D&D 5E Dying House Rule

[epithet]

...
Facetiously: You could just try hitting yourself in the face whenever your character is knocked unconscious. You seem to want an individual, metagame punishment for failure. Perhaps if you're not keen on actual pain, you could do something like buy everyone a pizza, or donate money to a charity. Or say 10 hail marys.

More seriously: Your campaign doesn't seem to have any consequences at all, and you seem to have no investment in the game at all. You said yourself: a TPK isn't worrying to you. Why not? Do you just not care about the story at all? If your quest is delayed by an hour, that should matter. If the party are TPKed, you should care that the bad guys won, and that their evil plans will come to fruition.

You raise an excellent point here. There is a big, big, BIG difference between consequence and punishment. Character loss is only one of the possible consequences of that character's death, and most of those consequences should ideally give in-game reasons why the characters should try their best to avoid death. When you start jacking with the rules to implement character loss as a punishment to the player for letting a character die, then you're just being an antagonistic DM - and that rarely ends well.

 

[Huntsman57]

You raise an excellent point here. There is a big, big, BIG difference between consequence and punishment. Character loss is only one of the possible consequences of that character's death, and most of those consequences should ideally give in-game reasons why the characters should try their best to avoid death. When you start jacking with the rules to implement character loss as a punishment to the player for letting a character die, then you're just being an antagonistic DM - and that rarely ends well.

A high risk of individual character death is for the enjoyment of the players, not an attempt to be antagonistic to the players. You may not feel the same sense of "the greater the risk, the greater the reward" and that's ok. When my players barely survive an encounter there are high fives all around, and this is because they knew death wasn't an empty threat.

Not every game is for every player, but then that's probably the best reason of all for house rules. That's not to say that a DM should houserule lightly. One should always consider the broader implications of a change they're about to make. However, house rules are what allow a group of players to derive maximum enjoyment (for them) from a gaming system.

 

[Libramarian]

My memory of od&d and ad&d is one where I can't remember the name of any character I played, because becoming invested in a character was a futile exercise. Life was cheap, and characters survived more through luck than through having control of their destiny.

Which is kind of why the 'death on 0' rule was not a big deal - tons of things didn't even touch your hit points, and even if they did, having your hit points only get to 0 was really uncommon.

Yep -- there are two axes here: luck and deadliness. Old D&D is high luck/deadly. "Hardcore" 5e would be low luck/deadly, which is a different feel. It's more stressful. Old D&D is tense, but not overly stressful. The sloppiness of the math and the wackiness of the traps and monsters takes some of the "edge" off of the challenge. Especially with a DM who's willing to actually use the rules for generating encounters and dungeons.

Old D&D with procedurally generated dungeons should not have an adversarial feel at all. More commiserative if anything Hardcore 5e (via extensive house rules) with 5e style run-the-gauntlet adventures is way more likely to feel adversarial.

 

[FrogReaver]

For those wanting a fix for dying I propose:

"Healing a character that is unconscious doesn't remove the unconscious condition. Instead when a character that is 'dying' gains hp they track their hp and roll a d4 to determine how many hours it's going to be until the become conscious again."

Thus, no more instantly popping up from lying on the ground. Healing can still be used to stabilize you but you must wait a bit before you can do anything. Thoughts?

 

[Flamestrike]

I cut my teeth on 2nd edition. My feedback: it won't fix issues with Revify, but it DOES make Revivify access more important, and the stakes higher in combat. I have since quibbles with the world building implications of "you never stabilize on your own", and as a DM I'd probably keep the "three successes stabilizes" rule, but overall I like it both as a player and DM. I would totally play in a campaign with this rule.

It may be relevant to add that I favor Combat As War, so my goal would always be to win with NO damage taken. This rule simply raises the stakes and, to an extent, explains why the PCs are special for their willingness to risk death.

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I increased the gp cost for the diamond for revivify spells to 1000gp, impose a permanent loss of 1 point of Con for death, require a DC 5 Con check to avoid permadeath, and slap a levels of exhaustion on the revivified PC.

 

[Sunseeker]

I got rid of death saving throws, I didn't like how the mechanic worked, especially when taking damage while downed.

I liked the "lose one point per turn when below zero" rule, so I implemented that. But I wanted to reward people who invested in Con, so instead of a universal -9, they can drop as far as -Con Score. No roll is required to hit a downed person, but they are not auto-crits, since one or two hits from even the weakest creatures is likely to kill someone. However, you also heal up from whatever negative number you're at. Players do not auto-stabilize, but another player can make a survival/medicine/heal check (whichever is most appropriate or they can make a valid argument is applicable) to keep them from losing 1 HP next turn, this can be repeated each turn. The DC is 10+however far below 0 the downed player is.

So....
Zero is unconcious and stable.
Lose 1 HP per round if at -1 or more.
No saves to stabilize, but another can attempt to stabilize you.
Healing heals from -X up, no auto-healing from 0.
You do not auto-stabilize when you take a long rest.
If you are at 0 when you take a full rest, your HP becomes 1 at the end of it.
-For story purposes, a PC can be conscious while at 0, but any strenuous activity calls for a Con check or falling unconscious again.

My biggest problem with 5E's death system is that it just feels awkward. There are many ways they could have made death more dice-based and less brutal, without the system they use that relies on several different sections of the rules (rules against downed characters, the death-save system and other minutia).

 

[ExploderWizard]

For those wanting a fix for dying I propose:

"Healing a character that is unconscious doesn't remove the unconscious condition. Instead when a character that is 'dying' gains hp they track their hp and roll a d4 to determine how many hours it's going to be until the become conscious again."

Thus, no more instantly popping up from lying on the ground. Healing can still be used to stabilize you but you must wait a bit before you can do anything. Thoughts?

I proposed something similar. Apparently not being able to pop back up and keep fighting as if nothing had happened after being nearly killed is considered too harsh. Supposedly being at 0 hit points isn't a big deal or anything.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I proposed something similar. Apparently not being able to pop back up and keep fighting as if nothing had happened after being nearly killed is considered too harsh. Supposedly being at 0 hit points isn't a big deal or anything.

Mostly it's tedious. 5e's combat has been tuned such that it's not too hard to get knocked down to 0, and there's not a lot that you can do about the possibility. Making people sit out the game when it happens seems like a poor response to players who are tactically deficient (and think that somehow getting taken to zero is a tactical advantage) or who don't care about your game (and thus don't fear any non-death consequence).

 

[Lanliss]

Mostly it's tedious. 5e's combat has been tuned such that it's not too hard to get knocked down to 0, and there's not a lot that you can do about the possibility. Making people sit out the game when it happens seems like a poor response to players who are tactically deficient (and think that somehow getting taken to zero is a tactical advantage) or who don't care about your game (and thus don't fear any non-death consequence).

So don't apply rules like this for players who don't care about the Setting consequences, or are bad at tactics. I don't understand the logic behind so many comments in this and other threads, always along the lines of "There are players that could abuse this, all it takes is for them to not care."

Why is it always so quickly assumed that people are only/mostly going to be playing with random people who don't care about the Story? I would think the general assumption should be that a rule is being made for a group that it will fit for, such as [MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION] s threads tweakng 5E to his and his groups liking. I have some rules set for my world to give my players what they want, mechanics more deeply tied to the Story, rather than the Crunch. It is very rare that I see a DM posting a thread that opens with "I don't think my players will like this rule, but I am going to do it anyway."

 

[Saeviomagy]

So don't apply rules like this for players who don't care about the Setting consequences, or are bad at tactics. I don't understand the logic behind so many comments in this and other threads, always along the lines of "There are players that could abuse this, all it takes is for them to not care."

I think you got me backwards there: I was saying that if people aren't bad at tactics, they will realize that dropping to 0 is a bad idea. If they DO care about the story, you don't need to 'punish' them extra for falling to 0. I don't think players can abuse this... I just don't think it's in any way the solution to the problems "My players think dropping to 0 is a good tactic" or "My players don't give a damn about whether their characters live or die".

It MIGHT be a solution to the 'problem' "I feel like the game is less realistic because being knocked unconscious can be fixed with magic". But I think the problem there is that you're combining magic and realism.