D&D 5E Dying and Bloodied: review my house rule

[TakeoBR]

It's been a couple months since I've DMed 5e and in that time I've talked a lot with a friend who's designing his own RPG. Those conversations motivated me to try my hand at game design and I figured a good start would be adressing some of my problems with good old DnD before I run it again.

The issues:

• when a battle gets hard players default to dealing more damage, rarely considering defensive options
• players have a hard time deciding if and when they should retreat
• unconscious characters are healed to single digit HP only to be droped and healed repeatedly
• characters at 0 HP have nothing to do apart from rolling death saves

The house rules I'm working on adds two new conditions, one of which replaces the current dying rules:

Bloodied
Being bloodied means that the injuries the creature has suffered, be it from cumulative damage from scrathes and bruises or a single massive hit, have taken a visible toll.

• A creature is bloodied whenever their hit points are below one third of their maximum, and they cease to be bloodied as soon as they are above that threshold.
• The player or DM in control of a bloodied creature must announce its condition to the rest of the players.
• When a bloodied creature misses an attack roll or a creature succeeds on a saving throw they caused, the next attack roll against them has advantage.

Dying
When a creature’s hit points are reduced to zero they don’t die immeadiatly unless some effect causes them to, but their ability to fight is compromised and their survival uncertain.

• A creature is dying whenever their hit points are at zero. They cease to be dying if they regain any hit points.
• A dying creature falls prone when their hit points are reduced to zero and their exhaustion level increases by one for as long as they are Dying.
• The creature has disadvantage on attack rolls.
• Saving throws against the creature’s spells, attacks, and abilities have advantage.
• At the start of each of their turns, a dying creature must make a death saving throw, to which no ability modfiers apply: If the roll is 10 or higher, they succeed. Otherwise, they fail. A success has no effect by itself, but on their second failure they fall Unconscious and on their third, consecutive or not, they die. The number of death saving throw failures are reset to zero when the creature is no longer Dying.
• If they take any damage while Dying, they suffer a death saving throw failure.
• By expending an use of a medical kit you can attempt to stabilize a Dying creature by succeding in a DC 10 Wisdom (medicine) check. A stable creature is still Dying but doesn’t need to make death saving throws and any failures they had are reset to zero. Once stable a creature regains one hit point in 1d4 hours.

The Bloodied condition is meant to indicate a sense of urgency for players reaching low HP, and the offensive debuff it causes is supposed to represent the damage taken and make the player reconsider their strategy. Unlike in 4th, it only kicks in when you are with a third of HP remaining, as I don't intend for characters to spend much time with it, but just like 4th edition it could be a trigger for many effects (I'm already considering a dragonborn redesign that uses that). It also gives a small but lasting consequence in the form of restricted healing.
The new dying rules are supposed to make death frightening while not making the dying character completely passive.
With these I expect players to not use their healing in the typical yo-yo fashion, but either sooner or with higher level spells to hopefully keep themselves off the bloodied range. I also expect them to consider retreating or avoiding battles more often, and finally, I expect some defensive options like the Dodge action to actually see some play.

What do you think? Any suggestions on things that should change to accompany these conditions? Any unexpected consequences or things you think are poorly thought through? Please let me know

Edits:
- Removed the part about regaining hit points from short and long rests from the Bloodied condition. It was an afterthought and only caused confusion.

 

[jmartkdr2]

On the one hand, the bloodied condition means the pcs only have 2/3 as many hit points where they are at full fighting strength, making them weaker overall. On the other hand, dying no longer causes them to lose turns, which could be a huge boon to pc action economy, making them stronger in the rough spots. I'm not sure of these will be a bigger influence.

I don't think it's obviously broken, so the only way to really know is to play it.

One rule I've used to reduce yo-yo healing is to allow characters to spend Hit Dice when they get healed (up to one HD per die rolled in a healing spell, or one per 5 hp granted by a fixed healing effect like Lay on Hands.) I might even extend that to allowing Medicine checks to spend HD (dc 5 per HD you can spend?) if you want to make healing kits more useful. Since you're spending HD you still have to conserve the resource, but it means spending a turn healing isn't going to give you enough healing to last only one more turn before you need healing again.

 

[TakeoBR]

One rule I've used to reduce yo-yo healing is to allow characters to spend Hit Dice when they get healed (up to one HD per die rolled in a healing spell, or one per 5 hp granted by a fixed healing effect like Lay on Hands.) I might even extend that to allowing Medicine checks to spend HD (dc 5 per HD you can spend?) if you want to make healing kits more useful. Since you're spending HD you still have to conserve the resource, but it means spending a turn healing isn't going to give you enough healing to last only one more turn before you need healing again.

This is an interesting approach. Do you think this changes the way players go through an adventuring day or their combat decision making beyond what you just mentioned?

 

[jmartkdr2]

This is an interesting approach. Do you think this changes the way players go through an adventuring day or their combat decision making beyond what you just mentioned?

A little - this was included with modified short rests (5 min, 2/day) to make pacing in a dungeon more believable.

Ultimately we dropped it since it wasn't really better than just player the rules as they are. It might have been slightly more versimilitudinous, but it wasn't really more fun. Your mileage, however, may vary.

 

[Quartz]

Your Bloodied condition is a hard NO! from me. It's very easy for a fighter type to lose a lot of HP very quickly, often even before they've had a chance to act, yet dealing a lot of damage when they do. You're effectively reducing the fighter's HP. As I read it, this change makes it unfun to play a front line fighter.

 

[Rockyroad]

I mentioned this in another recent thread. When a player is at 0 hp you could say that that player needs to receive healing spell cast at spell slot at least half the fallen character level maybe capped at level 5 spell slot so that they don't receive just a few hp from that level 1 healing word, making them vulnerable to be downed again in one shot.

 

[Blue]

It's been a couple months since I've DMed 5e and in that time I've talked a lot with a friend who's designing his own RPG. Those conversations motivated me to try my hand at game design and I figured a good start would be adressing some of my problems with good old DnD before I run it again.

The issues:

• when a battle gets hard players default to dealing more damage, rarely considering defensive options
• players have a hard time deciding if and when they should retreat
• unconscious characters are healed to single digit HP only to be droped and healed repeatedly
• characters at 0 HP have nothing to do apart from rolling death saves

The house rules I'm working on adds two new conditions, one of which replaces the current dying rules:

Bloodied
Being bloodied means that the injuries the creature has suffered, be it from cumulative damage from scrathes and bruises or a single massive hit, have taken a visible toll.

• A creature is bloodied whenever their hit points are below one third of their maximum, and they cease to be bloodied as soon as they are above that threshold.
• The player or DM in control of a bloodied creature must announce its condition to the rest of the players.
• When a bloodied creature misses an attack roll or a creature succeeds on a saving throw they caused, the next attack roll against them has advantage.
• The creature can only regain hit points as part of spending hit dice in a short rest or taking a long rest if they expend an use of a medical kit.

Dying
When a creature’s hit points are reduced to zero they don’t die immeadiatly unless some effect causes them to, but their ability to fight is compromised and their survival uncertain.

• A creature is dying whenever their hit points are at zero. They cease to be dying if they regain any hit points.
• A dying creature falls prone when their hit points are reduced to zero and their exhaustion level increases by one for as long as they are Dying.
• The creature has disadvantage on attack rolls.
• Saving throws against the creature’s spells, attacks, and abilities have advantage.
• At the start of each of their turns, a dying creature must make a death saving throw, to which no ability modfiers apply: If the roll is 10 or higher, they succeed. Otherwise, they fail. A success has no effect by itself, but on their second failure they fall Unconscious and on their third, consecutive or not, they die. The number of death saving throw failures are reset to zero when the creature is no longer Dying.
• If they take any damage while Dying, they suffer a death saving throw failure.
• By expending an use of a medical kit you can attempt to stabilize a Dying creature by succeding in a DC 10 Wisdom (medicine) check. A stable creature is still Dying but doesn’t need to make death saving throws and any failures they had are reset to zero. Once stable a creature regains one hit point in 1d4 hours.

The Bloodied condition is meant to indicate a sense of urgency for players reaching low HP, and the offensive debuff it causes is supposed to represent the damage taken and make the player reconsider their strategy. Unlike in 4th, it only kicks in when you are with a third of HP remaining, as I don't intend for characters to spend much time with it, but just like 4th edition it could be a trigger for many effects (I'm already considering a dragonborn redesign that uses that). It also gives a small but lasting consequence in the form of restricted healing.
The new dying rules are supposed to make death frightening while not making the dying character completely passive.
With these I expect players to not use their healing in the typical yo-yo fashion, but either sooner or with higher level spells to hopefully keep themselves off the bloodied range. I also expect them to consider retreating or avoiding battles more often, and finally, I expect some defensive options like the Dodge action to actually see some play.

What do you think? Any suggestions on things that should change to accompany these conditions? Any unexpected consequences or things you think are poorly thought through? Please let me know

Not sure where to start. First, I wouldn't play in a game with these rules. Some roles in the party are expected to put themselves in harm's way to protect the other members of the party. A foe crit, a missed save or a miscalculation on how much damage new foes put out can put them in a place where they are blooded and YOU PREVENT TEAMWORK - i.e. the healer can no longer heal them because they are less than 1/3 of their HPs. And since they are still on the front line (and the next attack has advantage), there's a good chance from there they end up at 0.

Now, once at zero you will most likely die. Healing doesn't work to stabilize because you are still bloodied and it won't heal you, successes will never stabilize you. You can't even drink a healing potion to any effect. The only hope is a source making Medicine rolls. If not, you are dead since you will fail your 3 death saves before 360 turn long short rest restores any HPs.

You ask for suggestions - my suggestions start with don't put in a major nerf to the front line role that put themselves in danger to protect the rest of the party. You can't take this out on the players who are willing to play tank. My second thing is D&D is a team game, and preventing teamwork by stopping the healers from healing is a non-starter.

 

[Stalker0]

I think the attack penalties and such on bloodied are unnecessary, the major major effect is the inability to heal except by short rest....which is already a tremendous penalty and will definately have players trying to get in combat healed before this effect.

Overall I think this will lead to deadlier fights in general, which nothing wrong with that if its what you are going for. The death saves mean that a character is still pretty durable, but the inability to heal will definately make fights seem deadlier to players, as they have no way to recover other than winning the fight.

 

[Brotton Goodfellow]

For what it's worth coming from a stranger on the internet, I like what you got. That'll definitely get your players motivated to be on the defensive and to maybe think a little more strategic. I can see a bloodied character, if they aren't careful, slowly being sucked into a death spiral that is difficult to get out of. I like the use of exhaustion levels while dying as well. Being brought low should have a lingering effect. My only concern is that it may make the players overly cautious and too afraid to engage the enemy, which might make things boring. Maybe not though. I will also echo that not being able to heal without rest once bloodied is too much.

I've been using 5E Hardcore Mode rules for dying and it's made being at 1 HP a lot more nerve wracking for the players. The rules go something like this:

• When a character is knocked to 0 HP the character is unconscious and bleeding out. If no aid is given in 3 rounds, the character bleeds out and dies. A character is no longer dying if they receive 1 HP of healing through magic or medical aid (I use healers kits as a one time use item that allows a character to expend a hit die to regain HP)
• A character dies if they take 10+ points of damage past 0. So if Johnny fighter is sitting at 1 HP and takes 11 or more points of damage in a round, he's killed. No saves. Straight up worm food. I had a ghoul slap the lower jaw off of the cleric. It was great fun for all.

The supplement also has a rule for becoming injured that reminds me of what you've done with being bloodied. The condition gets triggered if you take 10+ damage from a single source and are still standing. Much like what you have done, its the start of a death spiral that can escalate quickly if not dealt with right away.

PS: To anyone looking for a more deadlier game I highly recommend 5E Hardcore Mode.

 

[commandercrud]

Just use the gritty realism variant. It's worked wonders for me.