D&D 5E Dying House Rule

[The Crimson Binome]

I don't think you are supposed to like it. It is my understanding of the game that a DM should allow the creature to act the way it was intended (or implied based on the DM's assessment) based on description, alignment, and RAW. The DM's personal preferences should not influence that one way or another. With that said, one is certainly always welcome to House Rule it in any way they feel works best for their game.

The DM is obligated to play the NPC in accordance with who that character is, and how the world actually works. That is the essence of role-playing.

If the DM wants an NPC to act a certain way, then what they're really saying is that they want the world to work in such a way that it makes sense for the character to behave like this. By both RAW and RAI, the DM is supposed to create their own setting, and it's no big deal if they want to change the healing or dying rules; those are both explicitly parts of the expected world-building process.

 

[CydKnight]

The DM is obligated to play the NPC in accordance with who that character is, and how the world actually works. That is the essence of role-playing.

If the DM wants an NPC to act a certain way, then what they're really saying is that they want the world to work in such a way that it makes sense for the character to behave like this. By both RAW and RAI, the DM is supposed to create their own setting, and it's no big deal if they want to change the healing or dying rules; those are both explicitly parts of the expected world-building process.

Ok. I am not in disagreement with any of this. It's never a big deal to make the rules work in any way that works best for your game unless you are playing AL. My original comment was my personal preference based on my personal experiences in 5E.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Cleric abilities like Revivify don't bother me quite as much tbh. Do they feel a bit cheap? Yes...but really, the cleric is way weaker than in 3E and I almost feel as though spells like these give the class a purpose. Healing is weaker than the older editions (unless if you're a life cleric perhaps), raise dead and related spells are largely unnecessary, and the cleric's damage output is fairly low compared to most other classes as well. The cleric has quite a few useful low level spells, but begins to level out and fall off in value by 9th level or so IMO. I guess I figure if a player decided to play a cleric, I should take pity and give him a bit more latitude in his spell use rather than house ruling such spells out.

I don't know which older editions you refer to, but healing is insanely strong in 5E compared to 2nd edition. A Lore Bard, with some multiclassing, can be healing over 2000 HP per day by 10th level via Extended Aura of Vitality. In 2nd you'd be lucky to heal 150.

Frankly I have never seen any group come anywhere close to NEEDING that amount of healing, but it's there in the rules.

I agree that clerics are lame; but when I said Revivify I wasn't referring only to clerics. What I meant specifically is that you'll see more Revivify as Magical Secrets for Bards; you might also see more paladins. And yes, clerics too.

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[discosoc]

I generally use Savage Worlds' "Heroes never die" rule, where basically players can't really get killed by anyone that's not actually important. They might get left for dead, or captured, or brought back by a kind old man or something, but unless it's an actual villain, they won't die.

I do make exceptions when it comes to stupid decisions, however. If the 5th level party decides to charge into the Ancient Red Dragon lair because "heroes never die," then we'll be rolling new characters soon enough.

Also, I love 2e, so this is obviously not an attempt at emulating that level of lethality or anything. I simply value a good story more than constant life and death struggles these days.

 

[robus]

I think the regular goblins want to win. Sure, it makes sense for them to focus on the enemy that's still standing and to ignore the one that's unconscious on the floor... until the unconscious one gets up and starts fighting again. Once that happens, it makes sense for the goblin to take a moment to make sure that once you're down, you stay down.

The PCs are a bit like Zombies aren't they? Better to go for the double tap just to be sure!

 

[Saeviomagy]

The -10 hp helps somewhat. Even better would be a knocked out rule. Any character dropped in combat would be knocked out/ out of action for d6 hours regardless of applied healing short of a heal spell. So once a character goes down then they truly are no longer a threat and thus there would be no sane reason to keep attacking. No longer would healers just wait until someone drops to heal them. It would become vital that all party members stay above 0 hit points.

The problem there is that once you're knocked out, you just go home for the night. Glad I made time in a busy schedule so I can be unconscious for the entire game.

OD&D- 0hp= dead
B/X- 0hp= dead
AD&D- 0 hp = mandatory week of rest with no adventuring possible.

Zero hp is a pretty big thing historically speaking.

Well actually I think that AD&D was dead at 0 as well.

But every edition since has had 0 = unconscious or incapacitated. And indeed house rules to that effect were near-universal in my experience and reading. In fact it seems that even Gary Gygax used such a rule (http://cyclopeatron.blogspot.com.au/2010/03/gary-gygaxs-whitebox-od-house-rules.html)

So you could argue that by-the-book, D&D had instant death at 0 hitpoints for less than half it's life. The reality is that it rarely had it. Maybe your experience differs from that?

 

[Caliban]

In short, if you the DM want dramatic tension in combat, you either need rules that make even random encounters potentially deadly (per OP's proposal), or unintelligent enemies like zombies and beasts who seek kills but not in a rational way, or you need intelligent enemies who ramp up the dramatic tension on ALL scales: tactical AND operational and possibly strategic too.

This is kind of my approach. I basically ignore the encounter building guidelines in the DMG and create encounters with whatever number of creatures feels appropriate to me based on what I want out of that encounter. Plus, I often "upgrade" the monsters with feats or change their abilities to make them more flavorful or interesting. (Example: I frequently allow monsters with magic abilities use them as a bonus action so they can still make their non-magical multi-attack.)

Players try very hard not to let their PC's go below zero, and try to get them up fast if they do - because it will have a significant impact on their ability to deal with the rest of the encounter.

Of course, I also don't use XP - I use milestones, telling the PC's to level up when appropriate, and the PC's all have an extra feat and access to multi-classing and feats. My world is dangerous, the PC's even more so.

(This is one reason I rarely weigh in on discussions about balancing encounters and such - my game is different enough from baseline 5e in that respect that I don't think my experience in that area is relevant.)

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The problem there is that once you're knocked out, you just go home for the night. Glad I made time in a busy schedule so I can be unconscious for the entire game.

Part of that can be addressed on the player end. Once you know that unconsciousness means you're down for a long time, it gives more incentive to avoid falling unconscious, which makes it much less likely to happen. To contrast, many players find that the default rules actually incentivize falling unconscious, since extra damage against you is ignored and the action economy means you lose nothing in the exchange. Taken to a more extreme case, the old rules where a new character would come in at level 1 would provide extreme incentive to avoid character death, which encouraged players to become more invested in their own survival.

On a more practical note, if falling unconscious put your character out of action for eight hours, then nine-times-out-of-ten would just mean that the party retreats and suffers whatever sort of loss is associated with not continuing on for the day. It's not terribly likely that the whole group will just keep going like normal, while one player is sidelined.

Well actually I think that AD&D was dead at 0 as well.

Death at zero was the base rule in AD&D (2E, at least). Death's Door - where you can stay alive until negative ten, but you're super messed up until you can rest for a week - was an optional rule which was extremely popular. (Critical hits were another optional rule which was strangely popular.)

 

[Saeviomagy]

Part of that can be addressed on the player end. Once you know that unconsciousness means you're down for a long time, it gives more incentive to avoid falling unconscious, which makes it much less likely to happen.

Except it doesn't. You already don't want to fall unconscious, and when you do, it's not typically your fault. It's usually random chance with the occasional contribution of other character's self-interest or DM miscommunication thrown in.

To contrast, many players find that the default rules actually incentivize falling unconscious, since extra damage against you is ignored and the action economy means you lose nothing in the exchange.

Firstly, it's not really much of an incentive: 'losing nothing' presupposes that you have a healer who's initiative falls after the monster, but before yours, and between you the two of you don't have a better sequence of actions than those that lead to you taking damage and him healing you. You are always better off having some way to take the damage without anyone passing out.

Secondly, those players who have no fear of unconsciousness have DMs who are soft. It only takes one time for a foe to finish someone off (be it deliberate or accidental with an AoE) before you can see how terrible an idea it is to sit around on 0.

Taken to a more extreme case, the old rules where a new character would come in at level 1 would provide extreme incentive to avoid character death, which encouraged players to become more invested in their own survival.

Well, actually they didn't really. My memory of od&d and ad&d is one where I can't remember the name of any character I played, because becoming invested in a character was a futile exercise. Life was cheap, and characters survived more through luck than through having control of their destiny.

Which is kind of why the 'death on 0' rule was not a big deal - tons of things didn't even touch your hit points, and even if they did, having your hit points only get to 0 was really uncommon.

On a more practical note, if falling unconscious put your character out of action for eight hours, then nine-times-out-of-ten would just mean that the party retreats and suffers whatever sort of loss is associated with not continuing on for the day. It's not terribly likely that the whole group will just keep going like normal, while one player is sidelined.

9 times out of ten... if the DM supports the 5 minute work day. That's already a problem, and now you're saying it should just be assumed that the PCs have all the time in the world? And to what end? Now your 'penalty' is basically nothing, and falling unconscious is no big deal again.

Death at zero was the base rule in AD&D (2E, at least). Death's Door - where you can stay alive until negative ten, but you're super messed up until you can rest for a week - was an optional rule which was extremely popular. (Critical hits were another optional rule which was strangely popular.)

Deaths door was popular. I'm not sure that most people bothered with the "oh, by the way, you can't adventure all day even if you get healed" bit, or if they did, then it just got handwaved "yeah, sure, you rest up and can do stuff again".

 

[Huntsman57]

I don't know which older editions you refer to, but healing is insanely strong in 5E compared to 2nd edition. A Lore Bard, with some multiclassing, can be healing over 2000 HP per day by 10th level via Extended Aura of Vitality. In 2nd you'd be lucky to heal 150.

Frankly I have never seen any group come anywhere close to NEEDING that amount of healing, but it's there in the rules.

I agree that clerics are lame; but when I said Revivify I wasn't referring only to clerics. What I meant specifically is that you'll see more Revivify as Magical Secrets for Bards; you might also see more paladins. And yes, clerics too.

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Your memory for 2E is better than my own. I remember a thing called Thac0 and another thing called system shock, along with that wacky 'ol dual classing system. Other than that, 17 years has faded my memory of most of the details. My comparison was with 3E. 2E would be a more difficult comparison since you also didn't have quite as many hit points in 2E as I recall, so less healing didn't necessarily equate to less effective healing, though again, as I said I simply don't recall. I will say that I remember a Heal spell that recovered all your hit points rather than the jippo 5E version.