D&D (2024) Gain 1 exhaustion when dropping to 0hp?

[Greg Benage]

Getting hit with a battle axe so hard that you fall unconscious should not be common place.

That's the problem this is trying to fix, while still give a buffer against being one shot by said battle axe.

In hopes of providing constructive feedback, here's the problems (for me) that I ran into:
1. It just slows the game down. I want my players to push forward and take on the next challenge. This just gave them yet another reason to look for opportunities to shut 'er down, as if they needed any more.
2. The penalties fall disproportionately on the front-liners, and 5e doesn't love front-liners to begin with (compared to ranged/spellcasters).
3. It solves the "problem" by incentivizing in-combat healing, and no one enjoys spending their combats healing.

YMMV.

 

[mellored]

In hopes of providing constructive feedback, here's the problems (for me) that I ran into:

Always welcome.

1. It just slows the game down.

slows the game down, or slows the story down?

I want my players to push forward and take on the next challenge. This just gave them yet another reason to look for opportunities to shut 'er down, as if they needed any more.

Fair. But that seems like you need to solve it for casters anyways.

2. The penalties fall disproportionately on the front-liners, and 5e doesn't love front-liners to begin with (compared to ranged/spellcasters).

Agreed, mostly. Using the Heroic Inspiration to recover, which weapon uses get more of, helps. I've also tossed in a few potions of rest.

But I still kind of like that the other players will step out front to guard the fighter every once in a while. Or at least that's what happened in my group.

3. It solves the "problem" by incentivizing in-combat healing, and no one enjoys spending their combats healing.

My player playing the life cleric does. In fact they much prefer this system since otherwise she just kind of wait for someone to drop before using healing word.

But I could see how some others wouldn't like that.

 

[Greg Benage]

Always welcome.

slows the game down, or slows the story down?

I don't really do "story" -- it's whatever the PCs do -- but I guess...both? First, it made combats last longer, because characters were spending action economy on healing or because direct damage dealers were exhausted. Second, it meant the players weren't willing to push as much as they otherwise would have. And they became really conservative, more than I would have thought, because they're making decisions amidst uncertainty. Like, I knew that if they knew what was in front of them, they would have pushed on even on the wrong side of a death spiral. But they didn't know, so they erred on the side of caution. And that was the right approach, because I do sandbox my campaigns, and they knew from hard experience that the world wasn't necessarily tailored to their level or the levels of exhaustion they were carrying.

And then, if the "story" is whatever the PCs do, it made the story slower because the story often became about going back to town (or whatever) to rest the exhausted front-liners rather than pushing deeper into the dungeon, or exploring deeper into the wilderness, or going to confront that potentially hostile antagonist.

Fair. But that seems like you need to solve it for casters anyways.

The casters can control their resource expenditure, and the game wants them to do that, but the front-liners can't necessarily control getting reduced to 0 hp, even if the party is expending resources to keep them up. It just made the whole thing worse.

Agreed, mostly. Using the Heroic Inspiration to recover, which weapon uses get more of, helps. I've also tossed in a few potions of rest.

But I still kind of like that the other players will step out front to guard the fighter every once in a while. Or at least that's what happened in my group.

My player playing the life cleric does. In fact they much prefer this system since otherwise she just kind of wait for someone to drop before using healing word.

But I could see how some others wouldn't like that.

Yeah, that's cool. If I had players who enjoyed healing in combat, I'd also look for ways to make healing in combat more important. I think that's good DMing.

 

[Vael]

My inclination is that PCs gain a level of exhaustion after being brought back after being knocked unconcious, I don't want that penalty from new exhaustion rules to hit the PCs death saves.

 

[mellored]

My inclination is that PCs gain a level of exhaustion after being brought back after being knocked unconcious, I don't want that penalty from new exhaustion rules to hit the PCs death saves.

Agreed

 

[Jolly Ruby]

I voted for something else: I like the houserule that when healed, downed PCs take 3d10 minutes to wake up. It makes getting to 0hp very dangerous during combat.

 

[Bacon Bits]

I think it's okay if you're doing it because you're having whack-a-mole problems. But if you do, you really can't complain that the PCs want to immediately long rest once it has happened instead of pushing ahead through the rest of their daily budget. It definitely pushes the game away from both heroic and pulp fantasy towards gritty realism.

If I'm totally honest about it, then in my experience whack-a-mole only happens when the monsters have overmatched the PCs. It might be because the encounter was designed too strong. Or it might be that the PCs rolled badly, or the NPCs rolled very well. Or it might be that the PCs prepared the wrong spells, or spent their resources in earlier encounters, or overestimated their remaining resources, or are just bad at estimating their capabilities, whatever. It might be accidental, it might be intentional, it might be the DM's fault, it might be the PC's fault. And it's never helped by the fact that individual initiative makes running away really difficult.

In any case, if it's happening so often that you're inclined to change the rules, then I would start to guess that someone at the table is doing something wrong.

Now if changing the rule works for you and your table, that's fine. It's not a problem what you're doing if everyone is happy. But I don't necessarily think it's the best rule if your goal isn't to shift the game's play style towards gritty realism and away from epic heroism.

 

[tetrasodium]

I think it's okay if you're doing it because you're having whack-a-mole problems. But if you do, you really can't complain that the PCs want to immediately long rest once it has happened instead of pushing ahead through the rest of their daily budget. It definitely pushes the game away from both heroic and pulp fantasy towards gritty realism.

If I'm totally honest about it, then in my experience whack-a-mole only happens when the monsters have overmatched the PCs. It might be because the encounter was designed too strong. Or it might be that the PCs rolled badly, or the NPCs rolled very well. Or it might be that the PCs prepared the wrong spells, or spent their resources in earlier encounters, or overestimated their remaining resources, or are just bad at estimating their capabilities, whatever. It might be accidental, it might be intentional, it might be the DM's fault, it might be the PC's fault. And it's never helped by the fact that individual initiative makes running away really difficult.

In any case, if it's happening so often that you're inclined to change the rules, then I would start to guess that someone at the table is doing something wrong.

Now if changing the rule works for you and your table, that's fine. It's not a problem what you're doing if everyone is happy. But I don't necessarily think it's the best rule if your goal isn't to shift the game's play style towards gritty realism and away from epic heroism.

To be completely honest PCs are so absurdly durable & overmatch monsters to such a degree that they make the average isekai protagonist look a bit fragile. The fact that even a single instance of wackamole healing let alone five or ten is possible without even the slightest opportunity cost is a serious problem. The system being designed to make a moral hazard like wackamole healing the optimal choice by nullifying all of the damage beyond zero only serves to exacerbate the problem.

This misalignment often gets defended with some vague gestures towards "big damn heroes" or "heroic fantasy" to invoke some kind of isekai/wuxia/etc analog for PCs but in all of those the overpowered main character is generally capable of having an oh crap moment where they realize this is gonna suck but the rules & mechanics are designed so that such a moment can only occur after the avalanche of a curb stomp battle has been set in motion to play out more like rocks fall everyone dies with the serial numbers scratched off.

 

[Bacon Bits]

To be completely honest PCs are so absurdly durable & overmatch monsters to such a degree that they make the average isekai protagonist look a bit fragile. The fact that even a single instance of wackamole healing let alone five or ten is possible without even the slightest opportunity cost is a serious problem. The system being designed to make a moral hazard like wackamole healing the optimal choice by nullifying all of the damage beyond zero only serves to exacerbate the problem.

No, I don't agree. I think it's extremely easy to occasionally arrive at whack-a-mole by error on the part of the PCs or the DM, or -- probably most likely -- though accident thanks to the fact that the dice are really high variance in D&D. And I think that the high variance of the dice means that it's impossible for the designers to avoid the problem unless they so overload everyone with HP and so control hit rates so that they're always in a narrow range -- that is, what 4e did, which turned into a huge slog -- then you're just naturally going to have encounters every so often where stuff goes pear-shaped for reasons outside the designer planning and outside the intentions of anyone at the table.

Further, it's "difficult" to kill the PCs in as much as it takes one attack to down a PC, and two more attacks to kill a PC outright. It's at least moderately common that that can happen in most encounters. If you just never have NPCs with three attacks, or never have NPCs with two attacks and a friend, ok sure. I guess that's difficult if your initiative is accidentally incorrect.

Additionally, healing magic is terrible. Pretty straightforward terrible. First level spells do about 3d8 damage plus 1d8 per level above 1 at range. Healing spells do 1d8+ability damage -- so basically 2d8 -- plus 1d8 per level above 1 at touch (or half that for a bonus action at range). So you just lose a die. And attack spells can do that while hitting multiple targets at no loss of damage. Healing spells? No, your multi-target spells lose even more dice. Healing is a losing proposition in almost every case. That's why you get whack-a-mole. Because healing can't keep up.

This misalignment often gets defended with some vague gestures towards "big damn heroes" or "heroic fantasy" to invoke some kind of isekai/wuxia/etc analog for PCs but in all of those the overpowered main character is generally capable of having an oh crap moment where they realize this is gonna suck but the rules & mechanics are designed so that such a moment can only occur after the avalanche of a curb stomp battle has been set in motion to play out more like rocks fall everyone dies with the serial numbers scratched off.

If you don't like heroic fantasy tropes, that's fine, but it's hard to argue that heroic fantasy is not a big part of D&D. No, it's not 20th century D&D, or OSR, but... there's kind of a reason that that style of gameplay hasn't really been featured in over 20 years. Lots of people don't want gritty realism. Lots of people don't want sword & sorcery. Lots of people don't want dark fantasy. Not when they're running D&D. I do think 5e tries to straddle both gritty realism/OSR and heroic fantasy. I also think it's done a terrible job with both of them. It's trying to be the everything game, and I don't think it succeeds at anything but being inoffensive.

However, as boring as the published 5e modules have been overall, none of them have been gritty realism or OSR. Quite the opposite. Most of them involve some plot to save the world, not some scheme to line their pockets. Like it's year 10 and they're just now releasing a book of heists. Indeed, as time has gone on, the modules have steadily eliminated player rewards from them -- both monetary and magical. I'm willing to bet, sight unseen, the heist book has underwhelming rewards. (I wouldn't be surprised if half of them don't even have tangible rewards.) But... heroic fantasy doesn't care about tangible rewards. It cares about advancing the plot. So I think the adventures being sold have been heroic fantasy. That's what people are buying and playing. They're not kicking in the door to steal the treasure. They're kicking in the door to rescue the princess.

 

[tetrasodium]

No, I don't agree. I think it's extremely easy to occasionally arrive at whack-a-mole by error on the part of the PCs or the DM, or -- probably most likely -- though accident thanks to the fact that the dice are really high variance in D&D. And I think that the high variance of the dice means that it's impossible for the designers to avoid the problem unless they so overload everyone with HP and so control hit rates so that they're always in a narrow range -- that is, what 4e did, which turned into a huge slog -- then you're just naturally going to have encounters every so often where stuff goes pear-shaped for reasons outside the designer planning and outside the intentions of anyone at the table.

Further, it's "difficult" to kill the PCs in as much as it takes one attack to down a PC, and two more attacks to kill a PC outright. It's at least moderately common that that can happen in most encounters. If you just never have NPCs with three attacks, or never have NPCs with two attacks and a friend, ok sure. I guess that's difficult if your initiative is accidentally incorrect.

Additionally, healing magic is terrible. Pretty straightforward terrible. First level spells do about 3d8 damage plus 1d8 per level above 1 at range. Healing spells do 1d8+ability damage -- so basically 2d8 -- plus 1d8 per level above 1 at touch (or half that for a bonus action at range). So you just lose a die. And attack spells can do that while hitting multiple targets at no loss of damage. Healing spells? No, your multi-target spells lose even more dice. Healing is a losing proposition in almost every case. That's why you get whack-a-mole. Because healing can't keep up.



If you don't like heroic fantasy tropes, that's fine, but it's hard to argue that heroic fantasy is not a big part of D&D. No, it's not 20th century D&D, or OSR, but... there's kind of a reason that that style of gameplay hasn't really been featured in over 20 years. Lots of people don't want gritty realism. Lots of people don't want sword & sorcery. Lots of people don't want dark fantasy. Not when they're running D&D. I do think 5e tries to straddle both gritty realism/OSR and heroic fantasy. I also think it's done a terrible job with both of them. It's trying to be the everything game, and I don't think it succeeds at anything but being inoffensive.

However, as boring as the published 5e modules have been overall, none of them have been gritty realism or OSR. Quite the opposite. Most of them involve some plot to save the world, not some scheme to line their pockets. Like it's year 10 and they're just now releasing a book of heists. Indeed, as time has gone on, the modules have steadily eliminated player rewards from them -- both monetary and magical. I'm willing to bet, sight unseen, the heist book has underwhelming rewards. (I wouldn't be surprised if half of them don't even have tangible rewards.) But... heroic fantasy doesn't care about tangible rewards. It cares about advancing the plot. So I think the adventures being sold have been heroic fantasy. That's what people are buying and playing. They're not kicking in the door to steal the treasure. They're kicking in the door to rescue the princess.

Healing magic is terrible because the system is designed around wackamole. It's easy for a pc to unexpectedly surprise go down because they don't have any need to engage in teamwork & acts of self preservation when the system practically provides them with plot armor even before wackamole healing. Your on ywtong track with heroic fantasy... Remember the time Gandalf & aragon argued over the merits of long vrs short rest before the the bridge? How about when they avoided Isengard entirely because they slept in the rainy forest instead?... Literally nothing but Isekai works like 5e, even OTT wixia & such have more risk attrition & reliance on the world than 5e... That's not "heroic fantasy" it's die hard.