Last Words
According to the official Dungeons and Dragons rules, a character cannot bleed to death without being unconscious first (usually for around a minute.) Regardless of if this is realistic, it does raise a problem for a player who wants to do a homage to Boromir from Lord of the Rings, or a similar work. Under the current rules, a character won’t get a chance for last words.
To fix this, we suggest that you allow characters a will save when they are knocked into negative hit points, DC 15+damage from that attack. If the character succeeds, he is conscious but can only take partial actions, just as though he were at zero hit points. The character continues to bleed and cannot attempt to stabilize himself. If the character tries to take a non-standard action, he must make a fortitude save, DC 25. If he succeeds he may take the action, but he looses two hit points and falls unconscious. If he fails, he still looses the two hit points and falls unconscious, but cannot take the action.