Talk:Pregnancy (3.5e Disease)

Balance Concerns

"During birth, the character must succeed on a DC 15 Fortitude save every round or take 1d2 points of lethal damage."

Let's say the woman is in labour for an hour (an extremely quick birth, by the way). That's six hundred checks. If this woman is already much tougher than the norm and has a +5 to Fortitude saves (just to make the math easy), that's an average of 450 points of damage. This would make childbirth pretty much unsurvivable with magical aid for anything but the most epically powerful of warriors. --Snikers 11:35, 20 June 2011 (MDT)

If you keep reading you'll note it says "Birth takes 9 rounds to complete". That makes it 9 checks, for a maximum of 18 damage, average of about 7 (assuming your +5 Fortitude Woman). That means if halfway though someone casts "cure light wounds" once, she should be fine unless she is level one. --Badger 11:58, 20 June 2011 (MDT)

A human Com1 (aka 95+% of the population) has a Fort save of +0 and 2.5hp average. Io they have to roll a 15 or higher to succeed on the fortitude save (30%) or be dealt 1.5 points of damage (average), this works out to an average of 1.05 points of damage per round. This means the average human commoner goes unconscious after 2.4 rounds, and ends up being dealt 9.45 damage after the 9 rounds, which isn't enough to kill her, except that during round 2-7 she loses 0.9HP per round (10% chance to stabilize, otherwise she loses a hit point), for a grand total of -15.05HP. A CLW from a first level cleric cures 5.5 damage, which isn't enough to keep the person above -10 by the end. In order to end the birth while still conscious with no outside help, the average commoner could fail only 2 saves (0.01% chance) plus be dealt only 2 damage (25% chance).

I think the damage should be non-lethal for starters, so there's no risk of death, and lower the save. If it deals 1 non-lethal damage with a save of DC 10, that works out to an average of 0.55 non-lethal per round, so she still probably won't make it out conscious (she only has to make 5 saves to stay conscious, though, so only 79% of commoner pregnancies end with an unconscious mother... which still seems high to me, but it's better than >50% (much more complicated to figure out the exact percentage) ending in death.)

PS I like probability. JazzMan 16:30, 21 June 2011 (MDT)

Does anyone know the percentages of women who would die in childbirth during medieval periods? Wikipedia suggests that in the 1800s it reached as high as 40% sometimes. My guess is pregnancy would knock most people out. What are the thoughts on "DC is 15, failing by 5 or more makes the damage lethal, but failing by 4 or less makes it non-lethal damage". --Badger 17:46, 21 June 2011 (MDT)

I'm guessing that the 40% number includes things connected to but not directly caused by childbirth, like poor medical practices or risky surgeries. Realistically, if any species has more than, say, 25 deaths per 100 births, they would die out as a species (having just two children would net you a just under 3-in-5 chance of surviving; three children is 3-in-5 against).

If we use the miss-by-5 rule (which is an elegant way of doing what I couldn't figure out how to do, that is, mixing lethal and non-lethal damage) that means a 30% chance of taking no damage, 20% chance of taking non-lethal and 50% chance of lethal each round. Assuming it's still 1d2 damage, on average we are talking 6.75 lethal and 2.7 non-lethal damage. The woman goes unconscious after 2.4 rounds, and goes into negative HP after 3.3 rounds. She is dealt another 5.1 HP lethal damage while at negative for a grand total of -9.3 lethal/2.7 non-lethal. Any 2.5HP commoner who passes at least four out of their first five saves (19% chance), 5 out of their first 6 saves (11%) or 6 saves in any order (16%) can roll 1's for every single other save and still survive. The total survival rate for the average commoner is just over 55% (actually upon doing the next calculation, I realized I was double counting, so the number is actually somewhere below 55%, but I'm not exactly sure what it is). If you lower the damage from 1d2 to just 1, then they need to make 2 of the first 4 saves or 3+ saves in any order to survive. Somewhere over 91% of people will survive, though most of them will be passed out. This probably seems accurate in a world without analgesics. JazzMan 19:26, 21 June 2011 (MDT)

Sorry but labor takes a hell of a lot longer then 54seconds (9rounds). Instead of doing checks by the round how about the hour, considering early labor which is almost unpredictable has been noted by days. Active labor can last up to 18 hours and the and the part where she actually pops the baby out can take up to an hour itself.