D&D 5E Death saves, Temporary math penalties & Exhaustion

[Agametorememberbooks]

I can absolutely see that it would look like ‘tanks’ are going to be affected by these ideas more than caster types who hang back. Generally, I design combats that are dynamic and casters don’t just get to sit back and camp out.

I can also see how it could end up turning sessions into ‘let us wait and rest up so that we don’t risk death’. We’ll give it a try and see how it goes.

 

[DND_Reborn]

#1: Death Saves
Limit - 3 per long rest. There’s only so much a mortal body can handle before death cannot be reversed.

When we used death saves we did this, but found it a bit too harsh, and ended up changing it to short rests. That worked fairly well IMO, so if you find the long rests too punishing, I would suggest short rests.

#2: Temporary math penalties (annoying to track)
For instance, undead attacks that reduce a player‘s strength (shadow) or their hit point maximum (specter, wight, wraith).
Instead, I’ll be dropping levels of exhaustion for each ‘touch’ with the cumulative effect heading towards death.

I never found the tracking of such things too bad, but I've suggested and have used the level(s) of exhaustion akin to level draining in AD&D for powerful undead, finding it very--um, "satisfying" as a DM to bring back the terror of such monsters.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Generally, I design combats that are dynamic and casters don’t just get to sit back and camp out.

Sure, but if you're going to trial this, I strongly suggest you open up Excel or Google sheets, and track how many Death saves each character makes, noting their class and spec (i.e. melee vs ranged etc.). Also note actual deaths of course lol.

If you don't see that melee characters make 2-3x as many death saves as non-melees (assuming a decent sized sample set), I'll be extremely surprised, even with "dynamic" combats. It's just a lot easier to avoid losing those last few HP if you're not in melee (indeed, it's rare for casters/archers to go below 50% in my experience, unless the melees are down).

 

[NotAYakk]

Exhaustion mechanic can be shoe-horned into this, but I think it might best be reserved for, well, exhaustion. Like going days and days without a break in a harsh environment.

For a life-draining type effect, you want something that is more dangerous to fragile PCs than to front-line PCs, or you run the risk of punishing front-line PCs, while it being a trivial problem for "fragile" characters.

And I get it, it should be scary for front-line PCs. But I'm saying per unit it should be even scarier for back-line PCs.

That way when the undead ambushes the back line, it isn't "yawn", it is "omg run away", while the front line remains credibly able to fight them and keep them off the back line.

And to be explicit, this is an advantage that both Strength Drain and max HP drain have over exhaustion; front line PCs have higher strength and more max HP typically.

In addition, your change has a side effect of making Strength matter even less than it does.

---

So, I might suggest combining your two mechanics -- death saves and life drain -- into one. And making a mechanic that merges them.

Every death save failure can cause the same effect as an undead "vitality drain". And we design the mechanic to care about both HP and Strength.

One option is to give you (Max HP/10 + Strength Bonus) vitality drain before you die.

Enervation: When you fail a death saving throw you gain a point of Enervation.

If you have at least 1 point of Enervation, you suffer from 1 additional level of Exhaustion (if you have no Exhaustion, it acts as if you have 1, etc). This can kill you.

If you have more Enervation than you have Strength bonus, for each extra point your max HP is reduced by 10. If you have a strength penalty, the first point of Enervation reduces your max HP by an additional 10 for every point of penalty. (Ie, max HP reduced by 10*(enervation-strength mod) if enervation> 0, and never increased).

At the end of a long rest, you recover 1d4 plus your Strength modifier (min 0) levels of enervation. Lesser Restoration recovers 1 level of enervation, and Greater Restoration acts like a long rest.

 

[jgsugden]

That can get very harsh very fast. I'd consider capping the amount of exhaustion that can be inflicted in this manner. The fourth level of exhaustion, for example, halves hit points. And if it's coming from wraiths, they're already probably losing hit points off their max.

You can also soften the issue by having 'lesser exhaustion' that heal by itself at the rate of 1 level per hour, but is otherwise cumulative with normal exhaustion.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

#1: Death Saves
Limit - 3 per long rest. There’s only so much a mortal body can handle before death cannot be reversed.

Our current variation on this (for CoS/Ravenloft West Marchesque style campaign):

Death Save failures only reset with the following:

3 successfully rolled Death Saves
Nat 20 on a Death Save
Stabilization with a Healer's Kit
Long Rest

In other words, magical healing doesn't wipe the slate clean. Your post does give me some thoughts about making allowances in our campaign for Lesser Restoration and Greater Restoration possibly having an effect on eliminating D.S. failures... so thanks for that!

 

[Agametorememberbooks]

You can also soften the issue by having 'lesser exhaustion' that heal by itself at the rate of 1 level per hour, but is otherwise cumulative with normal exhaustion.

I like the addition of that idea as well as the post above with the additional sources of ‘cleaning the slate’ with things like the healer’s kit, etc.