A question about saving throws, death, and the Mortal Wounds table

In my campaign, I’ve been saying that if someone dies from an effect that immediately results in death, there is no roll on the Mortal Wounds table. Usually, these situations involve saves vs. poison, death magic, and the like, which are mostly boolean results that do no hit point damage. It seems obvious to me, but character death is on the line, and I’d like to be certain.

My interpretation is that if it doesn’t do hit point damage to reduce the character to zero hp or lower, there’s no roll on the table. The target is simply dead. Is this correct?

IAANA, but I’m pretty sure yes, the Mortal Wounds table is reserved for HP damage. You don’t fail a saving throw against poison and then find out it’s just a broken arm.

That’s correct!

Thank you both. :slight_smile:

It’s actually kinda nice, since your body’s usually in better shape for getting resurrected than if you’d died of HP damage+mortal wounds roll.

Except if you died from an effect that killed you outright you suffer a huge penalty to the Tampering with Mortality roll.

Our interpretation has always been that that refers to the “red smear” sort of results on the mortal wounds table, rather than the sort of “oops your heart stopped but things are mostly in decent shape” you get out of Finger of Death or poison.vc