D&D (2024) How many of you would implement the drop to 0 HP, get 1 level of exhaustion house rule?

[Kobold Avenger]

It seems like exhaustion is the -1 to all rolls per level of exhaustion that it was in UA at some point. And I know some people here have certainly thought of having such a house rule, if exhaustion was stacking -1's.

 

[Parmandur]

It seems like exhaustion is the -1 to all rolls per level of exhaustion that it was in UA at some point. And I know some people here have certainly thought of having such a house rule, if exhaustion was stacking -1's.

It is interesting: I'd want to see the final Exhaustion rules.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I already do it. My last several campaigns I replaced the 3 Failed Death Saves with the Exhaustion chart (my re-ordered version). You drop to 0 HP, every failed death save gives you a level of Exhaustion... reach Level 6 and you die. It's worked absolutely fine. And most likely I'm going to continue to use my death saves / Exhaustion chart even with the 5E24 rules (if they have changed how Exhaustion works.)

 

[Blue]

Don't reach for Exhaustion, it is the wrong mechanic. It's an existing and underused track that seems like it would be a good fit, but reflection on the nature of it shows it is the wrong tool for the job, and inflict a long term issue on someone who is likely not at fault. And, it actively encourages a selfishness of play that I find opposite of what I want at my table.

D&D is a team game. A character going down is rarely their sole fault, it's a team failure. A tank that was too good at their job of blocking all the foes and took too many hits so they go down. Or a tank that wasn't as good and let a foe get to a low AC & HP member of the party. A cleric that prioritized healing one party member over another and it was the wrong choice. Or just bad luck on getting critted or some failed saves. Having some sort of detriment to whack-a-mole healing (which is intentional in 5e) I can see. But having it last all day (or multiple) affecting one player when they may not have had a lot to do with them going down is punitive.

Third, front line is a valid and needed niche. Being willing to get hit and be in the fray, even if it's a heavily armored cleric who isn't using melee, is a definite thing in D&D. But, as the ones getting attacked the most they are the ones most likely go down to when luck runs poorly. So you are punishing a player for making a choice to play a character that protects others. The melee battlemaster and the archer battlemaster are just as resilient, but one will be targeted a heck of a lot more.

We have a penalty that only goes away once per long rest, but frontliners can get it more than once a combat. They fall, get Healing Word, and then are dropped again. Healing from zero is intentional design paradigm, as the game is supposed to be fun and making players sit out as a penalty is boring, especially in combat which is mechanically heavy so it takes a long time. Yet the way it interacts with the designer-intentional heal-from-zero can make it stack up quickly. So they can accumulate and accumulate throughout an adventure, only dropping by the smallest amount (-1) on a day they completely avoid dropping at all.

So Exhaustion gives inappropriate penalties, for a punitively long period, to someone who likely doesn't deserve it, and unjustly penalizes a class of characters that protect others and therefore penalizes play that I want to see (teamwork and selflessness).

Sicne heal-from-zero is intentional and not something we want to remove, there's no reason to have it in the first place. So it's a bunch of problems, to "solve" an intended benefit. It's there's no upside and plenty of downside.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I kinda want to try 1 level of 2024 exhaustion per failed death save...

 

[ezo]

We used to do a level of exhaustion at 0 hp and it worked fine.

Now I am more in favor of 0 hp = DEAD, so no need to track adding levels of exhaustion.

 

[cbwjm]

Considering how bad the current exhaustion system can be, I don't think I'd want to include it as a punishment for hitting 0. Played in a game recently which had us get multiple levels of exhaustion and it was punishing.

 

[mellored]

D&D is a team game. A character going down is rarely their sole fault, it's a team failure. A tank that was too good at their job of blocking all the foes and took too many hits so they go down. Or a tank that wasn't as good and let a foe get to a low AC & HP member of the party.

You could make it group exhaustion then.

Every failed death saving throw, a random PC gets exhaustion. Not necessarily the same person.

Alternatively, tanks can reduce a level of exhaustion on a short rest. Or ignore their first X levels of exhaustion.

 

[Stormonu]

I'd be willing to give it a try and see how it works.

Frankly though, if characters are dropping to 0 hp enough to consider implementing this, I think I'd be stepping back and looking to see if there's a bigger problem going on that needs to be addressed.

 

[J-H]

Yes, I use it to incentivize NOT going to 0. It works reasonably well.