"Don't Die on me, man!"

rules

#1

I got a question. Let’s say I am playing a healer. I go up to a guy who has fallen. & got a 3 on the rounds he has until perm a death. If I am there. Do I have to do “don’t die on me” or can I just heal him up?


#2

There’s no have-to in RP. But it’s always a great thing if you roleplay around your healing. Afaik “don’t die on me” (as term from the Core Book) refers to stabilizing a friend if no help is available.

But these are just my two cents - talk to your GM as well! :slight_smile:


#3

I’ve done both and I’m leaning towards they need to be stable to be healed.


#4

You can just heal him up.

Stabilizing a person’s wounds involves putting pressure on the wound, wrapping someone with a bandage, and encouraging them to pull through. It requires INT or WIS to know or intuit how to get a wounded person to a stable condition. And stabilizing a person simply stops the dying timer (at least in 2e as written).

Magic bypasses all of those mundane things. If you a heal a person for six, they instantly get up with six hit points.


#5

I let my players heal DYING characters because they have to roll an ATTEMPT for the healing anyway and there is still the possibility of failure, and therefore, excitement. This is no different than making a roll for “Don’t die on me man!”, but simply more effective. This also okay because someone bothered to learn that healing spell, so they should be able to use it.

If many characters have automatic healing abilities due to LOOT or whatever, this might remove pressure and excitement from DYING but I wouldn’t change the rules because that would make me an A-hole GM.

There are many different ways to pressure players without changing the rules underneath them. This is slightly tangent but should be talked about.


Designing with character powers, loot and resources in mind
#6

The first time I heard of a DM working with the rules to create meaningful obstacles was Bruce Cordell in Heart of Moonfang Spire. The spire was built such that it could be scaled with difficulty, but a character with Fly could just fly in and open it from the inside. That module used a lot of 3e rules in that way: anticipating what spells and abilities characters and monsters had and building challenges around them. I agree that challenging players’ abilities rather than punishing them for having abilities is a worthy topic.


#7

If it matters, I will second @Alex as that is exactly how I was going to word it LOL


#8

I usually play it as once you have a Dying Dice in effect, you can only be Stabilized to 1 HP. After that, you can be Healed.

This keeps the pressure of tactical decisions up DURING the fight which reinforces the meta of “The Table is a Team” and “Getting Hit Hard Costs More Than Just Some HP” mentality.

And of course, I’m a little stingy with Heal Magic, which reinforces the value of when to RECOVER as a tactical decision (as well as putting points in CON).


#9

Can you describe how your stinginess manifests? I’m curious!


#10

@Geoffrey_Nelson
The main thing is rarely dropping powerful Heal Loot.

When I do drop Heal Loot, I usually make its effect simply a “Free Recover Action” and limited number of uses. (This isn’t just a “Less is More” Lazy GM thing. I do it because it reduces cognitive load and notes-checking time, and Recover is a Fantastic, Elegant Rule that just makes sense to re-use whenever possible rather than submit the table to never-ending “complexity creep” just so we keep buying more books or whatever. Sidebar: I also often give a Free Recover as a part of a Nat 20 bonus when it makes sense.)

If I do drop Heal Loot that does more than a Free Recover, (ie d6 or d8) it’s usually “single use” or “once per session” or explicitly tied to a certain location.

If the PCs want more powerful Heals than that, they need to get that from their Milestone and Path Advancement Loot. This helps keep the focus on PCs as the coolest thing in the Game–but even the coolest PC still has to make tough decisions and the whole party will live or die by those decisions.

NOW here’s a long digression on my theory of how to apply some brain science to the Headgame of Easy Heals:
If PCs know healing is plentiful and powerful, they lose the sense of risk and tension quicker and that lack of risk tends to encourage stupid stuff more than heroic stuff in the long run. ie, Easy Heals Diminish the Threat of Any Actual Loss, and therefore contribute to a less fun game for everyone.

So what I often do in conjunction with Stingy Heals is throw in a few dashes of Stingy Protections as well. Now before you rear back and say “Well, those are mechanically and effectively the same thing as Healing before the Fact”… I know it, you know it, the PCs know it, but our lazy stupid neuroscience brains don’t know it. The reactionary lizard brain sees the need to be protected as even more of a sign of how dangerous things really are. And one more thing to feel the sting of losing when it’s gone…And thus gets you a lot more engaged in the situational risks.

But this still needs to be somewhat stingy most of the time. And especially I prefer to keep the cognitive math load down, so I mostly use ablative protections “Here’s X amount of Free damage you can take, but when it’s gone, it’s gone.” This doesn’t just keep the Procedural/Math brain out of things, it actively contributes to the Scarcity Mentality that creates stress, drama and engagement (by leveraging our inherent Loss Avoidance biases).

Compare to: “avoid so much damage per hit” type of Protection, where every time a PC gets hurt, they have the opportunity to get jarred from Scarcity Mentality and the Presence of Danger by pausing to think through the rules logic and mitigation math. Worse yet, it opens the door to breaking the flow of a scene for the whole table by wondering out loud in between other people’s turns: “Did I take the 2 points off when the Orc hit me with his sword two rounds ago? I know I did it for the arrows. Should I just add those HP back in now, as not really lost?” or “Does the Boss count as a Hell Demon or an Abyss Demon for purposes of my Amulet of Protection from Hellfire -1?”

So when I have a narrative in game reason to want the Big Damn Heroes to feel a little more threatened, or aware of the Dangers of the world, like before a big Campaign Finale Fight, they might be blessed by a priest with a temporary bonus Heart. In lesser events, it could be anything from “the overturned furniture will protect whoever’s behind it from the next [rolls d6] incoming damage” to “The Ice God’s Token you found has one use per session, it allows you to completely ignore 1 source of Cold Damage.”
(Another Sidebar: These kinds of Protections can also be a benefit of a Nat 20 roll… or given to an enemy when the PC rolls a Nat 1…)


#11

I am proud to declare that, Lon, the Mad Scientist of ICRPG, wins this thread.


#12

Whoa, I love these discussions that from from simple rule-checks around here haha. It’s all about sharing what you do and reading what others do so you can always improve your game. Hell, the D&D5e community could learn a couple of things from ya’ll (SHOTS FIRED!!!)

I’m gonna throw my 2 cents at @Khan, I also let people “just heal” the dying directly to fighting strength with curative items or magic, since they chose that item/power instead of something else, and that speaks volumes about selflessness and team playing.

I have a mindset of “BUFFING > NERFING”. Give the players cool stuff, powerful stuff, useful stuff, things that other people might consider OP. Those things are NOTHING without a group of players making a strategy to use it, they earn it. Sure, having certain sense of scarcity can make the game more tense, but you as a GM already have immense power over what is known and encountered, how much damage, how difficult or simply how much narrative power you exercise over the game.

That said, I also believe that everything a player does in the game, must be a strategic choice. There SHOULD be no “right” choice, no one way to play that’s strictly better. And here I want to (friendly!) confront @Lon’s perspective haha. I’ve found out that, the more you limit the players, the more they get into the mindset of “playing optimal” that I so much hate lol.

That cool amulet you have with only one use? They’re gonna save it for later only to never use it. Healing people is hard? No one’s gonna take the healer role.

This leads us to planning. In time, I’ve found that a sense of scarcity makes you plan and play your character in a selfish way, makes you want to spend AS LITTLE as you can, you start to fear the moment you will run out of things and be forced to suffer the consequences. I as a GM, I’m not interested in teaching people lessons about materialism haha so I bite the bullet and totally skip that mindset.

I say that a good strategic choice is not “should I use this NOW?”, but “should I use THIS thing over this OTHER thing?”. Let the GM handle challenge through his dice throwing and planning, while providing the players enough options and freedom to make any character build viable and satisfying.

Just last weekend, we where playing our weekly Fallout campaign and a relevant situation happened. I was planning on “nerfing” the First Aid Kit, as it basically allowed “free healing” during combat, as the user could make a #Medicine (INT) attempt and heal a close target with tool effort (d6). The three party members had preciously planned their “build” composition, a Gangster (LCK/CHA+Firearms, DPS type), a Bruiser (STR/CON+Explosives and Melee, a Frontline type), and a Technical handy-girl (INT/PER+Medicine and Science, a Support type). During a tough combat encounter with some chem-crazied raiders, the tech support player felt a little annoyed by her build, as she wanted to heal the bruiser who was tanking some wild dogs and taking heavy damage. She told us that, while she kept the bruiser up with her d6 healing almost each round, she felt that just shooting her laser pistol had a greater impact on the encounter since it made the enemy go down faster, coupled with the swinginess she experienced from her d6 effort die, she felt as if her actions could be “better” spend just attacking each turn.

I ended that encounter regretting my thoughts of nerfing the first aid kit. Later she worked with me a lvl up reward that added +2 to her tool effort, thus making the choice between “provide extra damage” vs “heal the wounded” a less biased and more viable one.

Sorry for the wall of text (again lol), I’ll also add that I let players crawl to close distances and take limited actions while dying instead of just going K.O. which I think is another example of not limiting the players providing more strategical and tactical choices.


#13

Appreciate the feedback.

You might have misunderstood a piece of what I said, though.

PC Heal abilities work fine. They have to make the call when to use them rather than all the other cool stuff they can do. Stuff off the Milestone and Path that Heals will usually be the most powerful healing available to 80% of the entire game world, in more heroic genres. But don’t expect to find Powerful Heal Loot laying around in the world, generally.

In practice, this means the PCs have to rely on each other against a cold hard world. It also works out to the opposite of minmax-ing so far. (Thank Hastur!) Not discussed above but still a factor: the Power of Hero Coins or Surge dice, which I use liberally. This is still keeping the focus on the PCs being Big Damn Heroes who do cool shit others can’t, and emphasizes how crucial the PC’s decisions are. Works out to the opposite of feeling restrictive, at least at my tables.

ETA: Also, just want to clarify that I was explaining a tendency that is part of a balanced system of interlocking elements. It shouldn’t be read as any kind of extreme or directive, rather should be part of a constantly changing variety and balance that keeps things fresh, in that “the same but different” way that Hollywood and other industries have figured out is what people keep coming back for. :grinning:


#14

Kind of related, not wanting to add clutter to the home page! When you do heal someone from death, I was thinking that it might be a good moment to award a heart stone. What ever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. Has anyone done this at all? Might limit it a bit to a fate roll if they get one or not. Otherwise the game will turn into lots of LEROY moments :joy:


#15

Not like that, but if my healer rolls a Nat 20 when making a heal, sometimes I award the recipient a heart stone. As in, the holy power of this particular heal is so powerful, it not only restores you, it also makes you more hardy. I’ve done that several times in campaigns, much to the delight of my players.


#16

This is great @Alex . It’s always cool to make lasting effects off of a Nat 20 for anything that heals or aids imo. Building on it, a Nat 20 roll on buffing a PCs STR could give them a permanent +1 to the stat etc. (Of course you could consider the reverse when a Nat 1 is rolled too~! :sunglasses:)


#17

Oh, I also award +1 to a stat at times for amazing Nat 20 rolls in the moment. On the spot rewards are some of my favorite in the game.


#18

I’ve been in a few of those games. It’s seriously an amazing moment at the table, we went wild when it happened. :raised_hands::heart:


#19

All I care more about not getting a TPK then having a crazy moment at the table. So if I can just do a heal & not having to stick around a extra round. So I can save somebody else. That is gravy to the team. When I am the healer I want to help people to keep them involved in the battle not have to say “sorry I am down I can help” my job as the much needed healer is to save first, fight last. But I am finding a lot of ways as a priest I can help in the battle without fighting. I think a lot of people miss out just using the core book how good a priest is. FYI as a fighter if you could keep the fight no farther then a full movement away. It would be nice for us healers.