D&D 5E Death from Exhaustion

[The Crimson Binome]

So? What does that have to do with anything? Being at zero hit points could mean you have anywhere from almost zero seconds to live (ie - it's just before your turn and you already have 2 strikes and you're about to fail the third) to almost zero seconds before you get back up again (it's just before your turn on 2 strikes and you roll a 20) to 1d4 hours before you stand up (you were on 2 strikes and 2 successes and you roll a success). Being on 1 hit point is even more variable.

If you have 1 hit point, then you're not in the process of dying. You could wait around for three years, and having 1 hit point will never kill you (assuming you took care of outside factors, like food and water). The spell can go ahead and set you to 1 hit point, and that's a stable place for the magic to stop.

When you're at Exhaustion 5, you are in the process of dying from exhaustion. No matter where it sets you along that final day, it's still only a matter of time before you hit Exhaustion 6. Whether that is minutes away, or hours away, we have no way of knowing. There's no stable place for the magic to stop working. Why would it set you back to exactly the start of Exhaustion 5, when that point is exactly as unstable as any other? Why wouldn't it set you six seconds away from Exhaustion 6? There's no equivalent "Exhaustion 5 and stable" like there is "1 hit point and stable" or "zero hit points and stable".

 

[Saeviomagy]

There's no equivalent "Exhaustion 5 and stable" like there is "1 hit point and stable" or "zero hit points and stable".

Well, there kind of is: exhaustion doesn't inherently worsen, so it's stable in and of itself, pretty much like being on 1 hit point is.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Well, there kind of is: exhaustion doesn't inherently worsen, so it's stable in and of itself, pretty much like being on 1 hit point is.

Exhaustion worsens automatically, at a rate of one level per day, until the root cause is addressed. The reason why Death Ward (probably) wouldn't work is that it would un-do the death, causing the spell to end, and then you would die of exhaustion.

It's like, if someone sets you on fire for 1d6 damage per round, then Death Ward will save you once you hit zero... but you're still on fire and you'll go under at the start of your next turn. I guess that one extra round might matter if someone is there to help you, but I can't imagine a situation where that one round would be sufficient time to cure thirst or starvation; it takes more than six seconds for your body to start processing non-magical foods and liquids.

 

[jaelis]

When you're at Exhaustion 5, you are in the process of dying from exhaustion. No matter where it sets you along that final day, it's still only a matter of time before you hit Exhaustion 6. Whether that is minutes away, or hours away, we have no way of knowing. There's no stable place for the magic to stop working. Why would it set you back to exactly the start of Exhaustion 5, when that point is exactly as unstable as any other? Why wouldn't it set you six seconds away from Exhaustion 6? There's no equivalent "Exhaustion 5 and stable" like there is "1 hit point and stable" or "zero hit points and stable".

Yeah that's just not true. If a berserker frenzies too many times he could be at level 5 exhaustion, but there's no sense that he is in the process of dying. He's just worn out.

I think you are conflating "having exhaustion levels" with something like "starving" or "suffocating." I have to confess that I have mixed feelings about how death ward should work with things like that. But the obvious interpretation of dying by starvation is "you were killed by spending the past 24 hours without food" and so Death Ward would negate the effect of having done so.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Yeah that's just not true. If a berserker frenzies too many times he could be at level 5 exhaustion, but there's no sense that he is in the process of dying. He's just worn out.

Like I said before, it's different when it comes to instantaneous effects. A berserker frenzying is a lot like being hit with a Ray of Exhaustion or weird breath weapon, in that there is a point immediately prior to the effect which the spell could easily reset you back to. Undoing six seconds of bodily deterioration is well within the scope of the spell.

 

[Saeviomagy]

It's like, if someone sets you on fire for 1d6 damage per round, then Death Ward will save you once you hit zero... but you're still on fire and you'll go under at the start of your next turn. I guess that one extra round might matter if someone is there to help you, but I can't imagine a situation where that one round would be sufficient time to cure thirst or starvation; it takes more than six seconds for your body to start processing non-magical foods and liquids.

You'll note in your first example that you don't go back under immediately: you play out the damage interval of the effect.

To me, consistency would dictate that you'd do the same with starvation or suffocation, so death ward would buy you a day or a round respectively. It's not resetting the counter for no air/no food, it's just undoing the last application of penalties.

 

[jaelis]

Undoing six seconds of bodily deterioration is well within the scope of the spell.

Hmm but undoing six seconds of suffocation is not? Or is is specifically starvation/thirst that bothers you?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Hmm but undoing six seconds of suffocation is not? Or is is specifically starvation/thirst that bothers you?

Undoing six seconds of suffocation means you're still six seconds away from suffocating. It might work, sure, but it's probably not going to do you any good. (Although it might; I've certainly been in that situation before, where a party member was unconscious underwater and an extra round would make the difference.)

 

[The Crimson Binome]

You'll note in your first example that you don't go back under immediately: you play out the damage interval of the effect.

To me, consistency would dictate that you'd do the same with starvation or suffocation, so death ward would buy you a day or a round respectively. It's not resetting the counter for no air/no food, it's just undoing the last application of penalties.

You don't go back by the damage interval, necessarily; you go back by six seconds, because that's the smallest amount of time we can deal with under the resolution of the system. For that to be comparable to the starvation example, you could figure out how much damage the fire would do to you in a day, and Death Ward would have to un-do all of that damage.

Only using six levels for Exhaustion, and only applying it once per day, is a book-keeping measure for easy adjudication at the table. The in-game reality which it's attempting to model does not actually have six discrete steps that only increment once per day.

 

[jaelis]

So in the case of starvation, you would play that DW would keep you alive, but only for 6 more seconds?