D&D 5E Whack-a-mole gaming or being healed from 0 hp

[Lanefan]

As a simulationist, I really like the implications of your variant. Don't want to insert it into my existing campaign, but would consider stealing it for a new one. I like the fact that it makes it possible for people to bleed out over long periods of time, and I like the fact that, as you say, it makes sense to just leave unconscious characters/monsters alone until the combat is won, and then you go around cutting throats if you are so inclined.

The one modification I would make, if I were to using this, is to have a narrow band of HP (say, 0 to -Con) where you are incapacitated but still conscious until you fail at least on death save. This supports the narrative trope of e.g. finding a wounded warrior who gives you information before he dies, unless you heal him.

Another mechanic here is that if someone goes to or below 0 h.p. (and negative h.p. are essential) they need to roll under their Con. modified by their current h.p. on a d20 in order to remain conscious. We've been doing this for ages.

Another variant to consider is that if someone goes to or below 0 h.p. they can only be cured to - let's say 10% of their usual total - before a long rest. If while still incurable this way they go to or below 0 h.p. again their "curable lid" is one (or two?) points lower; and if the curable lid ever gets to 0 the character dies on the spot due to accumulated wounds (if not dead already, of course). Yes this means a character can be down and back up a few times in a fight (or over the course of a day) but one hopes they'd be more cautious in order to avoid this death spiral.

Another argument in favour of negative h.p. is knowing how mangled a corpse is plays into whether it can be Raised or whether something more powerful is required.

Lan-"I'm an expert on death - I've been there and back again far too many times"-efan

 

[S'mon]

This is a cool variant but doesn't pop up healing still work? Say a fighter got knocked down to -5 hp, then he gets healed for 10. Is he still down but stable or back in the fight with 5 hp in your system?

In that case he'd be back in the fight - at higher levels -5 represents more a KO than a critical injury. If he was at -40 and got 41 healing he would likewise be conscious again, but that would represent a more serious injury and lots of healing.
I also use the slow healing variant where you only recover surges/dice, not hp, from a long
rest, so it can take several days to heal up to full. Still not totally realistic, but it doesn't have the immersion-breaking potential of 4e style hp recovery.

 

[KarinsDad]

It's worth noting that at 0hp you drop prone and also drop any items you're holding. If it bothers you, you could certainly rule that the character can only pick up either his sword or his shield as part of his free "manipulate an item" action.

Shields are not held items. They take an action to take off.

 

[KarinsDad]

e) <add your suggestion here>

e) Don't bother with this. PCs do not drop often enough for this to matter. And using a cure spell or a stabilization check requires resources.

 

[delericho]

Shields are not held items. They take an action to take off.

Good spot. That's what I get for reading just the description of the item rather than checking the associated table.

 

[MarkB]

The CRPG Dragon Age Origins used an Injuries system - any time a character dropped in combat, they'd incur a random injury that could not be removed through normal healing magic.

Injuries were specific conditions such as Concussion or broken limbs, each of which imposed a specific penalty. In D&D terms, these could be modelled through Disadvantage to certain checks or saves, for instance.

Once injured, a character could not naturally remove an Injury except through a long rest. It might be reasonable to allow magical healing to remove one Injury per short rest.

 

[neobolts]

e) <add your suggestion here>
-

What I like about 5e healing is that it gets people back in the action and keeps them still relevant to the fight (being a sidelined PC is no fun and being a crippled PC might feel un-heroic at times). If you feel a change is needed, something like the no-reset death saves is better than a status effect.

As for being cut to zero being too light of a penalty in general, the threat of a coup de grâce looms large in my games. My PCs drop everything to force feed a potion or cast a healing spell when a player goes down.

 

[DEFCON 1]

WOW! Just...WOW. This...sounds incredibly punitive compared to the default game. Perhaps I've just had some particularly dangerous DMs, but I'm pretty sure I would have had at least two dead PCs by now, and no 4e campaign I've played has managed to make it past the first few levels! I'm genuinely curious--how did this tend to shake out in play? I'd expect a pretty long list of dead PCs, but...well, different rules can foster different behavior.

Heh... you are absolutely correct. And I did that on purpose.

For one, I wanted a Far Realm game to have actual longer-term consequences for my players, so in addition to the punitive damage rules above, I added Corruption and Sanity rules as well. So basically the entire area around Firestorm Peak was so infused with Far Realm energy, any time someone was healed from injury they had to make Corruption rolls or else their healing might start producing body mutation (one player had a third hand starting to grow out of their torso for example), and any time a player saw something maddening they had to make Sanity rolls or else begin to go mad (at the end of the campaign, our telepath character lost her sight due to hysterical blindness-- not that it really mattered because she could still "see" through her familiar's eyes.)

Did all of this make things more difficult and deadly for the players? Absolutely. But this campaign was done after a long three-year 4E campaign using the default 4E rules, and I wanted to do something different.

But here's the thing... in truth, based upon how I DM and the players at my table... the punitive rules did not actually make things much worse for them. My table was of 8 players, of which at least 6 were usually at any night's game... so there were ALWAYS characters at the table that could trigger healing surges. On top of that... I had made it explicitly clear at the top of the campaign that unlike the previous one... all of the "ranged" characters who usually remained completely out of the damage from the fight (and invariably whined when they actually DID get attacked in the previous game)... had BETTER set up and "take one for the team" occasionally by drawing attacks from the monsters. Because if they relied on the tank and couple melee characters to absorb all the damage, they'd be the ones to always drop to 0, run the risk of a quick death, and more importantly start mutating after being healed. And the last thing the ranged PC would want was a tank whose Max HP was at their Bloodied level and whose arms began to have small eyes and mouths growing on them like some gibbering mouther.

It was a damn fun and interesting game, and broke a lot of my "ranged character" players of some bad habits.

 

[cmad1977]

It's a non issue.

 

[jodyjohnson]

One of the ground-floor principles behind the design of 5th edition is that:
a) one default set of rules will not be perfect for every table
b) corollary: some rules will be issues with some tables,
c) rules people don't like can be changed because the default rules will be basic, fast, flexible

For some tables, this style of play is not wanted.