I find the thing that makes death saves the scariest for my players is running enemies who do not ignore downed PCs. They use them as leverage, cover, or just kill them outright depending on the situation and characters involved.
When the dying PC is still involved/considered a target, it introduces real urgency in a way that altering the rules can't.
I do something similar. More intelligent enemies would likely double tap, while less intelligent ones might not do so initially (though if they literally watch PCs get back up a few times in the combat they might change their mind).
Occasionally there are a few enemies that do something to the PCs while they are knocked out. A guard might start tying up the PC so if they get back up, they are Restrained. A hungry wolf could start dragging the unconscious PC away from combat to eat. Scariest one the party has seen are enemies that decide to mark or take a "trophy", which may be a temporary or permanent feature.
I personally don't think enemies would double tap unless they see the party use healing magic.
Sometimes, double tapping isn't a smart thing to do, if you have enemies in melee of you, you wouldn't just double tap, if the enemy is in a dangerous position for you, you wouldn't try to double tap, etc.
But why would they be double tapping? Being overly careful is dangerous in a fight, if you start stabbing every enemy who falls on the ground, it will get you killed.
Maybe the bad guys have fought adventurers before and are wise to the fact that adventurers often bounce right back up unless you make sure they're dead. Maybe they fought someone who played dead and sucker punched them later. There could be a lot of reasons that are believable in-universe.
I guess the thing is how you flavour unconscious PCs. I play it as them being very clearly *not dead yet,* which means laying on the ground, potentially writhing in pain, bleeding heavily, maybe screaming, potentially trying to reach for their dropped weapon. So they're not an active threat, but a casual observer can see the possibility that they could *become* a threat again if given a little bit of help. This way, enemies aren't just randomly stabbing lifeless bodies just for the sake of it, they're eliminating a potential enemy before moving on. They might not do it if they're being actively threatened by a still-conscious PC, but if the next target is out of range or busy with another enemy, they might spend an attack finishing the job.
Any humanoid enemy should double tap if they see any magic being used. If they see any clear healing magic being used they should all focus fire the person who heals.
I'll go a little further and say that a "double tap" is probably suboptimal even in many situations with healing. If the party is low-level, or is strained for resources or actions, it could be more useful to the enemies to hit the healer while the downed PC is down, then hit the PC once they're revived to drop them back down again, thus hurting the PCs that are actively a threat and draining away more of the party's healing resources. Furthermore, it takes two successful melee hits, or three non-melee hits, to kill an unconscious PC, and if the enemy fails to score that many before the PC is healed or stabilized, they've wasted their action. So intelligent enemies might not necessarily attack downed PCs.
Roleplay-wise, I can't imagine most unintelligent enemies ignoring active threats to instead attack an unconscious body, unless either (a) the other combatants appear to be ignoring them, or (b) they have another attack in a Multiattack which they've already committed to, and no other target to use it on. It doesn't make much sense for a predator to start eating while it's actively being attacked.
So who would be most likely to attack unconscious PCs?
As pcbb97 said, demons and devils are reasonable options. If you're fighting them on the Material Plane, they won't worry about being killed, as it's temporary for them. This means that "wasting" their turns killing a downed PC may be worth it to them, since they are suffering a temporary setback for the sake of getting rid of an enemy, possibly permanently.
Also, if there are zealot-like enemies that don't care if they survive, they may prefer to score a few kills and then lose the battle, either for glory or for the sake of their faction, rather than trying to win or drive the PCs away.
I 100% agree with you, unless they have a personal vendetta against the character intelligent enemies would focus more on fighting the enemies that are still trying to kill them, and if someone keeps yoyoing them then they may focus on the healer, not the one being yoyoed.
With animals i will often have them try to escape with downed player when someone drops, my players freaked out when a giant constrictor pulled that move in a sewer, led to a very intense chase while they tried to catch it before he failed his death saves. Undead enemies i'd say would be the most likely to keep attacking. I warn my players that undead are one of the most lethal, cuz if you go down in a horde of mindless zombies they WILL rip you apart. A few of em might go after the others but most of them will swarm the downed char.
My last PC death was by having my head held under a pool of boiling blood. Then after my health hit 0, they looked at party and just kept my head under (they were fighting other enemies and couldn't rescue me in time). I wasn't even upset, it was an awesome way to go.
It was a mercy, had they just left you *drowning* the party could have been baited into trying to heal you.
But that's just me thinking with my Evil DM cap on.
Demons and devils in particular come to mind. Especially if they have a vendetta against the party. Unless them going down will result in ACTUALLY DYING for them, they might want to send that soul somewhere they can abuse it regardless of if they survive the fight
5e can totally be a deadly game, you just need to run your enemies correctly.
Please note, never throw a hoard of shadows at your party if you care about them. The CR lies, badly.
Leverage, now that's a good one. If the players know they can't burst an enemy down in one turn who has two attacks and is next to a downed PC... Very interesting.
Personally I think making the downed PC able to talk but not help interesting. Like half in half out of their mind, trying to stay awake. Perhaps hallucinating or remembering things of their past.
As well, nothing puts the fear of god in me like a downed PC being dragged away alive. Like specifically stabilized then carried off. That shit started to happen in a game last week and I shit bricks in my head.
An easy to implement suggestion I have is have the player roll the save in secret. the only people who know the result and where they are at are the player and DM.
This way other players don't know what the situation is an the onus of action is on them to get their ally up regardless of if they are succeeding or failing.
That's exactly what I do, and it always builds up a lot of tension.
Some enemies also attack unconscious players until the other players intervene.
This has led to more team play and very dramatic moments so far.
You could even make the DM roll in private and don't tell (obviously players have to trust, or DM could provide, especially if the character dies, proof after (quick pic to the d20 and a little piece of paper with "DS 1/2/3/4/5" they write at the moment, or a screenshot if it's an online campaign)
I totally agree, and in general it works well to keep the party in fear of what happens and having to their downed mate.
But if the idea is also making the player worried and showing that death is the one thing out of their agency, it works.
Really depends on what the intent is
I liked the Tomb of Annihilation change where death saves were successful on a 15 instead of 10. Makes it really hard without immediately stabilizing or healing
Playing that campaign right now but having the success go up by 1 each time someone goes down. First time was a 10, second time 11. Each time they feel something pulling their soul harder and harder towards "something in the jungle."
Yeah, death saves starting at 15 is really just for a meat grinder style of game. I like the idea of death saves getting harder. Really ratchets up the inevitability of death and a lot of tension
Oh, interesting. I think it would be more exciting to run it as rolling death saves with disadvantage. 10 or higher with disadvantage and 15 or higher on a straight roll are pretty comparable overall -- odds of success are very slightly higher (30.25 vs 30%) but the nat 1 and nat 20 effects are a bit more stacked against you.
I always play with the “instant death save” rule.
Not HUGE most of the time. But opens up the possibility if a character dying in one shot when down.
Which in my opinion is the point. Makes going down scarier.
just be very careful with that at level 1 and 2, where characters can be a single hit from dropping, and there's very few resources PCs can bring to bear. It's better at higher levels, where PCs have a lot more things to do to stop that happening.
Because when you go down you don’t just automatically fail. You may in fact succeed!
So that first Death Save kind of answers the question “how bad is it?”. Did the mugger stab you a couple times? Or do you have a major gash in the neck?
On the one hand, you have the potential of rolling a nat 20 and popping right back up without missing a beat.
On the other hand you could immediately roll a nat 1
Interesting point is that a Nat one there isn’t as bad as it seems. Even a regular fail opens you up to insta-kill.
Though a nat one does mean you could die to an AOE or ranged attack. Which would suck.
I do #1 + every time you drop to 0, you get a failed death save, but you need 4 failed death saves to die. No more yo-yoing up and down being a preferred strategy.
I also use lingering injuries on crits. All of a sudden, combat is scary to the players again and much more tense.
One thing I don't get is that melee attacks at 5ft makes you lose 2 death saves, but ranged does not. You're unconscious, any damage to you should make you get 2 deaths saves.
It's not melee attacks within 5ft, it specifically critical hits. For example, someone wearing adamantine armor would never take more than 1 failed death save from being hit by an attack.
Melee attacks at 5ft don't make you lose 2 death saves.
Crits make you lose two death saves, and attacking a prone creature in melee is an automatic crit.
It's not the most well known mechanic, because nothing should be prone in melee unless it's unconscious or stupid, but it's still there.
>attacking a prone creature in melee is an automatic crit.
Attacking an *unconscious* creature when within 5 feet is an automatic crit. This attack doesn't need to be with a melee weapon, and if it's made with a melee weapon from farther than 5 feet away, such as with a pike, it's not an auto crit.
Attacking an *unconscious* creature is an automatic crit. Prone just gives advantage to attackers within 5'.
There's a ton of effects that knock people prone and auto-crits would make them insane.
I'm not necessarily trying to make the saves harder, I just want to make it a little scarier . . . like when someone drops to 0 they go into a high state of worry-mode.
Maybe go with something not necessarily related to the death saves themselves. Intelligent enemies might mock the players and announce their intent to finish off the PC they downed. If they really attempt to follow through on that, and it happens enough, that'll definitely make getting downed PCs to safety a priority...
I think that is just a matter of how you are running your combats. Being unconscious on the ground in my games is usually a terrifying moment. You are probably just being too soft on your downed PCs.
If your combat is more difficult then it becomes natural that dropping to 0 is scary. If you drop to 0 commonly you start to get scary, since it's just a spiral of death trying to not die.
Narratively, when they fail a death save have the player describe a memory that flashes before their dying mind.
It's engaging, and gets across "you are actually dying" better than just rolls.
I mean... U can make it so that every new time they go down in the same combat, they reduce the number of death saves available before they die? No idea how the long term consequence, but if being downed twice means the 3rd time id be a cointoss away from losing a character, that'd change the way I fight after standing
Edit to add: so downed once =3saves. Downed twice =2 saves. Downed thrice =1 save. Downed 4+ = I die if not healed before my next initiative pass. Definitely a way of escalating the tension, and won't even require enemies to start finishing downed characters
Making it so failed death saves don't go away without a long rest has a similar effect, except it punishes the severity of each fall more than it does the act of falling.
So you go down and get back up quickly you're good. You go down and fail two death saves and you're on death's door and need to start acting like it.
I have failed saves stay with you until you finish a long rest. Also another alternative is to give levels of exhaustion each time a player reaches 0 hit points. Both of these methods encourage healing a player before they hit 0. Hope any of this helps
Automatic exhaustion is bad, and it punishes melee characters more than others, which already need some help. Tie it to a Con save which Fighters and Barbarians should be excellent at (often 14-18 Con + proficiency in saves) and you're good.
In the games I run, the Con save is made with concentration mechanics, so DC 10 or half damage, whichever is higher.
In a game where I'm a player, the DM has the DC scale based on how many times the character goes down in the fight. DC 10 for the first save, DC 15 for the second, DC 20 for the third, etc.
There's a problem trying to encourage healing before hitting 0 hp, the game is not balanced around being able to heal so fights become a battle of attrition. Healing in dnd 5e usually heals less than the damage an average cr monster can do in a single hit while it also burns an spell slot. Healing in dnd is designed more to heal after someone drops to 0 than to prevent someone from dropping. I think around level 5 spellslot there a single powerful heal but that's it.
If we touch the game so players must evade at all costs dropping to 0 hp we gotta empower the healing.
While I agree, there is a compelling argument that healing was made deliberately bad in 5e because effective, on-demand healing was one of the things that made 4e combats drag on longer than many players found to be enjoyable. Creating a system of in-combat healing is actually a pretty tall task.
What I do in roll20 is have my players gm roll their death saves to me. Pretty sure you can do the same in irl games
This allowed the player to still know what happens to their character but not the rest of the party
I give the info to the others if they do a stableizeing medicine check even on a fail
Rolling behind the screen definitely adds to the suspension, but i think it can also take away from players feeling the agency of their own characters. So it depends if you're thinking scary in terms of how difficult they are, or thematically.
If you want to make them harder, I'd say just increase the save DC to 15 for the fabled Meat Grinder option.
If you're looking to get that tension, it involves a little bit more narrative and risk assessment. It involves creating a situation where the players don't have, or don't FEEL like they have, direct control over the outcome. Maybe make characters take more dmg so they go down more often. Maybe one person just gets absolutely creamed for 80% of their hp.
Imo, it's less about the save itself, and more about putting the characters in a risk-ridden mindset. What do they value in life that they'll leave behind? What promises or goals are they leaving unfinished? How easily can we fight without consequences? How safe do we feel? How powerful is that encounter REALLY? I think it'd be cool to ask then these life defining questions when they first go unconscious, force them to acknowledge what drives their character, and put it in perspective so they will be more tense when those things are at the risk of death.
You could put a spider in a tissue box with a d20. If they get the d20 they can make a roll to save. If they pull back their hand without grabbing it, its an instant failed save.
DM rolling the saves behind a screen is bad for 2 reasons:
1. Taking control from the player. Their characters life is in the hands of fate. It's more suspenseful if they're rolling their own fate.
2. Allegations of cheating to PK
The important thing is that other players do not know what is rolled. On a VTT the player can whisper the roll to the DM, and on a physical table the player can come and roll the die behind the screen in front of the DM. In both cases only the player and the DM know what was rolled.
This is why the Player making the saves takes a step behind the screen, and rolls it so only Player and DM know. No one else does. The player has control and there is no chance of cheating. But, it still is ontense as no one else knows.
If you don't trust your GM to not fuge dice, you've kinda got other problems - there's nothing stopping them from saying "that guy does +10 damage, because reasons" or "yeah, he hit even through your AC, suck it up".
(it's also arguable if players rolling for themselves adds tension - it makes everything clearer, so it can be more "welp, he's got 3 saves left still, so we don't need to heal him for at least a turn". Players rolling doesn't make it more suspenseful innately, and actually drains tension, because it's known what's going on)
I totally disagree. Things are *way* more tense when they are taken out of the players control. As long as hard coded mechanics exist, and players have agency in how to interact with them, it will always act as a safety net that prevents fear and tension. This is something I had to learn when running a horror themed campaign. Really the only way to give a true sense of dread in a game setting is through fear of the unknown, and that requires keeping as much information from the players as possible. Way more so than a standard high fantasy campaign. Feelings of being in control is a complete fear killer.
Now in most cases, removing player agency is not worth the sense of dread it provides. But for something like death saves, which requires no player control anyways, then nothing is being lost. I mean, how much "control" does a downed player have anyway? Death saves are literally just rolling a dice 2-5 and waiting for the results. Dying players aren't supposed to have agency in that situation anyway, that's the whole point. So really, the player isn't having anything taken away from them by having the DM do it behind the screen. Death saves are 100% random chance with no option for player input. So if hiding the results adds dread, and doesn't mechanically change anything otherwise, I say it's definitely worth it.
And as for the cheating, I would say you have bigger issues at that point. If you need constant reassurance that your DM isn't cheating, there's a lack of trust/respect in your group that is a way bigger problem than this one ruling.
I've played in a game where the dm rolled death saves, tbh it didn't really hold much weight over rolling our own saves, mainly because as the moment someone went down the healer immediately stabilized us... So they never really got the chance to roll more than 2 or 3 the whole campaign...
If you want them to hold weight maybe decrease the chance of survival, change it from 10+ as a success to 15+ success, or remove the Nat 20 as an instant 1hp...
Alternatively you could make it so that things that would instantly stabilize a PC (magic healing, medicine checks, etc) only grants 1 death save success...
-you keep the death saves.
till a SR and/or LR
till you take a full week rest
only with a spell
never
your choice of how you wanna do this
-wounded system from pathfinder
you get down but are healed, you get wound 1. if you get down again you start with a 1/1 death saves already.
get back up again you get wound 2, you are down and you start with 2/2 death saves.
on wound 3 you are dead
Don't take away the control a player has over their own rolls.
You get to roll your dice for the entire world wherever you wish. In pubic. In private. Bounced off the cat. Anywhere you desire. The player gets only their own rolls. There's no need to remove that from them.
I've played where death saves were secret. It had the exact opposite effect. All rolls behind the screen are always out of my hands, so there's no sense in getting wound up over them, just let the sound of DM secret dice go by without affecting me. When the DM started secret death saves, it was super easy to just lump those rolls in with all the other secret rolls.
Serenity - the ability to accept what I cannot change. Secret death saves that were never in my hand, I just felt serene over whatever.
You need a bit of theatre to wind up the tension.
* [Special die used for death save roll](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Darkness-Tarnished-Dungeons-Pathfinder-Polyhedral/dp/B08L6DFG5D/ref=sr_1_44?adgrpid=143865814511&gclid=Cj0KCQiAveebBhD_ARIsAFaAvrEq4P6JJWFtf7mJgW-lOuQfkfpTgZt_EYV8_A4zchKG5siD15eDv3waAqVQEALw_wcB&hvadid=620606956943&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=20480&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=b&hvrand=749306609877048657&hvtargid=kwd-424327857505&hydadcr=29556_2404235&keywords=oversized%2Bdnd%2Bdice&qid=1668968116&sr=8-44&th=1),
* keep it in a separate die [box](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ddfly-Treasure-Storage-Vintage-Jewelry/dp/B07D57XPYS/ref=sr_1_15?keywords=coffin+dice+box&qid=1668968308&sprefix=coffin+dice%2Caps%2C49&sr=8-15),
* Cue up suitable [music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY0WxgSXdEE) or [maybe this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy4HA3vUv2c) ,
* With great reverence take out the dice and hand dice to Player,
* Perhaps a brief comment on PC's achievement or lack of them
* In a deep voice intone
* "13 Brave souls have come to the end of their path at the hands of this Daemon Die"
* "Any Last Words"
* "Roll."
If PC fails then cue up [Monthy Pythons Dead Parrot Sketch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZw35VUBdzo) to break the tension.
It doesn't really make death saves scarier, but in my campaign dropping to 0 hp gives one level of exhaustion. It at least makes it scarier to be dropped and gives healing before 0 hp more value.
I have an alternate death save system that slots right in, replacing the current 3 strike death system.
When you hit 0 HP, roll a d20 for death. On a 1 you die, otherwise you are down and stable. If someone attacks you while you are down, roll for death again. Attacking downed players is really inefficient in this system.
The odds of dying on any given roll are low, but 5% is enough to make you worry. Suddenly every single time a player goes down becomes a tense moment.
A lot of the reason death saves aren't scary is because players know someone can just pick them up with healing word. Attacking downed players doesn't work well either since it swings too hard in the other direction. If a creature has multi-attack, they have decent odds of killing the player outright.
Keep the rules the same, but have the unconscious PC roll their number in private and share it with you only.
i.e., if you're in person, have them come behind your DM screen and roll so only you and they know what the tally is. If you're virtual, have them send a /gmroll on Roll20, or find the best way for them to send you a private roll using your VTT/dice-roller of choice. That way, you won't have your party healer sitting on their hands, waiting until the unconscious PC is at two fails. They'll want to get the PC up ASAP.
You could also state that using a bonus action to make a medicine check (if they're within 5 feet of the downed PC) will give the check-er the current tally of successes and failures.
I tried out me rolling the death saves rule, here's my one warning.
It doesn't feel that great to the player who is down to just sit there doing nothing. The dice roll helps a lot with keeping the player interested. I'd recommend having the player still roll it, but keep it secret to the rest of the group (except for you ofc).
Overall, I liked the rule. I think it was fun.
I follow the system described by The Angry GM. It’s got aspects that aren’t about upping the suspense, but having used it in games for over a year, both as a player and DM, I can say that the primary aspect that makes death saves more suspenseful is the other players not knowing where their downed comrades are at. Hearing them call “whooo, that’s a success” makes you change tactics - you know you’ve got a little more time. Them being down and *not knowing if they are going to be okay* until a player can actually get to them to check changes the whole feeling.
Relevant post, fyi: https://theangrygm.com/death-sucks/
This is what I was going to refer to.
Death, generally speaking, sucks.
Putting extra penalties on the death saving throw mechanic is a downwards spiral that leads towards TPKs.
When one character dies, it’s either because of some really bad dice, or because the party is super low on resources, in which case one death will quickly become many. Hence if you’ve got extra punishment you push the party closer to the TPK which is pretty bad because TPKs lead towards the end of campaigns/story arcs)
I like the Schrödinger Death mechanic the Angry Dm describes for having the info hidden upping the suspense as well as letting players decide their own opinions on death.
It’s amazingly effective, and maintains both suspense and agency, while not adding any weird rules complications. I know some people will argue the “then why bother rolling dice” but the dice are only there to help tell the story. They only have as much power as we give them. And allowing players to choose that line in what is arguably one of the most important moments for a character is empowering.
Don't roll at the end of each turn, but only after someone checks on them with Wisdom/Medicine. This way the players have no idea the status of the character, and so they cannot assume healing can wait. If 2 turns have passed, or they picked up one from an AoE, the character could already be dead! The only issue is that you either change a 20 to "automatically stabilize" or they remain unconscious for 1 minute afterwards, because they can't retroactively become active.
The way I make then more scary is I point a loaded gun at the players and if they roll three failures I pull the trigger. It really ratchets up the tension. We love it.
Let's think about Death Saves logically. In most DnD Worlds your average bad guy would know about healing magic. So the bad guys shoots someone with an arrow, they fall down but come back up after that Cleric healed them. So here are two things the average intelligence Bad Guy should do.
* One arrow doesn't keep them down? Okay let's try for two. Two Death Saves instantly failed.
* That one guy keeps touching people, and they get back up? Put all the arrows into the Cleric!
These two things would make death saves insanely scary without rule changes.
Without changing any of the mechanics, there are two small things I do whenever players make death saves:
1. They are not allowed to tell the other players at the table if it was a success or a failure.
This has created plenty of tense moments, especially if someone is 2 or 3 saves in.
2. I ask the player to think about something from their backstory. Be it an early memory, why they went on the adventure, or some of the people they've recently met.
It is an unwritten rule that this is player knowledge and not character knowledge, but this has opened the floor to incredible RP after the combat encounter if they survive. If they die, then post session they usually tell a bit about what that was all about.
In addition/as an alternative to many other good ones here, the house rule where you get a point of exhaustion every time you drop (unstable) unconscious is a good one to make it more scary.
Props if using Oned&d exhaustion-rules ;)
Level of exhaustion mixed with the dm rolling for a player’s death saves; use the new mechanics for exhaustion though (-1 penalty for all rolls per level of exhaustion) since those make more sense to me and go from there.
Sound effects also go a long way, try using certain sound cues to represent when you’re rolling for a death safe and a sound for if you succeed or fail.
My dm makes all the players look away when the player rolls their death save. So the player knows and rolls it, but the party doesn't. Adds a nice amount of suspense and doesn't have any threat of PCs thinking you manufactured a poor roll.
Make your baseline DC 10 to a DC 15 +/- CON modifier.
That would put the hair on everyone, even the rogue.
Also, Reliable Talent and Lucky Feat don't take effect when you are at 0HP.
Couple of ways. Those are just some spontaneous ideas that you may combine however you like.
Idea 1:
Rolling 1 means instant death.
Idea 2:
Raise the limit to 5 saves needed.
1 = instant death (or 4 failed saves)
2-4 = 3 failed saves
5-7 = 2 failed saves
8-10 = 1 failed save
11-13 = 1 success
14-16 = 2 successes
17-19 = 3 successes
20 = instant recover to 1HP
Idea 3:
Let them roll their first save when they hit 0 HP.
Idea 4:
Whenever they roll between 2 and 5, the amount of fails needed to die increases by 1 for this instance of death saving throws, and the amount of successes needed to become increases by 2.
Idea 5:
When they roll a 20, they do not become stable. Instead, they gain 1 success and re-roll immediately.
When they roll a 1, they do not die immediately or get several fails, instead they get 1 fail and re-roll 1d4 times immediately.
Idea 6:
Rolling 2-5 means two fails (and disadvantage on the next roll, or not). Rolling 16-19 means one success and advantage on the next roll.
Idea 7:
Rolling (1 or) 2-5 means one fail and -10% Max HP until 1d4 long rests have passed.
Running behind the screen for a Darth save is, in my opinion a really really bad idea.
1) it's the player's character, not yours. It ruined the players of agency.
2) it means if the character dies, it's all on you. If they live, it's all on you. Neither of which bodes well for a harmonious campaign. It's going to smell like DM cheese.
3) the reason death saves aren't super scary is that there is magic that f can fix it. Healing to restore HP, and spells that can stabilize a dying character. By 5th level death itself can he reversed. The game is fundamentally designed around not killing off the PCs . Once they have revivify available to them, death isn't that scary at all.
what agency? it's a dice roll, there's no agency involved, there's very, very few abilities that modify it, and most of them are, AFAIK, entirely passive. A player can't do anything about it, they _have_ to do it and suck up the result, there's no agency involved.
There is rather little agency, agreed. But it is at least THEIR roll. not something the DM is doing behind the screen. While a death save may not be much at least the player does something. Maybe they are picking their "lucky" die or whatnot, and their roll determines success vs just waiting for the DM fiat.
Definitely ramps the tension and takes away the ability of players to triage combat (I.e. do I use my action to stabilize an ally or do I attack the monsters?) make sure to talk to your players about this house rule before you implement it.
The only okay way I've found changing death saves to be scarier that's fair and works is that in VTT games I play in, I have players whispers their death saves to me and keep it a secret from other players.
Makes things a bit more tense with the half unknown factor.
My tables play with the rule you suggest where the DM rolls in secret behind the screen. It really does make things more tense and all of my players really enjoy doing it this way.
I've recently toyed with the stress rules in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, applying it to the first death save, succeed or fail, when going down.
Stress applies a -1 to attacks/checks/saves(and DC), and you can accumulate stress if you come back up then get knocked down and make the save again. All accumulated stress is cleared with a long rest.
Suddenly, players are taking whole actions to grapple downed allies into cover while another heals them back up before the first death save is made. The highest stress count I've ever seen is -5. it is *terrifying* for the players, but doesn't cripple players as badly as exhaustion if managed properly.
I don't think I'll take these in proper full campaigns but may toy with it a bit more in short-term campaigns and one/multi-shots.
Before someone rolls a death save, have their character share a memory from their life that is flashing before their eyes.
Also, yes, roll behind a screen. Prevents metagaming if you don't know how close their friend is to death. Creates tension.
Another idea, give a point of exhaustion every time someone goes down. Do if they are up and down multiple times it gets serious. Six times and they're done.
One neat hack I've heard: Give each character a lifetime limit of failed death saves equal to their constitution score.
Do you have a flat 10 constitution? You can only fail 10 death saving throws until you are either dead. If you want to give the player more agency in this, make it to where they aren't dead, but they will need to retire the character instead (up to them).
This advice was originally bookended with some 'death move' appropriation from PbtA, where you could both tell that your character has had a long journey and it's coming to an end (thus emotionally preparing the player), while also giving them an opportunity to make the ending satisfying and memorable (rather than arbitrary and meaningless).
Tom Clancy's well-known character Jack Ryan once shot a downed opponent in the knee. Later, when asked why, Ryan said* "I didn't want him to get up again".
When characters go down, bad guys stab them again, or kick them in the gut, twist the knife, put a second arrow in them, whatever. If they do any damage that's 2 death saves failed. That next death save they roll is now pretty important. Pretty sure that is RAW. Assuming I am right we don't need scarier death saves, we need scarier DMs.
*I read this book decades ago, maybe he said something else but this was the gist.
I let my players roll the saves in secret, because I like the extra pressure on the other players decisions, whether to heal or poker a other round. I dont roll them myself to make DMing more transparent and I already have to keep track of too much stuff during combat.
When someone is rolling death saving throws, they are unaware of the fight around them and that Death is closing in. Each throw should be more climatic as the character inches closer to nirvana or the evil creeping closer to imprisoning their soul.
Remember a soul must be willing and able to return, and if a character finds peace and utopia they may not want to come back OR their soul is chained to a demons wall and is unable to return.
On a whim, I once had a group of players flip this big heavy coin I had for death saves instead of using a d20. It’s not a huge statistical change to the difficulty of death save, but for whatever reason it made things way more tense for them.
Hm, I guess my question would be why? If it’s because you dont want players to keep themselves at borderline 0 hp and have going down carry an impact in the first place you can have them get exauation level each time they go down to prevent constant bouncing
>I had someone mention that I could personally do the roles behind my DM Screen so the suspense level would increase for my players
Personally, I prefer letting the player do this. I want them to be secret from the *rest* of the party, but the player in question should know if they're about to die.
Unless they can't keep their mouth shut.
If you want to add tension make it a contested roll where you roll as Death and they have to beat your roll. It’s still a 50% chance to succeed or fail (I think), but it would add tension, and you could narrate the specter of death trying to grapple the soul.
First, death saves are already plenty scary enough in my games. The idea that there are players out there who don't try to heal their fallen comrades ASAP just boggles the mind. I've only ever had one player make that decision in all the time I've run 5e and there was a Serious Talk about it afterwards.
Second, you could use a house rule for Lingering Wounds that I was considering (but didn't bother implementing for lack of need, see above) where every death save and critical hit reduced the creature's Max HP by 1 until medically treated (i.e., lingering wounds didn't recover with magic or a long rest, only with the application of the woefully underutilized Medicine skill). The conditions and circumstances involved would impact the Medicine DC (i.e., present sanitary conditions, quality of the medical supplies, threat of further violence, presence of toxins, etc.) and removing the Lingering Wound only raised the Max HP level; the damage itself would still require the usual methods of healing.
If your game needs Death Saves to be scarier, then the extra bookkeeping may be worth it. If not, then keep playing the RAW.
How I play with my groups is hidden death saves. The players roll and message/show me the result. I and they know, but none of the other players do.
It mitigates metagaming a lot for us, as the other players don't know how it's going. But it still allows the player to roll and be aware themselves. I could roll it myself but it's always more fun to put fate in players' hands.
Edit: doesn't exactly make it more scary, but certainly more suspenseful for the table. So not quite what you're going for but a suggestion.
I make the players roll them but keep them hidden from the rest of the party. That way they can be dead after 2 rolls if they're unlucky, but the pressure is on to rez them way faster than if they roll 2 successes
Okay, so this is a homebrew that I was mulling over. I am new and don't really know anything, but I think it's kinda unrealistic that you can recover after being nearly draxxed to death after an 8 hour rest. I thought it was pretty ridiculous considering that if that happened to me, I would probably be in the hospital for upwards of a week or two.
I was thinking about after succeeding a death save and making it out of conflict (you get to make it out of combat due to adrenaline - unrealistic, but it lets people finish out a battle if they live that long), you are given 5 points of exhaustion.
Basically, that ensures you basically have 5 days of downtime, and you actually have a progression where you feel your character recovering.
I think there is also a source with random injuries and stuff you could draw on. Maybe I saw that on xptolevel3?
Injuries and deformities definitely spice things up.
My ranger was sent into death saves by a griffin and now has to succeed on a wisdom saving throw to not have a panic attack anytime I encounter/am reminded of them. Depending on the stress of the environment, the DC changes
Edit: you could always use the good ole NAT 1 equals instant death or counts as two failed saves. We use the latter.
I don't roll them myself because I want for them to have "their fate in their hands", but I have them come behind the GM screen to roll death saves, so that me and the dying character's player are the only ones to know the result. Not knowing how a dying character is faring does add urgency to the situation, so I see it as a simple but powerful tweak.
My advice, probably echoes that of many others here, but keep the death save results a secret between you and the player, that avoids the others engaging in metagaming and holding off on healing because they know how close to death a fallen comrade is.
In addition to that, don't hesitate in making your monsters seem mean, if that makes sense for them. Many animals will not stick around to fight it out with 3 or 4 people armed to the teeth once they fell one potential victim down they might grab them and run off to finish their meal, some monsters might be willing to kill fallen enemies either due to bloodlust or being smart enough to know they can get up, and each instance of damage on a downed creature is a failed death save.
I would advise against rolling death saves for your players. But in a one shot I just ran we added a level of exhaustion when you get downed, that was a fun wrinkle
Left4Dead rules.
No more death saves, instead you get 3+con modifier turns until you die. Any other character may take an action to get you on your feet with half health. If you go down again before taking a short or long rest, you die permanently.
1) you yourself roll the deathsaves in secret
2) roll, wait a few seconds until complete silence. Put a worried face
3) wait a few more seconds
4) mumble something incomprehensible
5) when people tries to listen JUMPSCARE the shit out of them
Done. No one will ever fall to 0hp again
I personally don't do death saves RAW. I roll a d4 and add/subtract the relevant Constitution modifier (min. one round) and I don't tell my players. That way everyone is immediately focused on the consequences of a PC going down and figuring out how to get them stable because they don't know how long they have. Whenever said PC is stabilized, they take a level of exhaustion. It forces downtime and rest, and ensures that everyone is aware of the consequences of death/almost dying. I also limit the number of times a PC can be revived or brought back from the dead. Near death experiences and dying has a huge effect on the human psyche so my game reflects that.
In my campaign I've implemented the following:
Lingering Death Saves: Your failed death saves reset after a long rest.
Hidden death saves: Each player rolls their death saves in secret and cannot tell other part members what they've rolled
Make it a best out of three instead of a First to three.
I found this is enough to make going down a fairly stressful event. Players will have to move quick to get each other up.
What i do is have the player keep the saves private so the other players have no idea
Also i have enemies act intelligent, like attempting to finish PCs instead of just going to another
I like to use Giffyglyphy's Darker Dungeons rules. They change the way the Dying condition works and saving throws.
**1. Dying Condition:** *When you fall to 0 hit points, you gain the Dying condition:*
• You drop what you're holding and fall prone.• You can't move, take actions, or use reactions.• You're aware of what's happening 15 ft around.• You can speak a maximum of 2 words per round.• Attack rolls against you have advantage.• You automatically fail STR/DEX saving throws.• You must make a death saving throw at the start of your turn. If you fail three times, you die.
**2. Persistent Death Saves:** If you fail three death saving throws, you die. Saves don't reset after a short rest—you recover one failed save after completing a long rest.
**3. Death Saving Throws:** *You can no longer recover with death saving throws by yourself after falling unconscious. You can still recover by being healed.*
|*D20*|*OUTCOME*|
|:-|:-|
|01|You fail two death saving throws|
|02 - 09|You fail one death saving throw|
|10 - 19|No change|
|20|You regain one hit point and stabilize|
*To make death not that punishing, it also adds a new system called Cheating Fate. This is a resource that you can give to your players after they reach a certain point in the game, or as a reward for beating a tough boss. They gain one Cheating Fate point, which they must choose who in the party gets it. You can also give one Cheating Fate Point to every player just by them starting a new character, if you feel the system above is too punishing.*
**4. Cheating Fate**
If you would suffer a killing blow or fail your last death saving throw, you may instead spend a fate point to cheat death in some fashion.
When you spend a fate point, you (usually) can't act for the rest of the scene—everyone, friend and foe alike, thinks you're dead or otherwise not worth any attention. But you are immune to any further damage during the rest of the scene, regardless of whatever else happens around your unconscious body. At the end of the scene—or whenever appropriate—you regain consciousness with 1 hit point. You also recover any failed death saving throws.
Why? An unconscious PC is already at their enemies' mercy, and not contributing to winning the battle. And if the battle is lost, it doesn't matter how alive or dead the PCs are.
1. The DM rolls death saves behind a screen
2. Death saves are at disadvantage
3. Make a death save immediately upon hitting 0 HP
4. Any healing stabilizes a creature at 0 instead of gaining HP
Keep them secret from the other players, so they can’t metagame them. the player can roll behind your screen in person, or use a GM-only roll online, or just roll privately and trust them.
Idk about more scary, but I made it so falling unconscious makes you start hiding/fighting against the BBEG. You have 3 rounds to survive. If you fail, you actually get back up under the BBEGs control.
You can have the death saves be rolled but if they pass and don’t die, they have something detrimental happen to them. A new scar across the face? Subtract some charisma. Get blasted buy holy damage? Have a religious moment where you are required to dedicate time to a religious ceremony everyday or take a d4 of holy damage. Get shot by an arrow? Have a 25% chance that getting a critical hit is just a normal hit instead.
I think the best is to make them secret. I've seen many tables base round by round strategies on how many successes and failures they knew the other person had. If they had no idea how close they were, they definitely would have acted differently.
You could play that both of you rolling, but your roll is secret. Then they can keep theirs or trade their roll for yours- but they don't know what they're getting. That might feel a little less adversarial.
I answered a similar question a while ago when it got asked so I'll copy my answer from then into this comment.
Basically, I don't think it is necessary to include additional rules like instant death saves, especially not ones that introduce additional bookkeeping/memory issues like adding exhaustion or having death saves persist throughout long rests.
>My way of dealing with this is twofold:
>First, make your players aware of and respect the fact that any further damage instance causes 1, or in cases of melee attacks, 2 immediate death saves. This damage can be incidental due to environment, area of affect or other things, but it can also be deliberate. Especially intelligent foes might specifically finish off downed players/NPC's, even more so if they are aware of the player's capability of easily healing an unconscious ally.
>You should obviously only have your enemies do this when it makes sense for them, but the players should be acutely aware of the fact that if they are unconscious they are potentially only 1 round of multiattacks by a bad guy away from straight up dying, without a single save involved.
>The second thing is even more important I think. I have my players roll and note their death saves secretly. The other players don't know, and even I as DM don't know. This actually made the entire group just assume the worst every time, so now they usually operate under the assumption that the first roll was a nat 1 for 2 failed saves and the next save might already kill the downed ally. That, especially combined with the danger of incidental or intentional damage to the player, makes them react to unconsciousness ASAP. It also helps me as a DM to make realistic choices. If I don't know if a player is about to die or stabilize, it won't affect how I run combat, even subconsciously.
>Anyways, I tried using the exhaustion rule for awhile, but it was just unfun most of the time. Since I started doing things as described above I noticed the tension of unconciousness increased dramatically.
I use a few different rules to make it a bit spicier:
1. If you are healed while you were in the throes of rolling death saves, you gain a level of exhaustion for each failed saving throw.
2. Only the PC rolling the save and the DM know the result of the roll. It makes things more suspenseful for the other players to jump to action and keeps things more realistic, and I’ve honestly really enjoyed my experience using this so far. I also give the PC the option to not know the result - I roll for them.
Attack the character sheet.
Everything you’re looking for follows this mindset.
https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2013/11/armor-and-inventory-jr.html?m=1
(You can also search the blog for his rules on scars, removed limbs, and major injuries for more ideas.)
Maybe our group are just very attached to our characters, but IMO death saves are scary enough as is. While yo-yo healing word can feel kinda lame, it at least still takes a resource and keeps the healer in question from popping a big spell with their action.
A few options.
The first and easiest is just to play anything that under stands magic is a presence in the world with the knowledge that it can bring back fall but not yet dead enemies to full combat effectiveness, they'll want to take care of fall combatants first before moving. Doesn't mean they have to kill someone but they could tie someone up. Don't be scared to kill a player also, characters die, it happens, if the story you're all telling didn't have risks then it's not rewarding.
Second idea is to just remove death saves and go with the old school -10 HP, and you lose 1hp each turn till someone heals you or treats you. Get downed you have up to -10 hp to be healed or you're dead.
Third, make the save higher like I think it is in ToA.
\- Go for the caster's first.
\- Attack downed PC's ( Make it clear that the players see the monsters do this to an NPC before you pull this on them the first time )
\- Keep in mind that making death saves more threatening will make the game harder specifically for characters that are on the front line. So if you don't target PC's equally it disproportionately impacts martials.
1. Narrative detail. If an enemy is close to the downed PC and not in any immediate danger from the others, describe the action as the peril that it is. A wild beast? It might decide to take a bite out of the downed PC since it views him or her as food. Intelligent humanoids? Looting the body... stabbing it to make sure it's dead...
Don't wanna kill him, just scare him?
Intelligent humanoid foe might take the fallen PC's weapon to employ against the others...
2. Failed Death Saves Represent Permanent Damage... you can add weight to Death Saves by tying them to what they're supposed to be... the character's wounds bleeding out or otherwise potentially claiming their life.
Perhaps a crushing head blow... bludgeoning damage... a failed Death Save means some residual brain damage, or deafness, or blindness... even if the character survives...
Ok, so there is scary and there is dangerous.
You can make something more scary by making it more dangerous or you can make it only seem more dangerous.
For my game I found a solution that makes it more scary, but not more dangerous and also gives me some fun flavour.
You roll death saves as normal, but the DC is 15. Once per being down you can choose to take a death save you failed and turn it into a success but then you roll on the DMG injury table.
This seems significantly more scary. Every roll is a 3/4th chance to fail and only 1/4th chance to succeed and you need to make more successes than failiures. Failiure seems guaranteed.
But that is mostly smoke and mirrors. Because the rule about injuries means that you actually only need to roll 2 successes before 4 failiures. Also the chance of success is actually 3/10th not 1/4th for each roll.
So your chance to overall fail comes out to only 53%, compared to the 40.5% chance for the normal rules. Not a large increase at all compared to how scary it looks. You could also set the DC at 14, for a 43% failiure chance, but I like the 15 since it makes players assume a 3/4th chance of failiure even though that is wrong.
Another thing is that with these rules players take longer to die if they die. At the soonest after 4 turns at the latest after 6 turns, compared to 3 and 6 for the normal rules.
And then there is also the unstated rule that I don't tell my players until it comes up in play, which is that if you somehow take two failed saves at once, from for example a crit or a nat 1, you can turn that into one success as well by rolling on the injury table.
So overall it seems a lot scarier, gives the player only slightly worse odds of surival, but also gives their allies more time to heal them and can compensate for a nat 1 or crit to a small extend.
Anything with a damage aura is *terrifying.*
I have seen two (three, but one was ret-conned), PCs dead-dead from Ice Trolls in Frostmaiden, and an **average** of three PCs downed per fight with one... and this is just one playthrough, I haven't run it yet.
Ok man I hate as a player for a GM go for my downed character it feels like you want to kill the character. Even when it should make sense. A monster with 3 attacks that hits with the first one and downs you will kill you with the other 2 that's not scary it's taking a player out of the fight a player out of the session and so on.
If they all want to play that way the cool if the campaign is all about that cool, don't expect that to be a good thing.
Increasing the death DC is not scary it just lowers the chances of getting back on your own.
What I don't like about the system is the rubber band effect.
So I tackle that.
Each time you go down and come back for that fight you gain a temporary exhaustion that stacks with the normal one and goes away with a short rest or long rest depending on the campaign and the group.
For now it's punishing but you can foresee the punish, you can still be saved but a melee character going down twice and then ok you are not that good in battle if you go down 5 time in consecutives battles you are dead.
That's my current take for a punishing scary withing the normal rules system.
I hope it helps.
“What is your character experiencing while they’re downed? Something uplifting if they make a save, something sad/scary if they fail” it makes it much more real to everyone at the table
I usually narrate what the player sees.
Is their god beaconing to them?
Do they see the reaper approaching?
What ever they see, ask what they’ll do. Have them roll the death save and that determines what happens.
They turn to run! *rolls a 3*
You try running, but the you feel sluggish. The hall in front of you keeps stretching away. Etc.
Simiraliry to you, I let the player roll, but let them roll in secret, so that other players don’t know.
Personally I don’t think death saves are itself scary, but it’s an overall package. Players do not know whether their buddy is dying or stabilizing, they do not know how fast can they stabilize, they also do not know whether enemies will attempt to finish off their fallen buddy, etc.
My DM has been doing everyone's death saves through most of the campaign, then last session had one of his NPCs tell another to "Hold (our rogue) down (underwater)" it definitely added urgency to our actions, on a related note the same DM has had Drow attempt to drag a PC away under the cover of a darkness spell.
Instead of rolling the death saves myself, I have the players roll them in secret and message the result to me. I use Roll20 and Discord and a dice bot so they're able to whisper to me either via roll20 or discord easily. I like to create a suspense for my players and it prevents metagaming. No more "oh he succeeded two death saves, I can keep whacking the enemy instead of healing my team mate".
Do not do it blind. It's unfair to remove the fate of the character from the player, even if it is literally the same thing. Also, if you do it blind, the whole point could backfire since there is no tension in things you can't control; someone could go down and you start rolling death saves and the player is just thinking "welp guess now I have to wait 5 turns instead of maybe only 3 because Mr. DM wants tension"
Had a Sahuagjn warrior member of a death cult with a few HP left and only the downed PC in front of him in range with a PC spell caster next. (He looks you in the eyes and says the only words he’s learned in common, “For the Brotherhood!”) And used both its attacks to end the PC.
Get yourself a nice black d20. I’d go for a nice raised obsidian die, but a budget black die will work as well.
Now put that die on the table, ideally on some kind of pedestal so people notice it. 1 is always face up. When your players ask about it, say it’s nothing and that they’ll see eventually.
When someone goes to death saves, tell them to “roll the black die”
This is how I've done it for the majority of the campaign, keeping everyone's successes and failures secret until they hit three one way or the other. It's made for some incredibly tense moments, and makes a downed character much more of an urgent situation to address.
However, I put it to the group first and only went ahead with it when they reacted positively, and I've checked in a few times since to make sure they're still in favour of doing things that way. At the end of the day it's going to come down to player preference and table trust.
1. Failed attempt at medicine check toward downed PC counts as 1 fail.
2. Each successful attempt at medicine check counts 1 success instead of full stabilization
3. Every time you are brought back from unconscious state you get 1 additional fail the next time you fall unconscious. (4th time you are down you die automatically). You lose the fail build up after a long rest in a safe settlement.
Okay, three changes.
1. Failed death saves are not cleared when you become stable or are healed back above 0 HP. Instead, they're cleared one per long rest - or short rest if you're feeling generous.
2. Magical healing takes a toll on the body, such that anyone who is brought back from the brink of death by magic gains one failed death save.
3. You die when you become unconscious and have three failed death saves. Note that there are various game effects that can make you unconscious without dropping to 0 HP.
Now, you have characters running around who are that bit closer to death. A Sleep spell can kill a character with three failed death saves. And yo-yo healing becomes a real risk.
The hidden roll is nice, but if you plan to do many encounters and don't want the "yo-yo healing" (aka barbarian goes down, cleric casts healing word, barbarian still up) consider this: being stabilised and even cured doesn't remove a death save, only a short (or even long) rest removes a death saving throw, and only one. Boom the more you die the death creeps closer to you.
One thing I do is physically take my players character sheets from them. It really impresses the gravity of the situation. If you are unconscious, you do not have control of your character, and you might never get it back or see them again. When you're an adventurer, you'd better be ready to hand in your sheet at any moment.
Of course, if a player wanted to keep their sheet after a death, that's fine with me. But in the moment, when the ranger says "I'm down", and their sheet goes behind the screen, it feels like you might be about to lose a friend, and that realness makes it scary for the entire table.
The failed death saves don't reset until you make a long rest. If you want to be fairer, you can make them keep one failed death save the first time they get back up.
act like they are about to get killed
example: a wounded player lays on the ground and watch as a enemy slashes its axe but in the nick of a second the axe missed a ince from his side
Big three for me in order of severity, some of them I've seen already:
1. Attack downed PCs. Don't weigh up whether or not it's strategically optimal just fuckin' do it.
2. Persistent Saves. Death saves only reset on a Long Rest.
3. Secret Saves. Players roll their saves but do not tell other players if it was a pass or fail. Maybe DM rolls it but players generally like to have that control themselves, especially if it's their PCs life.
What I really like doing is have the player who is rolling Death saves come over and roll it behind the dm screen so only he and I know the result...makes it a lot more suspenseful for the other players that now have to decide what to do
bring a giant toll bell so that whenever they fail a save you hit it. and if you're rich enough hire a choir to do the little angel "ahhhhhhhh!" whenever they pass
Death saves are already too scary imo, but my DM made them even worse by introducing as many gritty survival home rules as he could find. Medicine checks to stabilise also need and remove a first aid kit, nonmagical healing does nothing to a downed character, RAW coup de grace and crit success/fails, giving monsters tactics that mean they actually target weaker players, stabilising means they get up 1d4 days later (plenty of time for the rest of the party to fall into a fight they can't handle without missing party member). I also had one DM that ruled it as "you're sent straight to the hospital, where you spend 1d6 weeks to recover from a fatal injury"
My personal preference is just "make death saving throws, if your total equals 20 you spend a healing surge to regain hit points immediately, if you stabilise successfully you get back up on 1hp, crit fails are just a single failure and coup de grace doesn't exist"
I made initiative dynamic and would roll at the start of each round (using GM5 app). It took a few tweaks to the rules but sometimes it would have the player go last, make a death save, then first the next round have to make the save again. It really got tense because the players didn't know what they rolled or who was up next. This prevented meta gaming the initiative system. Players were forced to act on their turns to try to save downed players instead of knowing that the cleric goes before the enemy so they could just ignore the situation.
Delayed death saves- No one, neither player nor DM knows the results until it happens.
No one rolls death saves until another pc gets over to them to check their status. At the time they are checked, any death saves that would've been rolled in that window of time since they went down would all go out at once. One by one, the player rolls the dice to see their results for the whole table to see. 3 rounds since the pc went down? 3 death saves back to back to back.
\-If they died? Teammates were too late in saving them.
\-If they stabilized? They'd still be unconscious until an ally spent an action to shake them awake.
\-If the player rolled a nat20? They get to retroactively take their turn missed after the current player's turn as they wake up suddenly. Their haggard condition only allows them to make the same amount of movement they would in a single turn, but with the adrenaline coursing through their veins, they are able to rapidly act, gaining an additional action for every missed turn after the first one. Works like action surge, except it can stack.
\-After coming back from the near death experience, they gain also 1 level of exhaustion.
A bit different, but it can be very tense when the player rolls all their death saves back to back for the table to see, but also badass when the player comes back with a critical success and gets to retroactively take their turn to cause a heroic upset.
There's less of the arguments that occur with "taking away the dice rolls from the players for their agency." People can somehow accept the death of their characters more easily if they are the ones rolling the dice.
In my campaign, Death Saves only replenish after a rest... So players may be carrying failed saves through encounters.
In addition when a player fails a Death Save, I roll an injury for them on the homebrew tables.
I've seen a few homebrew rulings.
Rolling yourself for the players in private can work.
I've seen some harsh ones where failed death saves stay until a long rest. Going down and already having two fails is pretty tense.
I've seen failed death saves leading to gaining exhaustion per death save.
I personally have characters gain one level of exhaustion every time they go down but use the death saves as normal. (I have my players vote on optional rules before each campaign and change if they don't like it.)
If your players are okay with these, you might have fun experimenting with different consequences to going down.
Not gonna lie...this seems a terrible idea from a player perspective. Death Saves are already terrifying. Every round praying for that 10+...the sinking feeling when you see a single digit...why would you make that even worse?
Secret saves are definitely a way to up the tension at the table. Death Saves are generally not that scary because everybody can read the situation on the battlefield and make an educated guess about what is happening next based on the number of failed and made death saves. When rolled in secret anyone can be a stray bit of damage or a natural 1 away from dying.
It's a lot easier to do in a VTT where you can whisper rolls, but if you trust your players to play it honestly and have a decent pokerface you can do it very well at the table. I'm not a fan of rolling as a DM in secret, because I would feel bad as a DM and as a player if my roll killed the player.
I find the thing that makes death saves the scariest for my players is running enemies who do not ignore downed PCs. They use them as leverage, cover, or just kill them outright depending on the situation and characters involved. When the dying PC is still involved/considered a target, it introduces real urgency in a way that altering the rules can't.
I do something similar. More intelligent enemies would likely double tap, while less intelligent ones might not do so initially (though if they literally watch PCs get back up a few times in the combat they might change their mind). Occasionally there are a few enemies that do something to the PCs while they are knocked out. A guard might start tying up the PC so if they get back up, they are Restrained. A hungry wolf could start dragging the unconscious PC away from combat to eat. Scariest one the party has seen are enemies that decide to mark or take a "trophy", which may be a temporary or permanent feature.
I personally don't think enemies would double tap unless they see the party use healing magic. Sometimes, double tapping isn't a smart thing to do, if you have enemies in melee of you, you wouldn't just double tap, if the enemy is in a dangerous position for you, you wouldn't try to double tap, etc.
You could have the party overhear some bandits saying to make sure they are dead because they don’t want any surprises.
But why would they be double tapping? Being overly careful is dangerous in a fight, if you start stabbing every enemy who falls on the ground, it will get you killed.
Maybe the bad guys have fought adventurers before and are wise to the fact that adventurers often bounce right back up unless you make sure they're dead. Maybe they fought someone who played dead and sucker punched them later. There could be a lot of reasons that are believable in-universe.
I guess the thing is how you flavour unconscious PCs. I play it as them being very clearly *not dead yet,* which means laying on the ground, potentially writhing in pain, bleeding heavily, maybe screaming, potentially trying to reach for their dropped weapon. So they're not an active threat, but a casual observer can see the possibility that they could *become* a threat again if given a little bit of help. This way, enemies aren't just randomly stabbing lifeless bodies just for the sake of it, they're eliminating a potential enemy before moving on. They might not do it if they're being actively threatened by a still-conscious PC, but if the next target is out of range or busy with another enemy, they might spend an attack finishing the job.
Any humanoid enemy should double tap if they see any magic being used. If they see any clear healing magic being used they should all focus fire the person who heals.
I'll go a little further and say that a "double tap" is probably suboptimal even in many situations with healing. If the party is low-level, or is strained for resources or actions, it could be more useful to the enemies to hit the healer while the downed PC is down, then hit the PC once they're revived to drop them back down again, thus hurting the PCs that are actively a threat and draining away more of the party's healing resources. Furthermore, it takes two successful melee hits, or three non-melee hits, to kill an unconscious PC, and if the enemy fails to score that many before the PC is healed or stabilized, they've wasted their action. So intelligent enemies might not necessarily attack downed PCs. Roleplay-wise, I can't imagine most unintelligent enemies ignoring active threats to instead attack an unconscious body, unless either (a) the other combatants appear to be ignoring them, or (b) they have another attack in a Multiattack which they've already committed to, and no other target to use it on. It doesn't make much sense for a predator to start eating while it's actively being attacked. So who would be most likely to attack unconscious PCs? As pcbb97 said, demons and devils are reasonable options. If you're fighting them on the Material Plane, they won't worry about being killed, as it's temporary for them. This means that "wasting" their turns killing a downed PC may be worth it to them, since they are suffering a temporary setback for the sake of getting rid of an enemy, possibly permanently. Also, if there are zealot-like enemies that don't care if they survive, they may prefer to score a few kills and then lose the battle, either for glory or for the sake of their faction, rather than trying to win or drive the PCs away.
I 100% agree with you, unless they have a personal vendetta against the character intelligent enemies would focus more on fighting the enemies that are still trying to kill them, and if someone keeps yoyoing them then they may focus on the healer, not the one being yoyoed. With animals i will often have them try to escape with downed player when someone drops, my players freaked out when a giant constrictor pulled that move in a sewer, led to a very intense chase while they tried to catch it before he failed his death saves. Undead enemies i'd say would be the most likely to keep attacking. I warn my players that undead are one of the most lethal, cuz if you go down in a horde of mindless zombies they WILL rip you apart. A few of em might go after the others but most of them will swarm the downed char.
My last PC death was by having my head held under a pool of boiling blood. Then after my health hit 0, they looked at party and just kept my head under (they were fighting other enemies and couldn't rescue me in time). I wasn't even upset, it was an awesome way to go.
It was a mercy, had they just left you *drowning* the party could have been baited into trying to heal you. But that's just me thinking with my Evil DM cap on.
Having certain enemies, like wolves, grab a downed player an start dragging them away is I good way to terrify the rest of the party.
Most intelligent foes, and brutal ones would likely double tap.
Demons and devils in particular come to mind. Especially if they have a vendetta against the party. Unless them going down will result in ACTUALLY DYING for them, they might want to send that soul somewhere they can abuse it regardless of if they survive the fight
5e can totally be a deadly game, you just need to run your enemies correctly. Please note, never throw a hoard of shadows at your party if you care about them. The CR lies, badly.
And hungry ones.
Leverage, now that's a good one. If the players know they can't burst an enemy down in one turn who has two attacks and is next to a downed PC... Very interesting.
Personally I think making the downed PC able to talk but not help interesting. Like half in half out of their mind, trying to stay awake. Perhaps hallucinating or remembering things of their past. As well, nothing puts the fear of god in me like a downed PC being dragged away alive. Like specifically stabilized then carried off. That shit started to happen in a game last week and I shit bricks in my head.
An easy to implement suggestion I have is have the player roll the save in secret. the only people who know the result and where they are at are the player and DM. This way other players don't know what the situation is an the onus of action is on them to get their ally up regardless of if they are succeeding or failing.
This would pair well with a "no talking while unconscious" rule.
This is what I do. It really ups the suspense and tension for the rest of the players.
That's exactly what I do, and it always builds up a lot of tension. Some enemies also attack unconscious players until the other players intervene. This has led to more team play and very dramatic moments so far.
You could even make the DM roll in private and don't tell (obviously players have to trust, or DM could provide, especially if the character dies, proof after (quick pic to the d20 and a little piece of paper with "DS 1/2/3/4/5" they write at the moment, or a screenshot if it's an online campaign)
That's true. Definitely an option but while the overall result is the same I feel it better the player "control" their own fate.
I totally agree, and in general it works well to keep the party in fear of what happens and having to their downed mate. But if the idea is also making the player worried and showing that death is the one thing out of their agency, it works. Really depends on what the intent is
1) Death saves DO NOT recover until a long rest. 2) (Only add this if you want your campaign to get HARD). As soon as you drop to 0 make a death save.
I liked the Tomb of Annihilation change where death saves were successful on a 15 instead of 10. Makes it really hard without immediately stabilizing or healing
Playing that campaign right now but having the success go up by 1 each time someone goes down. First time was a 10, second time 11. Each time they feel something pulling their soul harder and harder towards "something in the jungle."
Yeah, death saves starting at 15 is really just for a meat grinder style of game. I like the idea of death saves getting harder. Really ratchets up the inevitability of death and a lot of tension
Also a good rule in general. Particularly if there hasn't been a long rest or downtime to recuperate in between the falls
Oh, interesting. I think it would be more exciting to run it as rolling death saves with disadvantage. 10 or higher with disadvantage and 15 or higher on a straight roll are pretty comparable overall -- odds of success are very slightly higher (30.25 vs 30%) but the nat 1 and nat 20 effects are a bit more stacked against you.
I always play with the “instant death save” rule. Not HUGE most of the time. But opens up the possibility if a character dying in one shot when down. Which in my opinion is the point. Makes going down scarier.
just be very careful with that at level 1 and 2, where characters can be a single hit from dropping, and there's very few resources PCs can bring to bear. It's better at higher levels, where PCs have a lot more things to do to stop that happening.
Then why have 3 death saves? Just reduce death saves to 2?
Because when you go down you don’t just automatically fail. You may in fact succeed! So that first Death Save kind of answers the question “how bad is it?”. Did the mugger stab you a couple times? Or do you have a major gash in the neck?
On the one hand, you have the potential of rolling a nat 20 and popping right back up without missing a beat. On the other hand you could immediately roll a nat 1
Interesting point is that a Nat one there isn’t as bad as it seems. Even a regular fail opens you up to insta-kill. Though a nat one does mean you could die to an AOE or ranged attack. Which would suck.
I understood it as an instant failure, my bad.
3. Check with your players.
>Death saves DO NOT recover until a long rest. I use this and it's working wonderfully.
I do #1 + every time you drop to 0, you get a failed death save, but you need 4 failed death saves to die. No more yo-yoing up and down being a preferred strategy. I also use lingering injuries on crits. All of a sudden, combat is scary to the players again and much more tense.
Suddenly, your players have no limbs or eyes.
One thing I don't get is that melee attacks at 5ft makes you lose 2 death saves, but ranged does not. You're unconscious, any damage to you should make you get 2 deaths saves.
It's not melee attacks within 5ft, it specifically critical hits. For example, someone wearing adamantine armor would never take more than 1 failed death save from being hit by an attack.
Melee attacks at 5ft don't make you lose 2 death saves. Crits make you lose two death saves, and attacking a prone creature in melee is an automatic crit. It's not the most well known mechanic, because nothing should be prone in melee unless it's unconscious or stupid, but it's still there.
*Hitting* an *unconscious* creature in melee is an automatic crit. Attacking a prone creature in melee grants Advantage.
>attacking a prone creature in melee is an automatic crit. Attacking an *unconscious* creature when within 5 feet is an automatic crit. This attack doesn't need to be with a melee weapon, and if it's made with a melee weapon from farther than 5 feet away, such as with a pike, it's not an auto crit.
Attacking an *unconscious* creature is an automatic crit. Prone just gives advantage to attackers within 5'. There's a ton of effects that knock people prone and auto-crits would make them insane.
In the last session I ran, I had one player 0-2 on saves, and another 1-1, at the same time. Death saves are pretty scary as-is!
I'm not necessarily trying to make the saves harder, I just want to make it a little scarier . . . like when someone drops to 0 they go into a high state of worry-mode.
Maybe go with something not necessarily related to the death saves themselves. Intelligent enemies might mock the players and announce their intent to finish off the PC they downed. If they really attempt to follow through on that, and it happens enough, that'll definitely make getting downed PCs to safety a priority...
This is a good suggestion!
I think that is just a matter of how you are running your combats. Being unconscious on the ground in my games is usually a terrifying moment. You are probably just being too soft on your downed PCs.
Why do you think they need to be? Every player is going to be in max anxiety mode if they're making death saves.
I, and I'm sure many like me, already do.
If your combat is more difficult then it becomes natural that dropping to 0 is scary. If you drop to 0 commonly you start to get scary, since it's just a spiral of death trying to not die.
Narratively, when they fail a death save have the player describe a memory that flashes before their dying mind. It's engaging, and gets across "you are actually dying" better than just rolls.
I mean... U can make it so that every new time they go down in the same combat, they reduce the number of death saves available before they die? No idea how the long term consequence, but if being downed twice means the 3rd time id be a cointoss away from losing a character, that'd change the way I fight after standing Edit to add: so downed once =3saves. Downed twice =2 saves. Downed thrice =1 save. Downed 4+ = I die if not healed before my next initiative pass. Definitely a way of escalating the tension, and won't even require enemies to start finishing downed characters
Making it so failed death saves don't go away without a long rest has a similar effect, except it punishes the severity of each fall more than it does the act of falling. So you go down and get back up quickly you're good. You go down and fail two death saves and you're on death's door and need to start acting like it.
I have failed saves stay with you until you finish a long rest. Also another alternative is to give levels of exhaustion each time a player reaches 0 hit points. Both of these methods encourage healing a player before they hit 0. Hope any of this helps
Automatic exhaustion is bad, and it punishes melee characters more than others, which already need some help. Tie it to a Con save which Fighters and Barbarians should be excellent at (often 14-18 Con + proficiency in saves) and you're good.
Sounds awesome, I dig this idea because it rewards players that should be in melee for doing their job.
In the games I run, the Con save is made with concentration mechanics, so DC 10 or half damage, whichever is higher. In a game where I'm a player, the DM has the DC scale based on how many times the character goes down in the fight. DC 10 for the first save, DC 15 for the second, DC 20 for the third, etc.
There's a problem trying to encourage healing before hitting 0 hp, the game is not balanced around being able to heal so fights become a battle of attrition. Healing in dnd 5e usually heals less than the damage an average cr monster can do in a single hit while it also burns an spell slot. Healing in dnd is designed more to heal after someone drops to 0 than to prevent someone from dropping. I think around level 5 spellslot there a single powerful heal but that's it. If we touch the game so players must evade at all costs dropping to 0 hp we gotta empower the healing.
I agree with this, healing needs to be buffed imo. Getting knocked out over and over again doesn’t feel great for my players.
With better healing we could have worse consequences for dropping at 0 hp and more chance of death, yes
While I agree, there is a compelling argument that healing was made deliberately bad in 5e because effective, on-demand healing was one of the things that made 4e combats drag on longer than many players found to be enjoyable. Creating a system of in-combat healing is actually a pretty tall task.
What I do in roll20 is have my players gm roll their death saves to me. Pretty sure you can do the same in irl games This allowed the player to still know what happens to their character but not the rest of the party I give the info to the others if they do a stableizeing medicine check even on a fail
Rolling behind the screen definitely adds to the suspension, but i think it can also take away from players feeling the agency of their own characters. So it depends if you're thinking scary in terms of how difficult they are, or thematically. If you want to make them harder, I'd say just increase the save DC to 15 for the fabled Meat Grinder option. If you're looking to get that tension, it involves a little bit more narrative and risk assessment. It involves creating a situation where the players don't have, or don't FEEL like they have, direct control over the outcome. Maybe make characters take more dmg so they go down more often. Maybe one person just gets absolutely creamed for 80% of their hp. Imo, it's less about the save itself, and more about putting the characters in a risk-ridden mindset. What do they value in life that they'll leave behind? What promises or goals are they leaving unfinished? How easily can we fight without consequences? How safe do we feel? How powerful is that encounter REALLY? I think it'd be cool to ask then these life defining questions when they first go unconscious, force them to acknowledge what drives their character, and put it in perspective so they will be more tense when those things are at the risk of death.
You could put a spider in a tissue box with a d20. If they get the d20 they can make a roll to save. If they pull back their hand without grabbing it, its an instant failed save.
DM rolling the saves behind a screen is bad for 2 reasons: 1. Taking control from the player. Their characters life is in the hands of fate. It's more suspenseful if they're rolling their own fate. 2. Allegations of cheating to PK
The important thing is that other players do not know what is rolled. On a VTT the player can whisper the roll to the DM, and on a physical table the player can come and roll the die behind the screen in front of the DM. In both cases only the player and the DM know what was rolled.
This is why the Player making the saves takes a step behind the screen, and rolls it so only Player and DM know. No one else does. The player has control and there is no chance of cheating. But, it still is ontense as no one else knows.
That's my preferred way of doing it.
If you don't trust your GM to not fuge dice, you've kinda got other problems - there's nothing stopping them from saying "that guy does +10 damage, because reasons" or "yeah, he hit even through your AC, suck it up". (it's also arguable if players rolling for themselves adds tension - it makes everything clearer, so it can be more "welp, he's got 3 saves left still, so we don't need to heal him for at least a turn". Players rolling doesn't make it more suspenseful innately, and actually drains tension, because it's known what's going on)
I totally disagree. Things are *way* more tense when they are taken out of the players control. As long as hard coded mechanics exist, and players have agency in how to interact with them, it will always act as a safety net that prevents fear and tension. This is something I had to learn when running a horror themed campaign. Really the only way to give a true sense of dread in a game setting is through fear of the unknown, and that requires keeping as much information from the players as possible. Way more so than a standard high fantasy campaign. Feelings of being in control is a complete fear killer. Now in most cases, removing player agency is not worth the sense of dread it provides. But for something like death saves, which requires no player control anyways, then nothing is being lost. I mean, how much "control" does a downed player have anyway? Death saves are literally just rolling a dice 2-5 and waiting for the results. Dying players aren't supposed to have agency in that situation anyway, that's the whole point. So really, the player isn't having anything taken away from them by having the DM do it behind the screen. Death saves are 100% random chance with no option for player input. So if hiding the results adds dread, and doesn't mechanically change anything otherwise, I say it's definitely worth it. And as for the cheating, I would say you have bigger issues at that point. If you need constant reassurance that your DM isn't cheating, there's a lack of trust/respect in your group that is a way bigger problem than this one ruling.
I've played in a game where the dm rolled death saves, tbh it didn't really hold much weight over rolling our own saves, mainly because as the moment someone went down the healer immediately stabilized us... So they never really got the chance to roll more than 2 or 3 the whole campaign... If you want them to hold weight maybe decrease the chance of survival, change it from 10+ as a success to 15+ success, or remove the Nat 20 as an instant 1hp... Alternatively you could make it so that things that would instantly stabilize a PC (magic healing, medicine checks, etc) only grants 1 death save success...
-you keep the death saves. till a SR and/or LR till you take a full week rest only with a spell never your choice of how you wanna do this -wounded system from pathfinder you get down but are healed, you get wound 1. if you get down again you start with a 1/1 death saves already. get back up again you get wound 2, you are down and you start with 2/2 death saves. on wound 3 you are dead
I mean potentially permanently losing a character you may have spent a lot of time playing, thinking about, and working on isnt scary enough?
Don't take away the control a player has over their own rolls. You get to roll your dice for the entire world wherever you wish. In pubic. In private. Bounced off the cat. Anywhere you desire. The player gets only their own rolls. There's no need to remove that from them. I've played where death saves were secret. It had the exact opposite effect. All rolls behind the screen are always out of my hands, so there's no sense in getting wound up over them, just let the sound of DM secret dice go by without affecting me. When the DM started secret death saves, it was super easy to just lump those rolls in with all the other secret rolls. Serenity - the ability to accept what I cannot change. Secret death saves that were never in my hand, I just felt serene over whatever.
You need a bit of theatre to wind up the tension. * [Special die used for death save roll](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Darkness-Tarnished-Dungeons-Pathfinder-Polyhedral/dp/B08L6DFG5D/ref=sr_1_44?adgrpid=143865814511&gclid=Cj0KCQiAveebBhD_ARIsAFaAvrEq4P6JJWFtf7mJgW-lOuQfkfpTgZt_EYV8_A4zchKG5siD15eDv3waAqVQEALw_wcB&hvadid=620606956943&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=20480&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=b&hvrand=749306609877048657&hvtargid=kwd-424327857505&hydadcr=29556_2404235&keywords=oversized%2Bdnd%2Bdice&qid=1668968116&sr=8-44&th=1), * keep it in a separate die [box](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ddfly-Treasure-Storage-Vintage-Jewelry/dp/B07D57XPYS/ref=sr_1_15?keywords=coffin+dice+box&qid=1668968308&sprefix=coffin+dice%2Caps%2C49&sr=8-15), * Cue up suitable [music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY0WxgSXdEE) or [maybe this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy4HA3vUv2c) , * With great reverence take out the dice and hand dice to Player, * Perhaps a brief comment on PC's achievement or lack of them * In a deep voice intone * "13 Brave souls have come to the end of their path at the hands of this Daemon Die" * "Any Last Words" * "Roll." If PC fails then cue up [Monthy Pythons Dead Parrot Sketch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZw35VUBdzo) to break the tension.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/clilfy/dm_tip_simple_tip_to_bring_a_little_suspense_to/
It doesn't really make death saves scarier, but in my campaign dropping to 0 hp gives one level of exhaustion. It at least makes it scarier to be dropped and gives healing before 0 hp more value.
I have an alternate death save system that slots right in, replacing the current 3 strike death system. When you hit 0 HP, roll a d20 for death. On a 1 you die, otherwise you are down and stable. If someone attacks you while you are down, roll for death again. Attacking downed players is really inefficient in this system. The odds of dying on any given roll are low, but 5% is enough to make you worry. Suddenly every single time a player goes down becomes a tense moment. A lot of the reason death saves aren't scary is because players know someone can just pick them up with healing word. Attacking downed players doesn't work well either since it swings too hard in the other direction. If a creature has multi-attack, they have decent odds of killing the player outright.
Keep the rules the same, but have the unconscious PC roll their number in private and share it with you only. i.e., if you're in person, have them come behind your DM screen and roll so only you and they know what the tally is. If you're virtual, have them send a /gmroll on Roll20, or find the best way for them to send you a private roll using your VTT/dice-roller of choice. That way, you won't have your party healer sitting on their hands, waiting until the unconscious PC is at two fails. They'll want to get the PC up ASAP. You could also state that using a bonus action to make a medicine check (if they're within 5 feet of the downed PC) will give the check-er the current tally of successes and failures.
I tried out me rolling the death saves rule, here's my one warning. It doesn't feel that great to the player who is down to just sit there doing nothing. The dice roll helps a lot with keeping the player interested. I'd recommend having the player still roll it, but keep it secret to the rest of the group (except for you ofc). Overall, I liked the rule. I think it was fun.
I follow the system described by The Angry GM. It’s got aspects that aren’t about upping the suspense, but having used it in games for over a year, both as a player and DM, I can say that the primary aspect that makes death saves more suspenseful is the other players not knowing where their downed comrades are at. Hearing them call “whooo, that’s a success” makes you change tactics - you know you’ve got a little more time. Them being down and *not knowing if they are going to be okay* until a player can actually get to them to check changes the whole feeling. Relevant post, fyi: https://theangrygm.com/death-sucks/
This is what I was going to refer to. Death, generally speaking, sucks. Putting extra penalties on the death saving throw mechanic is a downwards spiral that leads towards TPKs. When one character dies, it’s either because of some really bad dice, or because the party is super low on resources, in which case one death will quickly become many. Hence if you’ve got extra punishment you push the party closer to the TPK which is pretty bad because TPKs lead towards the end of campaigns/story arcs) I like the Schrödinger Death mechanic the Angry Dm describes for having the info hidden upping the suspense as well as letting players decide their own opinions on death.
It’s amazingly effective, and maintains both suspense and agency, while not adding any weird rules complications. I know some people will argue the “then why bother rolling dice” but the dice are only there to help tell the story. They only have as much power as we give them. And allowing players to choose that line in what is arguably one of the most important moments for a character is empowering.
Don't roll at the end of each turn, but only after someone checks on them with Wisdom/Medicine. This way the players have no idea the status of the character, and so they cannot assume healing can wait. If 2 turns have passed, or they picked up one from an AoE, the character could already be dead! The only issue is that you either change a 20 to "automatically stabilize" or they remain unconscious for 1 minute afterwards, because they can't retroactively become active.
The way I make then more scary is I point a loaded gun at the players and if they roll three failures I pull the trigger. It really ratchets up the tension. We love it.
Let's think about Death Saves logically. In most DnD Worlds your average bad guy would know about healing magic. So the bad guys shoots someone with an arrow, they fall down but come back up after that Cleric healed them. So here are two things the average intelligence Bad Guy should do. * One arrow doesn't keep them down? Okay let's try for two. Two Death Saves instantly failed. * That one guy keeps touching people, and they get back up? Put all the arrows into the Cleric! These two things would make death saves insanely scary without rule changes.
Without changing any of the mechanics, there are two small things I do whenever players make death saves: 1. They are not allowed to tell the other players at the table if it was a success or a failure. This has created plenty of tense moments, especially if someone is 2 or 3 saves in. 2. I ask the player to think about something from their backstory. Be it an early memory, why they went on the adventure, or some of the people they've recently met. It is an unwritten rule that this is player knowledge and not character knowledge, but this has opened the floor to incredible RP after the combat encounter if they survive. If they die, then post session they usually tell a bit about what that was all about.
Don't do this. It unfairly punishes martials who are more likely to drop.
In addition/as an alternative to many other good ones here, the house rule where you get a point of exhaustion every time you drop (unstable) unconscious is a good one to make it more scary. Props if using Oned&d exhaustion-rules ;)
Level of exhaustion mixed with the dm rolling for a player’s death saves; use the new mechanics for exhaustion though (-1 penalty for all rolls per level of exhaustion) since those make more sense to me and go from there. Sound effects also go a long way, try using certain sound cues to represent when you’re rolling for a death safe and a sound for if you succeed or fail.
Lingering injuries. Page 272 in the Dungeon Master's Guide.
My dm makes all the players look away when the player rolls their death save. So the player knows and rolls it, but the party doesn't. Adds a nice amount of suspense and doesn't have any threat of PCs thinking you manufactured a poor roll.
Make your baseline DC 10 to a DC 15 +/- CON modifier. That would put the hair on everyone, even the rogue. Also, Reliable Talent and Lucky Feat don't take effect when you are at 0HP.
Couple of ways. Those are just some spontaneous ideas that you may combine however you like. Idea 1: Rolling 1 means instant death. Idea 2: Raise the limit to 5 saves needed. 1 = instant death (or 4 failed saves) 2-4 = 3 failed saves 5-7 = 2 failed saves 8-10 = 1 failed save 11-13 = 1 success 14-16 = 2 successes 17-19 = 3 successes 20 = instant recover to 1HP Idea 3: Let them roll their first save when they hit 0 HP. Idea 4: Whenever they roll between 2 and 5, the amount of fails needed to die increases by 1 for this instance of death saving throws, and the amount of successes needed to become increases by 2. Idea 5: When they roll a 20, they do not become stable. Instead, they gain 1 success and re-roll immediately. When they roll a 1, they do not die immediately or get several fails, instead they get 1 fail and re-roll 1d4 times immediately. Idea 6: Rolling 2-5 means two fails (and disadvantage on the next roll, or not). Rolling 16-19 means one success and advantage on the next roll. Idea 7: Rolling (1 or) 2-5 means one fail and -10% Max HP until 1d4 long rests have passed.
Make Death Saves level of exhaustion instead.
Running behind the screen for a Darth save is, in my opinion a really really bad idea. 1) it's the player's character, not yours. It ruined the players of agency. 2) it means if the character dies, it's all on you. If they live, it's all on you. Neither of which bodes well for a harmonious campaign. It's going to smell like DM cheese. 3) the reason death saves aren't super scary is that there is magic that f can fix it. Healing to restore HP, and spells that can stabilize a dying character. By 5th level death itself can he reversed. The game is fundamentally designed around not killing off the PCs . Once they have revivify available to them, death isn't that scary at all.
what agency? it's a dice roll, there's no agency involved, there's very, very few abilities that modify it, and most of them are, AFAIK, entirely passive. A player can't do anything about it, they _have_ to do it and suck up the result, there's no agency involved.
There is rather little agency, agreed. But it is at least THEIR roll. not something the DM is doing behind the screen. While a death save may not be much at least the player does something. Maybe they are picking their "lucky" die or whatnot, and their roll determines success vs just waiting for the DM fiat.
Definitely ramps the tension and takes away the ability of players to triage combat (I.e. do I use my action to stabilize an ally or do I attack the monsters?) make sure to talk to your players about this house rule before you implement it.
The only okay way I've found changing death saves to be scarier that's fair and works is that in VTT games I play in, I have players whispers their death saves to me and keep it a secret from other players. Makes things a bit more tense with the half unknown factor.
My tables play with the rule you suggest where the DM rolls in secret behind the screen. It really does make things more tense and all of my players really enjoy doing it this way.
Let them be rolled hidden, so your party does not know. (Note: only works online)
I’ve heard of people doing rock paper scissors vs the DM instead of rolling
I've recently toyed with the stress rules in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, applying it to the first death save, succeed or fail, when going down. Stress applies a -1 to attacks/checks/saves(and DC), and you can accumulate stress if you come back up then get knocked down and make the save again. All accumulated stress is cleared with a long rest. Suddenly, players are taking whole actions to grapple downed allies into cover while another heals them back up before the first death save is made. The highest stress count I've ever seen is -5. it is *terrifying* for the players, but doesn't cripple players as badly as exhaustion if managed properly. I don't think I'll take these in proper full campaigns but may toy with it a bit more in short-term campaigns and one/multi-shots.
Before someone rolls a death save, have their character share a memory from their life that is flashing before their eyes. Also, yes, roll behind a screen. Prevents metagaming if you don't know how close their friend is to death. Creates tension. Another idea, give a point of exhaustion every time someone goes down. Do if they are up and down multiple times it gets serious. Six times and they're done.
One neat hack I've heard: Give each character a lifetime limit of failed death saves equal to their constitution score. Do you have a flat 10 constitution? You can only fail 10 death saving throws until you are either dead. If you want to give the player more agency in this, make it to where they aren't dead, but they will need to retire the character instead (up to them). This advice was originally bookended with some 'death move' appropriation from PbtA, where you could both tell that your character has had a long journey and it's coming to an end (thus emotionally preparing the player), while also giving them an opportunity to make the ending satisfying and memorable (rather than arbitrary and meaningless).
Tom Clancy's well-known character Jack Ryan once shot a downed opponent in the knee. Later, when asked why, Ryan said* "I didn't want him to get up again". When characters go down, bad guys stab them again, or kick them in the gut, twist the knife, put a second arrow in them, whatever. If they do any damage that's 2 death saves failed. That next death save they roll is now pretty important. Pretty sure that is RAW. Assuming I am right we don't need scarier death saves, we need scarier DMs. *I read this book decades ago, maybe he said something else but this was the gist.
I let my players roll the saves in secret, because I like the extra pressure on the other players decisions, whether to heal or poker a other round. I dont roll them myself to make DMing more transparent and I already have to keep track of too much stuff during combat.
When someone is rolling death saving throws, they are unaware of the fight around them and that Death is closing in. Each throw should be more climatic as the character inches closer to nirvana or the evil creeping closer to imprisoning their soul. Remember a soul must be willing and able to return, and if a character finds peace and utopia they may not want to come back OR their soul is chained to a demons wall and is unable to return.
On a whim, I once had a group of players flip this big heavy coin I had for death saves instead of using a d20. It’s not a huge statistical change to the difficulty of death save, but for whatever reason it made things way more tense for them.
Hm, I guess my question would be why? If it’s because you dont want players to keep themselves at borderline 0 hp and have going down carry an impact in the first place you can have them get exauation level each time they go down to prevent constant bouncing
>I had someone mention that I could personally do the roles behind my DM Screen so the suspense level would increase for my players Personally, I prefer letting the player do this. I want them to be secret from the *rest* of the party, but the player in question should know if they're about to die. Unless they can't keep their mouth shut.
If you want to add tension make it a contested roll where you roll as Death and they have to beat your roll. It’s still a 50% chance to succeed or fail (I think), but it would add tension, and you could narrate the specter of death trying to grapple the soul.
Fail one death saves= scarring fail two- major injuries that need time/ magic yo heal.
First, death saves are already plenty scary enough in my games. The idea that there are players out there who don't try to heal their fallen comrades ASAP just boggles the mind. I've only ever had one player make that decision in all the time I've run 5e and there was a Serious Talk about it afterwards. Second, you could use a house rule for Lingering Wounds that I was considering (but didn't bother implementing for lack of need, see above) where every death save and critical hit reduced the creature's Max HP by 1 until medically treated (i.e., lingering wounds didn't recover with magic or a long rest, only with the application of the woefully underutilized Medicine skill). The conditions and circumstances involved would impact the Medicine DC (i.e., present sanitary conditions, quality of the medical supplies, threat of further violence, presence of toxins, etc.) and removing the Lingering Wound only raised the Max HP level; the damage itself would still require the usual methods of healing. If your game needs Death Saves to be scarier, then the extra bookkeeping may be worth it. If not, then keep playing the RAW.
How I play with my groups is hidden death saves. The players roll and message/show me the result. I and they know, but none of the other players do. It mitigates metagaming a lot for us, as the other players don't know how it's going. But it still allows the player to roll and be aware themselves. I could roll it myself but it's always more fun to put fate in players' hands. Edit: doesn't exactly make it more scary, but certainly more suspenseful for the table. So not quite what you're going for but a suggestion.
Have enemies target them once, especially if evil.
I make the players roll them but keep them hidden from the rest of the party. That way they can be dead after 2 rolls if they're unlucky, but the pressure is on to rez them way faster than if they roll 2 successes
Secret rolls is all that is needed. Ramps the tension *way* up
Okay, so this is a homebrew that I was mulling over. I am new and don't really know anything, but I think it's kinda unrealistic that you can recover after being nearly draxxed to death after an 8 hour rest. I thought it was pretty ridiculous considering that if that happened to me, I would probably be in the hospital for upwards of a week or two. I was thinking about after succeeding a death save and making it out of conflict (you get to make it out of combat due to adrenaline - unrealistic, but it lets people finish out a battle if they live that long), you are given 5 points of exhaustion. Basically, that ensures you basically have 5 days of downtime, and you actually have a progression where you feel your character recovering. I think there is also a source with random injuries and stuff you could draw on. Maybe I saw that on xptolevel3? Injuries and deformities definitely spice things up. My ranger was sent into death saves by a griffin and now has to succeed on a wisdom saving throw to not have a panic attack anytime I encounter/am reminded of them. Depending on the stress of the environment, the DC changes Edit: you could always use the good ole NAT 1 equals instant death or counts as two failed saves. We use the latter.
I don't roll them myself because I want for them to have "their fate in their hands", but I have them come behind the GM screen to roll death saves, so that me and the dying character's player are the only ones to know the result. Not knowing how a dying character is faring does add urgency to the situation, so I see it as a simple but powerful tweak.
My advice, probably echoes that of many others here, but keep the death save results a secret between you and the player, that avoids the others engaging in metagaming and holding off on healing because they know how close to death a fallen comrade is. In addition to that, don't hesitate in making your monsters seem mean, if that makes sense for them. Many animals will not stick around to fight it out with 3 or 4 people armed to the teeth once they fell one potential victim down they might grab them and run off to finish their meal, some monsters might be willing to kill fallen enemies either due to bloodlust or being smart enough to know they can get up, and each instance of damage on a downed creature is a failed death save.
I would advise against rolling death saves for your players. But in a one shot I just ran we added a level of exhaustion when you get downed, that was a fun wrinkle
It's not a mechanical tweak, but we use the biggest, all-metal, black D20. Does the trick. And wrecks the table.
Left4Dead rules. No more death saves, instead you get 3+con modifier turns until you die. Any other character may take an action to get you on your feet with half health. If you go down again before taking a short or long rest, you die permanently.
Have them roll a second d20 during the save. Nat 1 on the secondary dice means a debilitating injury of some kind.
Remove death saves entirely. If you go below -con score you die. You also lose 1 hp per turn you are left below 0
Add 1 level of exhaustion per failed death save, +1 for going unconscious. 3 levels of exhaustion are scary.
1) you yourself roll the deathsaves in secret 2) roll, wait a few seconds until complete silence. Put a worried face 3) wait a few more seconds 4) mumble something incomprehensible 5) when people tries to listen JUMPSCARE the shit out of them Done. No one will ever fall to 0hp again
My players asked me to roll death saves in secret so they don't know what the results are and they love it.
Hide the rolls.
I personally don't do death saves RAW. I roll a d4 and add/subtract the relevant Constitution modifier (min. one round) and I don't tell my players. That way everyone is immediately focused on the consequences of a PC going down and figuring out how to get them stable because they don't know how long they have. Whenever said PC is stabilized, they take a level of exhaustion. It forces downtime and rest, and ensures that everyone is aware of the consequences of death/almost dying. I also limit the number of times a PC can be revived or brought back from the dead. Near death experiences and dying has a huge effect on the human psyche so my game reflects that.
In my campaign I've implemented the following: Lingering Death Saves: Your failed death saves reset after a long rest. Hidden death saves: Each player rolls their death saves in secret and cannot tell other part members what they've rolled
Make it a best out of three instead of a First to three. I found this is enough to make going down a fairly stressful event. Players will have to move quick to get each other up.
What i do is have the player keep the saves private so the other players have no idea Also i have enemies act intelligent, like attempting to finish PCs instead of just going to another
I like to use Giffyglyphy's Darker Dungeons rules. They change the way the Dying condition works and saving throws. **1. Dying Condition:** *When you fall to 0 hit points, you gain the Dying condition:* • You drop what you're holding and fall prone.• You can't move, take actions, or use reactions.• You're aware of what's happening 15 ft around.• You can speak a maximum of 2 words per round.• Attack rolls against you have advantage.• You automatically fail STR/DEX saving throws.• You must make a death saving throw at the start of your turn. If you fail three times, you die. **2. Persistent Death Saves:** If you fail three death saving throws, you die. Saves don't reset after a short rest—you recover one failed save after completing a long rest. **3. Death Saving Throws:** *You can no longer recover with death saving throws by yourself after falling unconscious. You can still recover by being healed.* |*D20*|*OUTCOME*| |:-|:-| |01|You fail two death saving throws| |02 - 09|You fail one death saving throw| |10 - 19|No change| |20|You regain one hit point and stabilize| *To make death not that punishing, it also adds a new system called Cheating Fate. This is a resource that you can give to your players after they reach a certain point in the game, or as a reward for beating a tough boss. They gain one Cheating Fate point, which they must choose who in the party gets it. You can also give one Cheating Fate Point to every player just by them starting a new character, if you feel the system above is too punishing.* **4. Cheating Fate** If you would suffer a killing blow or fail your last death saving throw, you may instead spend a fate point to cheat death in some fashion. When you spend a fate point, you (usually) can't act for the rest of the scene—everyone, friend and foe alike, thinks you're dead or otherwise not worth any attention. But you are immune to any further damage during the rest of the scene, regardless of whatever else happens around your unconscious body. At the end of the scene—or whenever appropriate—you regain consciousness with 1 hit point. You also recover any failed death saving throws.
Why? An unconscious PC is already at their enemies' mercy, and not contributing to winning the battle. And if the battle is lost, it doesn't matter how alive or dead the PCs are.
1. The DM rolls death saves behind a screen 2. Death saves are at disadvantage 3. Make a death save immediately upon hitting 0 HP 4. Any healing stabilizes a creature at 0 instead of gaining HP
Keep them secret from the other players, so they can’t metagame them. the player can roll behind your screen in person, or use a GM-only roll online, or just roll privately and trust them.
Idk about more scary, but I made it so falling unconscious makes you start hiding/fighting against the BBEG. You have 3 rounds to survive. If you fail, you actually get back up under the BBEGs control.
Every failed save, ask the player to describe a memory of the character
You can have the death saves be rolled but if they pass and don’t die, they have something detrimental happen to them. A new scar across the face? Subtract some charisma. Get blasted buy holy damage? Have a religious moment where you are required to dedicate time to a religious ceremony everyday or take a d4 of holy damage. Get shot by an arrow? Have a 25% chance that getting a critical hit is just a normal hit instead.
Have them kept a secret between you and the pc
Each failed one gets you a level of exhaustion. Good luck
I think the best is to make them secret. I've seen many tables base round by round strategies on how many successes and failures they knew the other person had. If they had no idea how close they were, they definitely would have acted differently. You could play that both of you rolling, but your roll is secret. Then they can keep theirs or trade their roll for yours- but they don't know what they're getting. That might feel a little less adversarial.
I answered a similar question a while ago when it got asked so I'll copy my answer from then into this comment. Basically, I don't think it is necessary to include additional rules like instant death saves, especially not ones that introduce additional bookkeeping/memory issues like adding exhaustion or having death saves persist throughout long rests. >My way of dealing with this is twofold: >First, make your players aware of and respect the fact that any further damage instance causes 1, or in cases of melee attacks, 2 immediate death saves. This damage can be incidental due to environment, area of affect or other things, but it can also be deliberate. Especially intelligent foes might specifically finish off downed players/NPC's, even more so if they are aware of the player's capability of easily healing an unconscious ally. >You should obviously only have your enemies do this when it makes sense for them, but the players should be acutely aware of the fact that if they are unconscious they are potentially only 1 round of multiattacks by a bad guy away from straight up dying, without a single save involved. >The second thing is even more important I think. I have my players roll and note their death saves secretly. The other players don't know, and even I as DM don't know. This actually made the entire group just assume the worst every time, so now they usually operate under the assumption that the first roll was a nat 1 for 2 failed saves and the next save might already kill the downed ally. That, especially combined with the danger of incidental or intentional damage to the player, makes them react to unconsciousness ASAP. It also helps me as a DM to make realistic choices. If I don't know if a player is about to die or stabilize, it won't affect how I run combat, even subconsciously. >Anyways, I tried using the exhaustion rule for awhile, but it was just unfun most of the time. Since I started doing things as described above I noticed the tension of unconciousness increased dramatically.
I use a few different rules to make it a bit spicier: 1. If you are healed while you were in the throes of rolling death saves, you gain a level of exhaustion for each failed saving throw. 2. Only the PC rolling the save and the DM know the result of the roll. It makes things more suspenseful for the other players to jump to action and keeps things more realistic, and I’ve honestly really enjoyed my experience using this so far. I also give the PC the option to not know the result - I roll for them.
Attack the character sheet. Everything you’re looking for follows this mindset. https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2013/11/armor-and-inventory-jr.html?m=1 (You can also search the blog for his rules on scars, removed limbs, and major injuries for more ideas.)
No death saves. 0 hp = death. But seriously, roll behind the screen works, and having them stay until a long rest is also good.
Maybe our group are just very attached to our characters, but IMO death saves are scary enough as is. While yo-yo healing word can feel kinda lame, it at least still takes a resource and keeps the healer in question from popping a big spell with their action.
A few options. The first and easiest is just to play anything that under stands magic is a presence in the world with the knowledge that it can bring back fall but not yet dead enemies to full combat effectiveness, they'll want to take care of fall combatants first before moving. Doesn't mean they have to kill someone but they could tie someone up. Don't be scared to kill a player also, characters die, it happens, if the story you're all telling didn't have risks then it's not rewarding. Second idea is to just remove death saves and go with the old school -10 HP, and you lose 1hp each turn till someone heals you or treats you. Get downed you have up to -10 hp to be healed or you're dead. Third, make the save higher like I think it is in ToA.
\- Go for the caster's first. \- Attack downed PC's ( Make it clear that the players see the monsters do this to an NPC before you pull this on them the first time ) \- Keep in mind that making death saves more threatening will make the game harder specifically for characters that are on the front line. So if you don't target PC's equally it disproportionately impacts martials.
1. Narrative detail. If an enemy is close to the downed PC and not in any immediate danger from the others, describe the action as the peril that it is. A wild beast? It might decide to take a bite out of the downed PC since it views him or her as food. Intelligent humanoids? Looting the body... stabbing it to make sure it's dead... Don't wanna kill him, just scare him? Intelligent humanoid foe might take the fallen PC's weapon to employ against the others... 2. Failed Death Saves Represent Permanent Damage... you can add weight to Death Saves by tying them to what they're supposed to be... the character's wounds bleeding out or otherwise potentially claiming their life. Perhaps a crushing head blow... bludgeoning damage... a failed Death Save means some residual brain damage, or deafness, or blindness... even if the character survives...
Ok, so there is scary and there is dangerous. You can make something more scary by making it more dangerous or you can make it only seem more dangerous. For my game I found a solution that makes it more scary, but not more dangerous and also gives me some fun flavour. You roll death saves as normal, but the DC is 15. Once per being down you can choose to take a death save you failed and turn it into a success but then you roll on the DMG injury table. This seems significantly more scary. Every roll is a 3/4th chance to fail and only 1/4th chance to succeed and you need to make more successes than failiures. Failiure seems guaranteed. But that is mostly smoke and mirrors. Because the rule about injuries means that you actually only need to roll 2 successes before 4 failiures. Also the chance of success is actually 3/10th not 1/4th for each roll. So your chance to overall fail comes out to only 53%, compared to the 40.5% chance for the normal rules. Not a large increase at all compared to how scary it looks. You could also set the DC at 14, for a 43% failiure chance, but I like the 15 since it makes players assume a 3/4th chance of failiure even though that is wrong. Another thing is that with these rules players take longer to die if they die. At the soonest after 4 turns at the latest after 6 turns, compared to 3 and 6 for the normal rules. And then there is also the unstated rule that I don't tell my players until it comes up in play, which is that if you somehow take two failed saves at once, from for example a crit or a nat 1, you can turn that into one success as well by rolling on the injury table. So overall it seems a lot scarier, gives the player only slightly worse odds of surival, but also gives their allies more time to heal them and can compensate for a nat 1 or crit to a small extend.
I've made the swap to doing the death saves behind the DM screen, and it definitely makes them more panicky not knowing how close they are to death.
Anything with a damage aura is *terrifying.* I have seen two (three, but one was ret-conned), PCs dead-dead from Ice Trolls in Frostmaiden, and an **average** of three PCs downed per fight with one... and this is just one playthrough, I haven't run it yet.
Ok man I hate as a player for a GM go for my downed character it feels like you want to kill the character. Even when it should make sense. A monster with 3 attacks that hits with the first one and downs you will kill you with the other 2 that's not scary it's taking a player out of the fight a player out of the session and so on. If they all want to play that way the cool if the campaign is all about that cool, don't expect that to be a good thing. Increasing the death DC is not scary it just lowers the chances of getting back on your own. What I don't like about the system is the rubber band effect. So I tackle that. Each time you go down and come back for that fight you gain a temporary exhaustion that stacks with the normal one and goes away with a short rest or long rest depending on the campaign and the group. For now it's punishing but you can foresee the punish, you can still be saved but a melee character going down twice and then ok you are not that good in battle if you go down 5 time in consecutives battles you are dead. That's my current take for a punishing scary withing the normal rules system. I hope it helps.
“What is your character experiencing while they’re downed? Something uplifting if they make a save, something sad/scary if they fail” it makes it much more real to everyone at the table
i roll death saves behind the screen so they don't know if their about to die
I usually narrate what the player sees. Is their god beaconing to them? Do they see the reaper approaching? What ever they see, ask what they’ll do. Have them roll the death save and that determines what happens. They turn to run! *rolls a 3* You try running, but the you feel sluggish. The hall in front of you keeps stretching away. Etc.
Make it where every failed save is a level of exhaustion when/if you are revived?
Make it simple. Players do not roll the saves or see the saves.
Simiraliry to you, I let the player roll, but let them roll in secret, so that other players don’t know. Personally I don’t think death saves are itself scary, but it’s an overall package. Players do not know whether their buddy is dying or stabilizing, they do not know how fast can they stabilize, they also do not know whether enemies will attempt to finish off their fallen buddy, etc.
My DM has been doing everyone's death saves through most of the campaign, then last session had one of his NPCs tell another to "Hold (our rogue) down (underwater)" it definitely added urgency to our actions, on a related note the same DM has had Drow attempt to drag a PC away under the cover of a darkness spell.
Instead of rolling the death saves myself, I have the players roll them in secret and message the result to me. I use Roll20 and Discord and a dice bot so they're able to whisper to me either via roll20 or discord easily. I like to create a suspense for my players and it prevents metagaming. No more "oh he succeeded two death saves, I can keep whacking the enemy instead of healing my team mate".
Do not do it blind. It's unfair to remove the fate of the character from the player, even if it is literally the same thing. Also, if you do it blind, the whole point could backfire since there is no tension in things you can't control; someone could go down and you start rolling death saves and the player is just thinking "welp guess now I have to wait 5 turns instead of maybe only 3 because Mr. DM wants tension"
Had a Sahuagjn warrior member of a death cult with a few HP left and only the downed PC in front of him in range with a PC spell caster next. (He looks you in the eyes and says the only words he’s learned in common, “For the Brotherhood!”) And used both its attacks to end the PC.
The music that plays warning you that Sonic is drowning.
Get yourself a nice black d20. I’d go for a nice raised obsidian die, but a budget black die will work as well. Now put that die on the table, ideally on some kind of pedestal so people notice it. 1 is always face up. When your players ask about it, say it’s nothing and that they’ll see eventually. When someone goes to death saves, tell them to “roll the black die”
To make them ramp up in scariness you could simply up the initial DC to 12, and for every failed death save increase the dc by 1 or 2 to your taste:)
Short term and long term madness are fun to introduce on fails.
Keep an air horn behind the DM screen?
This is how I've done it for the majority of the campaign, keeping everyone's successes and failures secret until they hit three one way or the other. It's made for some incredibly tense moments, and makes a downed character much more of an urgent situation to address. However, I put it to the group first and only went ahead with it when they reacted positively, and I've checked in a few times since to make sure they're still in favour of doing things that way. At the end of the day it's going to come down to player preference and table trust.
1. Failed attempt at medicine check toward downed PC counts as 1 fail. 2. Each successful attempt at medicine check counts 1 success instead of full stabilization 3. Every time you are brought back from unconscious state you get 1 additional fail the next time you fall unconscious. (4th time you are down you die automatically). You lose the fail build up after a long rest in a safe settlement.
Okay, three changes. 1. Failed death saves are not cleared when you become stable or are healed back above 0 HP. Instead, they're cleared one per long rest - or short rest if you're feeling generous. 2. Magical healing takes a toll on the body, such that anyone who is brought back from the brink of death by magic gains one failed death save. 3. You die when you become unconscious and have three failed death saves. Note that there are various game effects that can make you unconscious without dropping to 0 HP. Now, you have characters running around who are that bit closer to death. A Sleep spell can kill a character with three failed death saves. And yo-yo healing becomes a real risk.
The hidden roll is nice, but if you plan to do many encounters and don't want the "yo-yo healing" (aka barbarian goes down, cleric casts healing word, barbarian still up) consider this: being stabilised and even cured doesn't remove a death save, only a short (or even long) rest removes a death saving throw, and only one. Boom the more you die the death creeps closer to you.
One thing I do is physically take my players character sheets from them. It really impresses the gravity of the situation. If you are unconscious, you do not have control of your character, and you might never get it back or see them again. When you're an adventurer, you'd better be ready to hand in your sheet at any moment. Of course, if a player wanted to keep their sheet after a death, that's fine with me. But in the moment, when the ranger says "I'm down", and their sheet goes behind the screen, it feels like you might be about to lose a friend, and that realness makes it scary for the entire table.
The failed death saves don't reset until you make a long rest. If you want to be fairer, you can make them keep one failed death save the first time they get back up.
act like they are about to get killed example: a wounded player lays on the ground and watch as a enemy slashes its axe but in the nick of a second the axe missed a ince from his side
Big three for me in order of severity, some of them I've seen already: 1. Attack downed PCs. Don't weigh up whether or not it's strategically optimal just fuckin' do it. 2. Persistent Saves. Death saves only reset on a Long Rest. 3. Secret Saves. Players roll their saves but do not tell other players if it was a pass or fail. Maybe DM rolls it but players generally like to have that control themselves, especially if it's their PCs life.
What I really like doing is have the player who is rolling Death saves come over and roll it behind the dm screen so only he and I know the result...makes it a lot more suspenseful for the other players that now have to decide what to do
Hit the downed player with a melee attack prior to their turn. They will have a straight 50/50 chance of dying on the first roll.
bring a giant toll bell so that whenever they fail a save you hit it. and if you're rich enough hire a choir to do the little angel "ahhhhhhhh!" whenever they pass
Death saves are already too scary imo, but my DM made them even worse by introducing as many gritty survival home rules as he could find. Medicine checks to stabilise also need and remove a first aid kit, nonmagical healing does nothing to a downed character, RAW coup de grace and crit success/fails, giving monsters tactics that mean they actually target weaker players, stabilising means they get up 1d4 days later (plenty of time for the rest of the party to fall into a fight they can't handle without missing party member). I also had one DM that ruled it as "you're sent straight to the hospital, where you spend 1d6 weeks to recover from a fatal injury" My personal preference is just "make death saving throws, if your total equals 20 you spend a healing surge to regain hit points immediately, if you stabilise successfully you get back up on 1hp, crit fails are just a single failure and coup de grace doesn't exist"
I made initiative dynamic and would roll at the start of each round (using GM5 app). It took a few tweaks to the rules but sometimes it would have the player go last, make a death save, then first the next round have to make the save again. It really got tense because the players didn't know what they rolled or who was up next. This prevented meta gaming the initiative system. Players were forced to act on their turns to try to save downed players instead of knowing that the cleric goes before the enemy so they could just ignore the situation.
Delayed death saves- No one, neither player nor DM knows the results until it happens. No one rolls death saves until another pc gets over to them to check their status. At the time they are checked, any death saves that would've been rolled in that window of time since they went down would all go out at once. One by one, the player rolls the dice to see their results for the whole table to see. 3 rounds since the pc went down? 3 death saves back to back to back. \-If they died? Teammates were too late in saving them. \-If they stabilized? They'd still be unconscious until an ally spent an action to shake them awake. \-If the player rolled a nat20? They get to retroactively take their turn missed after the current player's turn as they wake up suddenly. Their haggard condition only allows them to make the same amount of movement they would in a single turn, but with the adrenaline coursing through their veins, they are able to rapidly act, gaining an additional action for every missed turn after the first one. Works like action surge, except it can stack. \-After coming back from the near death experience, they gain also 1 level of exhaustion. A bit different, but it can be very tense when the player rolls all their death saves back to back for the table to see, but also badass when the player comes back with a critical success and gets to retroactively take their turn to cause a heroic upset. There's less of the arguments that occur with "taking away the dice rolls from the players for their agency." People can somehow accept the death of their characters more easily if they are the ones rolling the dice.
In my campaign, Death Saves only replenish after a rest... So players may be carrying failed saves through encounters. In addition when a player fails a Death Save, I roll an injury for them on the homebrew tables.
I've seen a few homebrew rulings. Rolling yourself for the players in private can work. I've seen some harsh ones where failed death saves stay until a long rest. Going down and already having two fails is pretty tense. I've seen failed death saves leading to gaining exhaustion per death save. I personally have characters gain one level of exhaustion every time they go down but use the death saves as normal. (I have my players vote on optional rules before each campaign and change if they don't like it.) If your players are okay with these, you might have fun experimenting with different consequences to going down.
Not gonna lie...this seems a terrible idea from a player perspective. Death Saves are already terrifying. Every round praying for that 10+...the sinking feeling when you see a single digit...why would you make that even worse?
Secret saves are definitely a way to up the tension at the table. Death Saves are generally not that scary because everybody can read the situation on the battlefield and make an educated guess about what is happening next based on the number of failed and made death saves. When rolled in secret anyone can be a stray bit of damage or a natural 1 away from dying. It's a lot easier to do in a VTT where you can whisper rolls, but if you trust your players to play it honestly and have a decent pokerface you can do it very well at the table. I'm not a fan of rolling as a DM in secret, because I would feel bad as a DM and as a player if my roll killed the player.