D&D 5E Dropping to 0 HP - Alternate Rule

[OB1]

I’ve been thinking about an alternate rule for dropping to 0 HP for a while and think I’m nearly there.

The goal here is to create a fun system that presents interesting choices for the players while making the line between 1HP and 0 HP a little blurrier and adding longer lasting consequences for dropping to 0 HP.

Would love feedback from the community!

Alternate Rule - Dropping to 0 HP
This rule completely replaces the rules for dropping to 0 HP as presented in the PHB

Your HP can never be lower than 0

Whenever you drop to 0HP, make a Death Saving Throw. On a failure, gain 1 level of Exhaustion. Once resolved, you can use your reaction to immediately take the dodge action.

While at 0 HP, you make an additional Death Saving Throw when any of the following occurs. You take damage, you take the attack action, you use your action to cast a spell, or you take a reaction. On a failed save, you gain 1 level of exhaustion.

If you suffer a critical hit while at 0 HP, you automatically gain one level of exhaustion and also make a Death Saving Throw, gaining another level of exhaustion on a failure.

The DC for a Death Saving Throw is 10 or 1/2 the damage taken from the triggering attack, whichever is higher. You may add your Con modifier to the roll.

That’s it. A few other things I’m considering.

- Make each failed death save 1/2 level of exhaustion

- Cap Death Saving Throw DC at 20

- Make Death Saving Throw a Constitution Saving Throw

- Remove option to take dodge as a reaction when you drop to 0 HP

- Have rule apply to all NPCs as well

 

[Bradley Hindman]

Do I understand correctly that with this proposed system a character can never be merely unconscious? The character who looses all HP remains conscious, but debilitated, as more and more exhaustion levels accrue, until Level 6 = death?

 

[OB1]

Do I understand correctly that with this proposed system a character can never be merely unconscious? The character who looses all HP remains conscious, but debilitated, as more and more exhaustion levels accrue, until Level 6 = death?

Correct, and that actually make me think of another possibility, making Level 6 exhaustion be unconsciousness and then level 7 death.

 

[the Jester]

So there's no way to actually kill someone in one blow under this system?

 

[OB1]

Duplicate post.

 

[OB1]

So there's no way to actually kill someone in one blow under this system?

Not PCs (and possibly NPCs). My biggest concern about implementing this for NPCs is the removal of the ability to assassinate an NPC in one blow.

One thing I did consider was to add a level of exhaustion for each 5 points under the death Save DC you rolled. This would allow for powerful single attacks to kill in one blow.

But I’m on the fence with this. If I end up implementing the rule for NPCs I would probably add that rule as well.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

It seems pretty complicated. I'm not sure that the benefit of additional granularity within the "downed" condition would outweigh the complexity cost.

I'm also not a fan of using the fatigue system as a measurement of how close to dying you are. It ties a lot of importance into a subsystem that is designed for other tasks, and makes those other tasks unnecessarily punishing since they bring you closer to death.

 

[Blue]

Whenever you drop to 0HP, make a Death Saving Throw. On a failure, gain 1 level of Exhaustion. Once resolved, you can use your reaction to immediately take the dodge action.

Pardon me if the following reaction seems a bit extreme.

NO!

Okay, now onto a slightly more nuanced evaluation.

Shadowrun had a Death Spiral, where taking damage made you less able to resist damage, which made you take more damage, which made you ineffective and unfun to play, and then it killed you.

Exhaustion does the same.

At the first it starts to make you less fun to play. Like violently less fun to play. Almost every single roll in every pillar of play outside combat is an ability check. (All skill checks are ability checks.) So the first thing you have is that you take disadvantage on every single thing you do except combat. So combat makes you suck at non-combat.

The people who will take the most hits (on purpose) are the front line combatants. The second level of exhaustion, halving speed, will harm them them most. So now they suck out of combat and are greatly harmed within it.

The third is the start of the death spiral in teams of making it harder to resist. You now have disadvantage on all attacks and all saves. Including death saves to avoid more levels of exhaustion.

So at this point you've got disadvantage on anything you can roll a d20 for, including avoiding more levels of exhaustion.

And it gets even worse with more levels.

And you only recover a single level of it on a long rest. It takes a 4th level spell to also regain also a single level. It sticks around. So one day of bad dice luck can make your character unfun (and potentially ultimately dead) for an entire adventure. Or longer if you don't play with downtime between adventures to rest up.

The rule doesn't sound all that bad, but the net effect is one I've seen in other game systems and it does not lead to "good tension". It just isn't fun, and made even worse by how exhaustion sticks around.

This is the antithesis of fun.

 

[Oofta]

I'm not sure I'd be quite as ... adamant ... as [MENTION=20564]Blue[/MENTION] but this doesn't appeal to me either. You could discuss it with your players, try a play test, etc but while I don't think the current rules are fantastic, they're still better than the alternatives from previous editions.

I would keep unconscious and potentially dying. If I wanted more "realism" (not sure I do) I'd probably add some kind of injured state, perhaps using the same options as exhaustion that kicks in once you get to 25% of your total hit points. You could even have a staggering option where you drop below 0 (to say 10% of your total HP) and can continue to take actions but it causes you to fail death saves and have a chance of spell failure.

So I'd go back to the drawing board. What are you trying to accomplish? What issue do you have with the current rules? Want to make death riskier? More realistic with people being negatively affected by being badly injured? Chance to heroically risk death by pushing beyond normal limits?

 

[Lalato]

Seems overly complicated... and keeps characters alive way longer than necessary. If you really want to use Exhaustion to represent near death... perhaps it would be better to have each failed Death Save = two (2) levels of Exhaustion. That way characters still only get three Death Saves before dropping, but they can still act until the very last Death Save hits them.