D&D (2024) The new playtest Exhaustion rules has already fixed the exploration pillar a lot.

[Horwath]

That's not my experience, but then I use knowledge checks pretty liberally, and everyone feels the hit to perception, investigation and stealth. In fact the skill monkeys with their expertise handle exhaustion the best. Disadvantage means less when you have higher bonuses.

if you have 4 proficiencies and no expertise, skill checks are side show for you. Sure some stealth and knowledge can be a crucial roll, but when you have 11 skill proficiencies and 7 expertise, then skill checks are your main show. and your main show is severely affected by level one exhaustion.

 

[Staffan]

What I think is missing is a short-term equivalent of exhaustion that gets dealt with by a short rest instead of a long. That's the kind of thing that would be more appropriate as a cost for various abilities and/or a debuff from various attacks and spells.

 

[Charlaquin]

I also like the flavor and harshness of the 5e system in the right context. As a punishing status effect to inflict on characters it works pretty well and is evocative. I wish it was used more. Dropping to O HP should involve taking d4 levels of exhaustion or whatever.

As something players knowingly and willingly risk taking levels of it has mostly been a failure, because they are willing to do things that cause or risk exactly one level of exhaustion (if the payoff is very high), possibly 1 or 2 more in an actual emergency, and that's it.

Well, you can pretty safely risk exhaustion indefinitely, until you accumulate one level, and at that point you probably stop risking it, if you can help it. But the thing is, you can’t always help it. I think that’s a great play dynamic.

And the designers mostly recognized this early on and designed very few abilities that willingly self inflicted exhaustion.

Only one that I can think of is Berseker Barbarian’s Frenzy, and IMO the problem there is that the payoff isn’t worth the cost. In theory, exhaustion as a drawback for using a special ability could be a really cool soft 1/day. But the only ability they put it on only gave you one minute of a benefit you could get at-will with no additional cost by just dual-wielding.

I also think a save vs. exhaustion instead of an automatic level of exhaustion would be a better way to do a mechanic like this, cause again, that essentially makes it free until you fail.

And, while I find it evocatively fun for a few minutes of gameplay, the nature of getting rid of it means that a character who takes multiple levels at an inopportune point in the adventure might have a multi-session slog of being pretty boring to play, which is probably why, as a mechanic, it barely gets used in official materials.

Getting multiple levels of exhaustion at an inopportune time sounds like the opposite of a boring slog to me. That would create an intense challenge to try to get the exhausted character somewhere they can safely rest before it’s too late. That’s like peak narrative tension right there. Once you’re in a safe place, it doesn’t really matter how long it takes to recover from, you can narrate over that time in a sentence or two and get back to adventuring.

 

[Maxperson]

if you have 4 proficiencies and no expertise, skill checks are side show for you. Sure some stealth and knowledge can be a crucial roll, but when you have 11 skill proficiencies and 7 expertise, then skill checks are your main show. and your main show is severely affected by level one exhaustion.

I strongly disagree. It doesn't matter if you only have 1 skill if it's commonly used and important to the success of the group. And if you have expertise in 7 skills then the first level of exhaustion is just a speed bump. Double proficiency for a minimum of +6 on top of ability bonus is huge. You'll miss a few more rolls, but you'll still make the lion's share of them if the DM is doing DCs correctly.

 

[Horwath]

I strongly disagree. It doesn't matter if you only have 1 skill if it's commonly used and important to the success of the group. And if you have expertise in 7 skills then the first level of exhaustion is just a speed bump. Double proficiency for a minimum of +6 on top of ability bonus is huge. You'll miss a few more rolls, but you'll still make the lion's share of them if the DM is doing DCs correctly.

with +3 proficiency and +3 on average ability mod, it's +9

you DC 15 chance goes from 75% to 56%, your DC 20 goes from 50% to 25% and your DC 25 goes from 25% to 6%.


maybe 1st level of exhaustion should be disadvantage on all attack rolls and having all targets advantage vs your spells/abilites and see how fast PCs would go to bed after 1st level of exhaustion...

 

[AnotherGuy]

I see two predominant issues
1) Expertise makes small potatoes of this incremental exhaustion track.
2) And I agree with @Staffan, there needs to be a short-term version of exhaustion, like a winded-condition.

Once you iron out those issues, you could look at modifying the exhaustion track in interesting ways.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I swapped around my exhaustion chart and it works so much better.

Level 1) Speed halved
Level 2) Max HP halved
Level 3) Attacks and STR/DEX/CON saves with disadvantage
Level 4) Ability checks and INT/WIS/CHA saves with disadvantage
Level 5) Movement 0
Level 6) Dead

Doing this makes the top of the chart much more acceptable to players even if its still annoying. Half speed just means that when you are out of combat you can't do "double moves" (Move and Dash action) to get where you need to go, you can only do standard movement (where the Exhausted PC has to use their Action to Dash to keep up, rather than keeping watch while traveling, foraging, etc.) Max HP halved at level 2 is also something that PCs have to plan and adjust their tactics around, but so long as the character makes thorough choices during any combats that come up, they can survive fairly well even when they start the day at half the XP as the others. Then at 3 & 4 I just prefer having physical reduction in ability over mental reduction in ability when exhausted which is why I do attacks and physical saves first, then skill checks and mental saves second (YMMV). Then being bedridden and dead remain the same.

Arranging things this way gives all PC two levels of irritating detriments but nothing that absolutely kills the player's fun (like rolling all ability with disadvantage at level 1 in the normal chart). Now of course those DMs who call for much fewer ability and skill checks might not find the current chart so big a deal... but I use checks all the time even just for the doling out of information so pushing that further down the chart has been a boon for my table.

The new playtest rules seems fine(?) but as I'm quite happy with where my current chart is (and in fact I use it in place of the 3 Death Saves rule for going unconscious)... I dunno if I'd bother to switch over if this new rule got put in place.

 

[AnotherGuy]

The new playtest rules seems fine(?) but as I'm quite happy with where my current chart is (and in fact I use it in place of the 3 Death Saves rule for going unconscious)... I dunno if I'd bother to switch over if this new rule got put in place.

You mean characters roll on your exhaustion track rather than the 3 death saves? So, they essentially have 6 "death saves" if they don't have any exhaustion levels, right?

 

[CapnZapp]

I greatly prefer the more specific effects of the various levels of exhaustion over a boring blanket numerical pentalty. For much the same reason that I prefer magic items that have unique effects over generic +X magic items, and the same reason I prefer gaining new abilities on level up over simply increasing HP and proficiency bonus. Numbers are the least interesting part of an RPG to me, so any mechanic that is expressed solely through a numerical modifier is inherently less interesting to me than one that is expressed through exceptions-based rules. Furthermore, I think the harshness of the exhaustion penalties was a feature, not a bug. There’s value in having status conditions with real teeth, as that gives them more power to create strong gameplay incentives. Classic exhaustion is one of very few things other than straight-up character death that could meaningfully threaten PCs of any level in 5e.

I agree with everything you write.

What you don't talk about, however, is the criticism against the original system: that anything beyond the first level you just avoid at any cost.

Fixing this by reducing everything to just boring numbers is somewhat akin to throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

But something needed to be done.

It would have been much better to keep the idea of discrete levels of exhaustion (with meaningful penalties that are more than just "-2" and such) but change these into things that remain playable to a point.

Most players considered the second level already to effectively shut down a hero. Effects of such severity needs to be reserved for many more levels of exhaustion.

The first three or four levels needs to be inconvenient yes debilitating no.

 

[DEFCON 1]

You mean characters roll on your exhaustion track rather than the 3 death saves? So, they essentially have 6 "death saves" if they don't have any exhaustion levels, right?

Yup. Makes it harder for characters to die (a positive in my book), but it also gives longer-term ailments to PCs who go unconscious. Inspires the players to try harder to keep their fellow players on their feet and not let them go to 0 HP.