and have
yet to figure out how to make and playtest our own house rules. Not
to mention, I think it's safe to say that most DMs are and were
players at one time or another, so technically, the majority of DMs
really are the people that have played the game.
> Characters still use a negative hit point threshold to determine when
> they move from “unconscious and dying” to “all-the-way-dead,” but now
> that threshold scales with their level (or more specifically, with their
> hit point total). A character with 30 hit points (such as a low-level
> cleric) dies when he reaches -15 hit points, while the 15th-level fighter
> with 120 hp isn’t killed until he’s reduced to -60 hit points.
No thanks. I prefer to stick with negative Con.
> Monsters don’t need or use this system unless the DM has special reason
> to do so.
No way. Since I bothered to give them a Con score, they're going
to use it.
> 3) If you’re dying at the end of your turn, roll 1d20.
> Lower than 10: You get worse. If you get this result three times before
> you are healed or stabilized (as per the Heal skill), you die.
> 10-19: No change.
> 20: You get better! You wake up with hit points equal to one-quarter your
> full normal hit points.
What? So if I have 100 hps, I wake up on a 20 with 25 hps? Wow.
That's quite the miraculous, nonmagical turnaround for someone that
was just about to die at the end of their turn...lol.
> 4) If a character with negative hit points receives healing, he returns
> to 0 hp before any healing is applied.
Okay, now this is just retarded. I'm at -60 or whatever (to use your
example above), and even *before* anyone even tries to help me, I
again miraculously gain 60 hps to put me at 0 (and before any
heals)? For wounds that are supposed to signify "bleeding out",
etc.., they sure fix themselves awfully quick.
> In other words, he’ll wake up again with hit points equal to the healing
> provided by the effect—a cure light wounds spell for 7 hp will bring any
> dying character back to 7 hp, no matter what his negative hit point total
> had reached.)
So, he actually gains 67 hps, or 47, 27, 14, pick a number.
--
It's a bit like painted checkers with some die rolls to see which
checker wins. -mdono.
Del Rio
Varl <bsm...@premier1.net> wrote:
>> 3) If you’re dying at the end of your turn, roll 1d20.
>> Lower than 10: You get worse. If you get this result three times before
>> you are healed or stabilized (as per the Heal skill), you die.
>> 10-19: No change.
>> 20: You get better! You wake up with hit points equal to one-quarter your
>> full normal hit points.
>
>What? So if I have 100 hps, I wake up on a 20 with 25 hps? Wow.
>That's quite the miraculous, nonmagical turnaround for someone that
>was just about to die at the end of their turn...lol.
I think that's intended to fit in with the idea that damage is
not strictly a bunch of small cuts adding up to you bleeding
out. Damage under 4e is clearly a combination of cuts,
bruises, bumps, exhaustion, morale loss, etc. Character types
like the Warlord who are going to "radiate healing" clearly
aren't intended to actually radiate a continuous Cure Light
Wounds aura; they're raising people's will to fight, which
(short of someone being mortally stabbed through the guts) is
actually more significant to them carrying on the fight than
the sum total of their numerous small injuries.
I'm still waiting to see if I'm actually going to *like* this,
but the principle behind it doesn't bother me.
--
"I know I promised, Lord, never again. But I also know
that YOU know what a weak-willed person I am."
Mark
This does have the big assumption that the monster is unaware that
healing magic exists, or even that the concept of a character
recovering quickly naturally might exist (even if the 3.5 rules mean
it never actually happens for an hour).
When I played Champions it was a common, ugly, tactic to beat up
unconscious people in preference to the active characters, because
someone you have barely knocked out would recover shortly and be back
in the fight (albeit at reduced power), whereas the rate of recovery
was reduced the more negative you were.
Mark
> WotC wrote:
> > Side note to all those would-be game designers out there: When you hear
> > yourself making that claim, you might be in danger of losing touch with
> > reality. Sometimes you're right, and your innovative game design concept
> > just needs a little time to sink in. (The cycling initiative system used
No they were momentarily stunned and not actually dying: you just
didn't *know* that until they rolled a 20 and found out...
>
> > 4) If a character with negative hit points receives healing, he returns
> > to 0 hp before any healing is applied.
>
> Okay, now this is just retarded. I'm at -60 or whatever (to use your
> example above), and even *before* anyone even tries to help me, I
> again miraculously gain 60 hps to put me at 0 (and before any
> heals)? For wounds that are supposed to signify "bleeding out",
> etc.., they sure fix themselves awfully quick.
>
> > In other words, he'll wake up again with hit points equal to the healing
> > provided by the effect--a cure light wounds spell for 7 hp will bring any
tussock
> Hadsil wrote:
>> What I'm more concerned about is how they'll treat coming back from the
>> dead.
>
> That is a concern of mine, as well. I find death to be far too trivial
> in D&D as it is.
Not really. At low levels it's permanent, then it costs you a level
for a while, then it costs you huge amounts of money, then you're a
godling and shouldn't really have to worry too much anyway, as long as
you remember all the protections against things that you can't come back
from without extreme difficulty (like the church getting all prissy about
it, or the high level NPCs running out of XP to power it).
GURPS has it pretty good. Various expensive costs for get out of
death free cards, and if you don't have one it's a circle of *very*
powerful clerical types and your four hundred closest friends chanting
all day to bring you back to life (unwilling participants, skeptics, or
deliberate spoilers counting 10 against).
--
tussock
Zzzzzzzzzz... uh, wha? What the hell? I was sleeping, bugger off.
tussock
>> From http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drdd/20080201a
>>
>>
> God damn, what a bunch of wordy crap. Someone needs to hire a writer.
Nice, but that's the editors job. Writers are notoriously verbose,
and this is a fine example of what DnD would be without editors. See also
anything written by EGG in the early days.
>> Among other problems, this also meant that characters effectively had
>> no way to "lose" a combat except by being killed. This removes a lot of
>> dramatic possibilities for the story--for instance, the classic scene
>> of the characters being captured and thrown in a cell from which they
>> have to escape using only their wits and a pack of chewing gum (or
>> whatever).
>
> I suppose being paralyzed, held, charmed, turned to stone, or just
> knocked unconscious through poison or non lethal damage are 'being
> killed' in his mind.
Let alone surrendering, negotiating an unfavourable truce, running
away, failing to win before something bad (tm) happens, failing to stop
the alarm being raised.
I guess what he means is the game didn't force people to surrender
before they died. However, I'm pretty sure that's a feature rather than a
bug. Prison escapes had to be plot points rather than play results with
an agressive group, but that's just the game letting the players chose
the results.
>> It's also less costly to bring dying characters back into the fight
>> now--there's no "negative hit point tax" that you have to pay out of
>> the healing delivered by your cure serious wounds prayer. That helps
>> ensure that a character who was healed from unconsciousness isn't in an
>> immediate threat of going right back there (and you'll never again have
>> the "I fed Jozan a potion of healing but he's still at negative hit
>> points" disappointment).
>
> Don't like this at all, It's been a house rule (or possibly raw rule?)
> in some old editions of AD&D in some games I've played in. It doesn't
> pass the believability test as he mentioned earlier.
Ditto. Anything can be rationalised, even that I'd reckon, but the
idea that something like cure minor wounds would pop you up on 1 HP every
round, no matter how much damage had been done, but only take you to 2 HP
the next round at best, ....
See, that tax, it's a good thing. Not only should dying hurt, nearly
dying should hurt too! Especially when someone's been whomping on your
bleeding carcass for a couple rounds.
Heh. That's where the popup characters came from in the last playtest
report. Nearly the whole party went down, some multiple times, but they
just kept on fighting anyway. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up.
>> Monsters don't need or use this system unless the DM has special reason
>> to do so. A monster at 0 hp is dead
>
> O.k. I hate this separation of Monster v.s. PC rules. Everyone playing
> by the same rules is one of the things that I really liked about 3.x vs.
> previous editions.
Yep. A pox on their houses. My game expects people to get finished
off in battle, because dead is a lot harder to come back from than -3,
and the bad guys aren't playing pattycake.
>> 3) If you're dying at the end of your turn, roll 1d20. Lower than 10:
>> You get worse. If you get this result three times before you are healed
>> or stabilized (as per the Heal skill), you die.
>
> Fuck that. You now have fractional negative hit points, and 3 uh...
> lets call them "death points" since that exactly what he said was
> rejected. Yeah, that's not complicated at all, no...
It's funny to see them continually reintroducing things at the end of
articles they've taken away at the start.
I think that's a reflection of the design process. The original 4e
concept was just the first bit, the end bit is what they've tacked on to
make it more like DnD again, defeating the purpose of the original
design. Design by comittee at it's best. 8]
I mean, they're basically using a save to stay alive, why not just
force another save with each attack that hits? Saves are even more
sensibly scaled in 4e and all, and we've probably got a simple SWS style
condition track sitting there ready to mark it on (which may be what 4e
will use rather than the three "death points").
Keith Davies
Monsters don't make sure of their victims, when there's nothing
immediately threatening? Nobody's heard of playing possum? You don't
get to hit back[1] if you're still at +1, and might be able to drop your
opponent?
[1] well, not if the timing doesn't work out for you -- if your opponent
still has attacks left and you're still up, you may still eat one of
them.
It clearly varies by situation.
Keith
--
Keith Davies "History is made by stupid people
keith....@kjdavies.org "Clever people wouldn't even try
keith....@gmail.com "If you want a place in the history books
http://www.kjdavies.org/ "Then do something dumb before you die."
-- The Arrogant Worms
Malachias Invictus
"Mark" <rin...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:acaafb6d-3f4b-4343...@i72g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
> When I played Champions it was a common, ugly, tactic to beat up
> unconscious people in preference to the active characters, because
> someone you have barely knocked out would recover shortly and be back
> in the fight (albeit at reduced power), whereas the rate of recovery
> was reduced the more negative you were.
If you had things going just right, there were enough live threats that the
use of this tactic was minimized. Of course, this tactic *is* very
effective.
Justisaur
> Justisaur wrote:
> >> Fromhttp://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drdd/20080201a
>
> > God damn, what a bunch of wordy crap. Someone needs to hire a writer.
>
> Nice, but that's the editors job. Writers are notoriously verbose,
> and this is a fine example of what DnD would be without editors. See also
> anything written by EGG in the early days.
I'm not nor have ever been a writer or an editor, so I'll bow to your
superior knowledge.
I like to think my ramblings are a bit more concise than this guy's,
but it's hard to judge your own shit.
> >> It's also less costly to bring dying characters back into the fight
> >> now--there's no "negative hit point tax" that you have to pay out of
> >> the healing delivered by your cure serious wounds prayer. That helps
> >> ensure that a character who was healed from unconsciousness isn't in an
> >> immediate threat of going right back there (and you'll never again have
> >> the "I fed Jozan a potion of healing but he's still at negative hit
> >> points" disappointment).
>
> > Don't like this at all, It's been a house rule (or possibly raw rule?)
> > in some old editions of AD&D in some games I've played in. It doesn't
> > pass the believability test as he mentioned earlier.
>
> Ditto. Anything can be rationalised, even that I'd reckon, but the
> idea that something like cure minor wounds would pop you up on 1 HP every
> round, no matter how much damage had been done, but only take you to 2 HP
> the next round at best, ....
>
> See, that tax, it's a good thing. Not only should dying hurt, nearly
> dying should hurt too! Especially when someone's been whomping on your
> bleeding carcass for a couple rounds.
>
> Heh. That's where the popup characters came from in the last playtest
> report. Nearly the whole party went down, some multiple times, but they
> just kept on fighting anyway. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up.
Ug. I really don't like an up/down up/down fight. I've seen some of
those even in 3.x, and it gets really tiring quickly. If the whole
game is like that, I'm not sure I'll be able to stomach it.
> >> 3) If you're dying at the end of your turn, roll 1d20. Lower than 10:
> >> You get worse. If you get this result three times before you are healed
> >> or stabilized (as per the Heal skill), you die.
>
> > Fuck that. You now have fractional negative hit points, and 3 uh...
> > lets call them "death points" since that exactly what he said was
> > rejected. Yeah, that's not complicated at all, no...
>
> It's funny to see them continually reintroducing things at the end of
> articles they've taken away at the start.
>
> I think that's a reflection of the design process. The original 4e
> concept was just the first bit, the end bit is what they've tacked on to
> make it more like DnD again, defeating the purpose of the original
> design. Design by comittee at it's best. 8]
>
> I mean, they're basically using a save to stay alive, why not just
> force another save with each attack that hits? Saves are even more
> sensibly scaled in 4e and all, and we've probably got a simple SWS style
> condition track sitting there ready to mark it on (which may be what 4e
> will use rather than the three "death points").
Ah, the condition track. I'm not sure I care much for the condition
track idea, but I've not played with it so it might be o.k.
- Justisaur
Malachias Invictus
"tussock" <sc...@clear.net.nz> wrote in message
news:47ab...@clear.net.nz...
> Malachias Invictus wrote:
>> Hadsil wrote:
>
>>> What I'm more concerned about is how they'll treat coming back from the
>>> dead.
>>
>> That is a concern of mine, as well. I find death to be far too trivial
>> in D&D as it is.
>
> Not really. At low levels it's permanent,
At very low levels, sure. Raise Dead only costs 5,450gp at default. Even a
fairly low level party can come up with that.
> then it costs you a level for a while,
BFD. The way experience works, you will catch up in only a few games.
> then it costs you huge amounts of money,
If you go for True Resurrection, sure (26,250gp at default). However, why
bother? You can replace that experience more easily than replacing that
money. Just bite the bullet and use Raise Dead.
> then you're a godling and shouldn't really have to worry too much
> anyway, as long as you remember all the protections against things
> that you can't come back from without extreme difficulty (like the
> church getting all prissy about it, or the high level NPCs running out
> of XP to power it).
Basically, Raise Dead is the main thing that screws this up. The cost of
raising dead is less than that of a pair of fucking Boots of Striding and
Springing. Sorry, but that is ridiculously trivial, even at fairly low
levels.
> GURPS has it pretty good. Various expensive costs for get out of
> death free cards, and if you don't have one it's a circle of *very*
> powerful clerical types and your four hundred closest friends chanting
> all day to bring you back to life (unwilling participants, skeptics, or
> deliberate spoilers counting 10 against).
Yes. GURPS makes raising the dead a huge fucking event, reserved only for
really important people and requiring a huge amount of resources to pull
off. That is more like what I would prefer. I don't want it to be
impossible, but I don't want it to be just another cost marked off the
character sheet.
Malachias Invictus
> I think that's a reflection of the design process. The original 4e
> concept was just the first bit, the end bit is what they've tacked on to
> make it more like DnD again, defeating the purpose of the original
> design. Design by comittee at it's best. 8]
>
> I mean, they're basically using a save to stay alive, why not just
> force another save with each attack that hits? Saves are even more
> sensibly scaled in 4e and all, and we've probably got a simple SWS style
> condition track sitting there ready to mark it on (which may be what 4e
> will use rather than the three "death points").
I like your idea better.
Patrick Baldwin
<SNIP>
>Yes. GURPS makes raising the dead a huge fucking event, reserved only for
>really important people and requiring a huge amount of resources to pull
>off. That is more like what I would prefer. I don't want it to be
>impossible, but I don't want it to be just another cost marked off the
>character sheet.
Ah, see I want my raising the dead (and teleportation) to be
more like in Steven Brust's Dragaeran setting. Where there's
levels of "dead". For example, nice neat stab in the heart,
resurection is pretty easy. Head chopped off? Much harder.
Killed with soul eating weapon (disturbingly common in his
setting), gone for good.
~P.
Malachias Invictus
"Patrick Baldwin" <p...@osmium.mv.net> wrote in message
news:fofr3m$ui$2...@pyrite.mv.net...
While that is a very interesting setting, it is not at all what I want out
of D&D.
Mark Blunden
news:slrnfqm9c3.ou...@kjdavies.org...
> DougL <lamper...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Feb 6, 2:12 pm, Justisaur <justis...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> O.k. that at least makes some sense. Me I'd rather still be up and
>>> able to affect the outcome - like taking out the baddie who's taken
>>> me down to 1 hp so he doesn't get a chance to kill him at all.
>>
>> Do the words next to last attack mean nothing to you? -1 HP left,
>> monster stops attacking because you are down, you have no further
>> effect on the battle. 1 HP left, monster uses last attack and KILLS
>> YOU DEAD and you STILL have no further effect on the battle.
>>
>> How much effect does a dead guy have on a battle and how are you going
>> to take him out in the middle of his attack routine? You die or you
>> drop, and dropping is only possible if the monster knocks you
>> negative.
>
> Monsters don't make sure of their victims, when there's nothing
> immediately threatening? Nobody's heard of playing possum?
If there's nothing else immediately threatening, you're probably toast. But
in the case of an ongoing battle, there's likely to be something else for it
to hit, and in most cases, hitting the active opponent is the best option
for a combatant.
> You don't
> get to hit back[1] if you're still at +1, and might be able to drop your
> opponent?
>
> [1] well, not if the timing doesn't work out for you -- if your opponent
> still has attacks left and you're still up, you may still eat one of
> them.
Your footnote is not an "if" in this case, it is explicitly a given in the
original question.
--
Mark.
Mark Blunden
>
>>> Among other problems, this also meant that characters effectively had
>>> no way to "lose" a combat except by being killed. This removes a lot of
>>> dramatic possibilities for the story--for instance, the classic scene
>>> of the characters being captured and thrown in a cell from which they
>>> have to escape using only their wits and a pack of chewing gum (or
>>> whatever).
>>
>> I suppose being paralyzed, held, charmed, turned to stone, or just
>> knocked unconscious through poison or non lethal damage are 'being
>> killed' in his mind.
>
> Let alone surrendering, negotiating an unfavourable truce, running
> away, failing to win before something bad (tm) happens, failing to stop
> the alarm being raised.
>
> I guess what he means is the game didn't force people to surrender
> before they died. However, I'm pretty sure that's a feature rather than a
> bug. Prison escapes had to be plot points rather than play results with
> an agressive group, but that's just the game letting the players chose
> the results.
In my experience, unless obviously overwhelmed right from the start, most
groups won't consider running, much less surrendering, until they're already
in too bad a shape to do it. Barring a wizard with a pre-memorised Teleport
spell, the majority of retreats I've seen in D&D turn into messy routs, with
encumbered characters carrying the dying, at least one character trying to
hold ground and keep the enemy pinned, and the party being picked off with
ranged attacks and spells. And generally it takes at least one or two
character deaths before the subject of surrendering is raised (even if it's
an option, which against many opponents it isn't).
--
Mark.
tussock
> tussock wrote:
>> I guess what he means is the game didn't force people to surrender
>> before they died. However, I'm pretty sure that's a feature rather than
>> a bug. Prison escapes had to be plot points rather than play results
>> with an agressive group, but that's just the game letting the players
>> chose the results.
>
> In my experience, unless obviously overwhelmed right from the start,
> most groups won't consider running, much less surrendering, until
> they're already in too bad a shape to do it.
Where I often use announced surrender terms, enemies that surrender
in part or in full, hit and run attacks (sometimes leading to traps),
enemies that split up, .... It's part of the world, along with the odd
totally unfair fight.
Ransoms get paid, prisoner exchanges happen, sometimes you keep
everything and get a message to carry, sometimes you lose a hand along
with everything of value, sometimes you'll be killed. Life goes on, get a
better diplomat if you get screwed too bad.
PCs with family, land, title, and favours owed are possibly worth
more alive than dead, which is ideal.
> Barring a wizard with a pre-memorised Teleport spell, the majority of
> retreats I've seen in D&D turn into messy routs, with encumbered
> characters carrying the dying, at least one character trying to hold
> ground and keep the enemy pinned, and the party being picked off with
> ranged attacks and spells.
Cover, concealment, /Web/ and such, squeeze points, fortifications
and barred doors, PC-grade movement rates, mounts, splitting up,
threatening or confusing illusions, speed bumps summoned, mooks to take
the fall, even alchemy or caltrops. Unsure enemies not really _wanting_
to chase PCs who are still in reasonable condition.
Sometimes it's a rout, sometimes it's a tactical feint. The more outs
you set up, the more likely one will safely work out when you need it.
> And generally it takes at least one or two character deaths before the
> subject of surrendering is raised (even if it's an option, which
> against many opponents it isn't).
Yea, you're waiting *far* too long; whatever can take half your HP
can take the other half. In my games it's an explicit option from round
one against even _remotely_ civilised opponents, and running away or
seeking spaces the bad guys don't fit is often the better idea against
less intelligent monsters.
Of course, sometimes there's wars of genocide against fast-movers in
play and that all goes out the window; you fight or you die. But even
Demons want to deal.
Jasin Zujovic
> Ransoms get paid,
Considering the insane amounts of wealth D&D PCs carry, isn't it often a
safer bet to fight to the death on the off chance you might win?
Relatively soon in the level progression, any casualty rate short of a
TPK becomes less of a setback than surrendering and getting stripped of
your gear, even if the enemy just lets you go without a ransom afterwards.
--
Jasin
Jasin Zujovic
>> Side note to all those would-be game designers out there: When you
>> hear yourself making that claim, you might be in danger of losing
>> touch with reality. Sometimes you’re right, and your innovative game
>> design concept just needs a little time to sink in. (The cycling
>> initiative system used by 3rd Edition D&D is a good example of
>> that—back in 1999, some very vociferous playtesters were convinced
>> that it would ruin D&D combat forever. Turned out that wasn’t exactly
>> true.) But every time you convince yourself that you know better than
>> the people playing your game, you’re opening the possibility of a very
>> rude (and costly) awakening.
>
> Awfully presumptuous of you to think that after, what, 34 +/- years of
> D&D being in existence, we still need to be hand held, and have yet to
> figure out how to make and playtest our own house rules.
Awfully presumptuous of you to think that only veterans with 34 +/-
years of experience matter.
--
Jasin
Nikolas Landauer
Remember one major factor: the Taltos books do not provide a
sufficient cross-section of Dragaeran society to state that anything
Vlad or his friends do is "common" or "easy". In fact, even when Vlad
was killed cleanly, Aliera "almost lost him" trying to revivify him,
and she's among the twenty best sorceresses in the entire Empire.
Vlad's gone through the expected costs for death, revivification,
assassination and the like, in one of the books. The poor almost
never have enough money for revivification in the three-day period
necessary after someone dies; Vlad's experiences with the wealthy
criminal element of House Jhereg show that criminal activity makes
this far more likely than usual (as a cost of doing business, one's
'boss' usually pays for one's revivification, if one dies in service
of the goals of that boss), and sometimes someone doesn't make it
(several of Vlad's enforcers get killed; "[guy 1] was lucky, and he
was revivifiable. [Guy 2] was even luckier, and teleported to a
healer. [Guy 3] didn't make it. Revivification failed." Vlad
responds angrily that he'll double the usual death bonus for the guy's
family, and make it a point to kill the guy who killed his employee).
As for the frequency of soul-eating weapons in Dragaera, Vlad
specifically requests several from his contacts, Morrolan specifically
studies them at some variance to Imperial law, and Vlad has been known
to comment that it's ridiculous how many Morganti weapons pop up in
his life, indicating that their frequency in his life is highly
abnormal.
Sorry about that. </nitpick>
--
Nik
Keith Davies
> Patrick Baldwin wrote:
>>
>> Ah, see I want my raising the dead (and teleportation)
>> to be more like in Steven Brust's Dragaeran setting.
>> Where there's levels of "dead". For example, nice
>> neat stab in the heart, resurection is pretty easy. Head
>> chopped off? Much harder. Killed with soul eating
>> weapon (disturbingly common in his setting), gone for
>> good.
>
> Remember one major factor: the Taltos books do not provide a
> sufficient cross-section of Dragaeran society to state that anything
> Vlad or his friends do is "common" or "easy".
No kidding. It's heavily, *heavily* weighted with badasses of the
Empire. Consider, there are rumored to be 17 Great Weapons (upper
limit and based on Dragaeran numerology, sort of), and Vlad knows and
has as friends the bearers of *four* of them. Off the top of my head,
and counting himself since one of the weapons *was* a friend.
> In fact, even when Vlad was killed cleanly, Aliera "almost lost him"
> trying to revivify him, and she's among the twenty best sorceresses in
> the entire Empire.
IIRC it took several tries. This is when he met his wife, right?
> Vlad's gone through the expected costs for death, revivification,
> assassination and the like, in one of the books. The poor almost
> never have enough money for revivification in the three-day period
> necessary after someone dies; Vlad's experiences with the wealthy
> criminal element of House Jhereg show that criminal activity makes
> this far more likely than usual (as a cost of doing business, one's
> 'boss' usually pays for one's revivification, if one dies in service
> of the goals of that boss), and sometimes someone doesn't make it
> (several of Vlad's enforcers get killed; "[guy 1] was lucky, and he
> was revivifiable. [Guy 2] was even luckier, and teleported to a
> healer. [Guy 3] didn't make it. Revivification failed." Vlad
> responds angrily that he'll double the usual death bonus for the guy's
> family, and make it a point to kill the guy who killed his employee).
It comes to me, and ISTR posting this to the Dragaera d20 list, that
D&D's revivification magicks come decently close to modeling Dragaeran
revivification, with a few modification.
1. /raise dead/ works only with three days (not one day per caster
level), and only if there is no severe neurological damage (the
examples noted where they aren't revivifiable usually involve damage
to the brain (skull crushed, stabbed inna eye) or spine (one of
Vlad's bodyguards gets nailed with "what we call a 'lucky shot'"). I
don't know about the level/Con loss, I haven't noticed that anyone
revivified is weaker after they've had time to recover.
2. /resurrection/... I don't think we ever saw this happen.
3. /true resurrection/... *once*, and it seems to require some serious,
serious magic to make it happen. In one case the person's soul had
been trapped in a staff, in another a sword
3a. A Great Weapon, as part of it's goal of protecting it's bonded
partner, can prevent a Morganti weapon from destroying the
partner's soul by collecting the soul itself. This is the only
known way to survive, such as it is, a Morganti slaying. This has
been known to happen once and only once.
Anything killed by a Morganti weapon is *gone*. Unrevifiable, and will
not be reincarnated. The stories say that anyone struck with a Morganti
weapon will be slain instantly, completely, and irrevocably... in D&D
terms this would be a *hugely* expensive weapon. Even in Vlad's circles
they would not be readily affordable. However, I also recall hearing of
only *one* Morganti attack landing in a less than fatal blow[1] (i.e.
all the people who died Morganti in the stories took blows that would've
killed them normally with plain steel) so for playability I'd be willing
to limit the Morganti effect to only killing blows, not all blows.
[1] from Issola, when the Very Good (not Great, quite) Weapon failed to
kill its target.
> As for the frequency of soul-eating weapons in Dragaera, Vlad
> specifically requests several from his contacts, Morrolan specifically
> studies them at some variance to Imperial law, and Vlad has been known
collects, yes?
> to comment that it's ridiculous how many Morganti weapons pop up in
> his life, indicating that their frequency in his life is highly
> abnormal.
Considering their effect on observers, more than *once* is pretty
unusual.
Varl
>> Awfully presumptuous of you to think that after, what, 34 +/- years of
>> D&D being in existence, we still need to be hand held, and have yet to
>> figure out how to make and playtest our own house rules.
>
> Awfully presumptuous of you to think that only veterans with 34 +/-
> years of experience matter.
The original wotc author also presumed a lot by suggesting the
possibility that the wisdom only travels in one direction. He's wrong.
Mark Blunden
news:WJadnavf86KqnjDa...@seanet.com...
> Jasin Zujovic wrote:
>
>>> Awfully presumptuous of you to think that after, what, 34 +/- years of
>>> D&D being in existence, we still need to be hand held, and have yet to
>>> figure out how to make and playtest our own house rules.
>>
>> Awfully presumptuous of you to think that only veterans with 34 +/- years
>> of experience matter.
>
> The original wotc author also presumed a lot by suggesting the possibility
> that the wisdom only travels in one direction. He's wrong.
I've re-read the original quote, and I'm not seeing that suggestion. All I'm
seeing is a cautionary note - to anyone trying to introduce new rules into a
system, no matter how experienced - against becoming so caught up in one's
own ideas that you start disregarding others' criticisms of them.
--
Mark.
tussock
> tussock wrote:
>> Ransoms get paid,
>
> Considering the insane amounts of wealth D&D PCs carry, isn't it often a
> safer bet to fight to the death on the off chance you might win?
No. Depends who you're fighting, but a ransom will normally be a
year's rents, or about 10% of your worth. If you carry all your worldly
goods on your back, /some/ folk will strip you of it, but they know that
makes them an outlaw. Outlaws with lots of other people's gear attract
all the wrong sorts of attention.
I've had high level NPCs fetch back or replace the PCs gear after
they had it unfairly taken from them; that's what being part of the
larger community is for.
> Relatively soon in the level progression, any casualty rate short of a
> TPK becomes less of a setback than surrendering and getting stripped of
> your gear, even if the enemy just lets you go without a ransom
> afterwards.
<shrug> So don't strip them of their gear. "Ygarde! Eek seyn hir cas.
Nay wo robberie, doun armes and spake. Be nay wood!"
Mart van de Wege
>
>> 3) If you’re dying at the end of your turn, roll 1d20.
>> Lower than 10: You get worse. If you get this result three times
>> before you are healed or stabilized (as per the Heal skill), you
>> die.
>> 10-19: No change.
>> 20: You get better! You wake up with hit points equal to one-quarter
>> your full normal hit points.
>
> What? So if I have 100 hps, I wake up on a 20 with 25 hps? Wow. That's
> quite the miraculous, nonmagical turnaround for someone that was just
> about to die at the end of their turn...lol.
>
So?
It's just as arbitrary as 'no matter how tough you are, once you spent
1 minute bleeding, you're dead'.
It goes with the territory of the abstract HP system. If you can't
deal with the sudden jump in health, there is a very simple house rule:
20 stabilizes instead of heals.
Since this a house rule about as trivial as 'death at -CON instead of
-10' that you *do* advocate, I don't see your problem here, frankly.
Mart
--
"We will need a longer wall when the revolution comes."
--- AJS, quoting an uncertain source.
Mart van de Wege
> On Feb 4, 11:44 am, Marcel Beaudoin <marcel.beaud...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Fromhttp://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drdd/20080201a
>
>> Monsters don't need or use this system unless the DM has special reason
>> to do so. A monster at 0 hp is dead
>
> O.k. I hate this separation of Monster v.s. PC rules. Everyone
> playing by the same rules is one of the things that I really liked
> about 3.x vs. previous editions.
I think this is a prime example of what the 4e designers call 'false
parallelism'.
What's the use of monsters dying at -10 instead of at 0? In the
current game, once they reach zero, all it takes is one more round of
attacks by the PCs to make sure they're really dead.
So, scrapping the -10 rule and killing monsters at 0 HP just gets rid
of an extraneous combat round.
Regenerating monsters can easily be handled by just giving them a tad
more HP.
Big fucking deal.
Mark Blunden
> Jasin Zujovic wrote:
>> tussock wrote:
>
>>> Ransoms get paid,
>>
>> Considering the insane amounts of wealth D&D PCs carry, isn't it often a
>> safer bet to fight to the death on the off chance you might win?
>
> No. Depends who you're fighting, but a ransom will normally be a
> year's rents, or about 10% of your worth. If you carry all your worldly
> goods on your back, /some/ folk will strip you of it, but they know that
> makes them an outlaw. Outlaws with lots of other people's gear attract
> all the wrong sorts of attention.
>
> I've had high level NPCs fetch back or replace the PCs gear after
> they had it unfairly taken from them; that's what being part of the
> larger community is for.
So, waylaying and robbing an adventurer makes you an outlaw, hunted by all,
but kidnapping and ransoming them is what? Taxation?
In any case, the average mid-level adventurer's gear is worth enough money
for a bandit to retire on, and it's not exactly difficult to move the items,
or else adventurers wouldn't be able to sell them.
--
Mark.
Varl
> It goes with the territory of the abstract HP system. If you can't
> deal with the sudden jump in health, there is a very simple house rule:
> 20 stabilizes instead of heals.
>
> Since this a house rule about as trivial as 'death at -CON instead of
> -10' that you *do* advocate, I don't see your problem here, frankly.
The fact that I'd have to create a house rule for this is the
problem. A house rule like the stabilization one you mention for
this would be inevitable if I end up playing 4e. The thing I didn't
like the most was number 4 in their description: If a character with
negative hit points receives healing, he returns to 0 hp *before*
any healing is applied (emphasis mine).
They're saying what you're at before the healing is even applied
doesn't matter. It could be -100 or -1. They all come back instantly
before any healing is applied. Those hps have never been phantom hps
in my games; they're the ones that tell you how close you are to
death, and to just give them all back seemingly on a whim, and not
even on any healing actions just on the "presumption" of a heal, is
a stupid rule. Stabilization. Definitely.
Mart van de Wege
> Mart van de Wege wrote:
>
>> It goes with the territory of the abstract HP system. If you can't
>> deal with the sudden jump in health, there is a very simple house rule:
>> 20 stabilizes instead of heals.
>>
>> Since this a house rule about as trivial as 'death at -CON instead of
>> -10' that you *do* advocate, I don't see your problem here, frankly.
>
> The fact that I'd have to create a house rule for this is the
> problem.
Again, since you seem to have no problem using the very common -CON
house rule right now, I must conclude that you are just whining for
whining's sake.
Malachias Invictus
"Mark Blunden" <markATmarkdb...@addresss.invalid> wrote in message
news:13qqqbo...@corp.supernews.com...
That is exactly what I got from it as well. It seemed to be more of a
warning against thinking things like "only veterans with 34 +/- years of
experience matter."
--
Kyle Wilson
>Justisaur <just...@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On Feb 4, 11:44 am, Marcel Beaudoin <marcel.beaud...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Fromhttp://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drdd/20080201a
>>
>>> Monsters don't need or use this system unless the DM has special reason
>>> to do so. A monster at 0 hp is dead
>>
>> O.k. I hate this separation of Monster v.s. PC rules. Everyone
>> playing by the same rules is one of the things that I really liked
>> about 3.x vs. previous editions.
>
>I think this is a prime example of what the 4e designers call 'false
>parallelism'.
>
>What's the use of monsters dying at -10 instead of at 0? In the
>current game, once they reach zero, all it takes is one more round of
>attacks by the PCs to make sure they're really dead.
>
>So, scrapping the -10 rule and killing monsters at 0 HP just gets rid
>of an extraneous combat round.
This means that you can't bind the wounds of one (or more) of the
goblins that you were fighting so that you can interrogate them after
the battle. This means that you can't fight the guards honorably
without unnecessary killing (as they die at zero and there is no
chance to save them).
If the game is just a wargame with 'cut scenes' provided by the GM
then this works. If you are presumed to be playing in a more detailed
and interconnected world then I don't think it works at all well.
Stopping to bind an honorable adversary's wounds during or after
battle may turn an enemy into an ally...
I'm afraid that the 4e changes suggest that D&D is being moved closer
to where warhammer is...a miniatures combat game with RPG trappings. I
can see how this would probably work well for WOTC as they would sell
lots of miniatures and running tournament games would be simpler as
there would be less GM ajudication...
>Regenerating monsters can easily be handled by just giving them a tad
>more HP.
>
>Big fucking deal.
>
>Mart
--
Kyle Wilson
email: mynameasoneword at wilson.mv.com
Del Rio
Varl <bsm...@premier1.net> wrote:
>
>They're saying what you're at before the healing is even applied
>doesn't matter. It could be -100 or -1. They all come back instantly
>before any healing is applied. Those hps have never been phantom hps
>in my games; they're the ones that tell you how close you are to
>death,
If HP strictly measure "physical damage" that would imply that
a mid-level fighter really can sustain the amount of physical
damage that it would take to kill a rhinoceros.
--
"I know I promised, Lord, never again. But I also know
that YOU know what a weak-willed person I am."
Malachias Invictus
"Del Rio" <del...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:fokvou$s43$1...@reader2.panix.com...
> In article <0_idneYSpskaSTDa...@seanet.com>,
> Varl <bsm...@premier1.net> wrote:
>>
>>They're saying what you're at before the healing is even applied
>>doesn't matter. It could be -100 or -1. They all come back instantly
>>before any healing is applied. Those hps have never been phantom hps
>>in my games; they're the ones that tell you how close you are to
>>death,
>
> If HP strictly measure "physical damage" that would imply that
> a mid-level fighter really can sustain the amount of physical
> damage that it would take to kill a rhinoceros.
*A* rhinoceros? More like two or three. Good point.
Malachias Invictus
"Kyle Wilson" <Usenet...@wilson.mv.com> wrote in message
news:jkqrq3pmhgt9ailcg...@4ax.com...
> Mart van de Wege <mvdwege...@wanadoo.nl> wrote:
>
>>Justisaur <just...@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> On Feb 4, 11:44 am, Marcel Beaudoin <marcel.beaud...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Fromhttp://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drdd/20080201a
>>>
>>>> Monsters don't need or use this system unless the DM has special reason
>>>> to do so. A monster at 0 hp is dead
>>>
>>> O.k. I hate this separation of Monster v.s. PC rules. Everyone
>>> playing by the same rules is one of the things that I really liked
>>> about 3.x vs. previous editions.
>>
>>I think this is a prime example of what the 4e designers call 'false
>>parallelism'.
>>
>>What's the use of monsters dying at -10 instead of at 0? In the
>>current game, once they reach zero, all it takes is one more round of
>>attacks by the PCs to make sure they're really dead.
>>
>>So, scrapping the -10 rule and killing monsters at 0 HP just gets rid
>>of an extraneous combat round.
>
> This means that you can't bind the wounds of one (or more) of the
> goblins that you were fighting so that you can interrogate them after
> the battle. This means that you can't fight the guards honorably
> without unnecessary killing (as they die at zero and there is no
> chance to save them).
Oh, bullshit. Perhaps you missed the part above where it says "unless the
DM has special reason to do so." Interrogations and honorable combat are
both reasons to do so.
> If the game is just a wargame with 'cut scenes' provided by the GM
> then this works. If you are presumed to be playing in a more detailed
> and interconnected world then I don't think it works at all well.
Simulationism and D&D do not mix particularly well.
> Stopping to bind an honorable adversary's wounds during or after
> battle may turn an enemy into an ally...
So? Who is stopping you? If you choose to bind wounds, you can bind
wounds. If you don't, they silently bleed out. Where is the problem? Even
now, I do not know a single GM who tracks negative hit points and monster
stabilization on every encounter. On important encounters, sure, but not on
every mook that strolls by and gets beat down.
> I'm afraid that the 4e changes suggest that D&D is being moved closer
> to where warhammer is...a miniatures combat game with RPG trappings.
Yeah, because D&D is *nothing* like a miniatures combat game with RPG
trappings, and never was, right?
> I can see how this would probably work well for WOTC as they would sell
> lots of miniatures
Hint: they are *already* selling lots of miniatures. Their miniatures line
makes many times as much money as their RPG books.
> and running tournament games would be simpler as
> there would be less GM ajudication...
That is a good thing. Clear rules create consistent worlds.
Kyle Wilson
Noone is tracking which combatant is alive or dead when they fall. The
information needed to figure out what is going on isn't preseved for
use when the combat ends. Certainly the GM can make an arbitrary call
(or just roll a die...30% chance that someone lived???). Or maybe a
formal rule that the party has to pre-declare that they might want to
keep someone going?
>> If the game is just a wargame with 'cut scenes' provided by the GM
>> then this works. If you are presumed to be playing in a more detailed
>> and interconnected world then I don't think it works at all well.
>
>Simulationism and D&D do not mix particularly well.
Seems as if the company is pushing towards a more streamlined,
wargame-ish feel. Just my current impression from the information
that has come out. It seems as if the best games are played in an
environment where the enemies aren't just targets to be killed. The
discussions surrounding 4th ed seem to be moving the game towards such
assumptions. Enemies don't need any more detail than their combat
related stats. A given enemy needs pretty much one 'thing' that they
do. Enemies 'pop' when they fall unless someone decides otherwise in
advance. Sounds like a move towards wargaming style play to me.
>> Stopping to bind an honorable adversary's wounds during or after
>> battle may turn an enemy into an ally...
>
>So? Who is stopping you? If you choose to bind wounds, you can bind
>wounds. If you don't, they silently bleed out. Where is the problem? Even
>now, I do not know a single GM who tracks negative hit points and monster
>stabilization on every encounter. On important encounters, sure, but not on
>every mook that strolls by and gets beat down.
At least by the RAW (as currently imperfectly revealed for 4th ed) it
seems as if the rules indicate that any enemy that wasn't 'tagged' as
significant by the GM ahead of time dies at 0 hp. Certainly, noone is
likely to track the bleed-out process for general mooks in combat,
but the rules indicate that it is nominally happening behind the
scenes. What I've heard of the 4th ed rules in this area suggests
that by the rules as written, the players don't get to decide after
the fact whether they're interested in someone. Houe rules are likely
to change this, but as currently discussed, the city guardsmen you're
fighting are dead at 0 automatically while thier seargeant might be
tagged to bleed out...
>> I'm afraid that the 4e changes suggest that D&D is being moved closer
>> to where warhammer is...a miniatures combat game with RPG trappings.
>
>Yeah, because D&D is *nothing* like a miniatures combat game with RPG
>trappings, and never was, right?
It started life that way. In its current form, the best games aspire
to be more. I believe that WOTC may very well do better financially
by taking the D&D brand and repositioning it against Wahammer 40K and
Warhammer fantasy. This would change how most people approach the
game, but would (I suspect) make it more accessible to many. Print
scenario books and sell lots of miniatures. Down-play the messy
social aspects of the game. Makes it much easier to have tournaments
and such.
>> I can see how this would probably work well for WOTC as they would sell
>> lots of miniatures
>
>Hint: they are *already* selling lots of miniatures. Their miniatures line
>makes many times as much money as their RPG books.
No question about that. As such, it would seem to make financial
sense for them to further focus the game on selling minis. We'll have
to wait for 4ed to hit the streets before we'll know how that changes
push the game.
>> and running tournament games would be simpler as
>> there would be less GM ajudication...
>
>That is a good thing. Clear rules create consistent worlds.
Certainly a move away from role-playing gaming would add consistency
as the referee simply enforces the rules and runs published
(presumably pre-balanced) scenarios. A GM is expected to ajudicate
issues that the rules don't cover. For a true miniatures game, you
can't do things that the rules don't cover... I think that it will be
interesting to see where this goes. Warhammer makes good money on its
minis and seems to involve much less creative overhead for the books
(as there are fewer). Hopefully for the current community, they'll
strive to support both modes of play.
drow
> Noone is tracking which combatant is alive or dead when they fall.
nah, who cares? if a monster falls to 0 hp, it's out of combat, and
isn't getting back in unless the enemy cleric heals it or something.
it's effectively dead.
if the party wants an only-mostly-dead prisoner after the battle is
over, the DM gives them a bloody prisoner.
> Seems as if the company is pushing towards a more streamlined,
> wargame-ish feel.
as opposed to the complex wargame-ish feel it has now, yes.
--
n_n n_n dr...@bin.sh (CARRIER LOST) <http://www.bin.sh/>
|"|n_n_n|"| ---------------------------------------------------------------
| | " " | | "Ryan Dancey doesn't *do* anything. He's got epic levels in
|_|_[T]_|_| psion. He simply wills people into action."
-- der_kluge
tussock
> if the party wants an only-mostly-dead prisoner after the battle is
> over, the DM gives them a bloody prisoner.
If the player wants to hit, why bother rolling the d20? If the player
doesn't want his character to die, why have rules for killing him? If PCs
are easy to bring back, and hard to finish, you can be *damn sure* the
NPCs and monsters will be too, at least in my game.
If the rules are too damn fiddly to use for NPCs, *fix the rules*.
tussock
>> Mart van de Wege wrote:
>>
>>> Since this a house rule about as trivial as 'death at -CON instead of
>>> -10' that you *do* advocate, I don't see your problem here, frankly.
>>
>> The fact that I'd have to create a house rule for this is the problem.
>
> Again, since you seem to have no problem using the very common -CON
> house rule right now, I must conclude that you are just whining for
> whining's sake.
Learn some logic, 'tard. That people disagree with two different
things does not make their disagreement with one of those things invalid.
--
tussock
tussock
> tussock wrote:
>>> tussock wrote:
>>
>>>> Ransoms get paid,
>>>
>>> Considering the insane amounts of wealth D&D PCs carry, isn't it often
>>> a safer bet to fight to the death on the off chance you might win?
>>
>> No. Depends who you're fighting, but a ransom will normally be a
>> year's rents, or about 10% of your worth. If you carry all your worldly
>> goods on your back, /some/ folk will strip you of it, but they know
>> that makes them an outlaw. Outlaws with lots of other people's gear
>> attract all the wrong sorts of attention.
>>
>> I've had high level NPCs fetch back or replace the PCs gear after
>> they had it unfairly taken from them; that's what being part of the
>> larger community is for.
>
> So, waylaying and robbing an adventurer makes you an outlaw, hunted by
> all,
At least by those with whom the PCs are allied to, or in service of,
or have owing them service. That can quickly become most of the people in
a city, or at least one major power group within it.
> but kidnapping and ransoming them is what? Taxation?
In a way, yes. Depends who's land your standing on when it happens,
how many laws you've broken, what all the relivent treaties required of
you and of them.
> In any case, the average mid-level adventurer's gear is worth enough
> money for a bandit to retire on,
That doesn't even happen in the real world, dude.
> and it's not exactly difficult to move the items, or else adventurers
> wouldn't be able to sell them.
The core rules for PCs selling gear isn't a valid economic
simulation. That the game allows all findings to be sold freely is the
problem here, after all. PCs take everything, untaxed, no one cares where
it came from, and there's no repurcussions they can't handle. As if.