Presenting the Only Good Encumbrance System for 5e

Edit: It turns out most people just want the rules and not the editorial - If you don't want to know why you should use encumbrance and will just take my word for it, skip to the last section, or see the printable PDF of the rules here and the new inventory sheet here.

Mundane rules lead to weighty choices

For games to really make you immerse yourself in the world, and to creatively use your tools to "attack" things that don't have statblocks, i.e. problems and obstacles, some semblance of verisimilitude is required.* Even if the mechanical representation of verisimilitude is highly abstracted and streamlined, instead of a 100% accurate simulation, then as long as they make players care about the environment a little bit, the rules are successful.

If characters need to eat each day, for example, they might need to think before charging into the vast desert. They might have to decide whether to hire a ranger, find a certain spell, eat their own mounts... That means thinking about the people, animals etc. of their environment. Do you butcher the trusty steed that has served you for the entire campaign? Do you take all the treasure, or do you carry more food and rope? Do you prepare a non-combat spell for once? Do you negotiate a truce with the monstrous humanoids for a place to eat and rest? Do you discard food or treasure to distract the enemy and escape?

Choices! Choices are the essence of the game. If the players are not making meaningful choices, then they're not playing, they're just chatting and listening to the DM's story. More choices per session means more play is happening. (But note, again, that they have to be MEANINGFUL choices. Anything that is not meaningful can be skipped, condensed, fast-forwarded, dealt with in a montage. If every shop has the same prices and none of the shopkeepers are my character's long lost brother, then I don't need to act out finding a shop and purchasing some lamp oil. Meaningful choices have consequences.)

Of course, the player-invented subgoals that arise from thinking of the environment as a real and organic world may veer the game off the railroad tracks. But, believe it or not, it's actually more fun that way. The game becomes more like a real adventure story with sidetreks and surprises, rather than a string of arena combats.

* 'Verisimilitude' instead of 'realism' so that nobody complains that dragons are not realistic.

Mundane rules unburden the DM

Some people believe that things concerned with verisimilitude are boring, and thus they don't need rules. But in fact, the reason that those things most of all need good rules is to prevent the implementation of verisimilitude from becoming a bore at the table. It is the game designer's job to make the player-facing procedures for tracking time, light, weight, and resources so quick and easy that they will actually use them and not throw them in the trash after ten minutes because it's a chore (and the benefits haven't become apparent yet). If the DM, being equipped with good rules, doesn't have to constantly make on-the-spot rulings about this or that mundane factor, then they are free to make more rulings on exciting and fantastic things. Like jumping onto flying monsters or whatever.

The game designer has to do all the hard up-front work of abstraction, making spreadsheets and playtesting to boil down mundane considerations to their essentials so that they have smooth and balanced procedures later on. The other option is for everyone to just say "fuck it" and not think about such things for a moment, run from combat to combat carrying 20 warhammers, spend limitless time on any task because they never have to eat, and so on. I'm not saying that's badwrongfun. But if the rules do their job, then you have the option of trying something different.

Encumbrance as it exists in 5e

Speaking of playtesting... D&D 5e has optional rules for different levels of encumbrance (PHB p. 176). I'm going to make a claim right now that those rules have never been playtested. Literally no one in the world uses those rules, but I believe that even the creators of the game have never attempted to use them. They're so off-kilter, I don't think anyone has even put them into a spreadsheet to check out how the numbers turn out... But I have done just that. You will be enraptured to know that a Paladin's starting equipment of 127 lbs. puts them well into lightly encumbered status, and at 70% of the way into heavily encumbered. That's a 10' speed reduction, BEFORE picking up any loot. And that's assuming an 18 Strength, which is the highest possible for a starting character. So I'm going to say the numbers were asspulled and never checked, because nobody cared. Which makes you wonder why they bothered to print a "weight" column onto the item list.

Luckily, I have solved this problem by creating actually good rules for encumbrance that are based on abstract slots - one item per slot, most of the time. I even did the spreadsheet calculations for you: using these rules, characters start only 40-70% of the way to lightly encumbered (instead of potentially 140-190% as using the misguided rules from the Player's Handbook). There have been similar slot- or stone-based systems in other games, and some fan-made ones for 5e, but the balance maths on those was rather off and they were still far more detailed than necessary. These rules, however, are complete and perfectly balanced. They are the only encumbrance rules you will ever need for 5e. They take even less time than tracking your spell slots, so you no longer have an excuse to ignore encumbrance, plus they fit on one single page. I even included a ready-made inventory sheet which doubles as a cheat sheet for the rules. You're welcome.

Read the full rules below or in a printable one-page PDF here. See the PDF of the inventory sheet/cheat sheet here.

---

Variant rules for 5e: Slot-based encumbrance

You can carry up to 10 + your Strength score in item slots without penalty. Above that limit, you are lightly encumbered, and your speed becomes 20’. While encumbered, racial speed modifiers have no effect, and you cannot benefit from any passive bonus to speed such as Unarmored Movement, although you can still benefit from temporary effects such as spells.

If carrying more than 20 + their Strength score, you are heavily encumbered, decreasing your speed further to 10’, and giving you disadvantage on attack rolls, Dexterity and Strength saving throws, and all physical ability checks.

If you are carrying more than 30 + your Strength score, you are over-encumbered, and your speed becomes 0'.

The first 10 item slots in your list, plus up to 100 coins or gems, are considered to be on your belt, pockets, or otherwise easily available. The rest are in your backpack, and cannot be retrieved without using an action to dig through the backpack.

• Normal items take up one slot: one-handed weapons, shields, arcane foci, lanterns, waterskins, flasks of oil, bedrolls, hunting traps, quivers (with up to 20 ammunition), etc.

• Light items can be bundled up to 5 items in one slot: torches, rations, small vials, daggers, light hammers, handaxes.

• Coins and gems can be bundled up to 100 in one slot.

• Heavy items take up two slots: weapons with the heavy property, as well as tents, chests and ladders.

• Medium armor takes up 2 slots, and heavy armor 4 slots.

• Tiny items such as paper, quills, and anything that can be fit in your palm does not count towards encumbrance, nor do empty bags, nor does worn clothing, light armor or jewelry.

For races with the Powerful Build racial trait, all encumbrance thresholds increase by 10 slots. For larger creatures, encumbrance thresholds increase by 10 slots for each size category above Medium. For a creature pulling a vehicle, its load counts as 10 slots less per each axle of the vehicle.

Slots threshold	Speed category	Speed		Disadvantage on physical rolls
-	Normal	Normal*		-
Strength score + 11	Lightly encumbered	20’		-
Strength score + 21	Heavily encumbered	10’		Yes
Strength score + 31	Over-encumbered	0’		Yes

*Normal speed depends on your race, as well as passive speed bonuses. Race and passive speed bonuses have no effect on speed while encumbered.

---

Death's door part 5: Three Strikes And You’re Dead

Go to Part 4

Six months since I last wrestled with the death & dying rules in D&D 5e, having played some 5e and some LotFP in the meantime, the time has come to start yet another 5e campaign. Which means I am once again wrestling in my mind with the death & dying rules, probably my least favourite part of 5e.

My previous attempts to solve the problem are unsatisfactory, and that is even more clear looking back at them through the separation of time. To be totally honest, none of the rule variants have been playtested. Part of the reason for founding this blog was to have a place to write down these ideas for potential solutions to problems, in a cleanly edited format. This allows getting them off my mind, taking a step back to judge them and possibly getting some external feedback, and only then iterate, playtest, and iterate.

The problems with the variants that I can see are complexity, and difficulty of balancing. A good rule shouldn’t take a dozen or more bullet points to lay out. And the knockout table, while tense and fun, is impossible to balance. A random table with not only many different kinds of consequences with variable probabilities, but also with a dynamic probability that scales with the amount of damage taken? That is an equation with far too many variables.

So while I think those ideas did solve the problems I set out to solve, they didn’t satisfy the criteria of simplicity and balance. And thus, I’m attempting to solve the same problem once again. I was inspired by this post by Eric Diaz at Methods & Madness. He suggests a system where you have three boxes to tick representing three different status effects, ticking one at a time, and a character being dead when all three boxes are ticked. However, the rules presented are undeveloped. I present my own adaptation of the idea for 5e below.

---

Variant death rules for 5e: Three Strikes

When you are reduced to 0 hit points, you fall prone, lose concentration, and you must make a death saving throw (10+ is a success, 1 and 20 are not special). On a failure, you suffer one of the following conditions of your choice that you are not already suffering from: bleeding out, weakened, or knocked out. If you take any damage while at 0 hit points, you automatically suffer the effects of a failed death saving throw.

Bleeding out. You must make a death saving throw at the start of each of your turns.

Weakened. You have disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks. If you cast a spell, you must make a death saving throw after casting it.

Knocked out. You are unconscious (see PHB p. 292). This condition ends after 1 hour.

Death. If you have all three conditions at the same time, you die. You also die instantly if excess damage at 0 hit points equals or exceeds your hit point maximum.

Healing at 0 hit points. If an effect would heal you or otherwise stabilize you, remove one of these conditions at a time with the following priority: first bleeding out, then weakened, then knocked out. You cannot gain hit points until all of these conditions have been removed.

---

Rationale

You will notice the rules are relatively lenient. You get a save at 0 HP before suffering any conditions, and you only suffer one failure from taking a hit, even critical hits. This is intended, in order to solve one of the original problems in 5e: you’re unconscious a lot (not fun), but you almost never die (not tense). Here, those probabilities are pushed in the opposite directions.

Although you're less likely to become unconscious or start dying, it is far more difficult to stop the process in the middle of battle: instead of a single heal getting you up and running as usual, each heal now just removes one failure-tick. Emergency room-style situations where you're racing with death to resuscitate someone should happen more often now. Even after removing all ticks and bringing you to consciousness, you are at 0 hit points, so taking damage means an automatic death save failure. After all, one of the goals with these houserules was to make retreats more of a consideration, instead of every battle being one to the bitter end. Thus, these rules are more fitting for a sandboxy campaign where getting out of there and going somewhere else instead is an option. If you are playing a plot-based railroad where every encounter is mandatory, these may not work for you.

The element of player choice introduces some strategy. Do you take a hit to your combat capability and attempt to flee? Do you grit your teeth and keep fighting at full strength through the pain, but risk dying - going down in a blaze of glory to save your comrades? Or do you fall unconscious on the ground? Well, the last one of these is clearly the worst option. However, consider that different enemies behave differently. Some intelligent foes may always prioritize the greatest threat, thus leaving you alone when you’re lying motionless. Some, like zombies, may keep clawing at the closest fleshy thing. And some animals looking for a meal may just try to drag you back to their lair and avoid the other threats. A good DM should always roleplay the enemy’s tactics, and you should take that into consideration when choosing how you go down.

These houserules have not been playtested, but will be in the coming weeks. If it is found that they are too lenient and no one ever (almost) dies, the difficulty will be tuned upwards by making automatic failures more common, or by increasing the target number of death saves, or adding critical death save failures. Or maybe it would be fun if dashing while weakened would cause you to fall prone at the end of your move - a bit of risk-and-reward for chase situations? We shall see.

Simple jousting rules for 5e

   Attacks. Each jouster wields a shield (+2 AC if proficient) and a lance (1d12, use Strength for attack and damage rolls). On each pass, each jouster rolls an attack with their lance.
   Hits. If a jouster is hit, they must make a brace check (see below) with a DC equal to the damage taken. On a failed check, they are unhorsed and lose the joust.
   Brace check. A brace check is a Strength (Animal Handling) check.
   Initiative. Attacks happen simultaneously, and it is possible for two jousters to unhorse each other.
   Rules of the match. A jousting lance is destroyed when it hits. New lances are handed out and passes are repeated until one or both participants are unhorsed. Additionally, a limit may be set for lances broken; for example, the first jouster to break three lances (score three hits) wins if neither has been unhorsed.
   Passes. On each pass, a jouster may attack normally, or choose one of the following maneuvers:

• Aggressive: +5 to attack, -5 to AC. 

• Defensive: -5 to attack, +5 to AC.

• Braced: -5 to attack, +5 to Animal Handling.

• High in Saddle: +5 to attack, -5 to Animal Handling.

• Eyes Fixed: +5 to attack. If you are hit, roll a d20. On a 1, you lose your left eye if you have it, and on a 2, you lose your right eye if you have it. On a 3-4, you gain a Horrible Scar, and on a 5-10 you gain a Minor Scar. (See the DMG p. 272 for the effects of these injuries.)

The same information in table format:

Maneuver	Attack	AC	Animal Handling	Special
None	-	-	-	-
Aggressive	+5	-5	-	-
Defensive	-5	+5	-	-
Braced	-5	-	+5	-
High in Saddle	+5	-	-5	-
Eyes Fixed	+5	-	-	See above

King Henri II of France was mortally wounded by a splintered lance in the eye from the hand of Gabriel Montgomery, the captain of his own guard, in a jousting match in 1559.

Optional rules

Reading opponents. When a PC is jousting against an NPC opponent, if you wish, you may allow the PC to attempt to make a read. First decide the NPC's maneuver for the pass, and then allow the player to make a Wisdom (Insight) check contested by the opponent's Wisdom (Animal Handling) check. If the player wins the contest, they learn which maneuver the opponent has chosen, and can then choose their own maneuver based on this information.

Alternative initiative systems: 'Split-side' and 'guerrilla' initiative

If you want to read the new rules rather than me rambling about a unified theory of initiative, skip on to the end.

The variables of an initiative system

The most common division made between initiative systems is in the granularity: individual initiative versus side initiative.

In individual initiative (the default in 5th edition D&D), the initiative order is written down, with each character acting on their own initiative count. Sometimes in battles with several types of monster, the monster types are grouped to act on the same count, but the key part is that each PC gets their own count, and their individual traits (Dexterity score, feats) affect that count. The benefit is that players get to feel the rewards of investing in those aspects of their character. The drawback of individual initiative is the need to constantly consult the initiative track, and the process of writing it down takes long enough to take us out of the exciting "combat is happening" moment.

In side initiative, the players and monsters make a contested roll to see which faction gets the first turn. This is then repeated (either in the same order, or re-rolling at the top of each round). Players are free to choose in which order they want to act during their side's turn. The benefit of side initiative is that it's fast, simple, and there is no need to write anything down, so it doesn't take us out of the moment. The drawback is more apparent in systems where action economy is important; if all the monsters focus-firing a single PC can down them in a single turn, fights can become even more swingy than they already are, with the first turn deciding it all. 

But this "side/individual axis" is only one variable of initiative systems. As an example of another variable, you could disregard rolling entirely, instead using the characters' passive initiative modifiers to determine their order (the 5e DMG presents this variant as "initiative score). This speeds things up, but only slightly, as the initiative order still needs to be written down. It also makes it rather static for the players, who end up acting in the same order relative to each other every time. It probably depends on your players whether they would be bummed out by that, or enjoy using it to discover trademark strategies.

This presents a second axis along which to customize initiative systems: the contested/passive axis. You can even introduce a hybrid of the two, in which only one side rolls, using the other side's passive score as a target number, but I see no particular benefits in this and only mention it as a curio.

Setting-specific initiative

To recap, the default 5e initiative system is a "individual + contested" initiative, in which everyone rolls, contested by everyone else, and the DMG presents an "individual + passive" variant. Many old-school games such as Moldvay Basic use a "side + contested" system as the default. But to really add flavour to our initiative system, we can create a "side + passive" system, and make the deciding factor something other than Dexterity score.

Veins of the Earth has "Lamps are Initiative", which has only the people with the brightest lights roll initiative - but if you decide that those with the brightest lights always go first, no rolling, you've got something interesting going. To give another example, consider what I'm calling "guerrilla initiative". Under this system, instead of rolling initiative, the side with the smaller numbers always has initiative. The players storm the lair of a solitary dragon? The dragon reacts first. The lair has a dozen kobolds in it? The players go first. The rule communicates something about the world: it really emphasizes the stealth in small numbers and the overhead of organizing as a larger group. You can come up with an infinite number of ways to decide which group has initiative in each setting.

Putting that aside, the system that I feel like combines the most strengths with the fewest drawbacks is something that, strangely, I haven't seen in any books. I call it split-side initiative.

Presenting split-side initiative

Like Moldvay and 5e, this is a contested roll, but it sits between side initiative and individual initiative.

The DM rolls a single initiative check for the monsters's side. The players then all roll initiative individually, using the monsters' roll as a target number. Players who roll equal or greater than the monsters' number are in group A. Those who do not are in group B. The turn order for a round then goes: the players in A, the monsters, the players in B. The player side is "split" in two. Each group of players acts as they would in side initiative.

This system is very simple, almost as simple as the old side initiative. But it also allows player characters to differentiate (rewarding high Dexterity scores), and reduces the impact of the "everyone focus-firing down a single character" problem. It's equally usable in old-school games, and games like 5e with a variety of feats and class features that interact with initiative rolls.

What do you think? Do let me know if this variant has been included in any books. It must have, seeing as there's no such thing as an original idea, right?

Death's door part 4: Just-in-time death saves

Go to Part 3

In the previous parts I suggested two new rules to make 0 hit points a bit more dangerous and dynamic in 5e. For those of you who find they add too much complexity, here's one more suggestion for getting back the urgency of a dying PC. This simple rule should stop the party from coldly calculating (metagaming) how long they can dawdle before they have to heal a fallen foe.

Simply hide the information of how many death save successes and failures a character has from the players! You could do this by having the DM roll death saves behind the screen, and revealing the result when the body is checked/healed. But I think there is another much better way that not only adds more tension, but negates even the possibility of the DM being tempted to fudge the roll: just-in-time compilation. In other words, the rolls are not made until such time that their result becomes relevant. Schrödinger's dead PC, essentially.

Variant rule for 5e: Just-in-time death saves

Whenever a character would be called to make a death saving throw, they instead mark a '?' on their character sheet. When the character's body receives magical healing, stabilization is attempted, or the body examined or otherwise interacted with, the player rolls a death saving throw for each '?'. The rolls are made sequentially one at a time, and if they result in the player being stabilized or dying, the rolling is interrupted and all remaining '?' marks erased.

Optional: If you wish to increase the feeling of "discovering what was previously determined", replace the rolls with a standard card deck. Instead of rolling death saves, the player draws a face-down card from a deck. When the body is interacted with, the cards are turned face-up, in order of drawing. A black card is a death save failure, and a red card is a success. With this variant, you can either disregard critical failures/successes, or signify them with black aces/red aces (3.8% chance of each instead of 5%), or the face cards of spades/hearts (5.8% chance of each instead of 5%). Or perhaps you think clubs are more appropriate to signify death than spades, for their crosslike shape - decide for yourself!

Death's door part 3: Dicing with death

Go to Part 2

Variant death rules for 5e: knockout table

When you take damage that reduces you to 0 hit points, the DM rolls a KO roll, which is a d20 minus the amount of damage taken in excess of 0 hit points. For example, if you had 10 HP and take 15 damage, roll 1d20-5. This roll does not benefit from advantage, Luck, or any other bonus. You can not go below 0 hit points.

Knockout roll	Effect
-40 or less	Dead and dismembered: a body part is lost, or the body partially/totally destroyed, as appropriate. A sword might sever a forearm, while a white dragon's breath might cause you to freeze, fall, and shatter into a thousand pieces.
-39 to -30	Dead.
-29 to -20	Grievously wounded. Become unconscious and dying, automatically gain two death saving failures, and gain two levels of exhaustion. Gain a nasty scar.
-19 to -10	Seriously wounded. Become unconscious and dying, automatically gain one death saving failure, and gain two levels of exhaustion.
-9 to 0	Wounded. Become unconscious and dying, and gain one exhaustion.
1 to 5	Trauma. Save vs. unconsciousness (Constitution, DC 20). Whether you succeed or fail, you are dying, and you gain one exhaustion.
4 to 9	Die standing up. Save vs. unconsciousness (Constitution, DC 10). Whether you succeed or fail, you are dying, and you gain one exhaustion.
10 to 14	General anesthesia. Save vs. unconsciousness (Constitution, DC 10). Whether you succeed or fail, you are at 0 hit points but stabilized, and you gain one exhaustion.
15 to 19	On the ropes. Regain 1 HP, fall prone, drop anything you are holding in your hands, and lose concentration.
Natural 20	Adrenaline surge. Regain 1d6+CON hit points. Gain a cool scar.

Dying: At the start of each of your turns, make a death saving throw (d20, 10+ is a success, 20 counts as two successes, 1 is not special). After three failures, you are dead. You automatically gain one failure whenever you take damage. After three successes, you are stabilized. You are also stabilized automatically if you receive any healing, or are tended to (see below).

Stabilized: Death save tallies are reset to zero. While unconscious and stabilized, at the start each of your turns, make a DC 10 Constitution save. On a success, you regain consciousness. You also regain consciousness if you receive any healing, or are tended to. If you take any damage while stabilized, you are destabilized and start dying (make a new KO roll).

Tending to: Tending to a character’s wounds to improve their status requires you to use your action while within 5 feet. You must either succeed on a DC 10 Medicine check, or spend one use from a healer’s kit (automatic success).

---

Rationale

The Death and Dismemberment table is a classic. The linked post lists numerous different versions of this concept, many with a 2d6 and big negative/positive effects at each end of the scale. I prefer the roll to instead be modified by the excess damage the hit deals. I like the idea that a giant's heavy hit is more likely to knock you out than a goblin's little cuts. But many little goblin cuts should still wear you down and make you increasingly less effective at fighting. That's your cue that you are dicing with death, and even if you manage not to fall down dead or unconscious, you'll bleed to death standing up - or perhaps get disarmed of your magic sword. Now do you attempt to grab it, or leave it but escape with your life? Now that's an interesting choice for a player to make!

You won't find many long-lasting injuries on this table. They seem to either make your character as good as dead/retired (I've seen a dwarf PC commit suicide because they were beaten and had their beard cut off), or else take them out of the adventure for weeks. Perhaps your mileage varies, and you have multiple characters per player who can sub in while the one rests their broken leg in town.

While this table has some positive outcomes, it still ups the attrition from the normal 5e rules. Although instant death only happens at massive damage, most of the outcomes give you exhaustion. As a reminder of what exhaustion does in 5e: three levels is disadvantage on all rolls, five levels makes you unable to move, and six means death. I have also made getting back into the fight a little harder, increasing the steps required to two, in comparison to 5e's usual one-step recovery. So that should balance out the fact that hitting a natural 20 can save you even from big hits. It's a reminder that combat to the death is unpredictable and risky, as it should be.

Next time I'll be looking at what can be done about that old chestnut: tracking initiative.

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)

Death's door part 1: The biggest problem with D&D 5e

In D&D 5th edition, there are often tense scenes as a character is bleeding out on the ground, rolling death saving throws. They're potentially just two rolls from dying! However, as a group gains experience, this tension begins to feel hollow and artificial - at least in the case that they have any magical healing (and if they don't, then any of the published adventures is likely to kill them as soon as one of them goes down, unless the DM fudges to allow them to escape).

Death, or rather the lack of it, is becoming my least-favourite part of 5e. It's the one part of the system that I wish would be given a long hard look by WotC in any edition to follow, whether it's 5.5e or 6th edition. But before that happens, I have to try to hack at it and fix the rules myself.

In this first part of a series, I will examine (in excruciating detail) why I think this hollow feel arises from the mechanics of 5e. I will outline some design goals for any hacks that would attempt to solve this problem. And in the next parts, I will present a couple different hacks of variant death rules that might accomplish that.

How does zero HP work in 5e and what's wrong with it?

• (1) You’re knocked unconscious at zero HP. Zero HP is very easy to reach because of low character toughness relative to the encounters presented in the books, and also because of the swinginess of the d20.
• (2) You’re very easy to get back up to consciousness - any magical healing will do this instantly.
• Because of (1) and (2), magical healing is essentially a must-have.
• Because of (1) and (2), there is a yo-yo effect: characters are bobbing up and down in any tough fight, even though the fight is winnable. While this can make fights tense at the table, they make them ridiculous in-universe.
• Because of (1), being unable to act, there is no way to escape once you’re at zero HP. A character could, in theory, carry their unconscious comrade away, or a wizard could block the enemy off with a spell to cover their retreat. But most of the time, the best option is to double down and keep fighting. (Having bonus action healing spells that allow healers to still attack on their turn enforces this.) There are also no dramatic last words, desperate last stands, or characters going down in a blaze of glory, aware of certain death, giving their friends time to escape.
• While being knocked out is easy, dying is actually quite hard. Healing allies has no urgency, because savvy players know there is at least two or three rounds to heal someone before they die, unless they are threatened by a coup-de-grâce. (In my opinion, this introduces dissociation.) Death save failure tallies are reset on receiving healing. All this introduces the "need" (real or imagined) for DMs to employ disintegration, lava pools and acid pits.
• Because of the last two points, there is an assumption that any encounter the DM presents to the players is winnable, thus causing players to rarely consider retreat as an option, reducing the potential for strategic play, scouting etc.

 

What should any fix to these rules achieve?

• It must be harder for characters to become unable to act, whether by making it harder to fall to zero HP (not my preference), or (more interestingly) by giving them a chance to continue acting past zero HP. Their actions may be less effective or restricted in this bleeding-out state, but at the very minimum they should be able to attempt an escape from an enemy they realize is too powerful. Killing things should be harder than normal, but running (limping) away should be possible.
• To compensate for the increased action economy, the fix must make zero HP more dangerous. Death must come easier, and not be essentially nullified simply by receiving any healing within three rounds, or there must be some added risk in acting while bleeding out.
• The fix must make dramatic scenes more possible.
• OPTIONAL: Since there are other mechanics in 5e like class features that interact with death saving throws, the fix may include death saving throws as not to obsolete these.
• OPTIONAL: The fix may make pre-emptive healing more worthwhile (healing before someone reaches zero HP), as it is currently worthless.
• OPTIONAL: The fix may make the Medicine skill and healer’s kits more worthwhile.
• OPTIONAL: The fix may include injury charts, and may give the players some control over when these happen. (Personally, I would avoid long-lasting injuries, because limping away from a battle is dramatic, but limping for the rest of your life means retirement from adventuring.)

There are a couple different ways to implement PCs pushing on to avoid unconsciousness. One is to leave the choice to the player (with associated risk of course), and the other is leaving it up to random chance. In the next part, I will present some simple rule changes that give players the choice.

Go to Part 2

I was converted to OSR by "Fifth Edition Funnel"

A couple months ago I played the Fifth Edition Funnel (by Ten Red Crows Press, available at https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/186076/Fifth-Edition-Funnel, pay what you want), first as a player and then as a DM, and I liked it. I started thinking about what exactly I liked about it, which lead me to researching OSR games - and now I’m pretty much a convert, prepping for my first OSR campaign. So if you’re looking for a gateway drug to get yourself or someone you know from 5e into old school gaming, I can recommend using these rules.

The rules of the Funnel

Fifth Edition Funnel is a "death funnel" style mini-supplement that uses the familiar rules of 5e, but strips the system down to bare essentials. Each player has multiple characters, who are “0th level” commoners - they have no class, no skill or weapon proficiencies, have a base HP of 4, and get no death saving throws. In other words, almost any hit is lethal to them, hence the multiple characters per player. Stats are rolled 3d6 in order - however, as a fun addition, each character has a bond with one other character that increases one stat by +1. This introduces a bit of cooperative storytelling and lets players flesh out the characters before sending them to the slaughter. Another great addition is a random medieval profession that substitutes for skills, and gives each PC some mundane items, which may be useful to a clever player.

Side notes: We did not use the included adventure, nor have I read it, so I cannot give that my endorsal. But if you're interested, Bryce Lynch at tenfootpole.org found it unappealing. In our self-made funnels, our death rate was lower than the stated expectation of 50-75%, so I would recommend no more than two characters per player. I also don’t like the race table in the Funnel, which uses all the 5e PHB core races, so I replaced it with my own.

The benefits of the Funnel

• Easier introduction for people new to RPGs. No class features means faster character creation (particularly together with randomization), obviously, but also far less stuff to explain to newcomers upfront, and less of an information overload on the character sheet. 
• Faster play. Just roll a d20 + ability modifier for everything. As with character creation: there's no skill bonuses or class features to consider, so the game doesn't get bogged down in rules minutiae and option paralysis. Instead of figuring out the intricacies of action economy, the players were Doing Stuff, and that's what I cared about the most. 
• Character death is fun! When I found my character in a desperate situation of impending death, that was the most fun and memorable part of the session! Players can get a sort of horror-film enjoyment of seeing their characters in terrible predicaments. The lethality of the funnel can get them out of the “my precious character” mindset and the “nothing bad can happen to me so why not do dumb shit all the time” mindset, and into the "losing is fun" mindset.

I don’t remember who said it first, but: “a scared player is a thinking player”. Player inattention can be a problem, but when they realize their character’s life is on the line, you can be sure everyone perks up and starts thinking of ways to survive, even running away (or using those mundane items from their profession). This doesn’t happen as much in plot-based games where players get used to expecting that the DM can’t TPK them because that would end the story.

Generally speaking, the most exciting outcome of any adventure/encounter is “they just barely made it”, like what happens in the movies. And fudging rolls can help deliver that knife's-edge balance. But if there’s no variance and every encounter is “people got knocked out but nobody died and we eked out a victory”, or if players catch on to the DM’s fudging, then it becomes boring. To some extent, I think 5e’s mechanics create a prevalence of this kind of constant, hollow tension (and I plan to talk about those mechanics in detail in a later blog).

Where this experiment led me

Thinking and talking about this with people, I became aware at some point that all the things I had found appealing - fast setup, newbie-friendliness, rules getting out of the way of interaction (call it a lack of bloat, or a shift from tactical to strategic focus, or whatever), and lethality developing tension and player cleverness - were a big thing in Old-School Revival (OSR) games, that is, the pre-WotC editions of D&D and their retroclones. I found myself going from browsing these games, to buying and reading one, to finally making the decision to change systems for my planned next campaign.

I know that the mentioned phenomena arising in old-school play is an oft-repeated point, from Matt Finch's A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming (a document that's apparently 10 years old, my gods...) to author interviews and daily comments on the forums/reddits and so on, and I'm probably not adding anything original there. But I guess I just had to experience it myself to have that epiphany. All it took was playing a one-shot death funnel.

Is there any reason to use Fifth Edition Funnel instead of a Dungeon Crawl Classics funnel or even an actual old system? Probably not, but it’s one way to get a foot in the door for 5e players, as only the character creation rules are overwritten, everything else being familiar. It tricks them into thinking they're not learning a new system, while in fact teaching them an entirely new style of gaming.

- munc