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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libramarian" data-source="post: 6863871" data-attributes="member: 6688858">All fair points. When I mentioned liquidity I was thinking of not just how easily healing resources can be converted into HP but the overall "accounting liquidity" of how that squares with incoming damage, or basically how easy it to manage party health and keep everybody alive. This is very easy in 5e. What really makes it easy are the rules for death and dying: high threshold for instakill, low likelihood of dying from death saves and heal-from-zero, which perversely incentivizes waiting for someone to drop before healing them. There's almost always a chance to save a downed character, often without them missing a single turn as long as the party has healing slots left. This is why characters almost never die outside of a TPK, and the party dies when they can't pop up KOed characters with spells (or forcefeed them healing potions) anymore. If the rules were death at negative Con+level, or simply dead-at-zero, then it would be much more difficult manage health across the party and characters would have to rely on their own defensive capacity without relying on a pop-up heal. Which brings us to the point of the thread: I'm concerned about character imbalances resulting from modifying the death and dying rules, because classes seem to have very different defensive capacities, even comparing classes of the same traditional role, like Barbarian vs Fighter and Druid vs Cleric.I agree that problems would result if the DM made it their goal to kill PCs. That's why I want the system to do it instead.Can you create a good challenge with a complex scenario and the  sporadic, somewhat arbitrary use of simulationist game mechanics? Yes,  but that's like saying you don't need a washing machine to clean your  clothes.As I said earlier I associate this kind of prep-heavy light gamism  with  Call of Cthulhu. It's nice to use a simple, "invisible" system for that  style of play, rather than a 300 pound washing machine like D&D.  You can focus on the atmosphere of the game and worry less about  plot-busting abilities like Speak with Dead and Zone of Truth, and  gamist constructs like XP and levels. I wonder how Curse of Strahd would  run with Cthulhu Dark Ages.I don't  think a DM must have an undue influence in the outcome of a game. I  think many of the tools and techniques that help to minimize conflicts  of interest in DM prep and refereeing (to maintain system "hygiene" as  Eero Tuovinen would say) have fallen out of the game through the years,  some of which are back in 5e but unfortunately presented more as  oddities than serious tools, e.g. random encounters.Well, that sounds more functional but less exciting. The  fact that it's not obvious what will happen lessens the impact of the  failure. With character death and start over at level 1, the impact is  very clear.</blockquote>

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