NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Sigil" data-source="post: 9461991" data-attributes="member: 2013">Since I'm someone who is happy to steal from multiple sources, when I find a rule that does the job, I steal it for my games.If you prefer to have an impactful downside for hitting 0 hp, I would advocate stealing the "Wounded" rule from PF2E to put some downside to going to zero, at least as a start. Here's how I would modify from PF2E as written for use in 5E.If your hit points reach 0, you are unconscious and gain the condition "dying 1" (The "dying" condition always has a number after it).If you take damage while you are already dying, increase your dying condition by 1.A critical hit against you while you are dying increases your dying condition by 1 (in addition to the increase from taking damage).At the end of each round, if you have the "dying" condition you must make a Death save.If you fail a death save, increase your dying condition by 1*.If you ever hit "dying 4" you immediately die.If you make a Death save, reduce your dying condition by 1.If your dying condition is reduced to 0 following a Death save or if your hit points are raised above 0, you lose the "dying" condition but gain the "wounded" condition instead with a value of 1 (if you already have the "wounded" condition, raise the value by 1).If you ever gain the "dying" condition, you add your current "wounded" condition to the dying level.You lose the wounded condition after either (1) a long rest or (2) being brought to full HP by any means followed by a short rest.This introduces risk in going down a couple of times; for example, if my fighter hits 0 HP and gets "dying 1" - then the cleric slaps a Cure Wounds to take the fighter up to 5 HP. The fighter is now "wounded 1." The next round the fighter gets whacked again and drops to 0 HP - he's now "dying 2." Again, a heal spell brings the fighter back to positive HP and the fighter is "wounded 2." A couple of rounds later, the fighter takes another hit and is "dying 3." A single failed death save at this point will mean the death of the fighter. Fortunately the healer is quick and brings the fighter back to positive HP a third time. The fighter is now "wounded 3" - and if the fighter's HP ever drop below 0 again prior to full heal and/or rest, immediately the condition is "dying 4" - which means "dead." No death saves, no nothing. But then, healing has already let the fighter cheat death thrice, so... maybe retreat first? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />* Note that you gain dying 1 when you drop to 0 HP or below. Three failed death saves means your condition will progress to dying 2, then dying 3, then dying 4 at which point you die. So you can't die any faster on your first knockdown than under current rules... and while it does make it possible to bleed out in the face of three successes (think "fail > dying 2, "fail > dying 3", "succeed > dying 2", "succeed > dying 1", repeat fail/fail/succeed/succeed ad naseum) I think the fact that it lets you fail three times and live (provided you succeeded at least once) offsets that.Personally, I find that mathematically, this is a tiny bit of downside overall (only comes into play after the character goes down for the second or third time), but leads to situations where players that have dropped a couple of times are very much in favor of a tactical retreat ("live to fight another day") as the risk for being dropped again is heightened each time.</blockquote>

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