BleedingOnZero

• You start bleeding on zero hits to the torso/head when done with lethal damage. Duration kept at 2 minutes. Reason - this way it isn't up to the refs to arbitrarily execute TPKs or not an doesn't make reffing such things incredibly painful.

• Proposer: Malselene
• Seconder: Felicity

This appears to completely negate the entire point of the new death system and convert it into something incredibly harsh, and I don't have a problem with a lack of TPK-by-randomness. I do think more monsters should hit people on the floor occasionally, though... --Pufferfish

Dislike strongly. --Locksmith

I think that having people actually bleed out if they end up getting left alone for significant periods after being cut down by enemies is actually quite fair, as opposed to incredibly harsh - their party didn't get back to them in time, after they were doing something dangerous together. --Zebbie

Even if this is not the solution to the TPK issue, there does indeed seem to be a hideous reffing issue whereby there is a lot of OOC social pressure on refs to not just have all the pcs who fall into a clearly lethal situation die, but instead an expectation/demand to fudge them out of it somehow in time to be playable in the pub next week, which is a fairly significant balancing issue in TT that is not actually a part of the rules, system or anything else ever formally mandated. As a side issue, it makes it increasingly likely that people will only ever die by assassination or by ultimate faith/overcast, which whilst valid methods of death, mean that whole sections of pcs have no likely way to leave the system/end a story in a final manner, which again leads to expectation that they will not die, and OOC pressure to make reality conform to this preconception, and so forth. IMO this is actually quite a significant factor affecting the game, but by stealth, which really seems non-ideal. --Zebbie

I quite like the idea of such a TPK having consequences, loss of limb, ending up horribly indebted to the Kobolds etc --Porange

Problem is that Non fatal TPK consequences are very hard to come up with on the fly and even harder to make stick as something beyond 'I go see one of the people in the bar with cure suffiencet, I kill the kobolds when they come looking for me in the bar with help of the rest of the bar'--Malselene

''Losing a limb for a month isn't exactly "not making it stick". And that assumes the healer likes you... --Pufferfish

I don't believe it is foip to say that every single person who has lost a limb this year has got it back. Most of them instantly by cure sufficient. I believe there is one exception that waited a month. --Malselene

In which case, why not have Cure Sufficient cause limbs you've lost completely to need a month to regrow, as with Regeneration? --Pufferfish

While that's an interesting idea I feel it's treating the symptoms rather than the problem. Limb loss is only one possible consequence and isn't always applicable. --Malselene

As above, I also note that it is incredibly difficult to think up and balance 'consequences' for TPK linears. Some characters are easier to ensnare in deals etc than others as some will care about their deals and some will say anything to get out and cheerfully renege on them; random flange to bind people to their consequences has to be invented to make it remotely consequential (simple curses are lifted by our high-level uncursers, lost limbs are restored by our high-level healers). While I'm actually mostly on the side of 'people should die in Significant ways or not at all' at a personal level, that's not actually the game we have here and having to think up balanced TPK consequences for a whole party is a big energy sink for the refs. --ChessyPig

I do not think this 'completely negates' the new death system. The main observed problem of our old system was that people could die in a single hit from massive damage with no way to prevent this.

That is still not a problem under this version- a 4/2 character taking an Oct to the chest does not die- they fall over and start bleeding. As an incidental to this, planning a linear which contains 'lethal death traps' is not so laughable or contrived. --TimB

The refs should, IMO, habitually stat intelligent monsters as 'you should start people bleeding if you get the chance', and named monsters as 'feel free to start grandstanding an execute if you get the chance'. The current rules support a more dangerous linear experience, and this just removes options. Also, consequences are hard, especially in light of a system which has methodically done away with any form of resources or transferable power, as bringing imbalance and unfairness. --I

Also subdual damage might get used once in a while! If you want someone unconscious but not at risk of dying there is a very simple work around. --Malselene

Can we not reproduce this effect by simply briefing monsters to put a couple of hits into downed PCs from time to time? --Valtiel

That was the assumption on which I wrote the current death rules. --I

I passionately dislike this motion. That the current death rules seldom result in PC death from a random wipe is one of their greatest strengths. Thinking up interesting consequences rather than just killing people may be hard work, but it adds an awful lot to the game rather than subtracting from it. --Jacob

Alas, consequences that are actually interesting rather than trivially fixable seem to make some non-negligible fraction of the playerbase very sad; having mechanics which say "Your character is now dead, no save" shields the refs from player aggression and consequently improves their quality of life. --NT

Echoing what people are saying here. It's solving the problem (if there is one) in the wrong way. --Winterlove

I actually like this idea. Agreeing with what was said above, my understanding had been that the real perceived problem was that you could be killed from standing by accident under the old system. This continues to prevent this, but does mean that people are more likely to die without being specifically killed (and in particular, specifically killed by the refs), which I view as a good thing, and am happy to second. --Felicity

On a side note, I would be inclined, rather than start bleed count on zero, brief all non-human monsters with mouths that they may eat (read amputate) the limbs of any downed pcs, npcs, or other monsters. That way if they make it back alive, not only do they have a consequence but they have a bonus story to tell. --Porange (also, bonus points if they catch something intresting from having wounds full of gribbly drool)

Ooooooh. Infected wounds as a Horrible Consequence. I approve wholeheartedly and will add it to my list :D --Pufferfish

It also has the bonus of making detect disease really rather useful. --Porange

LOVE. --Locksmith

If I have time over the summer I am more than willing to write a large number of truely horrific diseases. This is me. They would be *horrible* --Porange

Just as another side note - under the old system, on hitting zero it took 15 minutes to bleed out. Even if you were taken down to -2, it still took 5 minutes. It was not unknown for people to bleed at least one hit point before being noticed. With this proposal, there are only two minutes between getting knocked down in a fight and being dead. Discuss? --Entimix

I would want a longer death count if this went through. Four or five minutes is a good time I think. --Locksmith

Most linear fights and 99% of interactive fights are over in 4 or 5 minutes, entirely taking the urgency out of healing people... --ChessyPig

3 minutes then. I really don't like people being that likely to bleed out less than halfway through any standard encounter. I don't think TT gains from massive amounts of PC death. --Locksmith

Original New Death had people bleeding out in one minute. Two minutes gives a balance between 'no instagibs' and 'you actually have to pay attention to people going down and get there to fix it' - which makes the game of healers more exciting and meaningful and gives primary-healer builds something to do in fights... --ChessyPig

I think 5mins should be an absolute minimum if this horrible proposal does go through; that it takes some of the urgency out of healing people is a feature, not a bug. --Jacob

Part of the idea was to make healing a during encounter thing rather than a between encounter thing as I think that is a more interesting use of healing. --Malselene

My experience playing Nell was that during-encounter healing is very, very difficult. I don't think it's actually feasible enough for this to work for a first-aider, and it would be hard for an alchemist. Except with instant miracle-healing, and priests don't need any more advantage over FA. Also the limited healing on linears would need changing if this went through. --Locksmith

I find fighting two trolls with goblin support and no fire magic to be very difficult, and also believe that such encounters are fun and interesting (and if you fail people will die); I don't think "This task is difficult" in any way implies "This task is not interesting". --NT

When I say difficult, I actually mean "almost impracticable" to the extent of actually not being that fun. --Locksmith

In a separate comment, I disagree with the statement "Priests don't need any more advantage over First Aid"; First Aid neither costs resources nor fills at least half your character sheet. --NT

Seconded. It's a little easier on linears than in the bar, but only a little. Pufferfish

I think I could be persuaded to support this, but only with a longer initial bleed-out. I'd even go so far as to suggest a longer (at least 5 minutes) initial bleed on hitting zero, with a shorter bleed (2 minutes as currently?) if stabbed up on the floor. But maybe that's too complicated a proposal. --Entimix

There have been enough instances of "Character is only knocked out, not dead, and therefore more interesting stuff can happen" since the new death rules came into force that I am strongly against this motion. Having my characters die from a flood of monsters? Is not fun. Not even slightly fun. In the cases where this new rule would have killed one of my characters - I can think of three - only one of them was in any way worthwhile. The fact that currently TPK generally means Total Party Knockout and therefore Consequences is a thing I class as a great feature. Consequences beat random death every single time. --Aq

Absolutely 100% agree. This motion will make TT much less fun. --Jacob

Support this - adventuring in the middle of elementals/goblins/demons/cultists etc... should have a large element of risk. 2 minutes is ample for all but the largest encounters, but I would support an increase to in DC 3 minutes. --Drac

Looking at this, by my estimates, I would have got through between 7 and 10 characters in a year and a half. This would not have been much fun. --Porange

From my experience of spending my first term and a half having misunderstood the rules as how this motion proposes changing them and failing to die. I don't think it would up character death. --Malselene

This motion would actually make linears _less_ deadly compared to the situation where monsters were all briefed to stab on the ground, at least in the short term. This is because the party will always know that someone who is downed is in need of urgent attention, and so things like 'Ruth died because the party didn't know she was bleeding' wouldn't be so common. If the policy had been 'always stab on the ground' you'd have got through the same number of characters assuming no 'the party's down, bring in the monster who just happens to have First Aid 2' style fixes, which is still possible under this system. --ChessyPig

However, having some monsters go stab-happy and some not adds another variable to encounter design. And the trouble with monster-with-first-aid-2 fixes is that two minutes is actually not a very long time at all to decide to bring one in, have it kitted up, find the bandages (remember that the rules *require* bandage physreps) and then have it spend 10 seconds at least per character stopping them bleeding. I'd be happy with this with a longer deathcount, but nobody submitted that to the AGM... --Pufferfish

I think that this would make linearing a much more tense and risky proposition, but in a good way. It would encourage greater cohesion (possibly also sympathetic refs who don't overwhelm the party with a fresh wave while two PCs are out of the fighting) and moar dramatic fights. Longer bleed counts would be nice, but really this would mean that you *need* a medic on a linear who is good at their job and there are plenty of those around. As for the monster-with-first-aid-2 fix then isn't it ref fiat that if they say the monster picks you up then it did? Everyone else (including the clocks) just experienced a bit of time dilation. Also due to the unlikelihood of players splattering themselves with blood when bleeding (messy but cool) it is very hard to spot (like in Master Windy's case) if someone is unconcious or dying. If unconciousness could only be achieved by subdual it would also make (slightly - a cosh would shill fracture the skull and result in meningeal haematoma) more sense. Maybe more monsters could deal subdual damage? --Andrew

Using ref fiat to decide whether characters die or live is painful and stressful for refs. The motion was actually intended to reduce this. I believe the motion would also make first aid 2 and 3 more useful whereas now first aid seems to be mostly used for first aid 4/5 or first aid 1 to combine with other forms of healing. It also might actually make subdual damage see use and be vaguely worth the XP cost. --Malselene

What I was trying to say (badly) was that in a linear if the refs decide that it's lame for a TPK in encounter 1 and their heal-bots get there 10 seconds late then maybe the linear shouldn't be lost as that would not be fun --Andrew