If you check my comment, I will show you my current Dying condition that I have been able to test on the field.
It's 80 % the one from XP to level 3, with a few things changed and actually used in a DND game :)
Enjoy
this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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Condition Dying
Not for NPCs, the goal is to keep players alive.
When hit points reach 0, the character drops Prone and becomes Dying
At the beginning of the round, we start with the Death saving throws.
Then, the character can either:
Move (prone = half movement). Cost: Free
Talking while dying. Cost = Free
Action. Cost = 3 levels of Exhaustion
Bonus Action. Cost = 1 level of Exhaustion
Reaction. Cost = 1 level of Exhaustion
It is not possible to get up.
Exhaustion: On the d20
1 = -1 on every d20
2 = -2 on every d20
......
9 = -9 on every d20
10 = death
Recovery **First ** shorts rest = - 1 Exhaustion Long rest = - 2 Exhaustion
Edits following comments :
so, the -1 exhaustion on short rests is only on the FIRST short rest that they use it on. They can't do it twice in a day. Also clarified the scaling. Love to you all
I'm telling you, just play Pathfinder 2e already. They have great dying rules that prevents up/down abuse with the wounded condition building on the dying condition to stop the up/down cheese seen in 5e.
I used to run 5e for years and also use to make all kinds of house rules and systems just like this to get it to run how I wanted it to because it doesn't do much outside of combat out of the box. I read through the PF2e rulebook and kicked myself for not switching sooner because they have a rule for damn near everything I would want to run and super balanced at the same time.
If I had more time, PF2 is on my list for a game. I do know a DM, I just don't have the time yet in my scheduling. But yeah, I'm trying PF2 one day if I live long enough.
That's addressing a totally different issue to what the above piece, which is about maintaining action and agency when a PC is knocked unconscious.
The up-down yo-yo of 5e is a problem but the frustration here is when combat rounds are taking a while, it's so boring to just make one roll every 40 minutes.
Interesting concept, but I just need to ask for some clarification before I can consider using it for my players. Are the Exhaustion points you use disconnected from the condition Exhaustion, where you get various negative effects until death at the 6th point? If I read the last line correctly, you get 10 points and you die? If they're not regular points of exhaustion, a player can just use an action to heal themselves with a potion or spell, remove themselves from combat. Then they just need a short and long rest and they're good to go. I think this might make them too powerful in the long run. If you use regular points of Exhaustion, you suddenly raise the stakes, while still keeping the player's ability to move half movement and talk. Otherwise you're indtroducing another value to keep track of that might raise more questions than solve problems. Can they be removed with a powerful enough healing spell/potion?
Keep the system, but use regular points of Exhaustion instead. You get one action that'll really mess you up, where you are able to heal yourself, but you suffer the consequences of it after. Now that seems exciting. Just my two cents.
Its my new Exhaustion system borrowed from one dnd. I always hated the 5th version of exhaustion, as its hard to remember every single point. So my system here replaces the old one. Where instead every d20 roll has a minus.
Thank you for elaborating. How'd the playtesting go? Also, you referred to a specific XP To Lvl 3 video, would you be ok with sharing the link, pretty please?
How to refuse such politeness ? Here it is my good sir :
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w_6fHrOUoXM
It went really well. The hardest part was putting my 10+ leveled players to 0 HP. After that its a straight buff to them. They can talk and move for free, the rest is optional. You could even have the rule for half the table and still working. Except for changing the exhaustion, but fuck I do not like the complexity of every stage of 5th exhaustion. It lacks simplicity.
In your penultimate point you lost me, can you explain more about why 9 = -9, etc?
At level 9 of exhaustion it means -9 to every d20 roll.
Thanks, I'm with you now
I have no idea what this means.
How does this interact with the existing rules for exhaustion that say you only lose one level of exhaustion per long rest? Do you have to track exhaustion from different sources separately? What is stopping the party from taking five one hour long short rests in one day to completely eradicate all exhaustion with little effort?
This is fairly broken: The dying character can just use their action or bonus action to heal themselves, teleport away, etc. and since the short rest rule makes exhaustion trivial to heal there is barely any risk of death or even a cost for going down.
I feel like this is an overly complex, not well-thought-out nor playtested "solution" trying to patch an issue that lies somewhere completely different. If your table is taking 30 minutes for a single round of combat, either you have way too many players at the table or someone doesn't know how to run their characters. It takes some time when you're just getting started out but eventually every player (and the DM running their NPCs) should be familiar with what their character is going to do in combat and most of it should flow quite automatically. Your players (and the DM) should be planning their move during the others' turns and visibly displaying an initiative tracker letting players know when they're up can encourage them to be ready on time. If someone is taking inordinately long, say their character is too indecisive to act and skip their turn, they'll shape up in less than 5 minutes. Ban phones at the table, seriously.
More great ideas to fix slow combat
I do like how your first sentence is "I have no idea what this means" and then follow up with more text saying how I'm wrong than my rule took.
If you were wondering, 1 level means -1 on your d20s.
That's because I take away the old system of exhaustion completely.
The short rest respite is only on the FIRST short rest of the day.
Yup. A player could take their bonus action to heal, get back up by themselves. Oh no, autonomy. For one level of exhaustion that is on you until the combat ends, making you worst at everything until your short rest if it's the first of the day, or long rest like 99 % of all problems.
You are right, I do play with people not as good at DND as me. I still play with them. Oh no.
Anything else to ask before dishing out a critic when you don't really understand it in the first place ? I'm honestly happy to talk, I would prefer with people asking before dishing out thought.
You're the one here advertising how much of a gigabrain move using your homebrew rules is, people are going to come with the assumption that it's ready to use and understandable and you're opening your creation to critique. People shouldn't have to play 20 questions to figure out how to use your revolutionary homebrew rule, thus it is perfectly valid to criticize vaquely written rules.
Then why not just say that instead of the mess you wrote? Literally "you deduct your 'exhaustion' level from your rolls". Also, which d20 rolls? Attack rolls, ability checks, saves, damage rolls, that one random roll your GM asks you to make to determine whether you run into a random encounter in the wilds, some of them or all of them? This is important so don't leave your readers quessing.
So let me get this straight, it has none of the effects of exhaustion nor is it cured nor accrued in any of the ways already defined in D&D 5E? Then why is it called exhaustion when it clearly has nothing do with an already existing concept with the same name? This is needlessly confusing. Call new concepts new names.
And how are your readers supposed to guess this if you don't write it out? There aren't supposed to be any hidden rules. Besides, if you make it work literally like long rests, why not just tack it only on long rests? Rules saying there's only one long rest in a day already exist, why not leverage that?
If your homebrew is supposedly ready for use, people should not need to ask. I'm not trying to be rude but honestly, this has a plenty of smells of a kind of "GMs first homebrew":
What if you rewrote all of this as simply "You can ignore the effects of being unconscious from being at 0 hp for one turn at the cost of one level of exhaustion"? You could leverage existing rules to a great degree and it would be easily understandable and digestible. It'd have minimal mechanical impact as people are almost invariably going to use their action to get more hp at which point they can just act normally. Dropping to 0 hp already renders you prone which already halves your speed or costs half your speed to get up, etc...
God dam. I know a lost cause when I read one. Let me use my megabrain to do the best thing now for it
Jesus Christ just play 3.5 if you're going to make it that complex.
Oh yeah. Playing an entire different system sounds way easier than having this in a file that you only ever read if you get to 0 hp.
That's literally what I'm saying - when you're adding this much complexity to dying alone (because nobody runs 5e with just the one piece of homebrew rules), it would actually be easier to just play a system with more crunch by default and a complete rules set. It is more work for players to have to ask you/for you to tell players about each of your homebrews than to just use a system that already has the rules you're looking for.
It's a lot harder to get your head around the first TTRPG you play than any after, so changing system really isn't a big deal.
Except its not complexity once you see it in action. Novody cares about that piece of info before reaching 0 hp, when you do need it you are in combat and have plenty of time to check it out, and the best part ? You can even skip it if you dont care for it.
I prefer to adapt a car that I like than to switch cars for a better result after a big time of work. But that is my preference. And if its not yours its perfectly fine too.
Lets go through the actual steps:
So not super complicated, but definitely much more complex that.... basically any other way of dying. When added to all your other homebrew rules it doesn't matter if nobody cares until they reach 0hp, because the flip side is that they have to learn another new rule once they reach 0hp.
Meanwhile though, dying has moved from a serious problem to a non-condition: there are some mild penalties for acting, but overall? You still have all your actions, just at a slightly slower, still costless, move speed. Players lose little for entering it, so are going to be much less inclined to avoid it, while monsters are now encouraged to double tap - it would be very stupid to walk away from a PC just because they've been knocked prone, even if their actions has an additional cost now.
You're adding elaborate "adaptations" to your reliant robin to stop it tipping over instead of just cutting your losses and buying a car with 4 wheels. Spending lots of your time on something doesn't make it better than what's already out there.
You can also just move and roleplay and nothing else
Go and reread your comments. Look at what you've actually been saying. Here you're reminding me it's actually more complex than I described, after claiming it's incredibly simple. In your past comments you flipped from "it's easier to modify a game than learn a new one" to "actually I like putting more work in than if I just got a game that works".
You're not actually arguing that there are any benefits to the rule, you're just flipping through positions trying to justify using it. Its perfectly fine to say that a system doesn't actually do what you want and to find a system that does - there are plenty of OSR games that are very similar to 5e while adding those extra edges you're looking for - but right now you're adding a bunch of extra complexity that is suitable for high crunch systems, not simple ones like 5e.
I'm mostly against switching systems when I like the one that I use but there are 2-3 things that I'm going to change to make it even better.
I do not want to learn an entire system because I want to dodge modifying the few things that are bad in 5th.
As for the rule, my dear friend, you completely missed why it exists in my game. The reason is simple to keep my players engaged and entertained even when they are at 0 hp. That's it. nothing more and nothing less. It's not because 5th has bad exhaustion (because I never used it in my game to begin with) and it's not because being unconscious is boring (when not using my sweet condition) that I'm going to spend hours and hours relearn an entire system.
I'm fine with 5th. I like it. I'm not going to change cars because I do not like the paint color. I'll just repaint it and enjoy it then.