D&D 5E Reorganized Exhaustion Chart?

[CubicsRube]

Coroc i think that's a house rule. I don't remember a rule about saving to remove exhaustion in core.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Now THAT is a very intriguing idea! I hadn't thought of that. But it makes for an interesting decision point for each player as they have to decide what is and what isn't important to their characters.

I think that were I to go with this idea though... I'd probably make this chart arrangement for each PC as part of their character generation. So rather than letting each player rearrange the chart each time they drop to 0 HP (and thus try and min-max every single situation and slow the game down)

It doesn't take long. Fundamentally it's a choice between 2 or 3 things, and most of the time it's pretty obvious which one to take based on current circumstances and your character. Plotting it out ahead of time just seems like another thing to keep track of.

 

[Gadget]

I've often thought that the reason why the ability check penalty comes into play first is that the devs wanted to avoid too much of 'death spiral' too soon (even thought that's basically what the exhaustion levels are). Level one does not really penalize combat ability directly, and therefore survivability. I've often thought about adding a level (or two) of exhaustion to the effects of some of the weaker high level necromancy spells to beef them up, but it really does not have much of an effect on the combat when a group of orcs/knights have a level of exhaustion.

I also have noticed that is harder to recover from exhaustion than it is from death in the core rules (Revivify, being a third level spell vs Greater Restoration being a 5th level spell). That is, of course, barring rest

 

[CubicsRube]

" help me! My husband just died!"
"Not a problem ma'am, we'll get him on his feet in a jiffy!"


"Help me! My huband is tired!"
"...theres nothing we can do. I'm so sorry!"