Death Saving Throws 5e Explained

How do death saving throws work in 5e?

When damage drops you to 0 hit points and does not kill you outright, you fall unconscious. From then on, at the start of each of your turns, you roll a d20 with no modifier. This roll is a death saving throw, and you can make it with a d20 roller if you don't have dice handy.

• 10 or higher: one success.
• 9 or lower: one failure.
• Natural 20: you regain 1 hit point and wake up.
• Natural 1: counts as two failures.

You keep rolling until you reach three of one kind. Three successes make you stable: still unconscious at 0 hit points, but no longer rolling. Three failures and your character dies. The successes and failures don't need to be in a row.

These rules are the same in the 2014 and the 2024 Player's Handbook. Any healing, even 1 hit point from cure wounds or a potion, ends the process at once and resets both tallies to zero.

What are the odds of each death save roll?

Each face of a d20 is a 5% chance, so the four results break down like this:

Counting the natural 20, a single death save is good news 55% of the time and bad news 45% of the time.

What are the chances of dying from death saves?

We worked out the exact odds with a script that follows every possible sequence of rolls, assuming nobody heals you, stabilizes you or hits you again. Starting from zero successes and zero failures:

In other words, a character left alone survives about 59.5% of the time, but nearly 4 in 10 die. On average the process takes about 3.63 rolls, so a downed ally usually has three or four rounds before it is settled.

How do the odds change mid-sequence?

The table below shows your chances from each tally, which is useful when deciding whether a healer must act this round.

With two failures already marked, the next roll kills you 45% of the time. That is the moment to spend a spell slot or a potion.

What happens if you take damage while at 0 hit points?

Getting hit while you are down is dangerous. Each time you take any damage at 0 hit points, you mark one death save failure. If the damage comes from a critical hit, you mark two. Attacks against an unconscious creature have advantage, and a hit from within 5 feet is automatically a critical hit, so a single melee attack on a downed character usually costs two failures. See critical hits in 5e for more on how crits work.

When is death instant?

Massive damage skips death saves entirely. If damage drops you to 0 hit points and the damage left over equals or exceeds your hit point maximum, you die on the spot. For example, a character with a 12 HP maximum and 5 HP left dies outright from a hit of 17 or more. Likewise, if you are already at 0 hit points and take damage equal to or greater than your hit point maximum, you die.

How do you stabilize a dying creature?

You can stop the rolls without healing anyone:

• Medicine check: use your action (the Help action in the 2024 rules) and make a DC 10 Wisdom (Medicine) check on the creature. Success makes it stable.
• Healer's kit: spend a use of the kit to stabilize the creature with no check needed.
• Spare the dying: this cantrip stabilizes a creature at 0 hit points.

A stable creature stays unconscious at 0 hit points and stops making death saves. If it takes damage again, it is no longer stable and starts rolling again. If nobody heals it, it regains 1 hit point after 1d4 hours.

Healing is usually better than stabilizing because the creature wakes up and can act. Even 1 hit point gets a character back into the fight.

Can bonuses help your death saving throws?

A death save is a saving throw that isn't tied to an ability score, so you never add an ability modifier or proficiency. Effects that boost all saving throws still apply, such as the bless spell or a Paladin's aura. Bless adds 1d4, which turns rolls of 6 to 9 into possible successes. A Halfling's Luck trait lets them reroll a natural 1, which removes the worst result.

How should a party handle a downed ally?

1. Heal the ally if you can. Any healing resets the tally and lets them act on their turn.
2. If you can't heal, stabilize them with Medicine, a healer's kit or spare the dying.
3. Keep enemies away from them, since every hit adds failures.
4. Track successes and failures out loud so the whole table knows the stakes.

Many groups roll death saves in the open for tension; others let the DM roll them secretly so the party doesn't know how close a friend is to death. Either way, the math above stays the same.

FAQ

What are the odds of dying on death saves in 5e?

If nobody helps you and you take no more damage, you die about 40.49% of the time, become stable about 41.38% of the time, and roll a natural 20 to wake up with 1 hit point about 18.14% of the time.

Do you add modifiers to death saving throws?

Normally no. A death save is a flat d20 roll. Effects that boost all saving throws, such as the bless spell or a Paladin's aura, do apply, because a death save counts as a saving throw.

Do death save successes and failures reset?

Yes. Both tallies reset to zero when you regain any hit points or become stable.

What happens if you take damage at 0 hit points?

You suffer one death save failure, or two if the hit was a critical hit. If the damage equals or exceeds your hit point maximum, you die instantly.

Related

• Roll a d20
• Hit Dice in 5e and How to Calculate HP
• Conditions in 5e: Complete List
• Cure Wounds 5e