D&D 5E Making Combat Mean Something [+]

Cruentus

Adventurer
- Firstly dropping to 0 hp doesn’t mean unconscious. It means a serious wound - a real medical emergency but not completely out. They still take death saves as normal but when on 0 hp characters can’t rise from prone but can take a single bonus action, a single action, or move (but not stand up). Taking any action or move forces them to make an additional death save.

- Secondly, I’ll be using the slow healing rules. Spending HD is the only way to regain wounds, which represent bandaging and rest. No spending 8 hours to wake fresh as a daisy.

- Thirdly, and this is the doozy, I want dropping to 0 hp to cause the Pc to gain 1d6 levels of exhaustion. Yes the PC has a 1/6 chance of dying instantly when dropped to 0 hp. When their head gets lopped off. The exhaustion represents their wound - which they are free to describe as they like. When their exhaustion is gone (through the normal means) their wound is gone.
So, I tried to run a 5e game using my own version of gritty rules, including 1e/2e overnight healing, slow HD recovery rates, use of HD for primary healing, and a modified exhaustion mechanic that still used 6 levels, but had graduated minuses that affected all classes (including spellcasters). I'll try to answer your OP based on what I experienced:

1) zero hp and prone, with one "action": that would make it scary to be in that position, but you'd have to think through the possible "actions" that could be used: attack? spellcast? hide? The additional activity forcing another death save would require some thought on the part of the player, hopefully a cost/benefit analysis.

2) works for me. That's what I used, but it really didn't "slow down healing" very much in my campaign experience as all the players were some form of caster. It did slow down the pace of play, which was what I was going for, but wasn't really "slow" per se. And I also ascribe the one or two encounters in a day, sometimes long stretches without any.

3) Using the 1dnd exhaustion, this could be a big hit at 0hp. It would compound #1, due to every action or move being affected by the minuses in the exhaustion rules. I found in my game that avoiding exhaustion was the driving factor for my players, regardless of where they were with re: to HP. So they would hunker down and take awhile to rest to remove exhaustion (and remember, this was a granular system over 6 level, not standard 5e exhaustion). Now, of course, the scenarios/game/campaign I was running mostly allowed for this, but their slowing down also caused events to unfold that they couldn't then intercept in time.

I agree that the bounce up from zero/bag o' hit points/heal everything overnight is not what I want in a game. But I was also unsatisfied with how it all rolled out in my 5e game. Best bet is to just try it, and roll it back if it doesn't work.

We've been playing OSE lately (less hp, less busy rounds, quicker gameplay), and using Goblin Punch's Death and Dismemberment Table, which gives us enough of a feel of "you don't want to go below zero" balanced against dying instantly at zero, since it combines long term injuries with "fatal wounds" that work like death saves. That could probably be modded to work in 5e.
 

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Bill Zebub

“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
The issue for me is that the big bag doesn’t really mean anything when it empties, because folks spring back up like whack-a-mole. So not only is it a resource it doesn’t make much difference when it runs out. By having 0 mean something, now every HP counts.

Oh you mean the PCs are bags of hit points.

I’m used to seeing the term used in reference to monsters, in the sense of every combat feeling the same.
 


GMMichael

Guide of Modos
So it will be no secret that I have long been looking for a way to make combat more meaningful - instead of the whack-a-mole - sacks of hit points that opponents turn into in 5e. . .
I don't see the at-zero-HP houserules as having any impact on the above problem. It sounds like you'd want rules that come into play during hit point loss, not at the end of it.

This campaign won’t be the typical dungeon crawl hack and slash. Combats will be rarer - one to three per day. With most adventures to have 1-3 combats potentially. It will also mostly be operating at a low-ish level 3-7. What are peoples though, could it work cohesively.
Low level is key to the sack-of-HP problem - it only gets worse at higher levels, with more hit points.

And there is the rub. You are right. But fighting at an optimal level until death does nothing to counter this. The risk of continued fighting being greater than the risk of what will happen when captured is the only way to encourage it.
Does this account for avoidance and fleeing?

All too often I see player X say, well we can’t get away from this fight because player Y is unconscious inside the creatures threatened area. So we might as well carry on. The thought of abandoning one of the team causes players to act irrationally and either the campaign ends or the players win. Every… single… time…
See, I solve this problem by not metagaming. "Steve went down? HE'S DEAD! LEAVE HIM!"
 

Bill Zebub

“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
I don't see the at-zero-HP houserules as having any impact on the above problem. It sounds like you'd want rules that come into play during hit point loss, not at the end of it.

Yeah, I asked about the same thing. I think they are using "bag of hit points" in a different way.
 

Lanefan

Victoria Rules
So the two major issues I see here are that D&D 5E doesn't balance damage and particularly doesn't balance people getting "downed" across the party.

Dropping to 0 HP wildly disproportionately happens to the frontliners, who are typically 25-50% of the party. They account for easily 80% of "dropped to 0 HP" incidents.
I'd be interested in seeing some hard data on this for 5e, if anyone has tracked such for their own game.

For my games (which aren't 5e) I don't track near-death but I do track actual deaths*, and the overall death frequency between front-liners, sneaks, and mages isn't all that different. The outlier tends to be Clerics, probably because a) they can cure themselves more easily than they can cure anyone else and b) it's common knowledge that keeping the healer upright is good for everyone.

* - I should note that petrifications counts as deaths for recordkeeping purposes, but those are pretty rare.
 

You still haven't given an opinion on my idea of reducing available spell slots with each degree of exhaustion, which would seem to answer many of your qualms here.

That would help equaling out the suck, but then you're still left with the system simply encouraging the PCs to abuse the 5MWD to negate the suck (which is bad) or alternatively, sucking (which is not fun).
 

Lanefan

Victoria Rules
This would mean that, if we take the "there's only about a 25% chance even one person drops to 0 HP per session" thing seriously, the proposed rule would effectively double the lethality of the game. Yes, I think it's a pretty significant change to make the game twice as deadly!
As 5e by both RAW and RAI really isn't all that lethal, doubling the lethality - while sounding grim - might not mean very much in practice.
Okay. So you're cool with the players taking an entirely mercenary view. Your statements weren't the ones I was responding to; TheSword's were. You can't simultaneously seek to incentivize teamwork and other-valuing choices and incentivize personal survival and self-serving choices.
Well, I posit you can incentivize both by having a system where characters have serious weaknesses along with their strengths, thus soft-requiring the presence of other characters such that they fill in each other's gaps. Due to this interdependence, the whole becomes more than the sum of the parts, meaning teamwork is often a better path to survival - both of the party and of each character in it - than individualism.

I, personally, very much wanted to encourage characters to act nobly, show compassion, and value people and places inherently, not instrumentally. The proposed rules run directly counter to that; they will almost surely teach players to be murderhobos. I'm a bad fit for a murderhobo game, and told my players as much. As I said in the "endings" thread, I love heroes and happy endings, and I rapidly lose interest in grimdark/"90s antihero"/"Evil vs Evil" type stories, which are lamentably extremely common in fiction today.
Yeah, we're very different: I got bored with the heroes always winning when I was about ten.
We have, together, built conditions for a world where dark things really do happen, but the player characters can fight back and make things actually better. Often incompletely or haltingly; real, lasting change is hard, and usually takes a long time. But you can still make a difference and protect things that matter--and you may need to make great sacrifices along the way.
If that's how you've set the story up, cool. Me, I'll usually have an underlying story or two like that on the go but I'm not married to them; if the players/PCs decide to turn their backs on such a story or to join the enemy or whatever then so be it: that's what I'll run.
I adore actual teamwork games. D&D, with exactly one exception (you know the one), has manifestly failed to actually support real teamwork.
Whcih strikes me as odd, because IMO in-party teamwork's biggest enemy is do-it-all-themselves characters who have no weaknesses (and thus don't need to inter-depend with anyone else) and thus much less need for a party around them; and the exception you refer to was by design the best (worst) of all when it came to making do-it-all characters using the right combinations of multi-classes and feats. The TSR editions, where niche protection was considerably stronger, characters often had glaring weaknesses that couldn't be covered off with feats, and where multi-classing was clearly suboptimal, were IMO far better at promoting teamwork at the design level - even if it didn't always come off that way at the table level.
It supports murderhoboism, however, which can create a fragile facsimile of teamwork that dissolves like cotton candy in water at the first sign of danger.
Which in many ways is fairly realistic. Parties are usually (I hope!) made up of independent free-thinking people, they don't have a coach or a sergeant-major standing over them preaching team unity or regimental honour and telling them to play/fight till they drop; and absent this, when real danger appears self-preservation becomes a primary motivator.
 

Lanefan

Victoria Rules
A character dying every ten weeks would mean that by the end of the year, you'd have practically a brand new party. (EV: 5.2, SD: 2.16) Heck, there's a better than 25% chance that by the end of the first year, you'll have more than 6 deaths!
Turnover of party membership is very much a thing.

Also, you're forgetting that in a game where revival effects exist, those six deaths might only mean actual turnover of one or two characters; with the rest being revived.
And no, I don't think 2-3 deaths in a year is low. I think it is quite high.
Somehow I don't think you'd like my game very much... :)

It's not common, but I've occasionally seen one character die three times within a year, never mind the rest of the party. :)

There's also a short list of characters who have been killed more than once by the same opponent. Perhaps the best of these was a Dwarf in a fairly powerful party who went up against a Beholder. Dwarf got hit by the thing's death ray and, after all bonuses etc., needed to roll 3 or better to make the save. He rolled a 2, and dropped dead.

Party scoop up his remains, flee, and as they had revival effects available in the field they soon got him back.

Next day they beef themselves up with pre-castings then go back in and meet the same Beholder. By sheer bad luck (I was randomixing which rays targeted which characters until-unless the Beholder learned more about their capabilities) the death ray targets and hits the Dwarf again. This time he saves on a natural 2 - and up comes the 1.

Sometimes, a bad beat is just a bad beat.
Especially since this is 2-3 extra deaths, completely separate from deaths due to failing death saves or other effects that kill characters (that is, petrification, the "chunky salsa" rule, etc.) 2-3 deaths a year means literally any investment I might put into my fellow characters is pointless; either my character will die, and thus nothing they cared about will matter, or most of their friends will die, and thus it won't matter that they were friends. Death is the ultimate investment killer.
Only if the deceased isn't revived; and even then, there's still the investment in the story as a whole, and in the party's part in it.
 

Lanefan

Victoria Rules
That would help equaling out the suck, but then you're still left with the system simply encouraging the PCs to abuse the 5MWD to negate the suck (which is bad) or alternatively, sucking (which is not fun).
Sometimes sucking - and having to decide whether to carry on while sucking - is just part of the game.

Equalling out the suck is what I'm after: you're quite right in pointing out that the casters largely get off scot-free in the proposed system, and I'm just tossing out some ideas as to how to make casters feel some pain as well.

============

Random thought for the OP: have you considered introducing a variant of 4e's bloodied mechanic, where being at or below half* h.p. has effects both good (sometimes) and bad (common)? This would get people paying attention to their hit point levels while still well above zero, and could also serve to give martials a balancing boost. It could look like:

Not yet bloodied: everyone functions as normal.
Bloodied: everyone gains some penalties but martials also gain some real benefits.
Zero: everyone gains more penalties but martials are more affected than casters.

Just a thought...

* - or whatever threshold makes sense; I say "half" as that's what the 4e version uses.
 

TheSword

Legend
Sometimes sucking - and having to decide whether to carry on while sucking - is just part of the game.

Equalling out the suck is what I'm after: you're quite right in pointing out that the casters largely get off scot-free in the proposed system, and I'm just tossing out some ideas as to how to make casters feel some pain as well.

============

Random thought for the OP: have you considered introducing a variant of 4e's bloodied mechanic, where being at or below half* h.p. has effects both good (sometimes) and bad (common)? This would get people paying attention to their hit point levels while still well above zero, and could also serve to give martials a balancing boost. It could look like:

Not yet bloodied: everyone functions as normal.
Bloodied: everyone gains some penalties but martials also gain some real benefits.
Zero: everyone gains more penalties but martials are more affected than casters.

Just a thought...

* - or whatever threshold makes sense; I say "half" as that's what the 4e version uses.
I started using bloodied effects for monsters actually. Really like the fact that they could be something dreaded but also signify making headway.

On a separate note, I won’t be using revivify - I think it would make a mockery of these rules and the risk of death if you can reliably just pop people back to life a minute later - I’m not ruling out a miracle… or something darker to achieve the same thing as a one off.

See I don’t have such an issue with suck at 0, now I’ve settled on One D&D rules. They penalize casters as well. Also I still keep coming back to the fact that sucking for a while but being conscious is better than being dead.

Responding to @Flamestrike ’s last post. The 5MWD doesn’t really help remove multiple levels of exhaustion - it’s something that is going to take longer - in some cases over a week. Players will need to compensate for their injuries not wave a wand away. Though I’m all for having NpCs like surgeons that can speed up the process.
 
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For my games (which aren't 5e)
What are they where you have that kind of flatter distribution? 2E definitely had a flatter distribution. 3E had was flatter too, but more tilted than 2E. 4E the commonest to get dropped was actually melee strikers, because hooo boy where 4E tanks tough. 5E I've barely seen anyone who wasn't a front-line melee hit 0 HP, and I've seen a LOT of people hit 0 HP. Wizards/Sorcerers Casters often get walloped to like half health by something but they tend to act very defensively after that and to have a spell to protect themselves. This is all speaking from personal experience.

No-one has hard data though, and anyone saying they do is lying lol. We only have our anecdotes. The 3D VTT might be able to gather hard data eventually.
 

Lanefan

Victoria Rules
I started using bloodied effects for monsters actually. Really like the fact that they could be something dreaded but also signify making headway.
Maybe do some white-boarding on what happens if you chuck "bloodied" on to adventuring characters (both PC and foe), as to how it affects their approach to losing hit points.
On a separate note, I won’t be using revivify - I think it would make a mockery of these rules and the risk of death if you can reliably just pop people back to life a minute later - I’m not ruling out a miracle… or something darker to achieve the same thing as a one off.
Ah. Yes, knocking out Revivify in a 3rd-7th level party does make a difference. :0
 

Lanefan

Victoria Rules
What are they where you have that kind of flatter distribution? 2E definitely had a flatter distribution. 3E had was flatter too, but more tilted than 2E.
What do you mean here by "flatter distribution"? Distribution of classes? Distribution of resources? The game's power curve? Please elaborate.
No-one has hard data though, and anyone saying they do is lying lol. We only have our anecdotes.
In my own case the anecdotes are backed up by such hard data as I have access to, that being everything from all the games run by either myself or my DM, who also keeps good records.

So that's 40+ years of data covering a crap-ton of characters and, collectively, something over 3500 sessions of play. Even better, it's all in the same (evolving) system, meaning data from 30 years ago is still relevant today.

So, no lying here.

What I'm asking is whether anyone has any amount of similar data for their own 5e games as to the death rate for each class (or class group, even), to give a point of comparison both with the OP's game and with my earlier-edition games.
 


What do you mean here by "flatter distribution"? Distribution of classes? Distribution of resources? The game's power curve? Please elaborate.
Distribution of getting owned by monsters between classes.
In my own case the anecdotes are backed up by such hard data as I have access to, that being everything from all the games run by either myself or my DM, who also keeps good records.
That's not something I'd define as "hard data" lol but okay.
 

DND_Reborn

The High Aldwin
Except HP are also finite. Martials cannot, in fact, make attacks "all day" they will run out of HPs long before that. Monsters aren't boards, they hit back.
Sure, but HP are also finite for Casters... who have fewer of them in general. ;)
 

I’d like the risk of death to affect behavior.

One of the fundamental problems with 5e as written when it comes to goals is that combat is usually the most efficient method to get what you want. Want that Magic item - kill the person who has it. Want to find the information the person holds - beat them to 0hp and tie them up. Let’s have some other choices.
I think that if this is the fundamental issue that you are trying to address, a chat with your players is going to to do much more good than just trying to kill more of their characters.
If your players are behaving like this it is far more to do with them deciding to play murderhobo characters than the combat rules.

Outside of "Evil" games, that sort of behaviour seems to be more a symptom of lack of investment in a character, where they view advancement more as just getting loot rather than in-game character advancement.
Changing the rules so you get to take the player's characters away more often is not going to encourage them to emotionally invest into those characters more.
 

My current group has only had 1 death in 24 sessions, but they've had 5 close calls in total and had they not been quite lucky on 2 of those occasions, they would have suffered 3 deaths.
While I appreciate that from a human perspective this matters (and should matter), from a mathematical perspective it does not. You should have several close calls and moments where a lucky break made the difference. One death in 24 sessions is, in fact, exactly the same as TheSword's original stated expectation for the extra deaths (chance of one character dropped to 0 HP = 1/4, previously-stated chance of character instantly dying from exhaustion = 1/6; since these are independent events, chance of instant death from dropping to 0 is the product of these values.) Hence, for a typical case, we would expect a lot of (as you say) close brushes. And that doesn't account for the accumulation factor; if you get Exhaustion from dropping to 0 and don't instantly die, you're at extreme risk both because another "Exhaustion roll" is very likely to kill you instantly, and because Exhaustion has such massively punitive penalties that you basically can't fight with more than one or two levels of Exhaustion.

The character that died had his own "side quest" based on his backstory, but the rest of the party is still pursuing it as they are invested in seeing it through.
Honest question: why? Character is dead. The dead do not feel. They are no more. Why are they invested? Because, as I said, there is no greater investment-killer for me than frequent character death (which, yes, I consider even "just" 2-3 deaths a year "frequent.") It no longer matters to anyone other than as a symbol, and symbols have no instrumental value, the only kind of value incentivized by these proposed house rules. When the lethality rises too high, all the stakes pursued by these house-rules rapidly drain away because nothing matters, you'll lose it all in a few months anyway. It becomes too bleak to be worth caring about; better to just disengage rather than invest and be repeatedly hurt. Better to see things as tools to be used for the brief time you can (whether because they get taken away...or because you do) than to actually care about anything.

But even if they weren't, introducing a new character into the main adventure is easy.
Your experience so vastly differs from mine I struggle to understand it. IME, it's "easy" to introduce a new character only in the extremely sense that one can perform the action of entering data into a new character sheet and showing up for a session easily. Actually introducing—as in, writing a new character into an ongoing story in a way that is satisfying and effective—is hard. Extremely hard. Because you are haunted by the specter of what could have been and constantly comparing the incomplete, partial thing you have to the far more developed thing you had. It's like picking up the pieces after a breakup. "Rebound" relationships are notorious for their flaws, and many people wisely choose not to get into relationships until they have properly grieved for their previous one.

I haven't quite figured out what to do with Paladin lay on hands (considering making it 2 hp/level healing), but then again
Have you considered the possibility that your incentives teach your players not to? Because that's one of my claims here. Lanefan appears to be perfectly happy with such incentives. TheSword I am less sure of; as I said, they seem to want both teamwork and selfishness, and as presented that's a contradiction. Either one or the other wins, or we re-define the terms so they don't mean their usual meanings, or there's something more going on than the proposed rule changes which allows such conflicting goals to become compatible.

As 5e by both RAW and RAI really isn't all that lethal, doubling the lethality - while sounding grim - might not mean very much in practice.
This has not been my experience.

Well, I posit you can incentivize both by having a system where characters have serious weaknesses along with their strengths, thus soft-requiring the presence of other characters such that they fill in each other's gaps. Due to this interdependence, the whole becomes more than the sum of the parts, meaning teamwork is often a better path to survival - both of the party and of each character in it - than individualism.
This would be the candyfloss "teamwork" I spoke of (to use the term from across the pond.) The instant this "teamwork" encounters a threat of sufficient magnitude, it not only can but will break. Because the whole incentive structure is selfish survival.

(Of course, I agree that characters should have strengths and weaknesses and benefit from working together. D&D in general is extremely bad at actually designing characters so that that is true and even worse at doing so in a way that is productive game design. Consider that this thread has literally spoken—purely positively!—of training players not to use healing spells so they can use their "interesting" spells instead. Even in this very conversation, teamwork is treated as a dull, boring exercise, contrasted against the exciting and productive selfishness!)


Yeah, we're very different: I got bored with the heroes always winning when I was about ten.
Wow. That's an impressive jab; simultaneously calling me immature and straight-up contradicting my lived experience by telling me that "the heroes always win."

This isn't a matter of maturity, and the heroes don't always win. They've suffered and lost, had friends die or at least be effectively dead for an unknown amount of time (what I would call irrevocable but not permanent death: "character can't come back yet" sort of thing.)

It is deeply infuriating whenever I discuss this, because half the time folks do exactly what you have done here. Pretending that because death is rare, victory is guaranteed and thus the story is boring. Victory emphatically is not guaranteed. My players work hard for and earn their victories, and I always let the dice fall where they may, in the open. We have our understanding on these matters specifically so the dice can fall where they may and the players will roll with it (pun intended.)

if the players/PCs decide to turn their backs on such a story or to join the enemy or whatever then so be it: that's what I'll run.
I told my players that if they wished to sail for the horizon, they were free to do so. I was honest about it and said I would feel disappointed in myself, for having framed scenes and provided context and stakes they found so uninteresting, but I would give them the story they were actually looking for. I'm not going to force them. Fortunately, they (a) said they knew I wouldn't do that and that that is something they highly value about my game, and (b) were quite clear that they're happy where they're at and, while they may feel wanderlust from time to time, that's a "variety is the spice of life" response, not an effort to escape to a story they actually care about. As I have said many times, my players are troopers and I very much appreciate their patience and support (though I do wish they would give more critical feedback.)

Whcih strikes me as odd, because IMO in-party teamwork's biggest enemy is do-it-all-themselves characters who have no weaknesses (and thus don't need to inter-depend with anyone else)
Given I 100% agree with this statement, it is odd that you should mention it. Characters should not be so. Most versions of D&D incentivize and permit building such characters. The selfishness encouraged by the rules is specifically all about that. Never rely on healing, you should heal yourself. Never expect buffs because spells should be used efficiently. Optimize your own performance, that is how you will survive longest. Compete for the most and/or best loot, conceal discovered treasure from your (so-called) allies, break promises if it is advantageous to you, etc. These things generate something that isn't a team; it is a collection of individual adventurers who merely happen to adventure in the same places at the same times.

The TSR editions, where niche protection was considerably stronger,
It wasn't. Especially as these editions wore on. Niche protection requires that the niches actually have value and not be so thoroughly "draftable" that one character can fill nearly all roles. And guess what? Clerics can. Wizards often could do everything but heal. Fighters? Pshaw, they get niche enforcement, not allowed to move beyond it.

But when you actually make niche protection that matters, that has teeth, people riot over (allegedly) being told what kind of character to play. I've seen it on this very forum.

far better at promoting teamwork at the design level - even if it didn't always come off that way at the table level.
These two statements are contradictory. If the game is well designed for the purpose of teamwork, then by definition it should be producing teamwork at the table. Being well designed means accomplishing the goals set by the designer. There is no more important test for game design than looking at actual play and confirming that, within reasonable statistical limits, the design actually does what you want it to do. To say that the rules somehow do what they're supposed to at the "design" level but fail to do so at the "table" level is a contradiction in terms. One might as well speak of cars that have good fuel economy at the design level and terrible fuel economy when actually driven.

Which in many ways is fairly realistic. Parties are usually (I hope!) made up of independent free-thinking people, they don't have a coach or a sergeant-major standing over them preaching team unity or regimental honour and telling them to play/fight till they drop; and absent this, when real danger appears self-preservation becomes a primary motivator.
Firstly, I hadn't realized we were playing a Realistic Roleplaying Game. I had thought I read that D&D was a Fantasy Roleplaying Game, as in, one where we set aside many of the often grim and depressing details of the reality we live in so that we may experience entertaining fictions (among other ends, some of them actually productive in addition to being entertaining.)

Second, again, humans are not homo economicus. Rules that get people to act that way are in fact unrealistic, not realistic. Real people care about their social context, and (more importantly) almost always recognize that survival value is only one form of value, and in fact often a rather weak one in comparison to other things (like the virtues and social dynamics you disregard here.) Amoral, purely self-interested, perfectly rational and consistent people are mostly fictive, only useful as an abstraction, something most economists have known for a long time, though it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking real people act this way.

Also, you're forgetting that in a game where revival effects exist, those six deaths might only mean actual turnover of one or two characters; with the rest being revived.
Why throw good money after bad? We're already talking about selfish characters here. Why revive the dead? That's extra investment! Especially early on, when such things are not at all guaranteed. As people are so keen to note, raise dead doesn't come online until very late, relatively speaking, and others have noted the kinds of people who want combat to "matter" usually restrict and/or punish resurrection anyway!

Only if the deceased isn't revived; and even then, there's still the investment in the story as a whole, and in the party's part in it.
What investment? What story? There is no investment in the party for the dead characters! That's my whole point! The dead don't care about anything. They're dead. And didn't you just say you don't do "story as a whole"?

I think that if this is the fundamental issue that you are trying to address, a chat with your players is going to to do much more good than just trying to kill more of their characters.
If your players are behaving like this it is far more to do with them deciding to play murderhobo characters than the combat rules.

Outside of "Evil" games, that sort of behaviour seems to be more a symptom of lack of investment in a character, where they view advancement more as just getting loot rather than in-game character advancement.
Changing the rules so you get to take the player's characters away more often is not going to encourage them to emotionally invest into those characters more.
Thank you! You have made my point far better than I could.
 

DND_Reborn

The High Aldwin
One D&D has 10 levels of exhaustion. Each one adding -1 to a number of rolls. You die at 11.
Huh... funny, I haven't heard about that. Sounds like another idea from the past or stolen from message boards.

I know a long time ago we did you actually have levels of Exhaustion equal to your CON score and each level actually reduced your "temporary" CON score (resulting in lost HP max, etc.) and additional penalties if your CON dropped to 7 or lower. :devilish:
 

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