[zot]

Originally Posted by CardDiceian

Thanks all - Some really great suggestions there - (I had already tried a couple of them - ie, the orcs trying to call off the fight once they had the upper hand. Also using a much more relaxed 'death' so that the losing characters can be hauled away to recover over time.

I'll be printing off a lot of these suggestions and working them in - If it's OK, I'd like to start a thread which is a sort of battle / campaign report, perhaps in story form with stats? - which should help develop the campaign, might be useful to others who are relative newcomers,and would welcome any tips to improve the next chapters.

I posted this milder unconsciousness/death system in another thread. Notably, it does not track damage after a character goes unconscious. It's much easier on the PCs and let's you take focus of the combat and put it more on the story. If the PCs are all taken out, you, as GM, have the option to capture them and make the escape an exciting part of the story. Basically, a PC won't die unless you make an NPC attack then after they are already unconscious. What? You read it right. A PC will NEVER die under these rules yes you explicitly kill them...

Originally Posted by zot

The rules I've been toying with are potentially more generous than that -- but potentially less generous, depending. Here's what I'm going to try out. It's a bleeding-out / stabilization system ala D&D:

• Use popular house rule about separate damage and fatigue tracking with unconsciousness at ST 0, not ST 1
• When you take a hit that increases total damage past your ST, you start bleeding out and need to be stabilized or else you die
• When you're bleeding out
  • If you take any more damage you die
  • You can be stabilized by a successful action by someone with First Aid (IQ 8, 1 talent point, can heal 1 hit) or better and then you're no longer bleeding out, just unconscious
  • You make one "death save" per turn, starting on the next turn, at 4/ST (a constitution-like talent could reduce dice for this). Three out of five results determine whether you live or die. On your third failure, you die at the end of the turn unless someone stabilizes you. This gives someone a chance to stabilize -- you'll last for at least three turns but you could last 5 turns.