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

[Knaves Quill]

These types of mechanics came up last night in a game I ran, with the MCDM Shadow & Specter. The Shadow lowers Dex by 2 with every hit, and the Specter wipes a hit die. Obviously when a stat reaches 0 that tends to result in death, like the Shadow's effect does, and the Specter kills/raises the PC as another of its kind when its hit asks for a hit die to be erased by none are present.

I agree with the folks saying these effects stand out like a sore thumb among the general sea of creature abilities in 5e (2024 or otherwise). However, I will counter with these effects being sick as hell. My players loved the danger and tension they brought (they're level 3 so they were the perfect level for these I think). Now this comes down to the types of players you have, but it was a memorable and fun encounter that put a tangible clock in the fight that was more pressing than just dropping to 0 hp.

 

[tetrasodium]

That's unfortunate. I was always a popular DM when running public games because people knew it wouldn't be a cakewalk. Some of my most memorable games had almost everyone in the party unconscious at one point or another. It's not like death is permanent in those games, unless it's changed over the past couple of years since I stopped being involved because of COVID.

I think that it's a more fundamental problem due to players entering the hobby in a way that encourages them to view any changes from the GM as some kind of BadWrongFun EvilKillerGM thing. going beyond the small example encouraging the GM that @James Gasik embedded a couple posts back, the ALDMG has always tried pretty hard to poison that well should a GM try drawing from it. Unfortunately it does so in a way that empowers problem players.

Spoiler: like this from the SKT aldmg

Spoiler: or this from v14.0 ALdmg

Not sure what adventures it covers but it was on my hdd with the other & is dated with this at the top
D&D® ADVENTURERS LEAGUE
DM’S GUIDE



Effective Date: March 4, 2024. Version 14.0.

My experience running AL was similar if not identical to the post 88 extreme pushback. I've seen players literally go from asking "what adventure are you running" to pulling out their phone & searching for the magic items in it while standing in front of me conversing aboutwhat part of an adventure I was running★. It's one thing to do that because your at a store & looking to buy a particular product on your list or whatever but totally different to think that's acceptable after seeking out a potential GM who never approached you.

A lot of my nonAL games that started as AL & moved off for whatever reason are somewhat better, but it's not infrequent that one player decides I'm being a monstrous killer GM if I say no you can't relax enough for a rest" or provide the appearance of an actual challenge causing them to stop the session demanding metagame level explanations only for the other players to immediately chime in with "YeAaA hE's GoT a PoInT... YoU diDn'T cOveR tHat In SeSsIoN zErO" or give it a supportive pass by letting someone else take point+supportive second while pretending to nope out of the session hijack to focus on stacking dice or fiddling with their cellphone. It's almost reprehensible for wotc to bind GM's so heavily in the edition they claim so many things were done to empower "rulings not rules"

★I.e. while players are still rolling in & I'm early & setting up... me: "we are going through LMOP">player checking phone:"oh, Cragmaw?" (gauntlets of strength/MM Wand?)>me:"no">player checking phone: "old owl well?" (ring of protection?)>me:"no, you should find another table, there are like five">Player still checking phone & not finding another table: "Wave echo cave?(boots of striding, a magic weapon & magic armor?)> me:"no I've got a pretty stable group we are doing [low treasure bit] , you should check another table, maybe that one">player who still has phone out: "Yea Maybe I'll try you again when your running something better"

 

[James Gasik]

I have had players discuss going on certain adventures to get specific loot, and DM's who were willing to run those adventures, but I never had someone check their phone before sitting down at a game!

That having been said, what I did have was any time a rules question came up, I'd say what my ruling was, and instantly everyone at the table was looking for a sage advice/developer tweet, hoping it would be more favorable to them.

Like any time I enforced darkvision penalties, I would have players whining because apparently "no one ever uses those". It was so bad that I printed out sections of the PHB with page references and slapped them on my DM screen (I had a custom one with sleeves for pages so I could insert whatever I wanted on either side) just for things like "yes, disadvantage does reduce your passive score by 5" and "no, you really can't cast a quickened fireball and then use your wand of magic missile in the same turn", as well as "using a magic item ability is it's own action, not Use an Object"*.

*I think there's some grey area here for things like the necklace of missiles or bead of force, but that never came up.

-

Back on topic, monsters that drain healing surges/hit dice- these existed in 4e, and I kind of forgot about them. They were, simply put, devastating in that game, because without healing surges, you couldn't heal, which could suddenly make it impossible for a front liner to continue. In 5e, it seems far less threatening. It was only in the last month that I marveled that a party had run out of hit dice in my ToV game!

Stat drain, which shadows are one of the creatures to have (that I'm aware of) was a big deal in 3e, but the need to recalculate your modifiers and the fact that such a creature was either a nuisance or led you down a death spiral, based on which stat it was draining away, was bothersome.

(Drain a Fighter's Cha, he's not going to care until it's gone. Drain his Str, and suddenly he might be unable to attack anything effectively. Drain his Int, and suddenly half his feats go offline (Combat Expertise). Drain anyone's Con, and watch their hit point totals implode, killing them long before the lost Con probably does).

And of course, in the hands of players, you suddenly had things like Empowered Maximized Shivering Touch/Touch of Idiocy one-shotting monsters. I was glad to see that sort of thing (mostly) go away!

 

[Stalker0]

I'm not sure how the thread got on this tangent, but about AL, I will say, during my stint as a DM for AL, despite the fact that it's very clearly stated that:

View attachment 412402

I received unbelievable pushback for daring to make adventures "harder" for the players. It was surreal, something I'd never encountered in my home games. Apparently the players believed that an AL mod should always be run as written, no matter the size or levels of the group, so that their optimized builds could blast through content quickly and easily and they could collect their prizes and carry on without incident.

Even other AL DM's would argue with me, saying that it was somehow "against the spirit of AL" to modify the adventures (let alone make my own rulings, le gasp!), because AL was about "fun".

Some players started calling me the "Killer DM". How did they know I modified the adventures, you ask? Well, when I ran Tales From the Yawning Portal, I caught two of them flipping through the store copy of the adventure to make sure I wasn't "cheating".

I'll admit that until you showed me this....I had always assumed AL DMs had to run the adventurers as is. I figured that was the point, ensuring there was a consistent experience so players could take a character from city to city or session to session and get a mostly consistent experience.

 

[TheSword]

I'll admit that until you showed me this....I had always assumed AL DMs had to run the adventurers as is. I figured that was the point, ensuring there was a consistent experience so players could take a character from city to city or session to session and get a mostly consistent experience.

I get the point is you won’t get a consistent experience if one group has 3 players and one has 6. Or if one group is novice and one is veteran. One contains optimizers one contains casuals.

DM adjustment is how it becomes more consistent.

 

[James Gasik]

I get the point is you won’t get a consistent experience if one group has 3 players and one has 6. Or if one group is novice and one is veteran. One contains optimizers one contains casuals.

DM adjustment is how it becomes more consistent.

As it should be. The modules do give you some guidance for how to adjust, but they're based on things like "if you have more players/more experienced players", nothing concrete.

DMing is more art than skill, granted, but I hate when advice is imprecise or murky, because I still make mistakes after doing this for decades. I can't imagine what it's like for a new DM these days.

 

[TheSword]

As it should be. The modules do give you some guidance for how to adjust, but they're based on things like "if you have more players/more experienced players", nothing concrete.

DMing is more art than skill, granted, but I hate when advice is imprecise or murky, because I still make mistakes after doing this for decades. I can't imagine what it's like for a new DM these days.

I think new DMs with new players is pretty much fine as it has always been.

The problem is new DMs with veteran players. Unreasonable expectations.

 

[AlViking]

I think new DMs with new players is pretty much fine as it has always been.

The problem is new DMs with veteran players. Unreasonable expectations.

Veteran players should be supporting and helping new DMs as much as possible. We should remember that we were all newbies once.

 

[Adamant]

Veteran players should be supporting and helping new DMs as much as possible. We should remember that we were all newbies once.

100% this! Luckily, at least in the online AL communities I'm active in, this is a very common attitude. In fact, I can't remember the last time I ran into complaints about playing with an inexperienced DM, let alone played with someone who was complaining rather than trying to help.

Honestly, the biggest problem with AL is the lack of support that WotC gives to the AL admins. The community is mostly wonderful, and the rules about actually running modules are much less restrictive than many people think they are (same with character creation, the number of people who still think of AL as using the Player's Handbook +1 rule is pretty insane).

As for the topic of this thread, I don't like death at 0 rules much, because unless you have access to resurrection spells you can be out of the action as a player (even in AL with its lenient rules on death) until you can either bring in a new character (which is hard if you don't have one handy, and isn't even allowed in AL as far as I know) or come back in some way (AL allows that at the end of a session, because that's better than the risk of running into a jerk DM who goes out of his way to kill characters in a permanent death ruleset).

I don't mind quite as much if there's a way to quickly get back in the action, but signing up for a 4 hour session and having to sit a chunk of it out just isn't fun.