D&D 5E Dying House Rule

[Huntsman57]

Coming from 2E and 3.5, I've felt that the dying rules in 5E lack the teeth of those prior editions. While you can certainly wipe a party in 5E, the threat to an individual that they might fail a save or suck death effect, or be low on hit points and get instantly killed when they went below -9, is simply not there. In 5E a character will at a minimum have a couple of rounds on the ground before dying, and in most cases much longer. In fact a PC left unaided, odds are, will stabilize without any help from their teamates. This significantly reduces the tension for the individual PC, and with less of a sense of risk, there is less a sense of reward for surviving the fight IMO.

My goal is to create a situation where the risk of dying was statistically similar to 2E or 3E. I may not have hit the mark on the head, but I feel as though I've come close. I kept the "death saves" system but altered it significantly as follows...

- a single failed death save = death
- PC's will never self stabilize. They must always get assistance from a teammate
- the moment a character drops below 0 hit points they must make their first death save thus the hit that dropped them may have been instantly lethal
- the initial death save, and the death save made the round after are at a DC of 3. Each round thereafter the DC worsens by 1.

I'd particularly like to hear from those of you playing 5E that initially cut their teeth on D&D in 2E and 3E. If you preferred the old systems how do you feel about this bridge between old and new?

 

[epithet]

I can tell you that I would not let myself become very invested in or attached to a character in a campaign where we agreed to that house rule, and the first thing I would think of as a player if you (as a DM) suggested such a rule would be that you were one of "those" DMs, the ones who take an adversarial approach to the game.

5e starts characters off pretty fragile, and the relatively forgiving death rules seem (to me) to make players more comfortable getting to know their characters and putting some effort in early on to create a PC that brings something interesting to the campaign narrative. That what the whole background system is trying to promote. I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong to play it old-school, "Tomb of Horrors" style, but 5e seems to be designed to encourage a different mindset.

The other thing to keep in mind is that if you do get a group to agree initially to your homebrewed "drop dead" rules, you need to be prepared for the fact that players are likely to resent that fact the first time they have to roll up a new character. I mean, if a character dies in accordance with the published rules, it would probably be because he ran into a room full of orcs like a dumbass. If that character dies with your homebrew "drop dead" rules, it will be all your fault, and this campaign sucks, and no one likes your pizza topping choices, et cetera.

 

[schnee]

Fantasy Vietnam II: Grognard Boogaloo

 

[Libramarian]

I tried thoroughly to make 5e more scary and failed. It's unfortunately not as simple as editing the death and dying rules. Revivify is only a 3rd level spell. Also some classes are very hard to kill, like the barbarian, moon druid and monk. These classes are balanced for a game where healing/rezzing is very "liquid" and everyone lives and dies with the party. They become too powerful in a game with more individual PC deaths.

The 5e combat system in general is not really a good fit for scary because the action economy is very tight. The typical hit percentage is like 70%, and most characters only have enough HP for around 3 good hits. Old D&D combat is much sloppier and whiffier. You don't want combat to feel like a meatgrinder; that's not very scary. Combat becomes pleasingly scary when it's usually "easy" but sometimes tips out of control. Group initiative and proficiency bonus starting at 0 would get some of the way there.

To really do this properly would require very extensive house rules to 5e. A revision really. Better to just play an older edition when you want that feel.

 

[Lanliss]

I tried thoroughly to make 5e more scary and failed. It's unfortunately not as simple as editing the death and dying rules. Revivify is only a 3rd level spell. Also some classes are very hard to kill, like the barbarian, moon druid and monk. These classes are balanced for a game where healing/rezzing is very "liquid" and everyone lives and dies with the party. They become too powerful in a game with more individual PC deaths.

The 5e combat system in general is not really a good fit for scary because the action economy is very tight. The typical hit percentage is like 70%, and most characters only have enough HP for around 3 good hits. Old D&D combat is much sloppier and whiffier. You don't want combat to feel like a meatgrinder; that's not very scary. Combat becomes pleasingly scary when it's usually "easy" but sometimes tips out of control. Group initiative and proficiency bonus starting at 0 would get some of the way there.

To really do this properly would require very extensive house rules to 5e. A revision really. Better to just play an older edition when you want that feel.

I was thinking of some ideas a while back for making a horror setting in my world. For health I had that Players didn't gain full health on a long rest, and instead had to spend as many of the hit dice they gained from it as they wanted. For dying, I had some custom World rules that had some hefty disadvantages for dying at all, even with regards to Revivify. Nothing was directly linked to the dying itself, but there were tiers of downsides to dying. Stage 1 was 1d4 damage taken for sleeping away from a camp fire on all but the hottest nights, and that happened pretty much forever. Later disadvantages were things like Disadvantage on saves against cold damage, and later cold Vulnerability. I never got to actually test these things, but they felt like they would discourage dying, without it being too harsh at first.

As for making death scarier, these rules don't sound too harsh. They start much lower than normal, and take a full 7 rounds to get as bad as a normal Death Save. I would probably go so far as to add a rule that a Critical knocking a creature to 0 has an automatic DC of 6. It would certainly make being low level scary, but as long as the players play intelligently they should be fine.

 

[CapnZapp]

Coming from 2E and 3.5, I've felt that the dying rules in 5E lack the teeth of those prior editions. While you can certainly wipe a party in 5E, the threat to an individual that they might fail a save or suck death effect, or be low on hit points and get instantly killed when they went below -9, is simply not there. In 5E a character will at a minimum have a couple of rounds on the ground before dying, and in most cases much longer. In fact a PC left unaided, odds are, will stabilize without any help from their teamates. This significantly reduces the tension for the individual PC, and with less of a sense of risk, there is less a sense of reward for surviving the fight IMO.

My goal is to create a situation where the risk of dying was statistically similar to 2E or 3E. I may not have hit the mark on the head, but I feel as though I've come close. I kept the "death saves" system but altered it significantly as follows...

- a single failed death save = death
- PC's will never self stabilize. They must always get assistance from a teammate
- the moment a character drops below 0 hit points they must make their first death save thus the hit that dropped them may have been instantly lethal
- the initial death save, and the death save made the round after are at a DC of 3. Each round thereafter the DC worsens by 1.

I'd particularly like to hear from those of you playing 5E that initially cut their teeth on D&D in 2E and 3E. If you preferred the old systems how do you feel about this bridge between old and new?

The risk in 5e is when monsters (and area effects etc) keep hurting the fallen ally. You rack up three failed death saves very quickly this way.

That's the theory anyway.

The problem is, this assumes us players have no problem with monsters hitting the defenseless and fallen.

I certainly sympathize with your position, myself hating the idea that monsters should keep hacking at fallen party members to maintain the game's deadliness.

(just wanting to give you a heads-up on the objections you're gonna get, and a head start in defending your position against them)

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[Raith5]

I started D&D with 1E and I have to say that I am glad that earlier editions are in the past, especially with regards to dying and save or die effects. That said I am not finding 5E much more deadly than 3E.

But I do like the idea of building some suspense when a party member goes down, I am finding that in 5E that some someone going down, the standard response is not rush but I think the rules should encourage other members to rush to aid fallen! For that reasons I like the idea of the DC of the death save worsening each round.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The other thing to keep in mind is that if you do get a group to agree initially to your homebrewed "drop dead" rules, you need to be prepared for the fact that players are likely to resent that fact the first time they have to roll up a new character. I mean, if a character dies in accordance with the published rules, it would probably be because he ran into a room full of orcs like a dumbass. If that character dies with your homebrew "drop dead" rules, it will be all your fault, and this campaign sucks, and no one likes your pizza topping choices, et cetera.

That's going to be an issue with any attempt to change the game away from the default settings, which is unfortunate, since the default settings are so generous to players that it can be difficult to present any real challenge to them without intentionally including ridiculously-dangerous monsters. The frequent suggestion of intentionally making every enemy target fallen PCs, because that's the only way that death might conceivably occur, is far more adversarial than the suggestion at hand.

If they had made the default settings more moderate, then the DM would at least have the option of making things easier or playing at default without seeming adversarial. As it stands, any attempt to present an honest challenge by adjusting the death and healing rules is going to look like a huge red flag, even when the DM isn't trying to be adversarial.

And for what it's worth, even the option at hand would still leave lasting death as a rarity beyond level 5. Most characters have some way of stabilizing without requiring a roll (thanks to medkits), actual healers can stabilize as a bonus action anyway, and level 5 gives access to Revivify so that you can instantly bring back anyone who did happen to die in combat. The only real danger is in the 10% chance of dying from the first hit (or 5% for halflings).

 

[simonb530]

One of the things I have done to build suspense was the fallen pc didn't make any death saves until another character came and checked them. This helped alleviate the feeling "oh they have at least three rounds". I had one pc who was down for 4 rounds and the party thought he would be ok, but once he started his death saves first one was a crit fail and second he failed. After that the group was alot more responsive to getting a pc up right away.

If you are wanting to prevent yo-yo-ing, where the pc is just healed to get up but down the next round. You could have it that failed death saves stay until a long or short rest or everytime you hp is zeroed you gain a level of exhaustion.

 

[S'mon]

IMCs PCs die a lot. Probably because monsters with multi-attack routines will typically finish off a fallen PC before moving on to the next - it's the easy & logical thing to do. I think the GM has to deliberately nerf monster tactics before it becomes an easy game.

Now, some monsters/NPCs will capture fallen PCs for ransom, but finishing off fallen ones usually makes the most sense from the monster POV. At worst they have wasted 1-2 attacks. At best they've taken out a major threat that would otherwise pop back up.