House rule for Going below 0 hp and get up again with a good berry or a healing

[Yunru]

Does this mean they rest more often?

Not really. It's not normal for pcs to go down anyway, so it tends to end up the same amount.
What it does do is make healing before going down more important, as coup de graces are a significant worry.

 

[guachi]

Man, talk about harsh penalties...

The gnome reincarnation was a random die roll from the reincarnation spell table. I swear!

The awesome thing was the four PC party already had one gnome.

 

[5ekyu]

Not really. It's not normal for pcs to go down anyway, so it tends to end up the same amount.
What it does do is make healing before going down more important, as coup de graces are a significant worry.

So, were your PCs going down by choice before and now are choosing to avoid that?

 

[5ekyu]

The less challenging individual fights allow us to spend healing during fights before hitting 0 hp, or spend it between fights. There are also other, more fun, spells we have time to use instead of healing (but still reducing potential healing).

I think we have different problems with whack-a-mole. Our problem was that it happened frequently. Often going to 0 hp was not a feature for us. Reducing the threat intensity of each encounter let us do relevant healing before dropping to 0 hp, which was what we wanted all along: healing before going to 0 hp.

I'm increasingly getting the feeling that you see going to 0 hp as a feature. In that case you clearly have a different problem and the solution to our problem would not help.

I see four options where you seem to list three:
1. Frequently going to 0 hp, little or no healing. High lethality option.
2. Frequently go to 0, lots of healing; aka whack-a-mole.
3. Seldom go to 0 hp due to low threat, little or no healing or other spells used. Seems to be the impression I've given you; easy mode
4. Low enough threat to let healing before going to 0 hp keep a character standing another round. Still requires healing during and between encounters, but some spell slots can also be used to damage enemies. The risk is slowly running out of spell slots over the day, not that damage comes in faster than it can be healed. This is our case.

The main communication issue is probably that we want different things. I can keep describing what we considered the problem and how we solved it, but without knowing what tone you want for your game or what makes whack-a-mole a problem in your game I can't start guessing if our solution has relevance for solving your problem.

Re #4 and also the "problem" definition.. you and I have the same take in some ways... the issue is not that PCs players are enjoying getting knocked down so much they make choices to go down instead of stay up so they can pop up and so harsher penalties on going down are needed to change their minds.

The issue is them going down.

One rule I have used is the one I mentioned earlier - allow HD to be spent whenever healing occurs. So in the progress of a tough fight with heavy damage, the in-fight healing can be enhanced by spending your HD when someone heals you. Same when a surprise set of crits slams u hard and the HD are used to give you faster healing.

Let's folks keep above zero more flexibly when the encounter gets tougher.

I share with you, it seems some folks want to see the zeroes happen but aren't happy unless there are more long term consequences.

But whack-a-mole is easiest solved by preventing the whack by pcs and players having more control over pre-zero *or* by removing the drop from the drop and hop back up.

 

[cbwjm]

I was thinking about this earlier and thought that if I was to introduce a house rule it would be permanently mark off a failed death save each time you drop. After the first time you are reduced to 0 and brought back to 1 or more hit points, mark of a failed death save. If you drop to 0 a second time you must make 3 saves before 2 failures. Drop to 0 3 times and the 4th time you drop you die. Restore marked off failed death saves at the rate of 1 per long rest.

This introduces some form of penalty and fear of hitting 0 without introducing a death spiral from something like the exhaustion mechanic. As is, most people I've played with tend to use healing if they are getting close to 0 so I'm not sure I would need to introduce such a rule.

 

[Yunru]

So, were your PCs going down by choice before and now are choosing to avoid that?

Before the healer would wait until they were downed in most situations, before healing them.
Now they try and heal them whenever they drop below 1/3 health.

 

[5ekyu]

Before the healer would wait until they were downed in most situations, before healing them.
Now they try and heal them whenever they drop below 1/3 health.

Wow, my group would have kicked that healer to the curb long before that, given the risk of death down imposes.

Glad you found a rules change that forced your healers to changes their ways to something you guys enjoy more.

 

[Al2O3]

Re #4 and also the "problem" definition.. you and I have the same take in some ways... the issue is not that PCs players are enjoying getting knocked down so much they make choices to go down instead of stay up so they can pop up and so harsher penalties on going down are needed to change their minds.

The issue is them going down.

One rule I have used is the one I mentioned earlier - allow HD to be spent whenever healing occurs. So in the progress of a tough fight with heavy damage, the in-fight healing can be enhanced by spending your HD when someone heals you. Same when a surprise set of crits slams u hard and the HD are used to give you faster healing.

Let's folks keep above zero more flexibly when the encounter gets tougher.

I share with you, it seems some folks want to see the zeroes happen but aren't happy unless there are more long term consequences.

But whack-a-mole is easiest solved by preventing the whack by pcs and players having more control over pre-zero *or* by removing the drop from the drop and hop back up.

I do like the idea of using hit dice as extra healing in combat. If we need a house rule I'll probably suggest that.

 

[FrogReaver]

The less challenging individual fights allow us to spend healing during fights before hitting 0 hp, or spend it between fights. There are also other, more fun, spells we have time to use instead of healing (but still reducing potential healing).

I think we have different problems with whack-a-mole. Our problem was that it happened frequently. Often going to 0 hp was not a feature for us. Reducing the threat intensity of each encounter let us do relevant healing before dropping to 0 hp, which was what we wanted all along: healing before going to 0 hp.

I'm increasingly getting the feeling that you see going to 0 hp as a feature. In that case you clearly have a different problem and the solution to our problem would not help.

I see four options where you seem to list three:
1. Frequently going to 0 hp, little or no healing. High lethality option.
2. Frequently go to 0, lots of healing; aka whack-a-mole.
3. Seldom go to 0 hp due to low threat, little or no healing or other spells used. Seems to be the impression I've given you; easy mode
4. Low enough threat to let healing before going to 0 hp keep a character standing another round. Still requires healing during and between encounters, but some spell slots can also be used to damage enemies. The risk is slowly running out of spell slots over the day, not that damage comes in faster than it can be healed. This is our case.

The main communication issue is probably that we want different things. I can keep describing what we considered the problem and how we solved it, but without knowing what tone you want for your game or what makes whack-a-mole a problem in your game I can't start guessing if our solution has relevance for solving your problem.

So let's get this straight. You basically have 5 easy fights a day where no one even drops to 0 hp, followed by 1 hard fight where healing has already been all used up and this happens every single adventuring day without fail. Forgive me if I find the plausibility of this to be highly unlikely.

What surely is closer to the truth is that sometimes in the 5 easy fights a PC gets lucky and does get dropped to 0 only to immediately are healed. Then what is more truthful is that the final fight of the day doesn't leave the party with no healing resources(on most days), they just have much fewer but still enough so that if a PC falls to 0 they can immediately be healed.

Essentially the only hope you have of eliminating whack-a-mole is for the encounters to be so easy that no one ever really drops to 0 hp. That's not going to be an appealing solution to whack-a-mole for most of us. I'm glad it works for you though.

By the way, my solution to whack-a-mole is simple. I make 0 hp mean dead. I compensate the PC's with an extra max hit dice of hp at level 1 and leave everything the same from there.

 

[Al2O3]

So let's get this straight. You basically have 5 easy fights a day where no one even drops to 0 hp, followed by 1 hard fight where healing has already been all used up and this happens every single adventuring day without fail. Forgive me if I find the plausibility of this to be highly unlikely.

What surely is closer to the truth is that sometimes in the 5 easy fights a PC gets lucky and does get dropped to 0 only to immediately are healed. Then what is more truthful is that the final fight of the day doesn't leave the party with no healing resources(on most days), they just have much fewer but still enough so that if a PC falls to 0 they can immediately be healed.

Essentially the only hope you have of eliminating whack-a-mole is for the encounters to be so easy that no one ever really drops to 0 hp. That's not going to be an appealing solution to whack-a-mole for most of us. I'm glad it works for you though.

By the way, my solution to whack-a-mole is simple. I make 0 hp mean dead. I compensate the PC's with an extra max hit dice of hp at level 1 and leave everything the same from there.

Not quite like that. More like 5+ fights where a single PC may or may not go to 0 hp once, but will certainly get healed. At the end there may or may not be enough healing left to heal a PC that goes down.

This as contrast to two or three fights where multiple PCs drop multiple times per encounter because enemies would deal damage faster than PCs can heal. We basically figured that having "everybody survives" and "TPK" be about equally likely was not "challenging".

So your "simple" solution would in our context be a TPK per day. That is also unappealing.