D&D (2024) Gain 1 exhaustion when dropping to 0hp?

[mellored]

Proposed rule change: When a character is dropped to 0hp. They gain 1 exhaustion (the new version, -1 to all rolls, recover 1 per long rest).

Possibly add +Con to death saves, extra exhaustion when hit while down, turn the numbers higher for a deadly campaign, let fighters recover faster, add potions of recovery, or other tweaks.

I've been running this as a house rule, IMO, it fixes the biggest issue of 5e. Now dropping to 0 is something to avoid. Especially doing it repeatedly and bouncing back up with healing word. Get beat up too bad on the way to the boss and you may even have to retreat for a few days.

What's your opinion?

 

[AnotherGuy]

Been doing it for a couple of years now. Works perfectly fine. 1D&D changed the exhaustion progression so it would make things even easier if you adopted the new track.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I like it!

 

[Morrus]

We do that in Level Up and it works great.

 

[tetrasodium]

Proposed rule change: When a character is dropped to 0hp. They gain 1 exhaustion (the new version, -1 to all rolls, recover 1 per long rest).

Possibly add +Con to death saves too.

I've been running this as a house rule, IMO, it fixes the biggest issue of 5e. Now dropping to 0 is something to avoid. Especially doing it repeatedly and bouncing back up with healing word. Get beat up too bad on the way to the boss and you may even have to retreat for a few days.

What's your opinion?

Levelup uses something like this with fatigue & exhaustion but after using it for nearly a year it doesn't really change much because it's only one point. The old death at negative 10 worked because taking a 10 point hit at 1 hp put a player at -9 just like taking a 20 point hit at 10hp did. It wasn't a thing a player could expect to do several times before there was real risk. By expanding the window of safety to such an extreme degree with any amount shy of death by massive damage & similar* only being 1 point it goes from dancing a frightening razor's edge to something

* Yea if you get to negative total HP before any player can heal even a single point it would be deadly... That's just not an immediate threat unless the GM starts looking like they are channeling the adversarial killer gm feeling vibes. The GM can execute a PC at any time, that doesn't feel dangerous thoug.h Looking at your Current HP & knowing that it's only slightly more (or less) than the average attack from an opponent making it well under the likely damage for a crit is what was scary about death at neg10.

 

[mellored]

The GM can execute a PC at any time, that doesn't feel dangerous though.

Maybe gain an exhaustion each time you're hit at 0 (2 for crits?)
that allows the DM to attack downed players more freely?
1 for each failed death save?

And we can kinda keep the die at -10 thing going.

 

[CleverNickName]

Seems like a good way to handle it. I feel like the Exhaustion mechanic is under-used, so I'm always looking for more ways to use it.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Yeah, I'll be going with 1 Exhaustion (1D&D) at 0 hp, since its way less punitive than the prior version. Also, a character dropping to 0 hp will lose Inspiration.

BUT...

I think I will remove Death Saves, having instead a Dead to Right action where a creature can take an action to finish off an unconscious creature. It gives me some narrative control over the death of my player's characters, avoiding the anti-climatic low level death from a rabbit's crit.

A character at 0 hp regain 1 hp after 1d6 x 10 minutes. The countdown doest not start until there's no hostile creature around and the character is not suffering from another condition. A medicine check can halve the recovery time and allow the character to spend a number of HD up to their PB when they wake up.

 

[the Jester]

No thanks. I'm not a fan of the new exhaustion rules- they're too soft- while at the same time I'm not a fan of adding a death spiral to the game. I learned that I disliked that from World of Darkness back in the day.

 

[tetrasodium]

Maybe gain an exhaustion each time you're hit at 0 (2 for crits?)
that allows the DM to attack downed players more freely?
1 for each failed death save?

And we can kinda keep the die at -10 thing going.

I don't have any problems attacking downed players, it just doesn't accomplish anything unless I attack them enough times to cripple the PC. If I do that it has the negative impact of the group pulling back to rest off Bob's N points of fatigue (7=death) & refusing to go further until it's cleared. Worse is that at no point has anyone felt like Bob was dancing on a razor's edge or consider taking steps to avoid the razor's edge like death at zero/negative10 caused.

Back when players died at zero/neg10 simply being low on health was enough to cause players to act different & take steps that mitigate risk like the low HP player drawing back & some other PC taking steps to protect them. That shift was a positive thing in exploration & combat but is missing under this proposal

Edit: The fact that negative hp needed to be healed so getting a 10 point heal while at -9/xx would only being at 1/xx & still in critical danger was a significant factor in the risk. That's not represented either if the loss is capped at 1 per attack.