Three darts of pure force flew through the head of a man whose face had already had a close and intimate encounter with a fireball, or at least a Fire Bolt.
Dropping to 0 Hit Points
When you drop to 0 hit points, you either die outright or fall unconscious, as explained in the following sections.
Instant Death: Massive damage can kill you instantly. When damage reduces you to 0 hit points and there is damage remaining, you die if the remaining damage equals or exceeds your hit point maximum. For example, a cleric with a maximum of 12 hit points currently has 6 hit points. If she takes 18 damage from an attack, she is reduced to 0 hit points, but 12 damage remains. Because the remaining damage equals her hit point maximum, the cleric dies.
Falling Unconscious: If damage reduces you to 0 hit points and fails to kill you, you fall unconscious. This unconsciousness ends if you regain any hit points.
The drover had been level 2, and with some fair amount of Constitution. Nonetheless, as the first dart punched slammed into his skull, his eyes went vague and his body limp. The second and third darts followed in the split second that followed, and he went bonelessly backwards onto the ground.
Death Saving Throws
Whenever you start your turn with 0 hit points, you must make a special saving throw, called a death saving throw, to determine whether you creep closer to death or hang onto life. Unlike other saving throws, this one isn't tied to any ability score. You are in the hands of fate now, aided only by spells and features that improve your chances of succeeding on a saving throw. Roll a d20. If the roll is 10 or higher, you succeed. Otherwise, you fail. A success or failure has no effect by itself. On your third success, you become stable (see below). On your third failure, you die. The successes and failures don't need to be consecutive; keep track of both until you collect three of a kind. The number of both is reset to zero when you regain any hit points or become stable.
Rolling 1 or 20: When you make a death saving throw and roll a 1 on the d20, it counts as two failures. If you roll a 20 on the d20, you regain 1 hit point.
Damage at 0 Hit Points: If you take any damage while you have 0 hit points, you suffer a death saving throw failure. If the damage is from a critical hit, you suffer two failures instead. If the damage equals or exceeds your hit point maximum, you suffer instant death.
Cassandra’s eyes were flat as she looked at him, halfway between hateful and uncaring. “There isn’t,” she said softly, “any Resource Document information about attacks on the helpless or dying. So let’s test empirically.”
Two death saving throw failures, she thought to herself, one from each Magic Missile dart. And now…
Her foot rose, and her foot fell.
Conditions
Conditions alter a creature's capabilities in a variety of ways and can arise as a result of a spell, a class feature, a monster's attack, or other effect. Most conditions, such as blinded, are impairments, but a few, such as invisible, can be advantageous. A condition lasts either until it is countered (the prone condition is countered by standing up, for example) or for a duration specified by the effect that imposed the condition. If multiple effects impose the same condition on a creature, each instance of the condition has its own duration, but the condition's effects don't get worse. A creature either has a condition or doesn't. The following definitions specify what happens to a creature while it is subjected to a condition.
Unconscious
An unconscious creature is incapacitated (see the condition), can't move or speak, and is unaware of its surroundings. The creature drops whatever it's holding and falls prone. The creature automatically fails Strength and Dexterity saving throws. Attack rolls against the creature have advantage. Any attack that hits the creature is a critical hit if the attacker is within 5 feet of the creature.
Incapacitated
An incapacitated creature can't take actions or reactions.
Melee Attacks
Used in hand-to-hand combat, a melee attack allows you to attack a foe within your reach. A melee attack typically uses a handheld weapon such as a sword, a warhammer, or an axe. A typical monster makes a melee attack when it strikes with its claws, horns, teeth, tentacles, or other body part. A few spells also involve making a melee attack. Most creatures have a 5-foot reach and can thus attack targets within 5 feet of them when making a melee attack. Certain creatures (typically those larger than Medium) have melee attacks with a greater reach than 5 feet, as noted in their descriptions. Instead of using a weapon to make a melee weapon attack, you can use an unarmed strike: a punch, kick, head-butt, or similar forceful blow (none of which count as weapons). On a hit, an unarmed strike deals bludgeoning damage equal to 1 + your Strength modifier. You are proficient with your unarmed strikes.
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Damage Rolls
Each weapon, spell, and harmful monster ability specifies the damage it deals. You roll the damage die or dice, add any modifiers, and apply the damage to your target. Magic weapons, special abilities, and other factors can grant a bonus to damage. With a penalty, it is possible to deal 0 damage, but never negative damage. When attacking with a weapon, you add your ability modifier--the same modifier used for the attack roll--to the damage. A spell tells you which dice to roll for damage and whether to add any modifiers. If a spell or other effect deals damage to more than one target at the same time, roll the damage once for all of them. For example, when a wizard casts fireball or a cleric casts flame strike, the spell's damage is rolled once for all creatures caught in the blast.
Critical Hits
When you score a critical hit, you get to roll extra dice for the attack's damage against the target. Roll all of the attack's damage dice twice and add them together. Then add any relevant modifiers as normal. To speed up play, you can roll all the damage dice at once. For example, if you score a critical hit with a dagger, roll 2d4 for the damage, rather than 1d4, and then add your relevant ability modifier. If the attack involves other damage dice, such as from the rogue's Sneak Attack feature, you roll those dice twice as well.
Rolling To-Hit With Advantage | 1d20+1, Best 1 of 2
Result of 15 HITS | Automatic Critical | 1-1=0 Damage
“Huh.” The tiefling Sorceress with the Strength score of 8 tilted her head to the side, considering. “Zero damage critical melee hits, because there aren’t any dice. And the System has started snarking at me using bold text.”
“What the fuck are you—”
“Fire Bolt,” she remarked casually over the imprecative scream, and she hurled the mote of fire down at the Rogue.
Rolling To-Hit With Advantage | 1d20+7, Best 1 of 2
Result of 18 HITS | Target Executed
“And now,” she sighed, “time to explain. Talk about tiresome.”
“Yeah, no fucking shit,” Surge snarled from beside her, gauntleted hand heavy on her shoulder. “Start walking, and keep your hands where I can see ‘em and not making somatic gestures.”
“I don’t actually know where Mook is,” Cassandra admitted. “You’ll have to navigate.”
“Fine.”
“Also, I should warn you, my daughter is relentlessly inventive and my husband is usually a complete enabler.” Cassandra smiled faintly as they walked. “I have no idea what she’s up to, which is a little bit on my mind.”
“A little bit on your—lady,” Surge said heavily, “maybe your mind should be on your head, and on keeping it on your neck?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Her smile got broader, and she nodded towards the tent they were approaching. “Are you coming in?”
“Am I going to keep an eye on the murderer who just killed one of my boss’s drovers, while she’s talking to my boss?”
The aptly-described woman snickered, and then ducked through the tent flaps into the scrying-blocked interior.
The tent having been blocked to remote viewing, listening, or psychic conversation-following, a person reading a third-party’s recounting of the events of Cassandra’s journey would normally be out of luck. However, it was a conversation whose nature could be divined from first principles by a combination of logic and understanding the personalities involved, and it would have gone thusly:
First, Caravan Master Mook would have bemoaned the disruption in public order, in a manner that was transparently shallow.
The woman from Earth would have simply rolled her eyes and fixed him with a measuring, patient look.
Lieutenant One-Venture-Commanding Surge would then have snapped that she had given strict instructions not to kill people on suspicion of being plants, and the Caravan Master would have allowed that it was a tremendous inconvenience that the person he had previously been tipped off about with regards to being a plant was now dead—this would no doubt implicate his informants.
The mother would have leveled a flat glare and pointed out that she hadn’t killed him for being a plant; she had killed him for being a philandering pedophile and adulterer, and a blithering idiot at all of those things. Furthermore, she would have pointed out, if either of the others in the tent had any expectation that she or her husband would allow a scumbag like that to creep on her daughter, they were absolute fucking morons.
The conversation would have moved on to damage control from there, and ended with an easy camaraderie as the three of them bonded over making extremely public just why she had killed the Rogue who had been masquerading as a drover.
After all, it wasn’t like he hadn’t killed the man whose position he’d taken, and he really had been a scumbag.
All in all, matters would have been well resolved and all would have been contented as they stepped out from the tent, only to be the subject of a furious shout from a pint-sized Ranger.
“Goddamnit, mom!” Harriet Joan Claire yelled. “That was my kill! Why’d you have to merc him before I got a chance to? YOU SUCK!”