Gorck
Prince of Dorkness
In theory, that sounds like a perfectly acceptable idea.
In practice, that’s what made so many people dislike the 2014 Berserker’s Frenzy mechanic.
D&D (2024) Psionics: What Do You Want?
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
In practice, that’s what made so many people dislike the 2014 Berserker’s Frenzy mechanic.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
The problem is, 5e doesn't know (and never really has) how to make solid but not hyper-punitive stakes.
Exhaustion is stuck trying to be both an interesting and evocative alternative to damage, which thus allows for a different way to challenge the PCs...and also a "the buck stops here" mechanic where the PCs risk instant death if they play too fast and loose with it.
So a whole subclass built around inflicting Exhaustion on yourself is just a fundamentally bad idea. It's pretty much literally playing Russian roulette with your character. Overuse 5.0 Frenzy and you literally die. And what do you get in exchange? The ability to...make a single attack as a Bonus Action while Raging. Like...seriously? For real? I risk INSTANT DEATH, and get saddled with worse and worse and worse penalties over the course of the day, so I can...make one single additional attack?
It's pretty clear the original designers simply did not put enough thought into designing alternative tracks for risk or danger. If they had, I very much doubt they would have put such an enormously punitive penalty on something that is so weaksauce it's not even worth considering.
Gorck
Prince of Dorkness
At the risk of derailing this thread, I feel like the Exhaustion mechanic would be better with the following changes:
A) Levels 1-5 - each level of Exhaustion requires a Short Rest to recover from. A Long Rest clears all levels of Exhaustion.
B) Level 6 - rather than death, instead causes the Unconscious condition. Requires a Long Rest to fully recover from.
IRL, I’ve been thoroughly exhausted and it never knocked me on my butt for almost a week. I just got some good old shut-eye and was back to normal the following day.
A few years ago, I did a Ragnar Ultra where I ran a total of 40 or so miles in less than 36 hours over 5 or 6 runs. That is the most exhausted I have ever been. It took about 4 or 5 days to feel good, and at least a week to feel like I could go run 8 miles again.
Flights of Fancy
Candy is King
Then you've never been exhausted to the point of 5 levels in DND. shrug
That sounds more like it in my opinion.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
I'd be fine with a long rest restoring up to, say, 1d4+CON levels of exhaustion, if folks wanted to keep them as having a possible long-term issue. That in particular would reward Barbarians, since they get benefits from having high Constitution--so a weedy Wizard (-1 CON) taking too much Exhaustion is bad, as it might take them several days to clear it all (e.g. 4 levels of exhaustion would take at least two days to clear), while even five levels of exhaustion for a Barbarian who started with max Constitution would be a breeze (1d4+3 means 75% of the time, a long rest removes all Exhaustion.)
Alternatively, perhaps your Exhaustion track is expanded by your (nonnegative) CON. So that Barbarian ignores the first three times each day that she gets hit by exhaustion.
Your idea about having 6 Exhaustion cause unconsciousness rather than instant death is a good one, though I might include a tweak for folks who want something in-between. Like maybe if you hit 6, then when your Exhaustion is cleared, you have Burnout. Burnout is removed if you: (1) spend a whole day doing nothing but very light activity and rest+recovery, (2) complete a long rest in a safe place and succeed on a DC 10 Con save (regardless of whether you have taken new levels of exhaustion), or (3) do not take any new levels of Exhaustion between the end of one long rest and the end of the next long rest. If you reach 6 Exhaustion while you already have Burnout, you die. That way, there's a much greater degree of control, players can risk 6 Exhaustion some of the time without instant death, but there's still a hard (and harsh) limit--and, most importantly, that hard limit can be softened or modified in various ways to make a spectrum of difficulty, rather than an all-or-nothing situation like we currently have.
There are quite a few ways to tweak things so that you can have degrees of stakes, rather than all-or-nothing. Hence why I say I don't really think the original 5e designers really thought all that much about it. They just came up with an idea that wasn't obviously horrible and rolled with it.
Increase by 5 is too much. I'd go increase by 2 if anything. Better to just go Shadowdark style and have a flat 10+ability level.
mellored
Legend
Fair. Hmm...
To cast a spell, you need to make a DC equal to three times the spell level.
Each time you use this feature after the first, the DC increases by the spells level. (Cantrips are level 0). When you finish a Short or Long Rest, the DC resets.
That's actually an interesting choice. Cast a bunch of low level spells or cast a high level one and risk burning yourself out?
And then some kind of scaling.
Level 5: add half your Psion level to your spell casting check.
Level 11: the first time you fail a spell casting check, you can expend 1 hit die and succeed. The DC still increases as normal.
Level 17: advantage on spell casting checks.
Back in 3.5e, there was a magic variant that worked in a similar fashion (True Naming or something like that, from Tome of Magic). As I recall, it was not particularly popular – the main thing I see people missing from that book is the Binder.
The problem I see with systems like this is that it doesn't let you escalate. With the regular casting system, you can use lower-level magic to deal with lesser threats and save the big guns for the big threats. But when every previous spell you cast makes it harder to cast the next one, that means you'll lose the ability to do big stuff later in the day, which narratively is often when the bigger threats appear.
I'd rather see a system like the one in Divinity: Original Sin 2 (and presumably earlier installments in the series, but I haven't played those), which is primarily cooldown-based. So when you use a skill/spell, you can't use that particular skill/spell again for 2-6 rounds.
