Crit and death saves mean automatic ability score damage - Too gritty?

what if Max HP are reduced every time you hit zero HP and every failed save by a certain amount.

You max HP are returned after a long rest, but a number of HD must be used to return it (leaving you with less for a short rest)


just a quick idea ... not much thought put into it

I would like other people on the thread advise against ability score damage. It makes things too fiddly.

It's a good idea imo to look at the existing rules and options in 5e to see if theres something that suits your purpose.

The dmg option of not restoring hp and only half char level in hd solves your first problem straight away. They have to spend hd to recover ir use spell resources, and theyll start getting more scarce as time goes on.

A common houserule appears to be to give a level of exhaustion per failed death save. My next campaign will use this with a rule that you can spend 1 hd to recover one level of exhaustion.