Ever try PC death at 0 hit points?

[Invisible Stalker]

Try it?

I started out with it. (Red Box)

 

[Sacrosanct]

Hmm - how about this...

You get knocked to 0 HP, you're grievously wounded.

You begin your death saving throws as usual but unless someone has tended to you, you roll them at disadvantage.

If you've been given a potion of healing you roll death saves normally.

If you've been given a potion of greater healing you roll with advantage.

If you succeed in your death saves and are still alive, you can return to the fight (assuming you get some HP back) - but you'll take a level of exhaustion.

This might add some level of "emergency" to the situation that is lacking in the current rules IMHO.

I understand that with HP, there's a suspense of disbelief there, especially how you can be 100% the whole fight, but the minute you go to 0 you're done, but at 1 HP you're back at 100% effectiveness. I don't like it, but I understand why it's there because the alternative would be an entire different core mechanic needed into the game. And I'm not a huge fan of adding lots of house rules.

So I would probably keep it simple. Go to 0 HP, make a saving throw where DC = 8 + excess damage beyond what took you to zero. Fail and you die. That way you never know when the PC will die, so that sense of urgency is there. E.g, if you have 10 hp left and take 15 points of damage, then your DC to save is 13 (8+5). Attempt it every round until you die or are stabilized.

If I were to add an additional house rule, it would be that any time you are recovered from a 0 HP status, your attack rolls and saving throws are made at disadvantage until you receive additional healing, or a short rest. Sort of to emulate how being near death and beat down will affect you going forward.

 

[5ekyu]

The title.


Just curious if anyone ever tried this. Even for a short adventure. I’d like to hear about your experiences. Good, bad, indifferent? I don’t care about the theory crafting side of things right now.

Edit
Some questions I have for those who have ran this type of game

What was the character creation process? How long did it take?
How did the DM introduce a new PC?
Did a new PC start at 1st level with 0 experience points in the middle of a game?

Sure decades ago.

Was the norm til we changed it. Going from alive to dead by die roll turned out not so much fun.

Glad we moved past it, like, maybe, before a Bush was president.

Chargen wasvpretty quick. Not tons of backstory, very foregrounded.

New pcs came along quickly. Often started same party level.

More hassle than anything else.

"Save vs bookkeeping attack" coined then.

But also raise and rezz not uncommon.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

For 5e? Nope.

Why not? PC death isn't even remotely as 'rare' in my games as it seems to be in others. In a nutshell, over the last 4 years (wow...5e's been out that long already?), we haven't had any PC crest more than 7th level. Most PC's don't make it past 3rd or 4th.

How? (usually the next question I'm asked). It's really simple: I don't "build" adventures 'for' the PC's. It really does seem to be as simple as that. If I feel like writing/stocking a 3rd-level dungeon for my group I just start mapping. As I do so I think about where this 'dungeon' is. Who built it, why, where, etc. The info about my campaign world and the answeres to those questions is the primary determinant of what "goes into it". So if it ends up being, say, an old mine system taken over by 'scavenging' type monsters (giant ants, spiders, rats, etc), then that's the 'theme' I go with. I will write up interesting areas, traps, tricks and whatnot based on THOSE criteria...I don't care what type of PC's find themselves in that dungeon. If the PC's have no means of defending against poison, for example, well, tough noogies. If there is a trap that would be easily overcome with some particular spell, and nobody in the party has it...tough noogies. If there is a particular monster that will wipe the floor with a party that has no means of ranged attacks....again, tough noogies. Not my problem. I'm just the DM, it's not up to me to fix the PC's problems or provide 'obvious' (or even non-obvious) solutions.

Anyway, I found that over the decades, designing stuff for my campaign world this way...more or less "without regard for the PC's capabilities other than the most basic of average-party-level"...my adventures are plenty deadly. They only become less deadly if I'm running a 'newer' adventure module (re: something made for 3.x or later, generally speaking)...because IMNSHO, adventures "nowadays" have been specifically designed to be "a challenge" for the PC's. And that is a HUGE difference from an adventure being designed "to kill unsuspecting adventurers". Give me the latter any day of the week!

(PS: And yeah, my group prefers it that way. We are all, as a group, proud of "Bearkiller", the Goliath Rage Barbarian who managed to get to 7th level, and the player of Bearkiller even moreso! If getting to 7th level was 'an assumption', that all it would take is time playing, well...kinda sucks all the fun out of it. It would be like watching an Olympic sprinter race a bunch of middle-school kids...not very exciting for the spectators or the Olympic sprinter. Well, unless the sprinter has some EPIC self-esteem issues I guess... ).

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Psikerlord#]

I've played zero hp dead games, but it was a long time ago, and I remember thinking the game was toooo dangerous. When you have Bob the Fighter, followed by Rob the Fighter, followed by Nob the Fighter, it's almost the same as 5e's default never dying at all.

I prefer zero hp = incapacitated until the fight is over (even healing magic wont raise you immed). At the end of battle, single death save, with adv if healed in some way. If fail, dead. If succeed, roll on the injuries table. You can still muck around a bit, attempt some heroics, but if you get dropped it's serious and quite possibly fatal (approx 25% chance with adv).

 

[schnee]

It was fine when the game was a puzzle / logistics / grid-based tactics game with faceless characters that took 5 minutes to build.

Now, with personalities, backgrounds, flaws, goals, and substantial pre-game investment? Nah.

 

[TwoSix]

No, but I did try PC death at 5 HP. That went over really poorly.

 

[Sacrosanct]

No, but I did try PC death at 5 HP. That went over really poorly.

I suggested player death at PC 0 HP. That went over even worse...

 

[TwoSix]

I suggested player death at PC 0 HP. That went over even worse...

"What do you mean, you don't want to play Tomb of Horrors?"

 

[Mallus]

My groups were never fans of 'death at zero'.

it robs you of those tense situations when a party member has fallen in the middle of a pitched battle and you only have a few rounds to save them before they bleed out/get de-graced/get et, etc.

Makes combat more interesting, at the group level.