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Crit and death saves mean automatic ability score damage - Too gritty?
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<blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7462397" data-attributes="member: 6775031"><p>It's not that it's <em>objectively</em> too rough. Healing rules only make sense in the context of how the world works, and how much combat is expected. You could have a rule where hitting zero meant instant death, and that would still be fine if most combats were avoidable. I still don't like this rule, though, for a couple of reasons:</p><p></p><p>1) Crits are too random. You could be perfectly fine, with full HP and facing a single goblin, and some goofball crit gives you Con damage. There's no way for the players to interact with the system, aside from avoiding all combat entirely.</p><p></p><p>2) It's fiddly. Ability damage isn't really a big thing in 5E, because it's too much bookkeeping. Most instances of ability damage have been replaced with causing Disadvantage on ability checks. There's also no standardized heal rate for ability damage, from what I recall, though it sounds to me like you're talking about one point per day (which is reasonable).</p><p></p><p>If you don't want the PCs to sleep off critical injuries overnight, then I would recommend overhauling the heal rates. Nix the concept of hit dice entirely, and let characters recover 10% of their max HP every night. Convert Second Wind and other such features into granting temporary hit points.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="The Crimson Binome, post: 7462397, member: 6775031"] It's not that it's [I]objectively[/I] too rough. Healing rules only make sense in the context of how the world works, and how much combat is expected. You could have a rule where hitting zero meant instant death, and that would still be fine if most combats were avoidable. I still don't like this rule, though, for a couple of reasons: 1) Crits are too random. You could be perfectly fine, with full HP and facing a single goblin, and some goofball crit gives you Con damage. There's no way for the players to interact with the system, aside from avoiding all combat entirely. 2) It's fiddly. Ability damage isn't really a big thing in 5E, because it's too much bookkeeping. Most instances of ability damage have been replaced with causing Disadvantage on ability checks. There's also no standardized heal rate for ability damage, from what I recall, though it sounds to me like you're talking about one point per day (which is reasonable). If you don't want the PCs to sleep off critical injuries overnight, then I would recommend overhauling the heal rates. Nix the concept of hit dice entirely, and let characters recover 10% of their max HP every night. Convert Second Wind and other such features into granting temporary hit points. [/QUOTE]
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Crit and death saves mean automatic ability score damage - Too gritty?
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