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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 6709779" data-attributes="member: 12731">You've correctly described that there is no reward without risk.But you haven't countered the argument that this is still worth the risk.Take that Ettin critical for instance, it's a great example why this tactic is so good. The Fighter is at 1 hp. Unless the Ettin does absolutely maximum damage (37) the only effect from the attack will be... that the fighter drops to zero.That's probably 25 points of damage that simply... evaporates. 25 points of damage, negated. Automatically. For free! That's four healing potions saved. Or two second level cure light wounds. And more importantly: instead of spending two full actions on healing that damage, all the cleric needs to do... is spend another Healing Word to bring that fighter back into the fight!I am not saying you're wrong when you say "the Ettin can instakill the fighter" or "the Ettin can simply move over to attack the Cleric". I am saying, however, a minmaxer evaluates the odds of those things happening... and then still pursues this tactic.That is because what you're not taking into account. Chances are the Ettin misses the fighter with his first attack. Fighters often have high AC. And what about the cleric. Those cure spells could (and should) be used for things like Hold Person, which means there's a chance of denying even more damage from the enemy side.In contrast: what if the Ettin stays to bash the fallen fighter. He has advantage on his attacks. His troglodyte allies get advantage on their attacks. Hits mean automatic death save failures. If they manage to actually kill the fighter, the cleric must spend at least a third level spell (revivify). Just as it's a much better tactic for the players to let the "zero hp" rule do most of the healing for them, it's a much better tactic for the monsters to have the auto-strike-on-fallen rule do its best to negate that advantage.In the end, neither players nor monsters gain much.But the players and the game have suffered. Now everyone is out to murder you, and not just defend themselves. To me, that's a big shift in playing atmosphere. And I don't like it.That's why I'm adding negative hit points to the game: to allow monsters to abstain from killing the fallen without that making whack-a-mole a superior tactic! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I'm sure there are more ways to accomplish this, but this thread often falls into the trap of criticizing the negative hp suggestion for the wrong reason. I'm not out to make things worse for the players - quite the opposite: the change is there to not make me kill off fallen player characters. This is supposed to make life easier on the players!</blockquote>

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