Mike Mearls Games
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Making 5e Deadlier
🕑 Added 2025-10-07 12:00:13 +0000 UTCThere are many complaints that it’s too hard to die in 5e. I think part of that comes from the weird safety zone that exists at 0 hit points. It takes a while to die. When you're rolling death saves, you exist in a weird, safe bubble. The rest of the party has a crystal clear understanding of your risk of death. A DM attacking a downed character feels vindictive, creating an uncomfortable dynamic at the table. I think being at 0 hit points but still able to take actions puts characters in a lot more danger. It also creates more drama. Do you keep fighting or run?
I took my first cut on these rules back in August. If you compare those rules to these, you can see how the design process involves a lot of iteration to cull down rules to a simpler, more nimble, and more impactful form.
My main goal here is to make dying feel tense and exciting. Under these rules, you can still act but doing so might risk death. It also means DMs can feel justified going after a character at 0 hit points. If you stand and fight, the monsters are going to fight back!
Dropping to 0 Hit Points
When a creature drops to 0 hit points, it gains a level of exhaustion and is dying. It might instantly die.
Instant Death
Here are the main ways a creature can die instantly.
Monster or NPC Death. A monster or NPC dies the instant it drops to 0 hit points. Optionally, the DM can rule that the target is reduced to 1 hit point and is unconscious for 2d6 minutes.
Hit Point Maximum of 0. A creature dies if its hit point maximum reaches 0. Certain effects drain life energy, reducing a creature’s hit point maximum.
Exhaustion. You die immediately if your exhaustion level reaches four.
Design Note: Exhaustion. I've reworked exhaustion to have four levels. I removed the penalty to rolls and speed, but your max hit points are limited to your bloodied value while you have 2 or more exhaustion levels. You die when your exhaustion reaches 4.
Dying
If you are reduced to 0 hit points and are not killed, you are dying. While you are dying, you can still take your turn as normnal. However, additional damage can kill you and you need to make death saves. You are no longer dying if your hit points increase above 0.
Death Saves. Whenever you start your turn with 0 hit points, you must make a death save before taking your turn. Roll a d20 to make a death save. This is a special roll rather than a test. It ignores all bonuses and penalties you normally apply to tests.
· If you roll a 20 on the d20, you regain 1 hit point.
· If the roll is 10 or higher, you gain a successful death save.
· If the roll is less than 10, you gain a level of exhaustion.
After rolling, if you are still alive you take your turn as normal.
Three Successful Death Saves. When you gain your third successful death save, you immediately regain 1 hit point.
Losing Successful Death Saves. You lose all successful death saves when you are no longer dying.
Damage at 0 Hit Points. Each time you take any damage while you have 0 hit points, you gain a level of exhaustion.
Optional Rule: Massive Damage. While dying, each time you take 10 or more damage from an attack or other effect make a Constitution save with a DC equal to the damage taken. If you fail, you die. Otherwise, you gain a level of exhaustion.
Comments
Douglas Terbush
You ignored the glaring problem in 5E design, healing word. The way how I handle that hack is make it if a player is at zero hit points and they use Healing Word, it places a level of exhaustion on the player. s Why? Healing word is a bonus action and there is no requirement for the healer to be near the character to heal so they can do use an action. In the early game it requires the healers to develop situational awareness.
nimbus
this feels like it creates a really weird dynamic where monsters will always perfunctorily ding PCs with additional hits to kill them because just reducing them to 0 is meaningless. Exhaustion levels may be undesirable from the PCs' POV but they're irrelevant from the monsters' POV until they have a tangible effect on the current combat. Making hp damage less useful as a way of incapacitating an enemy also swings the meta back toward status conditions which goes against your stated goal of minimizing status effect based gameplay. There should be some immediate payoff from enemy POV for reducing a PC to 0. - Maybe take inspiration from 3e/PF1e and let disabled PCs still act, but only take a move or standard not both? Or attach some other big debuff to the dying condition, like disadvantage on all rolls. - Maybe whenever a dying PC acts they automatically gain an exhaustion level? This would make it more of a real tradeoff (and give enemies a plausible reason not to execute immediately).
