Maximum survivable damage

According to the Mortal Wounds Table, being at negative HP >= 1/2 max HP is good for a -5 on the d20 roll (moving your condition to one category worse), but that’s where the listed modifiers end. But is there some absolute limit for how far down you can go (-max HP, maybe?) before you’re just plain automatically dead?

(This question arises from my last session, where a pair of level 1 henchmen charged into melee with a troll and were then fireballed - multiple times - by one of the PCs in order to kill the troll. One of them started with 6 HP and was damaged down to -28. It doesn’t seem right that he should only take the same -5 for survival that he would if he were at -3 HP.)

By RAW, no, unless you want to count a fireball hitting a KO’d person as a coup de grace.

As a house rule with no thought behind it, I’d suggest an additional -5 for going below your max HP in negatives, and an additional -5 on top of that each time you hit your max HP again.

Susan’s rule sounds realistic and playable to me.

No More ACKS on Easy Mode! Hehe.

Yea, keep doing -5’s until it becomes a mathematical impossibility to not die outright.

Or, expand the table so that the player’s next characters are immediately killed after generation from the astral echoes of the first character’s horrible demise.

“Or, expand the table so that the player’s next characters are immediately killed after generation from the astral echoes of the first character’s horrible demise.”

I like that idea!

We had an Explorer once fail a save vs dragon’s breath and end up at some obscene negative HP score; -30 or -40 or something. Well over twice his max HP into the red. He rolled a natural 20 on the mortal wounds roll, and could’ve in theory survived if the party had enough healing to bring him back to 1HP within a day, but they were a couple of days’ march from civilization and only had one cleric. All the 20 did was prolong his dying.

(Then the party discovered that he had 13kgp in his mule’s saddlebags, and all further formulation of hairbrained schemes to save him from death came to a sudden halt. He was a good sport about it, though.)