(House rule) I'm still standing...

[CubicsRube]

Yeah yeah yeah!

I have a completely untested idea I've thought about implementing in a 5e campaign.

It is thus:
When a character reaches 0 HP, they do not go prone and unconscious. Rather, they can keep on fighting! However they do still make a death save at the start of each round and if they do get hit while at 0 HP they get an automatic failed death save as per normal.

I feel like it might give players more options to down a healing potion or get-out-of-dodge, or doing something else to be actively involved in the game and perhaps make the game somewhat more heroic, but I think it'd also feel more risky because you may have to choose between running and hiding or going for that lucky shot to end it.

What effect do you think this rule would have?

 

[schnee]

It would eliminate the drama of death from the table, and the other players will never be forced to make a tactically difficult decision between eliminating the opposition vs. saving a comrade.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The effects will be probably more dead characters, for one. On the whole I believe players are loathe to retreat or stop fighting, so if you allow them to keep fighting even after reaching 0 HP, I suspect more often than not they will use that extra round to keep swinging, rather than do the sensible thing of disengaging and retreating to then heal themselves up. Then all you need is one monster with Multiattack and two hits later the character is dead. Because while you as the DM can usually justify a monster leaving a body they just downed to go attack someone else (letting the unconscious PC roll death saves in peace)... if the PC remains standing and fighting, the monster will have no reason not to keep attacking it. Two hits... WHAM-WHAM, goodbye PC.

That being said... I have also toyed with the idea of letting PCs remain active at 0 HP, but I also replaced the 3 deaths saves table with a modified Exhaustion table. Which means it takes 6 failures to die, rather than 3 (however of course, the levels of exhaustion apply during the battle and remain afterwards even following healing healed to 1 HP.) For those characters, it would take several more hits to kill them. Which is a little more sporting, but does make their decision hold more weight because they are suffering some pretty penalties after the fact should they survive.

 

[FrogReaver]

#1 If the PC is still standing then he's more of a valid enemy target than if he was on the ground and unconscious. This will have the effect of causing characters at 0 hp to be hit more often causing more death saves faster.

#2 PC's do have the option of attempting to save themselves by dodging, casting defensive spells, disengaging or even healing themselves. This will likely lead to fewer death saves.

I'm not sure if #1 or #2 will be a bigger impact in actual play. I think #1 will typically be because all the defensive spells, disengaging dodging etc doesn't compare to being completely ignored while "dying" unconscious and motionless on the ground. The only benefit I'm seeing #2 offer is for PC's that can heal themselves. It makes them almost impossible to kill as long as they can heal. You may want to make the death saves cumulate throughtout the day until a long rest to counter this.

If you are in a game where downed PC's regularly get targeted then option #2 is going to make the game much less deadly. In my experience its rare for downed PC's to get targeted. I don't know if your games tend to be that way.

 

[FrogReaver]

It would eliminate the drama of death from the table, and the other players will never be forced to make a tactically difficult decision between eliminating the opposition vs. saving a comrade.

Assuming downed PC's rarely got targeted in his games under traditional rules then I think this change will increase the drama. The "dying" PC is much more likely to die in this scenario. Higher stakes typically makes higher drama IMO.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

This radically alters the balance between PCs and 'monsters' if you use the rule that monsters don't make death saves, because a monster dropped to 0 is simply out of the fight while a player dropped to 0 keeps fighting and likely can take another 2-3 hits before dying. You should probably make monsters work similarly, especially weak ones - things that come alone or in small groups are easy to land an extra 3 hits on to finish off, but if every generic cultist takes 2-3 hits after the 2-4 hits that took him to 0 then they will last MUCH longer.

And as other people have pointed out, this will make PC death much, much more common if it used to be standard for enemies to try to take out combatants before finishing off unconscious enemies. Instead of 'you drop out of the fight and it would take someone significant effort to make you dead right now instead of bleeding', it's 'you keep fighting and being targeted, but if you take 2-3 hits you will absolutely die'.

 

[FrogReaver]

This radically alters the balance between PCs and 'monsters' if you use the rule that monsters don't make death saves, because a monster dropped to 0 is simply out of the fight while a player dropped to 0 keeps fighting and likely can take another 2-3 hits before dying. You should probably make monsters work similarly, especially weak ones - things that come alone or in small groups are easy to land an extra 3 hits on to finish off, but if every generic cultist takes 2-3 hits after the 2-4 hits that took him to 0 then they will last MUCH longer.

And as other people have pointed out, this will make PC death much, much more common if it used to be standard for enemies to try to take out combatants before finishing off unconscious enemies. Instead of 'you drop out of the fight and it would take someone significant effort to make you dead right now instead of bleeding', it's 'you keep fighting and being targeted, but if you take 2-3 hits you will absolutely die'.

I totally disagree the with first part. Having 1 out of 4/5 players perform a 2-3 more actions in a combat is very unlikely to change the outcome of the fight. The only thing truly easier about this when it comes to combat is that the party is much less likely to face a TPK.

As long as you consider party failure to be a PC dying then this houserule will increase difficulty as even though a downed player gets 2-3 more actions, he still stays a valid target in all combats and thus is more likely to die in that regard. I'm really not sure what other consequence a single combat encounter has other than that. Greater Resource attrition maybe? But I would think more resources are being expended to prevent a 0 hp PC from reaching 3 death saves in a scenario where they are still being targeted by enemies (still standing).

 

[Dessert Nomad]

I totally disagree the with first part. Having 1 out of 4/5 players perform a 2-3 more actions in a combat is very unlikely to change the outcome of the fight. The only thing truly easier about this when it comes to combat is that the party is much less likely to face a TPK.

That's why I said that it's not going to make much difference on things that come alone or in small groups. But if your four PCs are facing half a dozen cultists that normally go down in 2-3 hits, they now need twice as many hits per cultist to take them down. That means it's going to take around twice as much time to bring them down, and they're going to keep doing damage (or grappling, or blocking movement, or providing advantage) during that time. If they're alone and just a resource drain, then they get to deal out more damage before they go down. If they're screens for a big boss type, you either give the big boss longer to strike at you unmolested, or have to keep getting attrited and interefered with by the double strength cultists.

 

[FrogReaver]

That's why I said that it's not going to make much difference on things that come alone or in small groups. But if your four PCs are facing half a dozen cultists that normally go down in 2-3 hits, they now need twice as many hits per cultist to take them down. That means it's going to take around twice as much time to bring them down, and they're going to keep doing damage (or grappling, or blocking movement, or providing advantage) during that time. If they're alone and just a resource drain, then they get to deal out more damage before they go down. If they're screens for a big boss type, you either give the big boss longer to strike at you unmolested, or have to keep getting attrited and interefered with by the double strength cultists.

Having a single PC in a party of 4/5 go down never makes the foes twice as strong because your only killing them marginally slower than if the PC hadn't went down.

 

[FrogReaver]

Anyways my takeaways:

1. The rule will make the game more deadly for individual PC's.
2. Resource drain will be nearly the same or maybe slightly less (less incoming damage when a PC goes down but more resources spent to protect him afterwards IMO). Play testing will likely need done to fully understand this one.
3. TPK's will occur significantly less.

I personally really like these effects and think the change could make for a very fun game. The only thing I would consider adding on is for death saves in an encounter or day to be cumulative. Resetting death saves upon gaining even 1 hp in a system where you can actually continue fighting while at 0 may make nearly invincible feeling PC's and override the potential effects I talked about above.