This pretty much makes it so any character would have about an 87.5% chance to never die as opposed to a 50% but their first two downs theyd have a 100% to be fine

Really interesting, I like this

I am a little confused about this idea. If a character were to begin throwing death saving throws, could they stop throwing them at a certain point and mark a permanent failed death saving throw?

I agree with SawLocalPianoMan, this is interesting.

To TheCapitalofHungaryisBudapest:  No, it says when you fall to zero you may mark a death save off permanently.  If you don't at that point, you would have to roll death saves as normal, minus any that you have already used the ability on.

Now, it says that the death save is gone permanently.  I was wondering if there was a way, a high level spell, perhaps Greater Restoration, Heal or Wish to regain that death save.  Definitely make it something difficult to remove.

I agree completely. Make it difficult to regain. It's a grievous wound that takes serious care or a cursed wound that will take a long ritual and a lot of money and resources to do so. 

But the role-play implications here are vast and I love it. Especially for characters with names that have 'The Neverdying" or "The Immortal" or other things in their name and it's like "HOW!? How did they survive THAT!?" 

Could you imagine playing a zealot Barbarian with this feat? It'd be insane. You could probably hash it out in a straight up slug fest with some of the higher CR monsters and, barring the use of magic, there's a fair chance you could simply beat them in to submission. 

An amazingly powerful feat that will display pure desperation and resilience of a player character, but for my campaign I'm going to change it so that there's a requirement of 15 constitution and being lvl 8 before choosing this feat so that it makes a bit more sense in terms of what kind of character can seemingly go beyond their own natural limits, it's not like a Barbarians and Fighters don't count as supernatural at some point in terms of power.  thankfully constitution is a stat that everyone can use. I'm also going to be adding some flavor for the after effects of using this feat.

wow, i really didnt think itd get this popular. thank you all for your suggestions and support.

Quote from TheCapitalofHungaryisBudapest >>

I am a little confused about this idea. If a character were to begin throwing death saving throws, could they stop throwing them at a certain point and mark a permanent failed death saving throw?

I originally intended it to be just when a pc went down or died. I know it would make the feat better if i changed it to "if they were to die, fall to 0 hp, or make a death saving throw" for more flexibility but it would make the situation less stressful for the player making the decision which is kinda what i want but i would accept arguments for changing it to that. I could add something where it could be used to resist things like feeblemind where the effect isnt lethal but debilitating. 

Quote from GrummerSteelshaper >>

 

Now, it says that the death save is gone permanently.  I was wondering if there was a way, a high level spell, perhaps Greater Restoration, Heal or Wish to regain that death save.  Definitely make it something difficult to remove.

I didnt want to mechanize a way for the saves to be regained since using the ability is intended to be a double edged sword where the consequence of using it should give players pause. Honestly, if i were to put something in the text to get back the points it would be something like 1d12+6 months of rest per point. It definitely up to dm discretion but I would say no on greater restoration and cure because there isnt anything necessarily wrong the pc. They just live a very dangerous lifestyle and it's the risks theyve taken and survived that have left them with a tenuous yet stubborn grasp on life. It would also mean that in two days the party healer would be able to trivialize the consequences of the feat.

That being said Wish would absolutely get the saves back because it's Wish and Wish is dumb. 

Honestly, if i were to put something in the text to get back the points it would be something like 1d12+6 months of rest per point

I don't think I would even personally give that, as it makes it still somewhat trivial to take the feat, UNLESS it was that amount of rest with NO adventuring, NO working on skills/abilities/training/multiclassing, NOTHING at all going on but resting to recover from the hurt that was taken.  Even then, I would probably require a CON save or something along those lines to see if the point was recovered at the end of the rest period, not make it automatic. 

This is a pretty powerful feat, and giving them the ability to restore the perm death saves taken away somewhat limits the downside to the feat. 

How about this:

 - You cannot recover on your own from the effect. However, consistent application of powerful healing magic can, over time, heal the loss.

 - You must spend a month of downtime to even begin making progress on recovery.

 - For that entire month, you must have the Regenerate spell cast on you daily.

 - Any action that would break a Long Rest invalidates progress for the entire month.

 - At the end of the month, whoever is casting Regenerate on you must make a DC30 medicine check. On a fail, no progress is made.

 - Once the total number of successful months equals the amount of damage that caused you to fall unconcious / die / fail a death save, which you avoided using this feat, you recover the permanent Death Save failure.

 - ANY damage taken, whether during the 'resting months' or between, completely resets all successes on the monthly Medicine checks, forcing you to start over.

That I could get behind!  It still gives the chance to recover from the penalty, without making it seem negligible to get the points back!

This seems really cool, however I feel like you could make it so if an adventurer spends say 1 month straight in rest an relaxation at an aristocratic lifestyle (10 GP a day) they could remove a single death save. You can obviously make this higher time wise if need be, or maybe even say it costs 15GP per day or more for additional medical supplies/magical healing (greater restoration spell casts every couple days)

I didn't know there was a sekiro feat.

Sounds to me like something to save to burn all at once in the final BBEG battle where you really give all of yourself to win and pay a huge price in the process. Even if you live, a lv 20 Barbarian or Fighter or Paladin with this would be permanently scarred and retire to open an inn or something and be an NPC mentor to the next band of plucky idiots to strike out on a quest against evil.  I'm picturing a lv20 Pally who burned this twice in some climactic battle and is at 1/9 of his old hit points, but still strong enough to train a young upstart up and comer. This is as much a background for a grizzled old NPC as it is a feat to burn down in a blaze of glory. I kind of love this.

Just to clarify, you did mean he is at 1/3 of his hit points each time, so that the first use of this puts a 100hp character to 34hp the first time and at 12hp the second time, correct?) Maybe just have him lose 1/3 of his hit points each time? So that 100hp character would go to 67hp after one use and 33hp after a second? It would be odd for any high level character to have a lv1 character's HP total. Otherwise you are pretty much guaranteeing a quick death after a single use of this. You go to one-shotted by a  high-damage Fireball the first time then 1 shotted by a lucky goblin with a crit the second time otherwise. 

Quote from Gehennaheretic >>

Sounds to me like something to save to burn all at once in the final BBEG battle where you really give all of yourself to win and pay a huge price in the process. Even if you live, a lv 20 Barbarian or Fighter or Paladin with this would be permanently scarred and retire to open an inn or something and be an NPC mentor to the next band of plucky idiots to strike out on a quest against evil.  I'm picturing a lv20 Pally who burned this twice in some climactic battle and is at 1/9 of his old hit points, but still strong enough to train a young upstart up and comer. This is as much a background for a grizzled old NPC as it is a feat to burn down in a blaze of glory. I kind of love this.

Just to clarify, you did mean he is at 1/3 of his hit points each time, so that the first use of this puts a 100hp character to 34hp the first time and at 12hp the second time, correct?) Maybe just have him lose 1/3 of his hit points each time? So that 100hp character would go to 67hp after one use and 33hp after a second? It would be odd for any high level character to have a lv1 character's HP total. Otherwise you are pretty much guaranteeing a quick death after a single use of this. You go to one-shotted by a  high-damage Fireball the first time then 1 shotted by a lucky goblin with a crit the second time otherwise. 

OHH wait, meaning you REGAIN 1/3 of your max HP? I read it as your max HP got set to 1/3 of your current max hp. You're not losing max HP just having a perma-failed death save waiting

There should be a fairly high level prerequisite for this. It's a really cool idea, but maybe only level 15+ characters should be able to get it. Or something like that.

This is a very interesting feat. I like the idea of being able to make a major long-term sacrifice for short-term gain, because that's what characters do.

Seems like a really interesting concept. I'm not entirely sure how powerful this feat is, but two free revives is a potent ability. It's not actually three, as attempting to revive a third time would give you three permanent failed death saves, and according to the wording, "If all death saving throws are marked as failed then your character dies and cannot be resurrected outside of divine intervention", that would immediately kill you regardless as all your death saving throws would be (permanently) marked as failed. It's also worth noting that attempting to revive when you've already been brought down to two regular failed saves will not work, and I think that's okay, as again, you would technically have three failed death saves and therefore die. Might be unintended, but two automatic revives is already an immensely potent ability, especially as you have to know when to use it and when not to.

If some method really were added to reverse the failed slots later on, it would have to have an immense price. Perhaps even something more meaningful than merely money, as no matter the monetary cost, eventually you'd have enough fat stacks of cash to cheat death indefinitely.

I did consider rewording it to make it three but after play testing it a little I realized that it created a weird situation where the character would be knocked out and immediately die due to having all three death saves failed upon unconsciousness. While that would be the repercussion of the risks they've taken it would also be a disappointing end to a pc. The main intent behind this feat is to make fights more climactic not less and restricting the pool of revives is one way of doing this by:

1) Forcing the party to adjust their strategy to heal the downed player in one turn

2) Removing the option for a player to have three saves failed upon entering combat so that they can always enter hazardous situations with a little more leeway