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

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Just going by your original question, and not any of the comments so far in the thread, a house rule I may use is based on how far below 0 the character goes. Basically, if a single application of a particular healing item/spell/magic effect/etc will bring the character back above 0, then they can function again on their next turn. But if multiple uses are needed to get back above 0, then the character was too severely hurt to function again quickly. For each use of healing beyond the first, one combat turn has to be sat out before the character has the strength and focus to start fighting again. So only a point or two below 0 and most any magic healing with get them back up right away, but 5 or 10 or 15 below 0? you better hope the healer rolls high or the party is high enough in level to have more powerful healing available or that character will be conscious but incapacitated for a couple of turns. But hey, at least they will not have to be making death saving throws.

Another house rule I have used is that characters can go negative in HP as much as their normal full HP before healing magic will not work and they are dead, regardless of saving throws.

 

[FrogReaver]

Not quite like that. More like 5+ fights where a single PC may or may not go to 0 hp once, but will certainly get healed. At the end there may or may not be enough healing left to heal a PC that goes down.

So whack-a-mole is still present it just doesn't occur to the same extent. Your method still has PC's popping right back up when they go down but they go down much less frequently so it doesn't "feel" the same. I'll even go so far as to call it "effectively eliminated" because of the infrequency.

This as contrast to two or three fights where multiple PCs drop multiple times per encounter because enemies would deal damage faster than PCs can heal. We basically figured that having "everybody survives" and "TPK" be about equally likely was not "challenging".

I don't think anyone is advocating for most fights to be so hard that they always are potential TPK's. At least I'm not.

So your "simple" solution would in our context be a TPK per day. That is also unappealing.

I doubt this was the case but, if your fights before were really so challenging that TPK was a real threat in most combats then you needed to tone them back somewhat regardless of whack-a-mole

Somewhat, counter-intuitively, in games where death occurs at 0, you can challenge the PC's with less because it's relatively easy to kill 1 PC when they die at 0. A death of even 1 PC is a significant consequence that doesn't require an enemy group that is really going to be capable of causing a TPK (barring the absolute most unfortunate rolls for the PC's).

Ultimately death at 0 style games can make each battle be challenging with an actual consequence the players will care about without forcing potential TPK producing encounters. The upside is that whether you have 1, 2, 3, 4, etc encounters a day the PC's still feel challenged because even in combats they feel the group will likely win, there's always the chance one of them don't live through it.

Contrast this to your solution, you make the first 5 encounters boring because there is no real threat of any significant consequence, TPK is very unlikely with your easier spread out fights and individual PC death is very unlikely as well except in the final encounter because of lack of party resources.

 

[Yunru]

Death is already easy...
Two adjacent, or three non-adjacent, attacks to a downed character and they're dead.

 

[FrogReaver]

Death is already easy...
Two adjacent, or three non-adjacent, attacks to a downed character and they're dead.

Maybe but IMO a DM choosing to attack a downed, defenseless and dying PC's just doesn't narratively feel right most the time. It also put the DM in a position where he is making the choice of whether that PC lives or dies as opposed to relying on the dice to resolve that question. Ultimately that makes it a relatively rare course of action for a DM to take.

That said I think it does need done sometimes just to sit the right tone but it shouldn't be done arbitrarily. Hungry wolves may down and look to kill a PC and drag off his body. A especially cruel enemy may look to kill your friend for the fun of it. But in general most enemy considerations are going to revolve around taking care of active threats first.

I now want a group of bandits to take a PC hostage once downed. That would make for an interesting turn of events.

 

[Al2O3]

So whack-a-mole is still present it just doesn't occur to the same extent. Your method still has PC's popping right back up when they go down but they go down much less frequently so it doesn't "feel" the same. I'll even go so far as to call it "effectively eliminated" because of the infrequency.



I don't think anyone is advocating for most fights to be so hard that they always are potential TPK's. At least I'm not.



I doubt this was the case but, if your fights before were really so challenging that TPK was a real threat in most combats then you needed to tone them back somewhat regardless of whack-a-mole

Somewhat, counter-intuitively, in games where death occurs at 0, you can challenge the PC's with less because it's relatively easy to kill 1 PC when they die at 0. A death of even 1 PC is a significant consequence that doesn't require an enemy group that is really going to be capable of causing a TPK (barring the absolute most unfortunate rolls for the PC's).

Ultimately death at 0 style games can make each battle be challenging with an actual consequence the players will care about without forcing potential TPK producing encounters. The upside is that whether you have 1, 2, 3, 4, etc encounters a day the PC's still feel challenged because even in combats they feel the group will likely win, there's always the chance one of them don't live through it.

Contrast this to your solution, you make the first 5 encounters boring because there is no real threat of any significant consequence, TPK is very unlikely with your easier spread out fights and individual PC death is very unlikely as well except in the final encounter because of lack of party resources.

It seems I finally managed to describe our experience clearly enough Your comments in previous posts also make a lot more sense now that I realise how different we use some of the words.

The way you describe a game without death saves (dead at 0 hp) does sound interesting. I wouldn't trust anyone in my group (including me) to pull the balancing off as DM, but I might be interested in trying it at some point as a player.