Page 82 of the Dungeon Masters Guide has several different sections worthy of comment, but, for the current post, I'm focusing on Gary Gygax's discussion of zero hit points. Whereas Volume 1 of OD&D clearly states that hit points are "the number of points of damage the character could sustain before death," (emphasis mine), the DMG instead states:
When any creature is brought to 0 hit points (optionally as low as –3 hit points if from the same blow which brought the total to 0), it is unconscious. In each of the next succeeding rounds 1 additional (negative) point will be lost until –10 is reached and the creature dies.
When I was young, this was a widely quoted – and used – rule, though I'd imagine most of us had no idea precisely where it was found. I don't object to it in principle, though I can't help but wonder why it's necessary.
Such loss and death are caused from bleeding, shock, convulsions, non-respirations, and similar causes. It ceases immediately on any round a friendly creature administers aid to the unconscious one. Aid consists of binding wounds, starting respiration, administering a draught (spirits, healing potion, etc.), or otherwise doing whatever is necessary to restore life.
I find it interesting that Gygax mentions "administering a draught," since it brings to mind the "liquid courage" house rule that was quite popular in the early days of the OSR, though, as we shall see, it's not at all similar.
Any character brought to 0 (or fewer) hit points and then revived will remain in a coma for 1–6 turns. Thereafter, he or she must rest for a full week, minimum. He or she will be incapable of any activity other than necessary to move slowly to a place of rest and east and sleep when there. The character cannot attack, defend, cast spells, use magic devices, carry burdens, run, study, research, or do anything else. This is true even if cure spells and/or healing potions are given to him or her, although if a heal spell is bestowed the prohibition no longer applies.
Now, it becomes clearer what Gygax has in mind. The –10 hit point rule serves a kind of ablative shield, a final protection against death – but one that comes with a significant price. A character who escapes death in this fashion can't simply get up, dust himself off, and keep on adventuring. Instead, he earns unconsciousness for up to an hour, followed by a week of recuperation, during which time he can't do much of anything. All things considered, I think this is fair.
If any character reaches a state of –6 or greater negative points before being revived, this could indicate scarring or the loss of some member, if you so choose. For example, a character struck by a fireball and then treated when at –9 might have horrible scar tissue on exposed areas of flesh – hands, arms, neck, face.
Since it's optional, I can't really complain about this. However, I still have some reservations, largely owing to the abstract nature of hit points. D&D's combat system has never prioritized "realism," instead emphasizing ease and speed of use. That's one of the reasons the system works so well for many gamers. Introducing the possibility of scarring or maiming seems to run counter to the spirit of the combat system.
I love these Random Roll posts...what a great idea. When I played AD&D as a teen, I don't think my group paid much attention to the "whys" of the underlying math, but I recall us using a house rule that you could go to a negative number of hp equal to your CON score. I wonder why, mathematically, Gygax chose arbitrary -3 and -10 benchmarks to represent the thresholds for every character, regardless of class or bodily endurance?
ReplyDeleteI don't recall us rendering a character useless for a week after dropping to 0 hp, either. That also seems arbitrary, given the deadliness of that era's system. It seems like there would be a substantial difference in recovery time required between a knock on the noggin versus taking a fireball to the face. I think we hand-waved that rule to keep the game going.
We hand-waved that rule too. If you received magical healing, that was powerful enough to get you back in the action.
DeleteHonestly, the -10hp rule served as a safety net to spare us the trouble and tedium of stopping all play to roll up a new character and insert them into the third level of a dungeoncrawl. Or worse, having to stop all adventuring to carry a comatose PC back to town for a week.
I don't remember Conan's exploits devoting so much time to rest and recuperation. And Frodo only need bedrest from the Morgul blade wound, and after enduring the Ring for so long.
We played the game to experience the thrills of action and adventure. Not the boredom of convalescence.
I like 0HP= You're out, and possibly done for. Zero is Zero, no need to deal with the negative numbers stuff, IMO. I also like the idea of modern "death saving throws"- I adopted them from 4E when I saw them there years ago. But, I keep them a pretty hard save to make- 16+, CON bonus/penalty applies to the roll. 3 Strikes, you're out. If you make your save and become conscious you are limited to one "thing" per round--movement at reduced rate, a sword swing, etc until you've rested up for an hour.
ReplyDeleteBecause I keep magical healing uncommon/rare, the 3 and out rule works well. Nothing bothers me more* in D&D than Combat Medic Clerics and spamming potions and wands of healing.
* With the possible exception of how screwed Fighters are in every edition except for OD&D+GH, and 4E.
"how screwed Fighters are in every edition" Why do you say this?
DeleteBecause Casters become far more powerful in combat as mid to high levels levels are achieved. Fighters must rely on the DMs being generous with giving out magic weapons and armor in order for them to even stay somewhat relevant.
DeleteBut fighters start out as the most immediately powerful of the classes, the bulwark of any party (and weapon specialization can make them even more powerful); they might "level off" power- and versatility-wise when compared to magic-users at comparable levels, but magic-users still need someone around to protect them when they've run out of spells and/or charges. And successful fighters don't need to have an especially generous DM: if they've accumulated enough money, they can _pay_ for someone to make them more potent weapons and armour (assuming comradely magic-users won't do it for them) if they can't find them.
DeleteThis is one of those interesting topics that is contentious because of divergent playstyles. If your group only plays one character apiece and really focus on that PC, getting slapped with a week of downtime can seem punishing. However if you maintain a stable of different characters (as we know was common in the early days), one character getting a week of downtime is merely some minor bookkeeping.
ReplyDeleteIt works the other way too, though. If you’re running multiple characters, the loss of one can be withstood until the next session.
DeleteGary pretty much considered the last 1 to 4 hit points to be the raw value of the physical body, so if you suffer a final hit that takes you to -4 or worse, well, that's a full solid sword slash or arrow to the eye or being split neck to gut by an axe... as dead as can be.
ReplyDeleteIf however you ended up at 0 to -3, you are merely knocked unconscious, and then bleeding out.
It emulates a factor in fiction and life that, hitherto, D&D had missed -- being rendered unconscious or non-combatant by damage, rather than being killed outright. Makes perfect sense to add something like this to the rules.
He balanced out the rule by making unconsciousness be something that required time for convalescence. I think the amount of time is too much... too realistic, rather than literary inspired. Conan was knocked out several times (once he did it to himself by running into a wall while drunk). I think a penalty, say, -2 to hit and to saving throws, until the character has rested or been magically healed up to regain all hit points, would have been more apt.
Today with Labyrinth Lord I use a variant of the DCC "roll the body over" rule. First, if negative damage > Level plus Con Bonus, you die instantly. Otherwise, you are unconscious at 0 hit points. When an ally or enemy rolls over the body to see if you are alive or dead, you roll a saving throw versus Death (with modifier based on Constitution). If you save, you are alive with 1 hit point, if you fail, you are dead. Also, you are wounded (-1 penalty to hit and to saves) until you heal up to full hit points (you can gain multiple wounds in this way, so they can add up).
"It emulates a factor in fiction and life that, hitherto, D&D had missed -- being rendered unconscious or non-combatant by damage, rather than being killed outright. Makes perfect sense to add something like this to the rules."
DeleteAgree.
D&D (and the vast majority of RPGs that came after it) are absolutely wretched at modeling injury and unconsciousness. Barring house rules or special attacks, your characters are just as effective in every way at one HP as they are at full, no matter how many sword blows, dragon bites, and fireballs you took getting there. It's not only a poor way to model trauma, it's downright boring. And D&D's success led to most designers emulating the system with some degree of tweaking, like Runequest's locational hit points and mechanics for disabling or losing limbs. Me, I'll take "wound threshold" mechanics like WEG Star Wars over HP attrition any day of the week, although even it isn't terrific.
DeleteAnd I've yet to see a game (even the ones that claim to be pulp-genre-specific) that comes anyhwere close to actual pulp stories when it comes to getting knocked out. For many writers and subgenres the hero(es) are practically required to be bludgeoned into unconsciousness at least once a story, only to be left for dead or awake imprisoned or in some new peril - or some lady's boudoir, asoften as not.
Heck, their used to be a website out there that tracked how many times Doc Savage and his pals were KO'd in each book. Never took any of them days to recover from a concussion...
"D&D (and the vast majority of RPGs that came after it) are absolutely wretched at modeling injury and unconsciousness."
DeleteTrue. Is that a vestigial remain from wargaming?
Critical fumble charts did have a sadistic and arbitrary stab at injury effects that warmed the heart of every Chaotic Evil teenage DM.
@ Etrimyn The wargaming roots might be the cause, the majority of such rules have a binary system for model status - you're either fighting or out of action, often without any consideration for why you're out. Dead, fled, wounded and seeking help, plundered the baggage and legging it, it's all the same to the game mechanics. Somewhere in the translation to an RPG the idea of being "out of action" for reasons other than death (or serious injury, once negative HP were introduced) mostly vanished.
DeleteThe morale rules for NPCs and monsters are a much more clear sign of the old wargaming rules IMO. It seems like the passage of time has largely erased that sort of thing in more modern D&D, particularly post-TSR. Leads to monsters being unrealistically willing to fight to the death IME, and the PCs tend to react in kind, forgetting that flight or offering terms or begging for mercy are options.
Thanks.
DeleteI love morale rolls for monsters in D&D. Also, reaction rolls.
Yes, the Morale rules worked great to simulate monster and NPC non-death combat attrition status; IIRC, the original Chainmail rules included different kinds of results, from simple morale break to walking wounded, etc. But no similar system existed for player characters due to player agency, which led to most combats being do or die... Which I think is what led to the development of the bleeding out rule. Many younger groups back in the day did not know the meaning of the word, "flee," even in the face of six balrogs.
DeleteWhich RPGs extended morale to PCs? Fantasy Wargaming did but I’m guessing there were earlier ones.
DeleteThere are a couple of ambiguities here that have caused some confusion (and occasional disputes):
ReplyDelete1) What exactly is required to "administer aid" in order to stabilize an unconscious character and stop further hp loss - is it just another character stating that they're spending a round "binding wounds" (i.e. anyone can do it) or is actual hp recovery (via spell, potion, the barbarian's first aid skill, etc.) required? I always used to require the latter, but it seems like most other folks I've played with go with the former.
2) Does the character has to be brought back above 0 hp to regain consciousness or does "revived" just means stabilized and the character will wake from their coma in 1-6 turns even if they still have a negative hp total? This one is the opposite in that I've usually gone with the latter but most other folks seem to go with the former.
Either way some healing magic is likely to be required to get an unconscious character stabilized and back on their feet, which means the cleric PCs tend to save their spells for this contingency even though in most instances they'd probably have been better off using them before the character dropped below 0 in order to prevent them from dropping below 0.
we handwaved. if you have HP, you can do things. the main threat was TPKs, not rolling up one more character. we even gave "Dying Swings" and "two unknown potions at once" to give players a chance. truthfully, both players and DM were dumb and foolhardy ;)
ReplyDelete