D&D (2024) How many of you would implement the drop to 0 HP, get 1 level of exhaustion house rule?

[UngainlyTitan]

This is like, the real 2024 answer.

WotC is attempting to avoid the death yoyo the "right" way by, instead of just punishing martials for getting killed tanking*, rather by making in-combat healing (and spells particularly), more powerful so that it's not just a trap to use them to heal non-downed people in-combat (right now it really is, in most cases).

* = It's very striking that every single thread-starter post I've seen proposing mechanics for dealing with yoyo'ing has been 100% focused on punishing martial characters for getting killed with punishments that will primarily or solely hurt martial characters. Never have I seen it proposed at all that the characters waiting to yoyo heal are doing anything wrong, at all, even though they're obviously "culprits", and if anyone is "exploiting", it's them. Never have I see a thread opened about yoyoing with even a proposed mechanic that would even mess with full casters in a meaningful way. Sometimes as the thread goes on, people propose that kind of thing, but usually the OP rejects or ignores it, because he's only interested in punishing the characters who are essentially the victims here - because they were doing their job, and it got them downed. Whereas the people let them get downed, or even intentionally waited for it? Oh they're fine! I find this misguided behaviour very interesting myself. It's clear that the people wanting this are either genuinely mad with martials (seems unlikely), or, more likely imho, thoughtless proposing what they consider "simulationist" solutions without actually looking at the problem holistically - attempting to cure a symptom, not the problem. WotC I must give some credit to, usually do similar, but here they didn't, I don't know if they've gone far enough, but the changes they made were certainly addressing the root cause more and not just targeting a symptom.

You could make a pretty funny case for applying the exhaustion to the healer attempting to yoyo, rather than the person being yoyo'd too, honestly - say it's "magical feedback" or whatever.

Agree with this, instead of more stick how about some carrot.

 

[jayoungr]

Ehhhh, maybe, if I wanted an extra-gritty campaign. But I don't have a big whack-a-mole problem in my games anyway.

 

[Vaalingrade]

* = It's very striking that every single thread-starter post I've seen proposing mechanics for dealing with yoyo'ing has been 100% focused on punishing martial characters for getting killed with punishments that will primarily or solely hurt martial characters.

I don't think it's about hurting martials.

In fact, I don't think anyone making these proposals are thinking about what characters get penalized at all, only that a character is getting penalized in an old school and/or pseudo realism manner.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I don't think it's about hurting martials.

In fact, I don't think anyone making these proposals are thinking about what characters get penalized at all, only that a character is getting penalized in an old school and/or pseudo realism manner.

Oh I think you're right that that's the dominant motivation, but I do think that so many of the people who come up with this stuff so glibly would think twice about being so glib about it if it was penalizing casters the way it penalizes martials. Casters just get protected so much more when DMs are making up house rules for whatever reason.

 

[mellored]

Agree with this, instead of more stick how about some carrot.

What kind of carrot would you give someone for NOT dropping to 0?

 

[tetrasodium]

Oh I think you're right that that's the dominant motivation, but I do think that so many of the people who come up with this stuff so glibly would think twice about being so glib about it if it was penalizing casters the way it penalizes martials. Casters just get protected so much more when DMs are making up house rules for whatever reason.

I think you will find that the venn diagram of people who openly dislike how little risk 5e has & people who think that the old squishy "help me it's a cr1/4 skeleton"casters were a good thing for the game is close to being a circle.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think you will find that the venn diagram of people who openly dislike how little risk 5e has & people who think that the old squishy "help me it's a cr1/4 skeleton"casters were a good thing for the game is close to being a circle.

I don't think so. Because they basically never add house rules which make things harder for casters (or never discuss it at least), but reliably do for martials. We'd see a lot more "I'm making it so Wizards and Sorcerers suffer spell failure in armour and have d4 HD" posts if what you say is true (I think we did see a pro-spell failure post a few months back at least but it wasn't from a "too little risk" perspective, just multiclass balancing or something). I guess sometimes we see the occasional "Cantrips shouldn't scale!!!" post? It'd be interesting to correlate that with death spiral mechanics like these.

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

Instant Death at Zero HP has no death spiral

 

[tetrasodium]

I don't think so. Because they basically never add house rules which make things harder for casters (or never discuss it at least), but reliably do for martials. We'd see a lot more "I'm making it so Wizards and Sorcerers suffer spell failure in armour and have d4 HD" posts if what you say is true (I think we did see a pro-spell failure post a few months back at least but it wasn't from a "too little risk" perspective, just multiclass balancing or something). I guess sometimes we see the occasional "Cantrips shouldn't scale!!!" post? It'd be interesting to correlate that with death spiral mechanics like these.

Ypu've got to remember that there are a lot of design elements put in place to make it very difficult to actually accomplish that bold bit without going full heartbreaker. Those squishy casters of old had strengths like proactive bi-directional teamwork & reciprocity to offset the fragility but fixing those almost always leads to a cascade of things that need revision like classes spells cantrips & so on.

Changing what happens when a PC hits zero/neg10 Hp may not be a full solution to everything, but it is a functional solution that opens the door to encouraging things like reciprocity teamwork & so on

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

We'd see a lot more "I'm making it so Wizards and Sorcerers suffer spell failure in armour and have d4 HD" posts if what you say is true

I think spellcasters should get one less spell slot per level, and spells (and spell like abilities) should again provoke attacks of opportunity.