Death by Massive Damage

Summary:

That one rule no one remembers, but is pretty evil when it happens near every attack at higher levels.

Death by Massive Damage

Bobkratos 04 Jun 2010 22:32

Massive Damage
If you ever sustain a single attack deals 50 points of damage or more and it doesn’t kill you outright, you must make a DC 15 Fortitude save. If this saving throw fails, you die regardless of your current hit points. If you take 50 points of damage or more from multiple attacks, no one of which dealt 50 or more points of damage itself, the massive damage rule does not apply.

Do we enforce this? Its standard 3.5 rules.

Re: Death by Massive Damage

avrahamthebirdman 04 Jun 2010 22:38

Heard about it. and on Black Marches it isn't enforced and for damn good reason. So no we do not enforce it.

Re: Death by Massive Damage

Pharaun 08 Jun 2010 17:44

I think it should be DM discretion on this. I mean its only if you take 50 from a single attack. Also its a DC 15 fort save. Not amazingly hard to beat.

Re: Death by Massive Damage

Bobkratos 08 Jun 2010 22:40

but theres always that one, and when it becomes a save you make every other attack it gets pretty annoying. Dm discresion works, i just want to know people's standing on the rule.

Re: Death by Massive Damage

Pharaun 09 Jun 2010 18:40

My personal ruling on it in my games is that it isn't a set 50 damage. It progressively gets higher as it becomes more and more likely for it to happen on one attack.

for instance say everyone is doing an average of 50 damage per attack… I make it somewhere between 75-85 for massive damage… I think it should be on a sliding scale based on level or something like that…

Re: Death by Massive Damage

Meyobrin 13 Jun 2010 13:57

Or perhaps on the hit points of the character, with a minimum of 50. Say, should anyone sustain more than 40% of their HP in one blow, to a minimum of 50.

So say a character with 100 hp gets hit for 40 damage, it would strike the massive damage rule if not for the minimum.
200 hp max, they'd need to get hit for 80 damage.
300, 120 — So on and so forth.

Or hell, maybe we could just make it 50% hp and further reduce the minimum to, say, 25?

50 hp guy gets hit for 25
100 hp gets hit for 50
200 for 100, etc etc

Though I suppose the first variant would have less people flipping out, since it wouldn't affect them until far later in the game.