I tend to run campaigns with a cadence - there are periods when the players tend to fight a few big threats and can mostly control when they rest, and there are periods of many small and large fights where controlling their resting is often impossible.
I want my players to be challenged, but I mostly want that to be a matter of player agency and attrition. To help foster that, I've been considering offering my players a new option: Burn two hit dice to automatically get the effect of a natural 20 on a death saving throw.
Since that only gets you up to 1hp, I suspect this will (if the situation is bad enough) mean that my players are likely to use a decent number of hit dice if one of the big small-number-of-encounter-per-days set pieces goes wrong, which will have a knock-on effect on the next time they need to enter a more dangerous phase (the transitions to which are only about half the time under their control).
I'm going to try this out on my lower-level parties (levels 4 and 5) where the cost is quite high. I'm posting here to see what people think about that for a higher level party. I *could* go with 1/3 of your maximum hit dice, rounded down (which would mean 1hd up to level 6), or keep it at two...
My highest level party have just hit level 9, and I won't be running a game for them until the new year. Plenty of time for canvassing opinions.
(Note: Yes, this isn't going to be an option for groups that think survivability is too high already - although I suspect this won't actually decrease the death rate in my games, because there is already a lot of pressure on hit dice in the dangerous phases)
I want my players to be challenged, but I mostly want that to be a matter of player agency and attrition. To help foster that, I've been considering offering my players a new option: Burn two hit dice to automatically get the effect of a natural 20 on a death saving throw.
Since that only gets you up to 1hp, I suspect this will (if the situation is bad enough) mean that my players are likely to use a decent number of hit dice if one of the big small-number-of-encounter-per-days set pieces goes wrong, which will have a knock-on effect on the next time they need to enter a more dangerous phase (the transitions to which are only about half the time under their control).
I'm going to try this out on my lower-level parties (levels 4 and 5) where the cost is quite high. I'm posting here to see what people think about that for a higher level party. I *could* go with 1/3 of your maximum hit dice, rounded down (which would mean 1hd up to level 6), or keep it at two...
My highest level party have just hit level 9, and I won't be running a game for them until the new year. Plenty of time for canvassing opinions.
(Note: Yes, this isn't going to be an option for groups that think survivability is too high already - although I suspect this won't actually decrease the death rate in my games, because there is already a lot of pressure on hit dice in the dangerous phases)