My thoughts on the herbs and stuff. While in the book it says this about the basic herbalism kit: Proficiency with this kit lets you add your proficiency bonus to any ability checks you make to identify or apply herbs. Also, proficiency with this kit is required to create antitoxin and potions of healing.)
Thus it is my take that if I can find and use the herbs then yes a small type of healing like the 1d4 should be something that a ranger or monk may know of that can help a player character heal a bit faster.
I'm a little late to add this in. I don't think it would have affected anything before with the death saves. Everyone rolled really well. I don't think that constitution modifiers should be added to the roll. It's a DC10 so if someone has a plus 3 or plus 4 constitution modifier they are rarely if ever going to fail more saves than they make. To me it takes some suspense out of the game. As the rules were written if your character is dying it's truly a coin toss if you make it or not. If someone has a character with a plus 4 or 5 constitution bonus they can act recklessly with no real fear their character might die. I feel that you always should have to be aware that your character could die. This takes away from that. What about if someone has a constitution penalty? Does that count against them on the roll? It makes constitution far and away the most important stat. Just boost constitution as much as possible knowing that makes your character basically immortal. Those are just my thoughts and opinions only. I'm just worried about how it could affect the game down the road.
Edited: Kyrroeth on 3rd Dec, 2016 - 8:24pm
A character with 4-5 constitution would rightly be legendarily tough to kill. A character with 4-5 constitution is also unlikely to be good at anything else. Investing that much in constitution is expensive, as Con is by far the least useful ability in terms of anything other than taking damage.
Frankly, if someone tries to take advantage, they're likely to get their party killed, and then they die anyways, as all it takes is a few extra stabs when they're down to keep them that way, not matter how high they push Con.
Edited: daishain on 3rd Dec, 2016 - 8:44pm
I see your point. However, even getting a plus two bonus on constitution (Which a lot of characters have) turns the coin toss into a 60 percent chance of success. Barbarians, Rangers and dwarves off the top of my head can get high constitutions without sacrificing much. Those are primary stats many times for those types of characters. Many players play barbarians as tanks soaking up damage with high constitution.
My charisma and Dexterity stats are already pretty good. It would be smart now for me to boost constitution at every chance now. My bardic abilities might not be quite as good but I can't perform any bardic activities if I'm dead. Most enemies won't keep attacking an apparent corpse just like the orcs didn't. We may have to agree to disagree Daishain. This is just my viewpoint. I'm not arguing to change Aeric's or anyone else's mind. I just see the potential for abuse.
Edited: Kyrroeth on 3rd Dec, 2016 - 9:17pm
I feel CON is already, in a way, giving a bonus to death saves. No, there is no direct modifier to the roll, but the higher a characters CON the harder, theoretically, the are to put down and thus are probably going roll significantly fewer death saves then other characters with not as high CON or HP.
I agree that any modifiers applied to death saves just based on CON (Magic and other things are a different topic) does take the fear of "Real" death out of many players minds. I think the developers took in to account all of this when making the death save rules.
KNtoran, just so you know when you are dropped below zero HP, you are just at zero, while doing death saving rolls. You are not at negative whatever, so any healing you get gives you positive HP. Mradoric is at 2 HP. Still, none of us are in great shape. I am thinking we at least need a short rest to gain HP back.
Well ugh. I was afraid this was going to happen. It's doubtful Zinna survives this. The rest of the group is too far away to reach her in time. The spells she has available are almost useless against elves. She has no weapon available. I don't think she can talk her way out of this one. I might be the one rolling a new character soon. :(.