D&D 5E Death and dying houserule

[The Crimson Binome]

Thinking more generally: one way to eliminate or greatly reduce "whack-a-mole" would be to somehow curtail or nearly eliminate in-combat healing. Instead of having it as just another fact of combat, make in-combat healing dangerous, risky, and therefore exciting to try; and if nobody wants to risk it then if you're down, you're down until the battle's over. Problem is, 5e seems to expect in-combat healing as a fact of life...grumble grumble dumb design...OK, on to plan B.

You might be overplaying the significance of that assumption. Even if baseline assumes that combat healing is available, simply removing that option wouldn't necessarily have a huge impact on most encounters. PCs are already so ludicrously resilient in this edition, largely due to Hit Dice and long rest healing, that combat healing is something which only really comes up during big boss fights. Not having combat healing would mean that they can't bounce back indefinitely during those big boss fights, but you could balance that (if you were so inclined) by fighting weaker bosses, and the benefit is that players might have to engage with easier fights and think more tactically since they won't have that safety net.

 

[Yunru]

I've said for the longest time that failed Death Saving Throws should only be removed upon the conclusion of a short or long rest.

I mean, it doesn't remove whak-a-mole, until they fail their third save. But it makes them far more cautious about it which is probably your true aim.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Resurrection: Any spell that resurrects you from death, only removes the 6th level of exhaustion (death). A character who is recently resurrected still suffers 5 levels of exhaustion and should probably take the week off

This looks a lot like the death penalty which is already associated with the Raise Dead spell. Like, a lot.

 

[Antonlowe]

What if you have a level of exhaustion from another source already? If exhaustion is the driver of actual PC death, doesn't that make the ostensibly toughest PC class (barbarian) extra fragile?

Thanks for reminding me about barbarians! This house rule is a small part of a major overhaul of the system im working on.

Since you mention it, I will probably give barbarians the ability to recover a level of fatigue during a short rest.

 

[Antonlowe]

This looks a lot like the death penalty which is already associated with the Raise Dead spell. Like, a lot.

Good point. I was thinking of the revivify spell when I wrote this rule. I would just eliminate the death penalty from raise dead.

 

[Yunru]

Good point. I was thinking of the revivify spell when I wrote this rule. I would just eliminate the death penalty from raise dead.

I think the point of revivify is there's no penalty because your (new) body hasn't died.

 

[Antonlowe]

I think the point of revivify is there's no penalty because your (new) body hasn't died.

But if you allow revivify to stand as is, then its better off to let a character die, then let them suffer the exhaustion penalties.

Having all resurrection abilities leave a character at 5 levels of exhaustion unifies the rules.

 

[Yunru]

But if you allow revivify to stand as is, then its better off to let a character die, then let them suffer the exhaustion penalties.

Having all resurrection abilities leave a character at 5 levels of exhaustion unifies the rules.

They're down a massive chunk of gold, and have a random race. That's not exactly better than taking some days off.

 

[Antonlowe]

They're down a massive chunk of gold, and have a random race. That's not exactly better than taking some days off.

revivify does not change your race as far as I can tell. I also want to enforce the idea that your Always better off not dying. So if you get rezzed, you still suffer the penalties no matter how you were brought back.

Its very easy to avoid these penalties:

If you are reduced to 0 hp, a cleric can cast a cure spell to restore you hit points before you even make a death saving throw.

During your turn, you can use the medicine skill/healer kit to try and stabilize yourself.

If you wait to die to try and fix the problem, you are going to suffer alot more then if you just tried to stop the bleeding earlier.

 

[Yunru]

I believe I may be thinking of Reincarnate...