You'd think. But based on other threads, that exhaustion at 0 HP leads to the death spiral, to be avoided at all costs!
What
@James Gasik is saying, I think, is that modding 5e to be "what I want/what my table wants" isn't often as easy as a couple of toggles. IME, those toggles either aren't well thought out, or they lead to these death spirals (apparently WOTC's designers never heard of that term, or they'd never had put exhaustion in the game
). I've tried to make 5e more "old school" according to my table's desires, and it wouldn't work without either 1) making 5e into an older edition, or 2) making it unrecognizeable. We realized that after a year and a half, and went back to an older edition. We're enjoying ourselves much more now, and we're happy to let others play 5e however they want.
Re: end states of combat. I would think combat, fighting something/anything, would be inherently dangerous. Ergo, there would be two basic states at the end: 1) players win or 2) monsters win (not counting one of the other side running, which has been established in other threads as to be impossible
), so we'll stick with 1 or2. But if player death isn't on the table every time they fight something, it defaults to 1 = players always win. Unless I'm missing something (and I don't count "players decide if they want to die, or players get captured (a lot), or other add-ons outside of the dice rolling and combat mechanics). Maybe I just don't see any other outcomes