Replacing Death Saves
Instead of making a death saving throw, roll the percentile dice (d%) once each round for the next four rounds. These rolls are called impact rolls, and determine the extent of a character's injuries through an impact score. If nothing has caused the character to become stabilized by the end of your fourth round rolling the percentile dice, roll the percentile dice one last time to determine the length of unconsciousness, if necessary.
The character's injuries worsen by the amount rolled on each impact roll. A lower amount corresponds to lesser injuries, while a higher amount corresponds to more extreme wounds. The total impact of the injury is determined by the cumulative total when all four rolls are completed.
The player determines the extent of their wounds, and ultimately determines whether their character dies of their wounds or not. As this is highly subjective, the following may be helpful as a general guide:
Impact Score: Effect
If characters change significantly because of a near-death experience, players should work with their DM to alter their characters in a meaningful way. This might mean limiting certain abilities while increasing others, changing classes, adding new narrative responsibilities to the character, &c. These should not only be limited to narrative changes—making mechanical changes to a character should be acceptable as long as the table can come to agreement over the changes. For example, a pact with a powerful being to prevent death may make a character more powerful as a result, but will also change how that character uses their power and how much freedom they have as a result of their second lease on life.
Players should also describe, or inherit as a part of their characterization, what injuries they sustained if they roll an impact score of 75 or higher. Near-fatal and fatal physical, psychic, mystical, &c. injuries take a hefty toll on any adventurer. Scars, bodily disintegration, mutations, newfound cautiousness, or a loss of fear due to a new outlook on death are all possibilities for various injuries. Characters may lose interest in things they now find trivial, while becoming intensely focused on other goals. At the highest levels of the impact score, characters may actually die from their injuries, but remain as ghosts in search of new bodily vessels—these kinds of extreme options can be reasonable with such similarly extreme injuries.
These decisions are ultimately and finally up to the player of the affected character, not the DM or even the other players at the table. For the sake of good manners and respect, the player should talk with the DM and the other players to confer on what keeps with the spirit of the story, but a character’s death should come out of an admission that it makes the story more interesting and maintains the overall health of game being played. Conversely, this allows players the option to give their characters a glorious, comical, painfully banal, tragic—whatever it is—death in stories where that might be more appropriate than leaving the decision solely up to the determination of the dice.
Players who want to see long-term injuries push a character closer and closer to death each time should add their impact score to a growing modifier each time they are pushed to a certain level of injury. +10 per level of impact score for all future impact scores is an appropriate starting place for players interested in this kind of effect.
If players also want to account for taking damage while unconscious, they should roll an impact roll each time they sustain damage and add this to the impact score. This does not count as one of the four impact rolls they take on their turn.
When the impact score and extremity of the injury are determined, the player should roll the percentile dice one last time on the same round that they rolled their final impact roll. The tens die indicates, either high or low, whether the amount of time while unconscious will be in hours (low) or days (high). The ones die indicates the number of hours or days the character will be unconscious before they are able to regain consciousness. This final roll can be skipped altogether if the character dies as a result of their injuries, unless there is another purpose for the amount of time is supposed to generate—the character returns to life through wheeling and dealing in the underworld after so many hours or days, the character’s ghost remains in the world of living for the following hours or days, &c.
The character's injuries worsen by the amount rolled on each impact roll. A lower amount corresponds to lesser injuries, while a higher amount corresponds to more extreme wounds. The total impact of the injury is determined by the cumulative total when all four rolls are completed.
The player determines the extent of their wounds, and ultimately determines whether their character dies of their wounds or not. As this is highly subjective, the following may be helpful as a general guide:
Impact Score: Effect
- >75: It certainly doesn’t tickle, but you should be fine if you take it easy.
- 76-125: Broken bones, internal bleeding, deep lacerations, dense psychic fog—whatever it is, it’ll probably haunt you for a good while.
- 126-200: This is a true brush with death. You’ve sustained a serious, likely permanent injury, and have a lot of thinking to do about your own mortality.
- 201-275: If you didn’t die from this, you should’ve—and you definitely know it. You caught a glimpse of whatever happens in the afterlife, if anything.
- 276-325: It’s difficult to say how you came back from an injury like that if you did. Either you’re the luckiest person alive, or you’ve someone watching out for you. Suffice to say, this kind of injury doesn’t go away.
- 326-400: If you’re still alive, there was some magical or divine intervention to ensure that. Something in the universe wants you to live for some reason—or you made a deal with something to throw your spirit back into your body.
If characters change significantly because of a near-death experience, players should work with their DM to alter their characters in a meaningful way. This might mean limiting certain abilities while increasing others, changing classes, adding new narrative responsibilities to the character, &c. These should not only be limited to narrative changes—making mechanical changes to a character should be acceptable as long as the table can come to agreement over the changes. For example, a pact with a powerful being to prevent death may make a character more powerful as a result, but will also change how that character uses their power and how much freedom they have as a result of their second lease on life.
Players should also describe, or inherit as a part of their characterization, what injuries they sustained if they roll an impact score of 75 or higher. Near-fatal and fatal physical, psychic, mystical, &c. injuries take a hefty toll on any adventurer. Scars, bodily disintegration, mutations, newfound cautiousness, or a loss of fear due to a new outlook on death are all possibilities for various injuries. Characters may lose interest in things they now find trivial, while becoming intensely focused on other goals. At the highest levels of the impact score, characters may actually die from their injuries, but remain as ghosts in search of new bodily vessels—these kinds of extreme options can be reasonable with such similarly extreme injuries.
These decisions are ultimately and finally up to the player of the affected character, not the DM or even the other players at the table. For the sake of good manners and respect, the player should talk with the DM and the other players to confer on what keeps with the spirit of the story, but a character’s death should come out of an admission that it makes the story more interesting and maintains the overall health of game being played. Conversely, this allows players the option to give their characters a glorious, comical, painfully banal, tragic—whatever it is—death in stories where that might be more appropriate than leaving the decision solely up to the determination of the dice.
Players who want to see long-term injuries push a character closer and closer to death each time should add their impact score to a growing modifier each time they are pushed to a certain level of injury. +10 per level of impact score for all future impact scores is an appropriate starting place for players interested in this kind of effect.
If players also want to account for taking damage while unconscious, they should roll an impact roll each time they sustain damage and add this to the impact score. This does not count as one of the four impact rolls they take on their turn.
When the impact score and extremity of the injury are determined, the player should roll the percentile dice one last time on the same round that they rolled their final impact roll. The tens die indicates, either high or low, whether the amount of time while unconscious will be in hours (low) or days (high). The ones die indicates the number of hours or days the character will be unconscious before they are able to regain consciousness. This final roll can be skipped altogether if the character dies as a result of their injuries, unless there is another purpose for the amount of time is supposed to generate—the character returns to life through wheeling and dealing in the underworld after so many hours or days, the character’s ghost remains in the world of living for the following hours or days, &c.
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