Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 8205996" data-attributes="member: 7006">I have done the "replace the 3 Death Saves" for the Exhaustion table before.  When I did it though, I re-ordered the Exhaustion table because I found having disadvantage on ability checks at level 1 to be way too penalizing for the rest of the adventuring day.  Getting Exhaustion should make you think twice about getting into more fights... not having everything else you do be where your problems lie.  So my table looked like this:Level 1: Movement speed halvedLevel 2: Hit Point Maximum halvedLevel 3: Disadvantage on attack rolls, saving throws, and STR ability checksLevel 4: Disadvantage on all other ability checksLevel 5: Movement speed zeroLevel 6: DeathIt put the most easily worked-around penalty first.  Moving half speed just means out of combat you have to use your action to Dash in order to keep up with everyone, while the others can scout, forage, map etc. while moving.  Then halving your HP maximum is painful... but your combat ability is not yet lessened so you can still fight normally if you have to... but it does put more pressure on you and your allies to manage who is getting hit and where your healers are.Then once you get to Level 3 you pretty much shouldn't be fighting at all.  And as probably is obvious... I put STR ability checks in with attacks and saves because most STR checks involve in-combat action with grappling, shoving and such, and I felt all actions you take in combat should be at disadvantage.  It does mean that swimming, climbing and jumping get penalized before all other ability checks... but I was fine with that.  After that, your out-of-combat activities get destroyed... and then you are helpless and then dead (like the normal Exhaustion chart.)  I found this chart to be much more manageable, and the players had no issue with it.  I did have some other extra rules on recovery from Exhaustion-- a long rest to lose one level... and if you had someone attending to you over the long rest you lost two (although that individual did not gain the effects of a long rest if they spent the eight hours nursing you to health.)Best of luck with however you decide to run it!</blockquote>

Verification