I think the Death and Dying section on page 261 is rather clear.

If you have bandages you bind their wounds.

You seem to be overthinking the rules a lot.

At a gaming convention recently another player made a great statement.

"You don't ask if you can do something. You tell the DM what you are doing and they decide if you can do it."

The rules in almost all old school systems are mostly guidelines. They don't or won't specify every possible action or have some dice roll mechanic to determine the outcome.

In this case, the rule is "if you are at -4 HP you need to be stabilized or continue losing 1 HP/round". You don't need to have a further paragraph stating all of the ways it can be done and something like a 1:6 chance if you aren't a class or character either healing background or some other nonsense.

DEATH and DYING:
 ...At a total of from −4 to −9 hp, he is in critical condition
and suffers convulsions and/or blood loss at a rate of 1
hp per round, unless properly stabilized by an ally (e.g.,
binding wounds, resuscitation, sorcerous healing)...

Bandaging is meant only as the stabilization of a person's wounds once they are at less than zero hit points. If you take damage that reduces you to exactly zero, you are stable but unconscious. If you take damage and it brings you to -1 or more, you are not stable and start bleeding out -1 hit point each round. "Stabilization" stops the bleed, and depending on how the GM wants it, either stabilizes them where they are (at a minus HP level, but no longer bleeding) or puts them at zero HP (stable).

Personally, I have the latter in my games, if you're at -8 HP and get bandaged, you go back to zero and stop bleeding out. I think of the negative numbers as a countdown clock till death, not as a real number, thus you could be at the last round before dying, and get bandaged, you go back to Stable (Zero HP).

Last edited by BlackKnight (6/04/2019 1:22 pm)

Thank you all! You are all awesome!

Blackadder23 wrote:

If you want binding wounds to restore some amount of damage for people who are still up and fighting, I think that's perfectly defensible and you should do so. I would suggest something minor like 1d2 hit points (or even just 1 point), and only once per time the PC is wounded.

Within the context of RAW, binding wounds is only relevant to someone who is down and bleeding to death.

I agree, Healing in my campaigns is kept to a minimum usually, so binding a wound received during combat just completed would give 1d2 HP returns, and you could only bandage a character that One; received at least 1 wound, Two; Could only bandage a number of wounds received. Ex, Fighter received only one wound the previous combat, he could be bandaged for 1d2 HP once, If a fighter received 3 wounds, he could be bandaged 3 times (one for/on each wound) for a total of 3d2...

I don't think it would be game breaking, and would definitely help in the lower levels, where healing is even more hard to come by and characters are the most vulnerable.

You could as a GM also throw in some money spending on behalf of the players by offering "Normal" bandages that only give 1 HP, then "Advanced" bandages that do the 1d2, and offer that "Healing Classes" can get the benefit to give Max, eg, 2 HP per bandage automatically with Advanced Bandages.

But always, Rules in the Books are just some guidelines, A GM's game is his own...

Last edited by BlackKnight (6/05/2019 6:59 am)

"I understand that at -1 tp -3 hp you don't suffer the -1 hp/round?"

Yes, that's correct. I think this was supposed to be the case in 1e as well, but the phasing in the original DMG was somewhat confusing.

Blackadder23 wrote:

kane wrote:

I understand that at -1 tp -3 hp you don't suffer the -1 hp/round?

Yes, that's correct. I think this was supposed to be the case in 1e as well, but the phasing in the original DMG was somewhat confusing.

Oops! I have been running this incorrectly. Pays to read the forums.