D&D 5E Dropping to 0 HP - House Rule Variant

[Asisreo]

Because like Rise over Run it's a matter of Degrees.

A Death Spiral describes something sharp and fast. Like that terrible makeshift ramp image I posted. It hastens your journey down to 0hp the entire way, like a ramp at too steep an angle for it's run. You pick up speed as you go and VOOM. Off you go.

Where what I've suggested applies after you've hit the bottom, already. Will it make it harder to get back up? Sure. But it didn't hasten you to the end, you got there on your own.

You see no difference between these two. Because there's no degrees in your definition. No understanding of scale or nuance. It's all exactly the same.

And those two ramps are both Death Spirals.

I think death spirals are more like quicksand (in mobies) where once you're in it, it gets increasingly hard to get out with each failed attempt.

So the speed at which you arrive into a death spiral has nothing to do with it. Its the difficulty to escape what's essentially certain death basically increasing exponentially.

For example, a death save where 3 failures kill isn't a spiral. A death save where each failure gives a -2 to the next save is a spiral because failing only makes it worse.

 

[Lanefan]

In principle there's nothing wrong with a death spiral as its existence provides encouragement not to let yourself get to the point where you're in one.

Which is the point of this exercise, isn't it?

 

[Asisreo]

In principle there's nothing wrong with a death spiral as its existence provides encouragement not to let yourself get to the point where you're in one.

Which is the point of this exercise, isn't it?

True, though many players are vocal about how they don't like feeling like they don't have any options at every point in their game. Personally, I think they should learn to be okay not having options for a few rounds but players are very fickle these days.

Have players fight a bunch of zombies, that's too easy. Put 2 shadows among them and suddenly the DM is unfair. Would hate to see modern players play a true Gygaxian dungeon crawl, meh.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

AoE attacks tend to cause an emergency that just one character can't easily fix. Like having an attack that does a good chunk of damage to both the wizard, fighter, and cleric with both the wizard and fighter going down will tie the cleric's hands, setting up for another devastating blow with Multiattack.

Ok, so your combats are so that the basically don't have the action economy to both save downed PCs and still win. Do you get a lot of TPKs, or just individual deaths?

 

[Asisreo]

Ok, so your combats are so that the basically don't have the action economy to both save downed PCs and still win. Do you get a lot of TPKs, or just individual deaths?

Individual deaths but not really "alot." Its very important for my clerics/bards to recognize that they can't save everyone at all times, especially themselves.

Though the key has always been action economy on my end in anything they do. The more actions a side has, the more likely they are to win. The more clustered and united those actions are, the game becomes even harder.

Its easier to fight a Wraith than it is 4 Specters because the Wraith can easily be isolated and positioned in such a way to be less likely to break formation. 4 Specters, on the other hand, are difficult to keep pinned down because they can either gang up on one player or spread themselves to threaten multiple.

Also, even though Wraiths have a higher XP budget, the Specters do more damage and are more likely to hit as well as actually drain HP.

Also, as a DM, you must keep a close eye on the actual details of the state of the fight. Either fight, they have sunlight sensitivity but darkvision, they'll be inclined to fight at night. The save against the attack doesn't reduce the damage at all, it only resists the max HP drain. The enemies can crit, and the drain is equivalent to the crit as well.

Most importantly, when its one Specter's turn, its all of the Specters' turn and a cleric cannot react to a single specter downing an ally before the other 3 get their turn to wreak havoc.

So yeah, Action Economy is a helluva drug.

 

[Steampunkette]

I think death spirals are more like quicksand (in mobies) where once you're in it, it gets increasingly hard to get out with each failed attempt.

So the speed at which you arrive into a death spiral has nothing to do with it. Its the difficulty to escape what's essentially certain death basically increasing exponentially.

For example, a death save where 3 failures kill isn't a spiral. A death save where each failure gives a -2 to the next save is a spiral because failing only makes it worse.

You're right about that death save thing for sure.

But in a game where it's a race to 0 and you hit 0, getting up from 0 should be hard 'cause you've already lost.

Any action which allows you to get up from 0 should be viewed as a blessing, even if there's a penalty attached to it.

 

[FrogReaver]

I find that Exhaustion penalizes that character at everything except combat for the rest of the day. Because that's what the first level of exhaustion does by granting disadvantage on all ability check - penalizes the character at the primary way they mechanically interact with every non-combat pillar of the game.

Can we at least agree that for 5e there should probably be some kind of penalty for the day for going down in combat? Because if you don't even agree with that notion then I doubt we are going to have a very useful discussion on the rest.

I don't understand why so many people feel that the appropriate penalty for going down is leaving your combat ability basically untouched but making the character suck at everything else for the rest of the day. Can you explain why you like that?

It's not so much about it being specifically exhaustion. It's just exhaustion is already in the game and has rules about how it works. Inventing a new mechanic that works similar is going to feel fiddly.

That said, I'm also not sure future combats should be penalized - or at least not often - because combat penalties that are only removed on rest push the game more toward 5MWDs and 5MWDs are best avoided. Penalizing out of combat activities though, don't tend to carry that same risk.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think death spirals are more like quicksand (in mobies) where once you're in it, it gets increasingly hard to get out with each failed attempt.

So the speed at which you arrive into a death spiral has nothing to do with it. Its the difficulty to escape what's essentially certain death basically increasing exponentially.

For example, a death save where 3 failures kill isn't a spiral. A death save where each failure gives a -2 to the next save is a spiral because failing only makes it worse.

I'd add, the state of dropping to 0 making you unconscious - which deprives you of actions and grants advantage on attack rolls against you and causes all hits to be crits certainly seems to fit those criteria.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

In the past 0 hp meant dead. If that was the case here then this would be true. But 0 hp doesn't mean dead and so something happening at 0 hp can still be part of a death spiral. We call it a death spiral, not a drop spiral after all.

Really? Because I remember a lot of pre-5E campaigns that used the old "0 HP is unconscious and -10 HP is dead" rule, with the downed PC losing 1 HP per turn until they were either stabilized/healed or reached -10.

 

[Blue]

Can we at least agree that for 5e there should probably be some kind of penalty for the day for going down in combat? Because if you don't even agree with that notion then I doubt we are going to have a very useful discussion on the rest.

My biggest problem is with Exhaustion as the mechanic because of what it penalizes, how it stacks, and how slow it goes away until 7th level.

I'm for removing whack-a-mole if you see it as a problem, but since you asked I'm against punitive "penalty for the day" for going down. It's not the only way to resolve it, and not one I support.

Going down is usually a team failure, not a single character's. A caster goign down because a tank didn't block well. A healer choosing the wrong character to heal. Or it's a cause of luck - the giant critting, the wrong failed save that left them Held so all foes had advantage and auto-crit. Trying to assign a punitive all-day penalty to one character isn't concentrating a team penalty onto one person.

One of the roles commonly seen is front line melee specifically as a tank. Trying to interpose and protect the squishier members of the party. Because of what they do for the party, they will go down more. Taking a common role and providing a disincentive of common day-long penalties is counter to play. I strongly don't want to return to earlier editions where someone was forced to play a cleric to heal because the role wasn't as much fun, or in this case the same for another role becoming less fun because it is unfairly commonly the recipient of a punitive penalty.

While you say we won't have a useful discussion, I strongly hope to convince you that the quest to meet the goals put out in the first post should never be met with all day penalties to a single character.