D&D 5E (2024) Effects that kill you at 0 hp

[AlViking]

Don't be dense. I'm not talking every obstacle, but if your first inclination is "I can take this head-on" without regard for some form of caution, that's not a game I want to be involved in, as the result is always the same.

You were the one who responded that "There are other ways to resolve conflict than hitting it over the head repeatedly." In D&D, that is not always a valid assumption.

I suppose it's technically correct if every character can always attack from range, but if you do that then there is no front line.

 

[tetrasodium]

You were the one who responded that "There are other ways to resolve conflict than hitting it over the head repeatedly." In D&D, that is not always a valid assumption.

I suppose it's technically correct if every character can always attack from range, but if you do that then there is no front line.

Resolving conflict through ways other than trusting in plot armor and hitting it on the head repeatedly doesn't have to mean that combat as a whole is avoided. Sometimes it's about finding a different combat (ie sneaking in instead of assaulting the heavily guarded gate) working more closely with other members of the party who can take some of the hits or mitigate those hits through things like buffs and febuffs.

Leroy Jenkins doesn't mean UBRS needs a redesign, it shows a player not working with others as justified by the risk.

 

[AlViking]

Resolving conflict through ways other than trusting in plot armor and hitting it on the head repeatedly doesn't have to mean that combat as a whole is avoided. Sometimes it's about finding a different combat (ie sneaking in instead of assaulting the heavily guarded gate) working more closely with other members of the party who can take some of the hits or mitigate those hits through things like buffs and febuffs.

Leroy Jenkins doesn't mean UBRS needs a redesign, it shows a player not working with others as justified by the risk.

Again ... if no one is in the front line everyone is in the front line. If you want a game where some characters can put themselves in harms way to protect the people in the back, dead at 0 makes that much more difficult in 5e. If you don't have anyone who willingly puts themselves in the front line then everyone is in the front line.

That's different from someone going toe-to-toe recklessly or with the wrong build.

 

[tetrasodium]

Again ... if no one is in the front line everyone is in the front line. If you want a game where some characters can put themselves in harms way to protect the people in the back, dead at 0 makes that much more difficult in 5e. If you don't have anyone who willingly puts themselves in the front line then everyone is in the front line.

That's different from someone going toe-to-toe recklessly or with the wrong build.

You are actively avoiding the point multiple posters have made. Making a character that "can" be on the front line doesn't mean that character is a solo one man army who should expect to be ok mindlessly acting like Juggernaut or Colossus from xmen while ignoring that said character is only one member of s group that needs to work together

 

[Stalker0]

What the heck are you talking about? 3.x is the edition that standardized ability score bonuses at +/-1 every 2 points up/down from ten.

I am saying that, as you said in the posted I quoted, 3e started making big con a true thing.

But I added in that I think that kind of "big con" style mostly stayed with 3e, and fell away in 4e/5e. In 4e the HP boost didn't scale as much, and in 5e with your more limited stats you rarely see a massive con like you did in 3e games.

 

[Stalker0]

Just yesterday, I was running Tales of the Valiant (so pretty close to 5e). Unlike 2024e, they didn't improve healing. They gave the classes more bennies and things to do, but there wasn't a significant boost to sustainability, while the monsters, if anything, got fiercer.

They were fighting a CR 4 Weretiger. This is it's attack routine:

Multiattack: the weretiger makes four(!) Claw or Scimitar Attacks. It can replace one attack with Bite if in an appropriate form.

Claw: +5 to hit, 7 (d8+3) damage.

Scimitar: +5 to hit, 6 (d6+3) damage.

Bite: +5 to hit, 8 (d10+3) damage plus DC 13 Con to avoid being cursed with weretigerism.

Bonus-Bleed Prey: choose one creature within 30'. Can pinpoint prey's location within 60'. If the weretiger hits that creature with two melee attacks, they rend- DC 13 Con save to avoid 7 (2d6) damage at the start of their next turn.

So a new player just joined the game with a 4th-level Ranger. 36 hit points, AC 16. Round 1, they ran up to the weretiger, making three attacks (ToV Rangers get a bonus action for two off-hand attacks with no stat to damage when two-weapon fighting).

The Weretiger in turn, uses Bleed Prey on the Ranger. They hit with three claws (on a natural 20) and their bite. I use average damage unless there's a crit, then I roll the damage di(c)e for the critical. So from the Ranger's point of view, this was the turn:

"Take 7 damage, take 7 damage, take 12 damage, take 8 damage. Ok, now make a DC 13 Con save. You failed? (+2 Con save, ToV Rangers are proficient with Str/Dex saves) Ok, that's 7 more damage."

"....I'm down." The Ranger's player makes a sad face.

That was it, that was his first combat round. From full to 0. If the monster could kill him at 0 hit points, he'd be dead. No warning, no nothing. No opportunity to do anything about it, make a new character. The party would get him up with minimal hit points (even a level 2 Cure Wounds from the Bard is only 2d8+4, the Ranger's own Cure Wounds is d8+3, and the Bard's performance allows you to spend a Hit Die to heal with a bonus equal to the Bard's Charisma, so that's 1d10+6 in this case. If all of those are used in the same turn, the Ranger isn't even back at their maximum hit points, and the Weretiger has demonstrated the ability to bring them from full to 0 already. So the melee Ranger was forced to disengage, drop their short swords on the ground, and switch to their longbow and deal d8+5/2 (because of course the weretiger is resistant to non-magical attacks) instead of using their +1 short sword for the rest of the combat. Because using the party's limited resources to keep healing him back to full only to have the monster decide to kill him again really wasn't worth it.

And that was kind of how it went for the rest of the session. A fight with some Death Dogs, a brawl with a Minotaur, the final battle with a CR 5 Sorcerer...every time he got into melee to do his Amazing Ginsu routine, the monster would see him as a threat, unload their damage on him, and he'd be on the ground bleeding out again.

And you can't even say he should have switched Con and Wis for example- all he'd have gotten was 4 more hit points.

Now some people reading the above might say "good! Low level characters should drop like flies! They need to be more cautious! He should have known better than to attack a weretiger head on!" and honestly, if that's someone's preferred style of gaming, that's great.

But this is what I keep seeing in 5e (and 5e-alikes). Almost no interaction between "player healthy" and "player critical" when it comes to combat. And no ability for a player to gauge "hm, can I afford to attack the monster and not die?" until after they've seen it tear large bloody chunks out of them!

So yeah, a good "death buffer" is fine by me. I don't want players to die due to actually thinking they can enter melee combat.

*Plus, in this particular circumstance, if I really wanted a character dead, with four friggin' attacks, downed PC's have zero chance to survive.

When we talk about including monsters that can kill at 0, that usually comes with two caveats:

1) Its not every monster. We are talking about including a few special monsters that use this effect. Not tossing out the death and dying rules wholesale.

2) Its a medium to high level inclusion. 5e has plenty of death at levels 1-4...Pcs are plenty squishy, instant death is still absolutely a thing. low level 5e needs nothing to make it more deadly imo, and I would argue against any inclusion of "death at 0" monsters at these CRs.

Its only past lvl 5 where you see a big increase in PC survivability...principally because the amount of damage a creature can do with a single attack does not scale with PC hitpoints. As a result, it becomes increasingly difficult to "alpha strike" a PC. As such, death tends to fall on the death saves more and more (and by levels 7+ I would argue nearly exclusively). And at that point, that's where the yo yo healing and such becomes a concern and including the "death at 0" effect becomes something to add to the DM toolbox.

 

[Stalker0]

Perhaps, but that would have nothing to do with my point back in post 31 about the quoted post drastically understating the impact of a 2-12 point crit in editions prior to 3.x when bonuses were standardized (and healing/recovery became far more generous through various means)

... you literally included the note that 3e is where the high con character took off in the quoted post. I was agreeing with you!

 

[AlViking]

You are actively avoiding the point multiple posters have made. Making a character that "can" be on the front line doesn't mean that character is a solo one man army who should expect to be ok mindlessly acting like Juggernaut or Colossus from xmen while ignoring that said character is only one member of s group that needs to work together

What am I avoiding? I just made what I think is an obvious statement. If no one can survive being in the front line, no one will want to be in the front line. If no one wants to be in the front line then everyone is in the front line.

 

[tetrasodium]

What am I avoiding? I just made what I think is an obvious statement. If no one can survive being in the front line, no one will want to be in the front line. If no one wants to be in the front line then everyone is in the front line.

umm..... You literally quoted me restating it while asking what you are ignoring "Making a character that "can" be on the front line doesn't mean that character is a solo one man army who should expect to be ok mindlessly acting like Juggernaut or Colossus from xmen while ignoring that said character is only one member of s group that needs to work together". Other posts from me & others previously pointed out other potential ways of addressing other elements of the scenario like finding a different approach or building power through other adventures aside from trying to leroy jenkins it.