Defeat in D&D is often only a temporary setback. One that happens fairly often and is immediately rectified with a casual display of magical healing, or a more rushed and terrified casting of "Revivify" if your DM is the kind of person who uses Coup de Grace rules for increased narrative lethality.
Dropping to 0 hit points is, among the older generation, something to be terrified of. Simply because we're so very used to 0= Dead or -10 = Dead. The new 5e Death Saves system mitigates that significantly, and that's not a -bad- thing at all. Though I think there's enough worry that it might be too lenient. Particularly when a player is downed in a climactic moment, only to stand up the next round with 1d8+5 hit points as if nothing had happened.
And there are few among us who jump with glee at the idea of whipping out the "Injury" table to permanently maim one of our player characters (Not none, but few)
So how can we give Defeat, but not Death, it's own weight?
The Exhaustion rules of the LevelUp system seem ripe for use!
Now being defeated has consequences even outside of actually dying. They're not entirely debilitating, as Long Rests and Restorative Magic can remove exhaustion, but they're certainly something the party would -feel- when that player pulls themself off the ground to return to the fight. Causing the Failed Saves to apply more Exhaustion also improves the urgency of restoring a character from 0hp, as each round can make them less and less effective when they are restored.
Further: if a character drops multiple times in the same fight, there's a nonzero chance they'll die from stacked exhaustion, separate from failed deathsaves. This gives players an increased incentive (as those stacks grow) to try and escape. But if they don't make that decision fast enough... it may no longer be an option!
And finally, by using both Fatigue and Strife we can model different types of defeat. A mental or emotional defeat bears a different sting than a physical one, with it's own narrative weight.
Dropping to 0 hit points is, among the older generation, something to be terrified of. Simply because we're so very used to 0= Dead or -10 = Dead. The new 5e Death Saves system mitigates that significantly, and that's not a -bad- thing at all. Though I think there's enough worry that it might be too lenient. Particularly when a player is downed in a climactic moment, only to stand up the next round with 1d8+5 hit points as if nothing had happened.
And there are few among us who jump with glee at the idea of whipping out the "Injury" table to permanently maim one of our player characters (Not none, but few)
So how can we give Defeat, but not Death, it's own weight?
The Exhaustion rules of the LevelUp system seem ripe for use!
Now being defeated has consequences even outside of actually dying. They're not entirely debilitating, as Long Rests and Restorative Magic can remove exhaustion, but they're certainly something the party would -feel- when that player pulls themself off the ground to return to the fight. Causing the Failed Saves to apply more Exhaustion also improves the urgency of restoring a character from 0hp, as each round can make them less and less effective when they are restored.
Further: if a character drops multiple times in the same fight, there's a nonzero chance they'll die from stacked exhaustion, separate from failed deathsaves. This gives players an increased incentive (as those stacks grow) to try and escape. But if they don't make that decision fast enough... it may no longer be an option!
And finally, by using both Fatigue and Strife we can model different types of defeat. A mental or emotional defeat bears a different sting than a physical one, with it's own narrative weight.
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