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Death Saves

Lore

In Chardenfell, mortals are fragile creatures. Hit Points (HP) do not represent how put together a PCs physical body is. A PC at 1 HP is not bleeding out, missing limbs, nor do they necessarily have other grievous wounds. Instead, they are merely out of stamina, out of position, and out of luck. A PC's HP is what they are using to prevent their physical body from being seriously wounded. Once they run out of HP, they are vulnerable to being killed. A PC's death saving throw failures instead represent their true "health", and all PCs get 3 failures before they die. Each failure should be accompanied by some physical description of how the PC has been hurt. Maybe a broken nose for instance.

Rule Changes

While a PC is at 0 HP, they do NOT make death saving throws at the start of their turn, nor do they fall unconscious. Instead, they gain the "Death's Door" condition "they are at Death's Door". This condition is removed when the PC is restored back to positive HP.

Death's Door

A PC is only "at Death's Door" while they have 0 HP. A PC at Death's Door has the following penalties:

  1. On their turn, they can only take an Action or a Bonus Action, not both.
  2. They cannot take reactions.
  3. Their movement speed is halved.
  4. Whenever they take damage, they take a Death Saving Throw failure and their HP remains 0.
    1. Crits count as 2 failures.
    2. When a PC has 3 failures, they die.
    3. Damage exceeding the PC's max HP instantly kills them.
    4. The character also suffers a cosmetic injury determined by the GM.
      1. This injury should generally not impose additional numeric penalties.

Semi-Permanent Failures

Death saving throw failures are not removed when a character is stabilized or regains HP. They can be removed by a trained magical healer attending to you over the course of a long rest, or a trained mundane healer over the course of an extended period of downtime dependent on the nature of your injuries.

Especially powerful healing magic can heal the injuries representing failed death saves instantly, however. The level of magic required to heal a death saving throw failure instantly is on the order of a supreme healing potion (1000 GP, healing 60 HP)

Generally, death saving throw failures last until the underlying injuries are healed. Some injuries may leave permanent scars, however, such as a severed finger.