Exhaustion

Corinnguard

Adventurer
I'd like exhaustion to happen regularly and certain healing spells to reduce it (either restoration or a new spell called Invigoration). As written, it should come from both mental and physical sources.
One spell for both physical and mental exhaustion? Or one spell for each, Invigoration for Physical, Clarity for Mental.
 

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FitzTheRuke

Legend
Exhaustion is only worthwhile  because it can't be easily spelled away.
I get what you're saying, but my thinking is to give it out quite a bit, and a spell would just give a party the ability to knock down the worst of it. I wouldn't want it to be "easily spelled away" (unless someone has a single level and they want to blow a spell slot to "top up" the party - something that should be rarely worth doing.) I would expect it to be something that's a resource-management decision.
 

Stalker0

Legend
ultimately I'm curious what works better in play, lowering offense with exhaustion or defense.

right now the playtest version is offense, no loss of defensive power, just offense. So a highly exhausted character isn't going to get gacked, but probably not going to be able to contribute to the fight very well either....which is boring, the worse thing you can do to a player. Previously they could try things like grappling but those are attack rolls now as well.

If you nerf defense, yes you create death spirals, but at least that's interesting. The player has to take a bigger risk to adventure, that to me is more "heroic" than being fully defended up and sit there ineffectually wailing on the enemy
 

Vaalingrade

Legend
'Interesting' is a wide net. Something you hate with an all-consuming passion is 'interesting', but probably not preferable to not having to deal with it.
 

Aurel Guthrie

They/Them
I like that the new exhaustion rules will allow me to trade a long rest for more downtime activities such as training, crafting, researching, copying spells, etc, without getting severely punished for it.
 

rules.mechanic

Craft homebrewer
I would prefer for AC to also be affected (simply "-1 penalty to any D20 test you make, or is made against you") and a hard limit on 1 exhaustion level recovered via long rest and 1 via other means per day (suggest limit spells to Hero's Feast, Heal, Regenerate, Life Transference) unless via Wish or Power Word: Heal. That's how we've played our over-exertion rules for 2 years now and it works really well.
 



So now I'm wondering, with this new 10 levels of exhaustion mechanic if WotC are going to finally do what they should have done so many years ago - tie one's limits for powers/spells/class features to the exhaustion mechanic. For example characters can push passed x times per day power but suffer y levels of exhaustion.
We already do this at our table.

EDIT: The only trick is, not to have it easily circumvented with spells.
 
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Corinnguard

Adventurer
I'm not sure how I feel about them bringing back semi-regular negative modifiers to rolls after they constructed the entire advantage/disadvantage system to avoid that kind of fiddly (and easily forgotten) number crunching
Agreed. Advantage/Disadvantage keeps it simple. Bringing back negative modifiers for something like Exhaustion could bog down gameplay because the player and/or the DM will then have to figure out which positive and negative modifiers apply to the situation. Being fatigued in body, mind or both is a disadvantage for the player. But even a disadvantaged player is still given a chance at succeeding a check when both d20's end up rolling high anyway.
 

gorice

Adventurer
Advantage/disadvantage is nice, but it just isn't granular enough to be used for everything. Basic stuff like cover and buffing spells have used distinct modifiers from the beginning (a lot of spells also roll bonuses, which is unbelievably fiddly). Ideally, they should restrict advantage to specific kinds of circumstances, or shift to a different system.
 

Horwath

Hero
Agreed. Advantage/Disadvantage keeps it simple. Bringing back negative modifiers for something like Exhaustion could bog down gameplay because the player and/or the DM will then have to figure out which positive and negative modifiers apply to the situation. Being fatigued in body, mind or both is a disadvantage for the player. But even a disadvantaged player is still given a chance at succeeding a check when both d20's end up rolling high anyway.
that is why this exhaustion rules are good.
It's -1 to every d20 roll.
 

Micah Sweet

Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Agreed. Advantage/Disadvantage keeps it simple. Bringing back negative modifiers for something like Exhaustion could bog down gameplay because the player and/or the DM will then have to figure out which positive and negative modifiers apply to the situation. Being fatigued in body, mind or both is a disadvantage for the player. But even a disadvantaged player is still given a chance at succeeding a check when both d20's end up rolling high anyway.
I have no problem creating or remembering disadvantages for the player, as long as they make sense in the narrative.
 

Corinnguard

Adventurer


Branduil

Hero
that is why this exhaustion rules are good.
It's -1 to every d20 roll.
It's about as simple as a negative modifier can be yes, but it will still inevitably face the problem of players forgetting to apply it. Maybe not a problem for online play, but at the table it's the kind of thing that's very easy to lose track of and forget to apply. And certainly it's hard for other players or the DM to notice if you've forgotten it or miscalculated.

This was always one of the big reasons for advantage/disadvantage, everyone can immediately see if you're applying it. It's true it lacks granularity, the question is if granularity is actually desirable for D&D.
 

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