Quote Originally Posted by Doug Lampert View Post
Remove the "PC pops up on a 20" rule and you can simply declare that everyone gets death saving throws, and we're abstracting away the PCs going arround and putting a sword through the throat of every down enemy, because that's not all that heroic.

Monsters rarely have healing powers, so other than the chance of a 20, it really doesn't matter much if they roll death saving throws.
When discussing NPCs and death saves it's rarely about them popping back up when you don't want them to as much as them not dying when you want them to.

Outside of a few very specific spells and class features that allow you to gather not necessarily complete information from the dead, knocking somebody unconscious with a melee attack rather than killing them is one of the best ways to potentially gather information about a opposing Force.

Same for keeping NPCs and Pet focused tagalongs to cause unnecessary strife because of the math rocks not being friendly.