D&D (2024) How many of you would implement the drop to 0 HP, get 1 level of exhaustion house rule?

[Vaalingrade]

No thanks. I'm hoping the improvements to healing will fix the not very much of a problem of 'pop-up healing' and would never use an intentional death spiral mechanic anyway.

 

[Horwath]

No thanks. I'm hoping the improvements to healing will fix the not very much of a problem of 'pop-up healing' and would never use an intentional death spiral mechanic anyway.

death spiral sucks, that is why we use that those exhaustion levels are removed after you are at 50% or more of your max HP.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

pick your injury is just translated to: pick whatever has the least effect on my character concept.

I.E:
broken jaw, 50% to waste casting action with verbal components?
just right for my dwarf battlerager!

I mean, the answer there is to not give injuries that only affect one type of character. So, something like...

• Broken arm. Cannot be used for any purpose, including holding a weapon, shield, or spellcasting focus, or pulling out material components. You automatically fail any ability check or saving throw that would require the use of both arms, and take a -5 penalty to any saving throw to catch onto a ledge when pushed off.
• Broken leg. Your normal speed is set to 10 feet, unless something else would cause it to be lower, you must use all of your speed to stand up from prone, and you automatically fail any ability check or saving throw related to balance or forced movement.
• Skull fracture. You have a -3 penalty to your attack rolls, saving throws, saving throw DCs, and AC, and when you roll damage, roll twice and take the lower result.
• Gut wound. While you are in combat with an untreated gut wound, you must make a Constitution saving throw each time you take an Action, Bonus Action, Reaction, or begin to move (only the first time you choose to move during your turn). The DC of this save is 10 plus twice the number of times you have made this save during the current round. If you fail this save, you take 2d6 damage, or half as much on a successful save. Other than a successful save, this damage cannot be reduced in any way, not even by resistance or immunity.
• Punctured lung. You cannot speak and your speed is halved. Further, you must choose whether you move, take an Action, or take a Bonus Action--you can only do one of these things until the punctured lung is healed.
• Severe concussion. You are permanently blind and deaf until the injury is healed, and you have disadvantage on all attack rolls and ability checks. If your spells cause any targets to make saving throws, those targets have advantage on such saves.

Naturally, some folks will take some injuries more easily than others. A Con 24 Barbarian 20 who took Tough (and thus has a +13 Con save and ~325 HP) is going to shrug off Gut Wound--but one would expect that a 20th level Barbarian could take a wound to the gut and hardly even notice. For a more typical character, though, that's rough--spellcasters can lose concentration, and the checks keep coming. You're on a death clock unless you get that injury healed. Broken arm is kinda-sorta tolerable for Dueling characters that (for some reason) aren't using a shield...but still sucks. That's probably the only one that needs beefing up though. Maybe force a saving throw at the start of each turn or be incapacitated (can't take actions nor reactions) from the pain? I'm sure there's something that can be done.

Of course, personally I think all of this is...well, it just sounds like exactly the opposite of a fun time. "Here's all the ways the game WILL torture you, HAVE FUN!!!!" I just...I really don't get the point of having all sorts of horrible debilitating injuries that make risk-of-death so much more damaging, because death is a breath away in 5e even when you're getting on in levels. But if you're going to design a subsystem, it should be worthy of existing. For this, that means making penalties where ALL of them are bad options for nearly everyone and you're just trying to not suffer too badly before it can get healed.

 

[tetrasodium]

I mean, the answer there is to not give injuries that only affect one type of character. So, something like...

• Broken arm. Cannot be used for any purpose, including holding a weapon, shield, or spellcasting focus, or pulling out material components. You automatically fail any ability check or saving throw that would require the use of both arms, and take a -5 penalty to any saving throw to catch onto a ledge when pushed off.

Alice: "my dragonborn beastmaster ranger specializing in her pet & breath weapon chooses this"

• Broken leg. Your normal speed is set to 10 feet, unless something else would cause it to be lower, you must use all of your speed to stand up from prone, and you automatically fail any ability check or saving throw related to balance or forced movement.

Bob: My Aarakokra warlockwith a fly speed of xx wasn't planning on using his walk speed much anyways

• Skull fracture. You have a -3 penalty to your attack rolls, saving throws, saving throw DCs, and AC, and when you roll damage, roll twice and take the lower result.

Cindy:"My buff/heal-bot chooses this... oh yea, I cast haste"

• Gut wound. While you are in combat with an untreated gut wound, you must make a Constitution saving throw each time you take an Action, Bonus Action, Reaction, or begin to move (only the first time you choose to move during your turn). The DC of this save is 10 plus twice the number of times you have made this save during the current round. If you fail this save, you take 2d6 damage, or half as much on a successful save. Other than a successful save, this damage cannot be reduced in any way, not even by resistance or immunity.

Nobody chooses this... It gets chosen by the group to be applied to monsters & the GM is voluntold then pressured into accepting it for the bbeg

• Punctured lung. You cannot speak and your speed is halved. Further, you must choose whether you move, take an Action, or take a Bonus Action--you can only do one of these things until the punctured lung is healed.

Same as gut wound. The bbeg gets voluntold & pressured into "choosing" this & N players pressure them into accepting it for whatever reasons apply to the situation.

• Severe concussion. You are permanently blind and deaf until the injury is healed, and you have disadvantage on all attack rolls and ability checks. If your spells cause any targets to make saving throws, those targets have advantage on such saves.

Same as gut wound & punctured lung. The bbeg gets voluntold & pressured into "choosing" this & N players pressure them into accepting it for whatever reasons apply to the situation.

Naturally, some folks will take some injuries more easily than others. A Con 24 Barbarian 20 who took Tough (and thus has a +13 Con save and ~325 HP) is going to shrug off Gut Wound--but one would expect that a 20th level Barbarian could take a wound to the gut and hardly even notice. For a more typical character, though, that's rough--spellcasters can lose concentration, and the checks keep coming. You're on a death clock unless you get that injury healed.

Of course, personally I think all of this is...well, it just sounds like exactly the opposite of a fun time. "Here's all the ways the game WILL torture you, HAVE FUN!!!!" I just...I really don't get the point of having all sorts of horrible debilitating injuries that make risk-of-death so much more damaging, because death is a breath away in 5e even when you're getting on in levels. But if you're going to design a subsystem, it should be worthy of existing. For this, that means making penalties where ALL of them are bad options for nearly everyone and you're just trying to not suffer too badly before it can get healed.

No. Players will choose whatever they can ignore with their build & sometimes PCs will be expressly designed so they can ignore one or more of these while abusing an ability that makes them a real risk.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Alice: "my dragonborn beastmaster ranger specializing in her pet & breath weapon chooses this"

Bob: My Aarakokra warlockwith a fly speed of xx wasn't planning on using his walk speed much anyways

Cindy:"My buff/heal-bot chooses this... oh yea, I cast haste"

Nobody chooses this... It gets chosen by the group to be applied to monsters & the GM is voluntold then pressured into accepting it for the bbeg

Same as gut wound. The bbeg gets voluntold & pressured into "choosing" this & N players pressure them into accepting it for whatever reasons apply to the situation.

Same as gut wound & punctured lung. The bbeg gets voluntold & pressured into "choosing" this & N players pressure them into accepting it for whatever reasons apply to the situation.

No. Players will choose whatever they can ignore with their build & sometimes PCs will be expressly designed so they can ignore one or more of these while abusing an ability that makes them a real risk.

I have no interest in engaging with you and your "oh, poor poor beleaguered DM, they only have absolute power, how will we EVER protect them from the horrible evil players" narrative.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

No thanks. I'm hoping the improvements to healing will fix the not very much of a problem of 'pop-up healing' and would never use an intentional death spiral mechanic anyway.

This is like, the real 2024 answer.

WotC is attempting to avoid the death yoyo the "right" way by, instead of just punishing martials for getting killed tanking*, rather by making in-combat healing (and spells particularly), more powerful so that it's not just a trap to use them to heal non-downed people in-combat (right now it really is, in most cases).

* = It's very striking that every single thread-starter post I've seen proposing mechanics for dealing with yoyo'ing has been 100% focused on punishing martial characters for getting killed with punishments that will primarily or solely hurt martial characters. Never have I seen it proposed at all that the characters waiting to yoyo heal are doing anything wrong, at all, even though they're obviously "culprits", and if anyone is "exploiting", it's them. Never have I see a thread opened about yoyoing with even a proposed mechanic that would even mess with full casters in a meaningful way. Sometimes as the thread goes on, people propose that kind of thing, but usually the OP rejects or ignores it, because he's only interested in punishing the characters who are essentially the victims here - because they were doing their job, and it got them downed. Whereas the people let them get downed, or even intentionally waited for it? Oh they're fine! I find this misguided behaviour very interesting myself. It's clear that the people wanting this are either genuinely mad with martials (seems unlikely), or, more likely imho, thoughtless proposing what they consider "simulationist" solutions without actually looking at the problem holistically - attempting to cure a symptom, not the problem. WotC I must give some credit to, usually do similar, but here they didn't, I don't know if they've gone far enough, but the changes they made were certainly addressing the root cause more and not just targeting a symptom.

You could make a pretty funny case for applying the exhaustion to the healer attempting to yoyo, rather than the person being yoyo'd too, honestly - say it's "magical feedback" or whatever.

 

[el-remmen]

I’d use it (and likely will adopt some version of it when I reboot my game/setting for my Vanity Frankenstein 5e) but currently we do use a modified lingering wounds rule, where you save against a lingering wound if you go down and get two failed death saves.

We also play that you only go unconscious if you have more failed death saves than successful ones and the roll is moved to the end of your turn. While dying, if you are still conscious, you remain prone, can only crawl, and have disadvantage on attacks and on dex and str based saves.

 

[Clint_L]

We roll on a critical injury table when a player drops to 0 HP. That definitely makes going to 0 HP scary.

 

[GMMichael]

I find that it doesn't mesh well with my drop to zero hit points, be dead house rule.

 

[tetrasodium]

I have no interest in engaging with you and your "oh, poor poor beleaguered DM, they only have absolute power, how will we EVER protect them from the horrible evil players" narrative.

You made terrible suggestions that fail to take basic human nature into account & I pointed out the giant holes. The GM was only mentioned because three of the six terrible suggestions were so much worse at ignoring human nature that they would never be chosen by a player.