D&D 5E Why my friends hate talking to me about 5e.

[EzekielRaiden]

I’m not sure this would achieve the desired effect. I’m also not sure exhaustion is the best mechanic to achieve the desired effect in the first place. Perhaps a lingering injury upon reaching 0 would be better, though I have issues with the lingering injury table as well.

That's fair. Without testing, I cannot truly be sure what appropriate "fixes" would be for how punitive Exhaustion is. My stab there was, in effect, trying to address the "you can't fix it" problem without making Exhaustion yet another slap-on-the-wrist penalty because of it being infinitely removable. Having such an extremely serious, death-spiral-prone penalty be essentially impossible to manage, other than resting (possibly for several days at a time), is part of why it's SO problematic. Granting a way to partially mitigate it, without granting absolute "you can just wish it away after every encounter" control, seemed the best quick-fix way to deal with it. But testing is always required before you can say with confidence that any adjustment does what it's supposed to do.

 

[Charlaquin]

That's fair. Without testing, I cannot truly be sure what appropriate "fixes" would be for how punitive Exhaustion is. My stab there was, in effect, trying to address the "you can't fix it" problem without making Exhaustion yet another slap-on-the-wrist penalty because of it being infinitely removable. Having such an extremely serious, death-spiral-prone penalty be essentially impossible to manage, other than resting (possibly for several days at a time), is part of why it's SO problematic. Granting a way to partially mitigate it, without granting absolute "you can just wish it away after every encounter" control, seemed the best quick-fix way to deal with it. But testing is always required before you can say with confidence that any adjustment does what it's supposed to do.

I think, for people who are considering a house rule like this, exhaustion being impossible to manage except by resting for days at a time is exactly what they want out of such a rule. You’re trying to fix the entire impetus for using exhaustion as a stand-in for long-term injury in the first place.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think the real pain of exhaustion is its longevity, you can't even get rid of it with a short rest (even though you can heal on a short rest). magically it takes a 5th level spell, and you only drop 1 level.

That's what makes it so brutal, in a game where a serious injury is just one 1st level spell or an hours rest away from being fixed up.... the fact that exhaustion still lingers on is narratively very weird, and mechanically very strong.

It's because, by the rules, there's really no such thing as a serious injury. Exhaustion and certain specific spells are it unless you get into optional rules and/or homebrew.

 

[tetrasodium]

Oh? how does it work?

Quite well. In a nutshell exhaustion is split into strife & fatigue that ,manifest mentally & physically. There are a few ways to get them in normal adventuring (either directly or instead of other things). Clearing them is not easy & maybe even more difficult than exhaustion by virtue of needing a haven or recovery downtime activity & gm blessing but critically they are not so debilitating that having strife or fatigue forces adventuring to a halt & not trivial enough to be ignored.

 

[CreamCloud0]

In one of my games I gave the players the ability to learn & prepare a 1d8+5 first level cure spell, a 2d8+10 second level spell. & a 3d8+15 third level spell with the restriction that being healed by them resulted in your next long rest taking a number of days equal to your level to complete a long rest. The campaign is sandboxy & time is pretty much never much of a problem several months in but the player response was I quote:"why would I ever prep* or cast any of those when I can just let the damage go away when they hit zero & bring them up normally after without the cost". The "characters fall to 0 so often that "pop-up" healing is a thing" because they lack the tools to do otherwise and the entrenched system is so good that no player would ever willingly abandon it no matter what they are offered.**

* at the time this was said by a healer archetype cleric who counted all of them as prepared automatically for free and would add their wisdom mod on top of that much larger heal.

I really think the long rest extension mechanics should have instead been used when they drop to zero and the number of times it happens, They can only cast the your superior heals the number of times they prep them and standard heals as regular but it gives them more of an incentive to prepare the better versions and heal themselves earlier before dropping so they don’t have to go through the extended recovery times from dying in a fight repeatedly.

 

[tetrasodium]

I really think the long rest extension mechanics should have instead been used when they drop to zero and the number of times it happens, They can only cast the your superior heals the number of times they prep them and standard heals as regular but it gives them more of an incentive to prepare the better versions and heal themselves earlier before dropping so they don’t have to go through the extended recovery times from dying in a fight repeatedly.

Extension mechanic?

 

[pemerton]

I mean, it says a lot about a rules system when the players are more afraid of exhaustion than they are about dropping to 0 hit points. Or to put it differently, it's really messed up that the players are more worried about getting tired than they are about getting stabbed.

The Exhaustion system can be a good way to incentivize players to not drop to 0 hp; but it is unfortunately somewhat half-baked, as pointed out up thread. Unlike 5e's rather robust and forgiving out of combat healing/recovery, it is long lasting, debilitating and hard to recover from

I think the real pain of exhaustion is its longevity, you can't even get rid of it with a short rest (even though you can heal on a short rest). magically it takes a 5th level spell, and you only drop 1 level.

That's what makes it so brutal, in a game where a serious injury is just one 1st level spell or an hours rest away from being fixed up.... the fact that exhaustion still lingers on is narratively very weird, and mechanically very strong.

To me, it's super-bizarre that a person in the world of 5e D&D is more likely to suffer debilitation from pushing themselves hard when walking, than going toe-to-toe with an ogre!

 

[CreamCloud0]

Extension mechanic?

What you said with this here

with the restriction that being healed by them resulted in your next long rest taking a number of days equal to your level to complete a long rest.

Attaching it to when players drop rather than when they cast the improved healing spells.

 

[GMMichael]

Let's observe that annethegnome's idea is clearly not for anyone else; she's watching herself while recording, not the camera/us.

To me, it's super-bizarre that a person in the world of 5e D&D is more likely to suffer debilitation from pushing themselves hard when walking, than going toe-to-toe with an ogre!

There's that. It's also super-bizarre to propose a house rule and then require that everyone strictly adheres to all other rules (like exhaustion RAW).

 

[tetrasodium]

What you said with this here

Attaching it to when players drop rather than when they cast the improved healing spells.

The two target different problems caused by the way 5e death saves make low hp a total nonconcern & how 5e "long" resting is practically video game command console recovery speed.

The bigger heals are to ensure that pcs have the tools so they don't fall to zero. Linking the slow recovery to a failure to use them does not make low health scary or even concerning

The slow recovery is not to prevent players from doing things like pulling back somewhere safe to rest, it means that "somewhere safe" is never a locked room or something close that can be trivially handled. That's important because players are now far enough from the "dungeon" for long enough to plausibly support all sorts of change within while they were away not seeing it happen to stop.. Only having it slow when someone drops to zero means that it's not going to matter most of the time and as a gm I can't supply magic items that would fill that need when things sre getting rough due to unavailable trivial rest or when things have gone sideways & everyone is going all out so a pc doesn't die...