Death's Door

Well, for the first time in my current mini-campaign, I fudged a dice roll. Previously, I've made a few mistakes, mis-counting damage rolls, forgetting modifiers, or whatever, but tonight I deliberately changed a roll to allow a PC to live where he should have died.

The situation was desperate, and the PCs were in real trouble. The character in question had 64 hit points remaining, which meant he could probably survive two hits. The NPCs were carefully designed to hit about 50% of the time. So, when three of them attacked the lone PC, he was probably going to be okay.

Of course, all three hit. I was asked if I wanted to roll the damage behind a screen, but declined. The damage result came up at precisely enough to drop the character to -10 hit points. Dead. So, I fudged things. I allowed him an immediate roll to stabilise, which I did roll behind the screen (I rolled because the player wasn't there - but I like to think that that wasn't a factor in my actions; I would have done the same for a player who was there, and would probably have allowed them to make the stabilisation roll behind a screen). Anyway, the roll was passed, and the PC lived.

Tsk. Naughty GM.

That said, losing a PC sucks, especially when you're not there. And it may be worse when the campaign is winding down - I'm ending it in the session after next. Plus, I'm really not a fan of allowing a PC to go from perfectly healthy to dead as a doornail in a single roll.

So, I think in my next campaign I'll institute a house rule that no PC may be slain instantly by a single attack. The worst that can happen is that they'll drop to -9 hit points, and have at least one chance to stabilise. I'm not sure how this will mesh with such things as disintegrate spells, but then in 3.5e these spells have all been changed to avoid instant death anyway, so I doubt it will matter too much.

Oh, I should also point out that a PC who is already at negative hit points is on their own; once you're down your chances at grace have faded.

Any thoughts?

Re: Cheat!

I just thought I'd mention here that my PCs also made use of the "Aid Another" action to good effect tonight, so my guilt at screwing them over with it last week is no longer bothering me.