so Im going to be DM for a Super Mario themed campaign.Thing is I'm considering doing away with the Death Saves entirely for this campaign. Here's how it would work:
Each player starts with 5 lives like most Mario games do and if a player were to drop to 0 hit points the would instead of making a Death Saving Throw, they would automatically expend a 1-up causing them to return to life with full health, all conditions and effects removed and Immunity to all damage, conditions, and all other effects until their next turn (to recreate the i-frames) however if a player drops to 0 hit points and has no 1-ups, they instantly die.
I would also not allow the use of any spells that can revive players and I'll be giving the players plenty of opportunities to buy of find extra 1-ups.
So what are your thoughts?
Let me know below what you think and have a great day. :)
Super Mario D&D, never thought I'd hear that lol. Yeah! Go for it. You might even consider putting them at half health and making them Small, lol.
This will affect the power level of certain things like Healing Word (usually used to rescue people from making death saves) but that might not matter at all -- you only have to care about the things your players wanna actually use. If nobody's playing, like, a Bard, then don't even worry about it. And I mean, it's not like a Bard is bad without Healing Word, nor is a Cleric bad without Revivify, etc. Just different.
Edit: Temporary immunity to conditions will cause an odd thing where, if a monster (evil Yoshi?) has eaten someone, and they go to 0 HP from the damage they take inside the monster, they'll... Get ejected out?
It's not a bad core idea. However, letting them fulling heal instantly is somewhat unbalancing, and more importantly takes away much of the penalties of going to 0 hp. If you kept the main idea, but had 0 hp characters return to 1 hp after a minute or after healed, that'd help I think. Or if you wanted it to be more forgiving you could have it half hp after a round.
It's not a bad core idea. However, letting them fulling heal instantly is somewhat unbalancing, and more importantly takes away much of the penalties of going to 0 hp. If you kept the main idea, but had 0 hp characters return to 1 hp after a minute or after healed, that'd help I think. Or if you wanted it to be more forgiving you could have it half hp after a round.
The only penalty that exist for going to 0 HP are:
1: You can't act, which tilts the balance of power towards your party's opponents, and
2: You might permanently die.
The first point is... Interesting. I think most people would agree that it sucks to not get to play the game, and combat can often take quite a long time. So we can see an obvious motive for wanting to change this, beyond the genre motif that OP is going for. It's just a question of how much it'll screw things up if we do. Let's talk about it.
I don't think most monsters are really intended to KO a character. What I mean is, WotC's writers aren't making these stat blocks saying "alright, so this monster is weaker than normal, but that's because it's supposed to KO somebody early, so the party is weaker." With the exception of something like gnolls, which get a special bonus if they KO someone, it's just not a consideration. (It *is* a consideration for monsters that paralyze, swallow, or otherwise remove a character from the turn order with effects other than damage.) A monster is meant to be fought in whatever state you happen to be in when you fight it -- the more important thing, the thing that guides the design more strongly, is to make the monster fit its narrative. Balance is... Secondary, at best. The Challenge Rating system is just an attempt to show DMs what they're getting into, so they can adequately foreshadow danger and know when they might want to be looser with the rules and stuff.
Under normal D&D death rules, you'll often go down and it won't cost a 3rd level spell and a diamond -- it'll cost a 1st level spell, or even a Spare the Dying or a Medicine check, because you didn't die, you just got KO'd. I think this new system is likely to make those "trivial KOs" more frightening, because they're just as costly as "real death." And I don't think that's a problem at all. It's just different. I mean, it could be a problem, if the economy for these 1-ups is too generous or too stingy, but I've just gotta trust OP to get that part right.
It's not a bad core idea. However, letting them fulling heal instantly is somewhat unbalancing, and more importantly takes away much of the penalties of going to 0 hp. If you kept the main idea, but had 0 hp characters return to 1 hp after a minute or after healed, that'd help I think. Or if you wanted it to be more forgiving you could have it half hp after a round.
The only penalty that exist for going to 0 HP are:
1: You can't act, which tilts the balance of power towards your party's opponents, and
2: You might permanently die.
It's not about the turn you go to 0 HP, it's the turn after that. Yes, you can do all the things whether your HP is 1 or 100, but what you choose to do in those two situations almost always varies greatly. Typically being healed after going down leaves you one hit from going down again. That changes how you behave, and how your allies behave. It changes the tension of the fight.
Dying being a "free" full heal completely flips that. There will absolutely be times that PCs will die on purpose just to get to full again. It changes what healing (and all associated abilities) is worth, it changes what hit dice are worth, it changes abilities that only work at low HP which are balanced by the danger of being at low HP. I try to avoid houserules with such wide-ranging consequences if at all possible.
I think the 1up idea is great. Definitely keep it. Just don't do the full heal part. If you drop to zero, you can't get back up at all unless you have a life left. If you drink a potion, you expend a 1-up and get up with 2d4+2 hp.
This isn't a direct answer to your question, but have you seen Welcome To The Fungal Kingdom? It's essentially Mario for Pathfinder. You might be able to import a lot from there.
Mind keeping us posted on how this campaign goes? I'd love to hear about it.
To make this work, you'll need to make the campaign ultra-lethal and regularly drop the characters to 0 hit points to make it feel relevant.
There's a sort of paradox around "permdeath is coming for you" systems. The big issue you'll have with this is that the characters will become very risk averse. When they risk losing a permanent resource, it feels very different to a risky one where they can pop back up easily enough. Losing a One-Up means one-step-closer to death in a long-term way, rather than 0 hit points being unlucky, but you'll probably be back on your feet in no time. I'd expect the players to start retreating from combat at 30% hit points or so - which means that the system never actually gets used, because the PCs take steps to ensure they aren't under threat.
I wouldn't let them pop back up on full hit points - have them respawn at "the start" somewhere (like a save point) at the next dawn, so that they leave the current combat.
I wouldn't expect to see them retreat ever. How would they? The systems to facilitate it just don't exist for most characters. (Maybe your players will deftly choose only characters who can safely retreat. I don't know them, maybe they're clever like that. Early on its basically just Rogues, until you get to long-distance teleporting or magic walls. Invisibility maybe.)
There is a danger of your players becoming very cautious about engaging in combat at all. They might start sneaking, scouting, and looking for alternative routes. Some people would say this is a good thing, but you might not want that for this game, so be aware.
Even so, I would say give it a try. Worst case scenario, it sucks and you have to change it, right? That's fine.
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so Im going to be DM for a Super Mario themed campaign.Thing is I'm considering doing away with the Death Saves entirely for this campaign. Here's how it would work:
Each player starts with 5 lives like most Mario games do and if a player were to drop to 0 hit points the would instead of making a Death Saving Throw, they would automatically expend a 1-up causing them to return to life with full health, all conditions and effects removed and Immunity to all damage, conditions, and all other effects until their next turn (to recreate the i-frames) however if a player drops to 0 hit points and has no 1-ups, they instantly die.
I would also not allow the use of any spells that can revive players and I'll be giving the players plenty of opportunities to buy of find extra 1-ups.
So what are your thoughts?
Let me know below what you think and have a great day. :)
DruidVSAdventure
Check out my Homebrew Class The Evoker
Super Mario D&D, never thought I'd hear that lol. Yeah! Go for it. You might even consider putting them at half health and making them Small, lol.
This will affect the power level of certain things like Healing Word (usually used to rescue people from making death saves) but that might not matter at all -- you only have to care about the things your players wanna actually use. If nobody's playing, like, a Bard, then don't even worry about it. And I mean, it's not like a Bard is bad without Healing Word, nor is a Cleric bad without Revivify, etc. Just different.
Edit: Temporary immunity to conditions will cause an odd thing where, if a monster (evil Yoshi?) has eaten someone, and they go to 0 HP from the damage they take inside the monster, they'll... Get ejected out?
Love this idea keep thinking these creative ideas:)
I wouldn’t make more extra lives too easy to find. Or if a character is low on hp, it can be on more useful for them to just let themselves die.
Suggestion for the theme: everybody should be under permanent effects of the Jump spell :D
Helpful rewriter of Japanese->English translation and delver into software codebases (she/e/they)
It's not a bad core idea. However, letting them fulling heal instantly is somewhat unbalancing, and more importantly takes away much of the penalties of going to 0 hp. If you kept the main idea, but had 0 hp characters return to 1 hp after a minute or after healed, that'd help I think. Or if you wanted it to be more forgiving you could have it half hp after a round.
I am an average mathematics enjoyer.
>Extended Signature<
The only penalty that exist for going to 0 HP are:
1: You can't act, which tilts the balance of power towards your party's opponents, and
2: You might permanently die.
The first point is... Interesting. I think most people would agree that it sucks to not get to play the game, and combat can often take quite a long time. So we can see an obvious motive for wanting to change this, beyond the genre motif that OP is going for. It's just a question of how much it'll screw things up if we do. Let's talk about it.
I don't think most monsters are really intended to KO a character. What I mean is, WotC's writers aren't making these stat blocks saying "alright, so this monster is weaker than normal, but that's because it's supposed to KO somebody early, so the party is weaker." With the exception of something like gnolls, which get a special bonus if they KO someone, it's just not a consideration. (It *is* a consideration for monsters that paralyze, swallow, or otherwise remove a character from the turn order with effects other than damage.) A monster is meant to be fought in whatever state you happen to be in when you fight it -- the more important thing, the thing that guides the design more strongly, is to make the monster fit its narrative. Balance is... Secondary, at best. The Challenge Rating system is just an attempt to show DMs what they're getting into, so they can adequately foreshadow danger and know when they might want to be looser with the rules and stuff.
Under normal D&D death rules, you'll often go down and it won't cost a 3rd level spell and a diamond -- it'll cost a 1st level spell, or even a Spare the Dying or a Medicine check, because you didn't die, you just got KO'd. I think this new system is likely to make those "trivial KOs" more frightening, because they're just as costly as "real death." And I don't think that's a problem at all. It's just different. I mean, it could be a problem, if the economy for these 1-ups is too generous or too stingy, but I've just gotta trust OP to get that part right.
It's not about the turn you go to 0 HP, it's the turn after that. Yes, you can do all the things whether your HP is 1 or 100, but what you choose to do in those two situations almost always varies greatly. Typically being healed after going down leaves you one hit from going down again. That changes how you behave, and how your allies behave. It changes the tension of the fight.
Dying being a "free" full heal completely flips that. There will absolutely be times that PCs will die on purpose just to get to full again. It changes what healing (and all associated abilities) is worth, it changes what hit dice are worth, it changes abilities that only work at low HP which are balanced by the danger of being at low HP. I try to avoid houserules with such wide-ranging consequences if at all possible.
I think the 1up idea is great. Definitely keep it. Just don't do the full heal part. If you drop to zero, you can't get back up at all unless you have a life left. If you drink a potion, you expend a 1-up and get up with 2d4+2 hp.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
This isn't a direct answer to your question, but have you seen Welcome To The Fungal Kingdom? It's essentially Mario for Pathfinder. You might be able to import a lot from there.
Mind keeping us posted on how this campaign goes? I'd love to hear about it.
To make this work, you'll need to make the campaign ultra-lethal and regularly drop the characters to 0 hit points to make it feel relevant.
There's a sort of paradox around "permdeath is coming for you" systems. The big issue you'll have with this is that the characters will become very risk averse. When they risk losing a permanent resource, it feels very different to a risky one where they can pop back up easily enough. Losing a One-Up means one-step-closer to death in a long-term way, rather than 0 hit points being unlucky, but you'll probably be back on your feet in no time. I'd expect the players to start retreating from combat at 30% hit points or so - which means that the system never actually gets used, because the PCs take steps to ensure they aren't under threat.
I wouldn't let them pop back up on full hit points - have them respawn at "the start" somewhere (like a save point) at the next dawn, so that they leave the current combat.
I wouldn't expect to see them retreat ever. How would they? The systems to facilitate it just don't exist for most characters. (Maybe your players will deftly choose only characters who can safely retreat. I don't know them, maybe they're clever like that. Early on its basically just Rogues, until you get to long-distance teleporting or magic walls. Invisibility maybe.)
There is a danger of your players becoming very cautious about engaging in combat at all. They might start sneaking, scouting, and looking for alternative routes. Some people would say this is a good thing, but you might not want that for this game, so be aware.
Even so, I would say give it a try. Worst case scenario, it sucks and you have to change it, right? That's fine.