Death's door part 2: Grit your teeth and risk it

Go to Part 1

What I was getting at in Part 1 was that in 5th edition, there is a huge buffer between fighting at full capacity, and being dead. That buffer is unconsciousness and death saves. While the idea of giving them a chance - a window for their allies to run in and patch them up - is appealing, swift and ranged healing spells completely trivialize that.

 "Whilst adding a death save increases the drama of going below zero hit points, in 4E & 5E this is also paired with easily accessable healing, meaning that non lethal unconsciousness is little more than an inconvenience." 
- Death & Dismemberment

If you simply wanted to limit the yo-yo effect, there are several simple things you could do, like not resetting death save failures, or giving exhaustion for falling unconscious. But I wanted to create a replacement rule that allowed players a chance to save their character's hide, while also adding more risk to falling to zero than is currently present in 5e. I ended up with two variants: one that gave the players a bit of narrative control, and one that embraced randomness. Although otherwise completely different mechanically, one thing they both share is making the act of bringing a zero hit-point character back into the fight a two-step process, instead of just one.

In this part, a variant rule for death and dying that puts the choice in the players' hands: either they can go down as normal - or they can suffer an increased risk of death to stay conscious. Perhaps it will be just enough for them to limp away out of danger to bandage their wounds, or to save the day and die a martyr in a blaze of glory?

Variant death rules: Grit your teeth

1) At 0 hit points, instead of healing causing you to instantly wake up, your state improves in steps. If you are dying, any of the following stabilizes you; or if you are stabilized but unconscious, brings you to consciousness at 1 hit point:

• You receive any healing.
• A creature tends to you by using an action to either spend one use of a healing kit, or to make a successful DC 10 Medicine check.
• You gain a total of three death saving successes. (only applicable while dying)

2) Death saving throws are made at the end of a creature’s turn, rather than the start.

3) When taking damage that reduces you to 0 hit points, you can choose to fight unconsciousness while potentially making your injuries worse. If you decide to do so, you remain conscious though dying, and immediately suffer the following effects: you lose concentration, suffer one level of exhaustion, and become weakened. While weakened:

• You have disadvantage on all rolls, including death saving throws, which you still have to make as usual (at the end of your turns).
• Any spell you cast has a 1 in 6 chance of failing to take effect. The spell slot is expended, but materials are not consumed. You can still concentrate on spells if you succeed in casting them.
• At the start of each of your turns, you can decide whether to fight on, or to fall unconscious. If you fall unconscious for any reason while weakened, you are no longer weakened (thus no longer having disadvantage on death saves).
• Whenever you take damage while weakened, you have to make the choice again, suffering an additional level of exhaustion and losing concentration if you choose to remain conscious.
• If you become stabilized, you are no longer weakened.

What do you think? How would you choose? In the next part: leaving it up to chance with a random table and variable effects.


Go to Part 3 (soon)