Quote from: Doom;1113336Well, you don't have much choice but to have enemies coup-de-grace at every opportunity. It's a bit of a paradigm shift, but in a world where recovering from grievous wounds is super easy, barely an inconvenience, "always stab a downed enemy before moving on to the next" becomes basic strategy.

Of course, once players hit 5th level, that might not be enough either...

Always stabbing downed enemies is tight.

Quote from: Aglondir;1113501Always stabbing downed enemies is tight.

Put enemies with healing magic against the PCs and see what they do. If they stab downed enemies, then they can probably expect that the same is going to happen to them someday soon.

Quote from: Aglondir;1113501Always stabbing downed enemies is tight.

Yeahyeahyeah. But why is it tight?

You have to hit them twice for a guaranteed kill. Thats an automatic 2 failed saves. One hit is probably not going to do it.

Or you could just re-instate the bleed out rules from the playtest. Every round lose 1d6 HP till stabalized. Can go to negative equal to HP+CON. Healing has to deal with the negative damage first.

That sounds less lethal.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1113510That sounds less lethal.

Still not anywhere as potentially off kilter as the current 5e system. Its similar to AD&D, just with eventually a-lot more negative HP. Remember that any damage taken adds to that negative. The older system also still had the coup de grace move.

Which is the main problem with 5e's 0 hp system. As discussed in many threads now here and elsewhere. The downed character has just short of unlimited HP as long as any damage taken while down does not exceed their HP total.  So in theory a PC with 21 HP could go negative 80 HP before shuffling off the mortal if every hit was 20 damage and the hit that downed them did not exceed 20. More likely though the PC will expire before that due to the other factors that either increase damage or double the save fails.

This and the impossible to break long rests are my two big irks with 5e. At least you can work around the 0hp problem as needed with various tactics.

The death saves is more lethal than having to bleed out to negative hit points.

Let's say you have 50 hit points. You get put to 0. You have to get put to -50+CON before you actually die? But you're losing 1d6 a turn? You literally will never bleed out. At least with death saves, the longest it will take one way or the other is a maximum of 5 saves.

And if the monster is attacking to try and put them to negative -50, then they probably will have given them 3 failed death saves by then anyway through their attacks.

I agree though that it always felt weird that you can absorb effectively infinite damage over time, when at 0 hit points, but that's less about lethality and more about realism/verisimilitude for me.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1113504Put enemies with healing magic against the PCs and see what they do. If they stab downed enemies, then they can probably expect that the same is going to happen to them someday soon.

As a GM, I once had a group where their... we'll call him the "orc barbarian," which is close enough, was basically nigh-impossible to kill, and was an absolute wrecking ball in combat.

So the adventuring party hired by the BBEG to hunt them down managed to alpha-strike his ass into unconsciousness as the PCs were coming out of a bottle-necked dungeon, then time hop'd his body something like 18 rounds into the future.

They did not appreciate that tactic.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1113519The death saves is more lethal than having to bleed out to negative hit points.

Let's say you have 50 hit points. You get put to 0. You have to get put to -50+CON before you actually die? But you're losing 1d6 a turn? You literally will never bleed out. At least with death saves, the longest it will take one way or the other is a maximum of 5 saves.

And if the monster is attacking to try and put them to negative -50, then they probably will have given them 3 failed death saves by then anyway through their attacks.

I agree though that it always felt weird that you can absorb effectively infinite damage over time, when at 0 hit points, but that's less about lethality and more about realism/verisimilitude for me.

Actually I misremembered it.
From the packet.

0 HP and Death
At 0HP each round make a con save vs DC 10. On each failure take 1d6 damage.
Stable after 3 successes at current HP.
Does not regain consciousness unless healed back to positive HP.
PC is Dead if damage equals CON+Level.

The Coup De Grace
You make a attack on an unconcious target within 5ft. If it hits then they either go instantly to 0 HP, or if they were at 0 HP, they die.

Long Rest was slightly stronger though as you regained all HD rather than half as in the final. But could be broken by combat strenuous activity. Rather than 1 freaking hour of it in the final.
Short Rest was only 10 min long and required a healing kit to be able to spend healing HD.

There was also this sidebar that might prove of use.

QuoteExperimental Rule 2: Healing and Rests
This rule replaces the rules for Hit Dice and resting.
Bloodied:
You have a bloodied value equal to half your hit point maximum.
When your hit points are less than or equal to your bloodied value, you are bloodied.
Resting:
For every 5 minutes you rest, you regain hit points equal to 1 + your level + your Constitution modifier (minimum equal to your level).
You can regain up to your hit point maximum, unless you are bloodied. In that case, you can regain hit points only up to your bloodied value.
Refocus:
You can use your action to attempt to draw on your inner strength and endurance.
Make a DC 10 Constitution check. If you succeed, you regain hit points equal to 1 + your Constitution modifier.

This was used with an experimental alternate rest system. Short rests healed per hour a flat rate of level + con mod. Long rest was essentially an extended series of short rests over at least 8 hours, which netted the healing each hour spent and an additional healing equal to con score.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1113519I agree though that it always felt weird that you can absorb effectively infinite damage over time, when at 0 hit points, but that's less about lethality and more about realism/verisimilitude for me.

The system as designed isn't about making it deliberately lethal or about realism/verisimilitude.  Rather, it's all about speed of the game at the table--handling time by the players, not anything about the characters.  Monkeying around with negative hit points is just trying to get something slightly less lethal than no saves at all, without using the levers that are there.  Instead, you'd be better off to lower the limits on death saves or eliminate them all together (death at zero hit points), depending upon how you nasty you want it.

For example, if you want to emphasize the fear for a downed player, keep one death save for all the marbles.  It's either dead or stable, and that's that.  Maybe don't make it until someone checks the downed character or tries to heal them.  If you don't mind a little extra handling time tacked onto that, then modify the roll slightly the longer someone waits to check (not 1:1 on rounds, but escalating time periods, e.g. -1 for 1 round, -2 for end of battle, -3 for an hour, etc.)  Though at that point, I'd rather just have the GM make a judgement on whether to roll the death save straight or at advantage or disadvantage, depending upon whatever parameters made sense to that GM.

There's really only two lethal level feels you can't easily get by tweaking the levers that 5E provides:

- It cannot do the the "anyone might die from a single hit" at any time thing past low-levels, because D&D just doesn't work that way (at least not consistently).  If you want that, you need to replace Armor as AC and escalating hit points with maneuvers, defensive rolls, and such.  Or play Rune Quest or GURPS or something else that has that built in.

- It cannot easily set up a lethalness illusion--where it pretends to be something it is not.  The flow of the game is too wired to setting up the opposite--the idea that you might lose, but probably won't die--to encourage players to try ridiculous things.  Specifically, it cannot easily make things where as the GM you can get a bunch of character deaths without either pushing the players hard and/or using the levers to make the system more obviously deadly.

Quote from: Doom;1113506Yeahyeahyeah. But why is it tight?

I don't know!

Quote from: Aglondir;1113562I don't know!

Well, ok then.

38 pages of problems in 5E?

5E must be broken....

Quote from: Razor 007;111371538 pages of problems in 5E?

5E must be broken....

You fail miserably at trolling.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;1113526They did not appreciate that tactic.

IME, players get pretty emotional when their opposition approaches anything resembling tactics or brutal practicality.