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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blue" data-source="post: 8578054" data-attributes="member: 20564">More interesting than most.  D&D 5e is a team game, and also a swingy one with the range of a d20 much more than bonuses one gets and some rolls (like a crit against or a particular failed save) being big deals.  In other words, characters often go down because (a) someone on their team didn't do their job right, (b) their job is to take the hits and those overwhelmed the whole team (not enough healing, etc.), and/or (c) luck was against them.  None of those are solely the responsibility of the person dropping, so basically any "you hit zero" that is net negative over the rules is pretty much wrong - it concentrates penalties that are not the whole or even majorly that character's fault or are just luck based.This is net negative, as in the default is that you/your party will take a penalty that isn't there, or you lose a death save.  But it at least has some possible redemption.  But that redemption comes at a high price, and it's the same price as avoiding the penalty, which basically only makes it possible to have anet positive in the case where you absolutely have a healer going before the you and any foe who might hit you while down (say AoE) so you can avoid the penalty and accept the boon.  Which is outside the control of the character again so doesn't have much to do with them.One of the things as a DM I greatly enjoy about 5e is that there is a large buffer between "legitimate fear of character death" and "actual character death".  Spending that buffer to avoid additional penalties hurts my ability as DM to throw tough encounters since I have a smaller amount of leyway in case the inherent swinginess of D&D combat has a run against the PCs.  So I can't really get behind additional ways to accumulate failed death saves.</blockquote>

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