Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Thank_Dog Aug 20, 2014 3:33:47	Someone brought this idea up in another thread (I can't be bothered finding it again because I can't remember which thread it was or who said it and the search function on this site is atrocious) and the more I think about it, the more I like it.   It's very basic. Whenever you're character is reduced to 0 hit points, they suffer an exhaustion level. Other than a restoration spell, the only way to get rid of this is to have a long rest and some food and drink. So if they drop to 0 several times before then, they keep increasing their exhaustion level with some pretty nasty cumulative effects.   I've never been too keen on the yo-yo effect but at the same time I'm not a huge fan of wounds systems either. This seems to strike a nice balance between the two extremes.
#2 DrDragonlance Aug 20, 2014 12:36:04	Level 3 of Exhaustion is Disadvantage on Saving Throws.   Whenever you start a turn with 0 HPs, you have to make a Death Saving Throw.   If you do this house rule, you would give the PC Disadvantage on Death Saving Throws.   Somehow I do not think that is a good idea.
#3 Thank_Dog Aug 20, 2014 12:54:19	I think it's a brilliant idea.   If you've dropped to 0 three times before you long rest, then your character deserves to die.
#4 UnknownMourner Aug 20, 2014 15:01:27	It just kicks people who are already down. It's a poor get poorer rule. Are you having problems with PCs in your game snapping right back up so often it's hurting the game?   Perhaps 1 level if they've failed 2 death saves in one KO?   While I know "roles" are downplayed in this edition it still hurts some classes more.   If you institude this you might add a slap on the wrist level at the top of the exhaustion progression.
#5 CaptainPicard Aug 21, 2014 7:55:56	This will lead to the game slowing to a crawl as players back out of dungeons repeatedly and take multiple long rests to raise their exhaustion levels, wasting a lot of time. Alternatively, the DM will construct a situation where such a thing cannot be done, leading to players continuing on with severely hampered characters.   The problem with this is, everyone has bad die rolls. Yes, sometimes players do something dumb and it winds up getting their characters shot, but most of the time, if someone goes down, it's a function of the monsters co-ordinating their attacks and rolling well, at least from my experience. Players sometimes get frustrated by a series of bad dice, for example if there is three turns of a single Goblin beating up their tough Dwarf Fighter because they cannot roll above 4 and the Goblin continues to get 15 or higher. However, the fact that they CAN bounce back, and do better next time, keeps the player interested in the game and motivated.   This reminds me of how ability score damage was handled in 3.x, where it could take days for a character to recover from it, especially at low levels. You could again say they deserve to waste that time, however I remember a level 1 Paladin having her strength lowered to around 4 by a giant spider that bit her and rolled some high poison damage combined with her failing her saves. That's really just dice, and she was the character who should have been taking that attack from the spider. The end result was that she was basically incapable of doing anything for several days, in-game, as the party could not stop where they were.
#6 RedSiegfried Aug 21, 2014 8:50:41	I strongly dislike fatigue/insanity/ability damage rules in RPGs.  They're just a second way to kill the protagonists when targeting their hp/life is too inconvenient.   Having two pools of hit points, either of which can incapacitate the heroes, is just more bookkeeping and another way to shaft the players, especially when in most games of these types the rules never seem to apply to the bad guys.
#7 Goober4473 Aug 21, 2014 14:03:01	I've found that a penalty on 0 hit points works well because it means it's still scary to drop to 0 hit points even if I don't have monsters brutally coup de grace all PCs that drop. I've had a lot of instances of characters dropping two or three times in a fight and getting up again each tiem from healing, and the options are usually to play the monsters dumb, which leaves little tension if there's any kind of healer around, or play them smart and straight up kill PCs, which I think is a little too much tension.   But if the penalty for dropping lasts too long, you end up with the problems others have outlined above. I think this would work better if you could remove a level of exhaustion with a short rest. I use a wound system, and most common wounds are healed by a short rest and aren't completely debilitating, and it works pretty well. Being at low hit points is tense even in an otherwise fairly safe situation with a healer nearby, but it generally doesn't completely screw a character over.
#8 Psikerlord Aug 21, 2014 20:32:20	Thank_Dog wrote: