Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="TakeoBR" data-source="post: 8164160" data-attributes="member: 6801900">It's been a couple months since I've DMed 5e and in that time I've talked a lot with a friend who's designing his own RPG. Those conversations motivated me to try my hand at game design and I figured a good start would be adressing some of my problems with good old DnD before I run it again.The issues:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">when a battle gets hard players default to dealing more damage, rarely considering defensive options</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">players have a hard time deciding if and when they should retreat</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">unconscious characters are healed to single digit HP only to be droped and healed repeatedly</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">characters at 0 HP have nothing to do apart from rolling death saves</li> </ul>The house rules I'm working on adds two new conditions, one of which replaces the current dying rules:BloodiedBeing bloodied means that the injuries the creature has suffered, be it from cumulative damage from scrathes and bruises or a single massive hit, have taken a visible toll.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A creature is bloodied whenever their hit points are below one third of their maximum, and they cease to be bloodied as soon as they are above that threshold.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The player or DM in control of a bloodied creature must announce its condition to the rest of the players.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">When a bloodied creature misses an attack roll or a creature succeeds on a saving throw they caused, the next attack roll against them has advantage.</li> </ul>DyingWhen a creature’s hit points are reduced to zero they don’t die immeadiatly unless some effect causes them to, but their ability to fight is compromised and their survival uncertain.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A creature is dying whenever their hit points are at zero. They cease to be dying if they regain any hit points.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A dying creature falls prone when their hit points are reduced to zero and their exhaustion level increases by one for as long as they are Dying.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The creature has disadvantage on attack rolls.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Saving throws against the creature’s spells, attacks, and abilities have advantage.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">At the start of each of their turns, a dying creature must make a death saving throw, to which no ability modfiers apply: If the roll is 10 or higher, they succeed. Otherwise, they fail. A success has no effect by itself, but on their second failure they fall Unconscious and on their third, consecutive or not, they die. The number of death saving throw failures are reset to zero when the creature is no longer Dying.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If they take any damage while Dying, they suffer a death saving throw failure.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">By expending an use of a medical kit you can attempt to stabilize a Dying creature by succeding in a DC 10 Wisdom (medicine) check. A stable creature is still Dying but doesn’t need to make death saving throws and any failures they had are reset to zero. Once stable a creature regains one hit point in 1d4 hours.</li> </ul>The Bloodied condition is meant to indicate a sense of urgency for players reaching low HP, and the offensive debuff it causes is supposed to represent the damage taken and make the player reconsider their strategy. Unlike in 4th, it only kicks in when you are with a third of HP remaining, as I don't intend for characters to spend much time with it, but just like 4th edition it could be a trigger for many effects (I'm already considering a dragonborn redesign that uses that). It also gives a small but lasting consequence in the form of restricted healing.The new dying rules are supposed to make death frightening while not making the dying character completely passive.With these I expect players to not use their healing in the typical yo-yo fashion, but either sooner or with higher level spells to hopefully keep themselves off the bloodied range. I also expect them to consider retreating or avoiding battles more often, and finally, I expect some defensive options like the Dodge action to actually see some play.What do you think? Any suggestions on things that should change to accompany these conditions? Any unexpected consequences or things you think are poorly thought through? Please let me know <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Edits: - Removed the part about regaining hit points from short and long rests from the Bloodied condition. It was an afterthought and only caused confusion.</blockquote>

Verification