House ruling exhaustion

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cthulhu42

Explorer

• Feb 19, 2018

• #1

I've been using the house rule whereby whenever a character goes to zero hit points and gets back up again he/she gains a level of exhaustion. I like it because it makes going to to zero suck quite a bit and have consequences.

However, taking a whole day to get rid of a level of exhaustion makes for quite a bit of downtime when I'd rather they were back out there saving the world. It makes giving them time sensitive quests a little tricky. They do use restorations, both party cast and bought from temples, but often after a really rough fight they'll still have to sit for multiple days.

So I'm thinking of house ruling that a single long rest will wipe out all levels of exhaustion.

Before I do though, I wanted to pick the ENWorld brains and see if this is a bad idea because of something I haven't foreseen.

So what about it? Will it break the game?

 

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dave2008

Legend

• Feb 19, 2018

• #2

I don't think it will break the game (since the exhaustion mechanic is not baked into the basic game anyway), but I would suggest limiting it to 2-3 levels recovered max. Helps emphasizing they should avoid dropping to 0 hP.

 

Doc_Klueless

Doors and Corners

• Feb 19, 2018

• #3

I do something similar in that going to zero gives a level of exhaustion. But I added in magical Potions of Vitality that remove 1d4 levels of exhaustion. Sort of like healing potions. Also, I've ruled that if a character is magically healed all the way back up, it wipes out 1d4 levels of exhaustion. So it's possible that a healing potion or spell will remove the levels of exhaustion.

One way of doing this may also be to say that spending a Hit Die can remove a level of exhaustion but doesn't heal at the same time OR does both. Up to you. But it would give the players a limited but renewable resource to get rid of exhaustion levels.

 

Warmaster Horus

Explorer

• Feb 19, 2018

• #4

How about a Con save after each long rest, DC 5? Remove 1 additional level of exhaustion per 5 success (so 2 at 10, 3 at 15, etc). This puts in a small chance of failure but a good chance for multiple exhaustion levels to be removed.

 

Doc_Klueless

Doors and Corners

• Feb 19, 2018

• #5

Warmaster Horus said:

How about a Con save after each long rest, DC 5?

Click to expand...

Oh, I like that as well. Good idea.

 

Blue

Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal

• Feb 19, 2018

• #6

You've increased how often Exhaustion comes up, I don't think that increasing how quickly i goes down will break the game. I do doubt you'll ever hit high levels of exhaustion if they clear up every day, but I doubt a campaign with the normal rules will ever hit high levels of exhaustion either.

It will make the Berserker barbarian more powerful, but considering that many currently put it as unviable that should be fine.

Right now, exhaustion and HD are the only multi-day attrition in 5e. If you wanted to keep the concept of multi-day attrition at the lower levels, make that you heal one level of exhaustion for free, but you can heal more by spending a HD during a long (?) rest when you are at max HPs. Since if you're hitting 0 HPs, HD will be in demand anyway this will make the "only recover half your HD" still something of a limitation at the lower levels, but it will go away at the high ones when one extra HD isn't a big deal.

 

FrogReaver

As long as i get to be the frog

• Feb 19, 2018

• #7

you are right that you need a counter for how many times a player falls. You don't have to tie that counter to exhaustion though.

Consider if a character can only fall down and be dying so many times before non-natural healing stops working on him.

As long as you pick a smallish number then your players have plenty of incentive to not play whackamole all combat.

 

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Syntallah

First Post

• Feb 19, 2018

• #8

I use the following rule at my table:

Each time you reach 0 hit points, you will gain a level of Exhaustion; these levels stack with each other. A Short Rest will negate one level of this exhaustion per point of Constitution modifier, while a Long Rest will negate double this amount (i.e. your Constitution modifier times two).

 

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cooperjer

Explorer

• Feb 19, 2018

• #9

I do not run into characters going to zero HP. However, a mechanic I see used in the MM is the reduction of maximum HP value. Instead of adding exhaustion, would a reduction in max HP give you what you are looking for? The recovery of max HP values tends to be directly tied to a long rest. In other words, any changes to max HP is reset on a long rest. My first thought is to reduce the max HP by 25% or 20% rather than a die roll or a static number.

 

MarkB

Legend

• Feb 19, 2018

• #10

You could track the Exhaustion levels due to combat takedowns separately from other Exhaustion levels, and say that those are cleared after a long rest, but any other sources of Exhaustion will need to be dealt with normally.