House rule for Going below 0 hp and get up again with a good berry or a healing

[TaranTheWanderer]

Going back to what I mentioned earlier,

1. what do you think the result of letting someone take a level of exhaustion to stay up and use their HD to heal?

2. What do you think of the idea of having failed death saves carry over in a single combat? (so, if you go unconscious, fail a death save, get revived, then fall unconscious again, you are starting at one failed death save)

3. If you would use option 1, should choosing to take a level of exhaustion to stay up also cause you to accrue a failed death save?

My theory:
1. It might encourage people to stay up and avoid the 'whack-a-mole' problem but it might make fights easier. If you combine it with 3(automatically accrue a failed death save), they have to determine whether it's worth taking exhaustion and a failed death save to get extra HP in the hopes of not dropping again, or just deciding to drop to 0 and hope they don't accrue any death saves. Maybe hope that the goodberry gets fed before they fail a save.

2. Accumulating failed death saves would limit how often people drop before they decide they should try to retreat. Combining it with 1 gives incentive to stay up and fighting.

3. Is that too brutal or is it a balancing factor?

Just curious on people's thoughts.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Going back to what I mentioned earlier,

1. what do you think the result of letting someone take a level of exhaustion to stay up and use their HD to heal?

2. What do you think of the idea of having failed death saves carry over in a single combat? (so, if you go unconscious, fail a death save, get revived, then fall unconscious again, you are starting at one failed death save)

3. If you would use option 1, should choosing to take a level of exhaustion to stay up also cause you to accrue a failed death save?

My theory:
1. It might encourage people to stay up and avoid the 'whack-a-mole' problem but it might make fights easier. If you combine it with 3(automatically accrue a failed death save), they have to determine whether it's worth taking exhaustion and a failed death save to get extra HP in the hopes of not dropping again, or just deciding to drop to 0 and hope they don't accrue any death saves. Maybe hope that the goodberry gets fed before they fail a save.

2. Accumulating failed death saves would limit how often people drop before they decide they should try to retreat. Combining it with 1 gives incentive to stay up and fighting.

3. Is that too brutal or is it a balancing factor?

Just curious on people's thoughts.

For 1., are you saying they can spend their HD during combat once they hit 0 HP? And how many HD can they spend? Personally I wouldn't go with this rule because I don't find the idea of being able to spend HD during combat only when someone otherwise hit 0 HP makes a lot of sense. Spending HD should only occur during rests in my opinion, not during combat. And if I did allow them to be used during combat, I wouldn't put in a rule that says it can only be done otherwise "fix" hitting 0 HP. It's either spend them whenever they want, or not at all.

For 2., I have done this before, the failed deaths saves only reset following a short or long rest. It didn't have too much impact on my games because my parties tend to have 6 or more players, which means there are always people available to heal. Thus the "faster" journey to 3 failed death saves still didn't happen that often.

For 3., if you would allow someone to spend as many HD as they wanted when they hit 0 HP (as though they suddenly found this reserve of energy prior to death), then I personally think their death spiral should be that rather than rolling and failing death saves, they should just keep gaining additional levels of Exhaustion each round automatically. Which means they have 6 total rounds to take action until they drop dead at level 6. The "3 failed death saves" thing is too quick of a drop for auto-fails, and I personally wouldn't like the idea of letting the player still roll death saves while they were in their "final stand" mode. Once they enter that mode through personal choice, Death is the only answer and should be the end result as part of their ultimate sacrifice for the team.

 

[Ganymede81]

I do two things. One, being dropped to 0 HP more than once in a fight results in a failed death saving throw. Two, failed death saving throws do not disappear until after the encounter.

 

[Al2O3]

So going through 4 or 5 encounters with nearly no risk of PC death only to be extremely challenged with a possible TPK in the final encounter of the day (the challenge stemming from lack of resources) is scarier than risking that same possible TPK in most every fight you encounter (even with full resources)? Seems like an odd sentiment.

The thing with whack-a-mole is that the moles keep coming back. So sure, there were a few times per combat when characters went down. However, that was not really a threat since they would typically end up taking their turn again anyway.

Also, the last combat of the adventuring is not always a near TPK or otherwise problematic, but at least it does contain a real challenge. Whack-a-mole did not have the same level tension.

The only tension in whack-a-mole was for players who were bored of their characters and wanted a replacement. In those cases there were some tension of "please just die already". It did not happen until we changed.

 

[FrogReaver]

The thing with whack-a-mole is that the moles keep coming back. So sure, there were a few times per combat when characters went down. However, that was not really a threat since they would typically end up taking their turn again anyway.

Also, the last combat of the adventuring is not always a near TPK or otherwise problematic, but at least it does contain a real challenge. Whack-a-mole did not have the same level tension.

The only tension in whack-a-mole was for players who were bored of their characters and wanted a replacement. In those cases there were some tension of "please just die already". It did not happen until we changed.

But you have only potentially eliminated whack-a-mole in the last combat of the day. It's still there in every other encounter.

You've maybe managed to make 1 battle a day potentially scary due to resource deprivation in exchange for all the fights leading up to it easier.

 

[Al2O3]

But you have only potentially eliminated whack-a-mole in the last combat of the day. It's still there in every other encounter.

You've maybe managed to make 1 battle a day potentially scary due to resource deprivation in exchange for all the fights leading up to it easier.

We no longer see any whack-a-mole in our sessions, going to 0 hp is scary and as an added benefit we have more balance between long rest and short rest classes.

The problem we had is gone. I'll probably keep clarifying how it solved our problem. Frequently risk of death was not a feature we were looking for. If frequent risk of PC death without whack-a-mole is what you're looking for, then you have different problem and need a different solution.

I should also maybe mention that there were times before the change where character death was a risk. Those belong in two categories:
Ambushes with one character dead before anyone with healing gets to act, and encounters where it's mostly the luck of death saves making the difference between TPK and everyone still alive. A couple of times we did end up with one PC as last creature standing, and then with too few hit points to take a hit and still fight.

So in summary: whack-a-mole happend and got annoyingly silly. We solved it by using the DMG guidelines for number and type of encounters. The resulting experience is closer to what we want.

 

[FrogReaver]

We no longer see any whack-a-mole in our sessions, going to 0 hp is scary and as an added benefit we have more balance between long rest and short rest classes.

The problem we had is gone. I'll probably keep clarifying how it solved our problem. Frequently risk of death was not a feature we were looking for. If frequent risk of PC death without whack-a-mole is what you're looking for, then you have different problem and need a different solution.

I should also maybe mention that there were times before the change where character death was a risk. Those belong in two categories:
Ambushes with one character dead before anyone with healing gets to act, and encounters where it's mostly the luck of death saves making the difference between TPK and everyone still alive. A couple of times we did end up with one PC as last creature standing, and then with too few hit points to take a hit and still fight.

So in summary: whack-a-mole happend and got annoyingly silly. We solved it by using the DMG guidelines for number and type of encounters. The resulting experience is closer to what we want.

But you didn't solve whack-a-mole. Everything you are saying reveals the truth of the matter. The fact is either characters commonly drop to 0 hp, in which case they can get whack-a-mole back up (assuming there are any healing resources left), or they don't commonly drop to 0 hp. In the case where they commonly drop to 0 then whack a mole still exists because they will be using healing spells to bounce back on their feet.

In the other case where PC's rarely get challenged enough to get knocked down to 0 hp, that means their healing resources aren't being drained, which means they never reach the point where whack-a-mole cannot occur.

Pretty much the only way to prevent whack-a-mole is by not having PC's drop to 0 hp very often and it sounds to me like that is mostly what your 6 pretty easy encounters a day is actually doing, even though you don't want to admit that's what is going on for whatever reason...

 

[Yunru]

A simple rule I stick by is to have failed saving throws only go away after a long or short rest.

 

[5ekyu]

A simple rule I stick by is to have failed saving throws only go away after a long or short rest.

Does this mean they rest more often?

 

[Al2O3]

But you didn't solve whack-a-mole. Everything you are saying reveals the truth of the matter. The fact is either characters commonly drop to 0 hp, in which case they can get whack-a-mole back up (assuming there are any healing resources left), or they don't commonly drop to 0 hp. In the case where they commonly drop to 0 then whack a mole still exists because they will be using healing spells to bounce back on their feet.

In the other case where PC's rarely get challenged enough to get knocked down to 0 hp, that means their healing resources aren't being drained, which means they never reach the point where whack-a-mole cannot occur.

Pretty much the only way to prevent whack-a-mole is by not having PC's drop to 0 hp very often and it sounds to me like that is mostly what your 6 pretty easy encounters a day is actually doing, even though you don't want to admit that's what is going on for whatever reason...

The less challenging individual fights allow us to spend healing during fights before hitting 0 hp, or spend it between fights. There are also other, more fun, spells we have time to use instead of healing (but still reducing potential healing).

I think we have different problems with whack-a-mole. Our problem was that it happened frequently. Often going to 0 hp was not a feature for us. Reducing the threat intensity of each encounter let us do relevant healing before dropping to 0 hp, which was what we wanted all along: healing before going to 0 hp.

I'm increasingly getting the feeling that you see going to 0 hp as a feature. In that case you clearly have a different problem and the solution to our problem would not help.

I see four options where you seem to list three:
1. Frequently going to 0 hp, little or no healing. High lethality option.
2. Frequently go to 0, lots of healing; aka whack-a-mole.
3. Seldom go to 0 hp due to low threat, little or no healing or other spells used. Seems to be the impression I've given you; easy mode
4. Low enough threat to let healing before going to 0 hp keep a character standing another round. Still requires healing during and between encounters, but some spell slots can also be used to damage enemies. The risk is slowly running out of spell slots over the day, not that damage comes in faster than it can be healed. This is our case.

The main communication issue is probably that we want different things. I can keep describing what we considered the problem and how we solved it, but without knowing what tone you want for your game or what makes whack-a-mole a problem in your game I can't start guessing if our solution has relevance for solving your problem.