D&D 5E Death and Dying in 5e

[sunrisekid]

My players requested that we make the game more "deathy". So we made/stole some house rules, which I copy below. Personally, I still get a bit cringey when characters die, which is common. Note, this is certainly not suitable for all gamers but it's what we do. And, I repeat, players asked for this

* At 0HP the character is unconscious and finished for the fight (effectively being penalized for poor luck and/or poor decisions)
* At the end of the fight make a single death save: Success = stabilization, failure = dead (this means the character bled out while everyone else was fighting)

Intervention during the fight:
* Heal spells only stabilize the character (who remains at 0HP); the player rolls a death save to regain consciousness and 1HP, otherwise stay unconscious for the fight. Casting a second healing spell works per normal rules (ie, bringing the player back into the fight)
* Use of a healing kit (and Medicine DC10 check if not proficient) gives the dying character an extra death save and a chance to stabilize; failure means you wasted your turn and the character is still dying.
Narratively-speaking, if death saves continue failing until the fight ends it means that the rescuer failed to apply first-aid (but there should be at least 1 death save, if not more granted by someone performing first-aid).

If the character survives then roll on the Lingering Injury table (DMG p272). This injury affects the character until the next adventure, amenable to downtime activities.

(Extra home-brewery note: our campaign does not have gods or clerics. The only healing spell in the game is Cure Wounds, available s usual to other classes.)

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

At low levels I was killing PC left and right, but they are all 5th-6th level now and I'm starting to think the people who said you can't really die very easily in 5e may be onto something.

 

[Greg Benage]

We've been doing "a level of exhaustion each time you drop to 0 hit points," and it's been working fairly well. Usually any given character only drops once per game, though we did have one freak occurrence where one character had three levels of exhaustion due to constantly dropping to 0 and being healed, then being dropped again.

I started my campaign with this house rule (plus, IIRC, four levels of exhaustion for being raised from the dead). I didn't like the whack-a-mole dynamic in previous campaigns as a player. I wanted to incentivize in-combat healing and create some lingering effects of being beaten into unconsciousness.

Then I got a group of smart, tactical players, one of whom plays a very strong Life cleric, and I just scrapped the house rule. Now, at 12th level, my biggest issue is how to make the PCs feel threatened without totally neutralizing the cleric.

I still think it's a good house rule for the right group and campaign style.

 

[machineelf]

One of the problems with "gain a level of exhaustion" is that it can indirectly contribute to the "5 minute workday" issue. The only way to remove levels of exhaustion is a long rest. So as soon as a character gains one, he'll want to (long) rest. It's taken me a year to convince my players that they don't have to (long) rest after every major battle, so I'd prefer to avoid something that encourages long rests.

Good point, however in 5e characters can only take a long rest once per 24 hour period. (so there has to be 16 hours in between each long rest, or something like that. I don't have the specific rule in front of me at the moment.) So that means they would have to sit around for 16 hours or until they can take their next long rest, and if they are on a time constraint or surrounded by threats, that might present serious challenges of their own. So there's at least that disincentive to the 5-minute workday.

 

[machineelf]

Okay, having established that background... the two gaming groups above have lost a total of 114 PCs to date. Permanent losses. Any character that is raised doesn't count in that total; only ripped-up character sheets.

Holy Crap, that's a lot! Sounds like a really fun group, though. This kind of D&D really appeals to me.