There’s actually nothing that flat out states this in the OD&D rules, but there are some hints.
A character swallowed by a purple worm will die in 6 turns. (Vol. II, Monsters & Treasure, p. 15)
The Bowl of Watery Death will drown a character in 2-5 turns. (Supplement I, Greyhawk, p. 52)The average person in the real world can hold their breath for 2 or 3 minutes, so if it’s assumed the above is in “combat” turns, it’s a generous but still close to accurate number. As usual, it seems “just roll a d6” is a good default ruling. Throw in the Con bonus for extra variety and start making saves or adversity rolls every minute when the time is up.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.
I don’t know how it works in 0e. I use 1 minute combat rounds. It’s 1 round for low CON, 2 for average CON and 3 for high CON. Then you pass out and go to 0 HP and you have the same amount of time to be saved: 1, 2 or 3 rounds depending on CON. If not, then you’re dead!
ReplyDeleteIt's 1 minute rounds in OD&D, too, but there's always a confusion when certain durations are given in turns. Do they mean exploration turns, or combat rounds?
DeleteI did consider just doing 1d6 damage every round after the initial number of rounds rolled, instead of using saves. You pass out at 0 hp, and have to roll a single save at the end of the turn if rescued. Successful rescues restore 1 hp.