New Exhaustion mechanics for 5E

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TJS

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I've written up some new exhaustion mechanics for 5E because I find the existing exhaustion system too punishing. I want exhaustion to be something players feel, but to be not so bad that they turtle up and refuse to continue.

So here it is, please tell me what you think.

Exhaustion Mechanics
For each level of exhaustion gain an exhaustion die as seen in the table below. As exhaustion worsens the exhaustion die becomes smaller.

Level123456
DieD12D10D8D6D4D3
Chance of Spell recovery failure01-51-101-15CertainCertain

When rolling a D20 roll an exhaustion die. On any result except for 1, nothing happens.

On a 1 the player may choose. Either the roll is a failure (even if it would otherwise have succeeded) or the roll succeeds (assuming the player rolled high enough) but the character moves one step further down the track.

Recovering a step of exhaustion requires either a good night’s sleep in civilisation, or 24 hours of safe rest in the wilderness* If travelling overland for more than 3 consecutive days in the wilderness a level of exhaustion is gained.**

Exhaustion may interfere with the ability to regain spell slots. If Exhaustion is at level 2 or above roll a D20 for each spell you wish to regain. - if the result is below the numbers indicated on the table the spell is not regained. At levels 5 or 6 the character is no longer able to recover spells.

In combat the exhaustion die may be initially ignored. When a character becomes bloodied (less that half hit points) they must begin rolling the die if they already have a level of exhaustion. (They don’t gain one).

If a PC is reduced to 0 hp they gain a level of exhaustion. +1 for every death save they fail.

*8 hours is sufficient for barbarians and rangers.
** Except for Rangers or Barbarians.
 
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Hi TJS TJS I have a couple questions and a recommendation for you.

Why do you feel Exhaustion is too punishing and how often does it come up in your game? Exhaustion represents severe conditions that degrade one's ability to function like starvation, exposure, and sleep deprivation.* These conditions aren't exactly common in a typical D&D adventure.

Has the Exhaustion rule made your players "turtle up and refuse to continue" during a game? I have found that players are gonna turtle up and rest to replenish depleted resources as often as the DM lets them away with it (the 15-minute workday is an old criticism about D&D). Despite applying Exhaustion more frequently than RAW (I apply a level of Exhaustion each time a PC reaches 0 hit points) I have yet to see it drag gameplay to a screeching halt in our 18 month long campaign. Then again, resting 8 hours in a monster-filled dungeon is tantamount to suicide in my game.

Since your system is a roundabout way of making the first few levels of Exhaustion trivial I recommend saving yourself a lot of trouble by making it easier to remove Exhaustion instead. You can kill 2 birds with one stone and give the Medicine skill a little love like so:

During a short rest, you can use the Medicine skill to reduce a creature's level of exhaustion one step by making a DC 15 Medicine check and expending one use of a healer's kit. A creature can't have their exhaustion reduced by this skill again until they finish a long rest.

I'd rule that sensible actions must be taken during the short rest to alleviate the condition before making the roll (e.g. sleep for sleep deprivation, warmth for frostbite, etc) but I suppose that can be handwaved or assumed.

If you really want Exhaustion to be trivial you can allow lesser restoration to remove a level.

*I also find Exhaustion useful for representing debilitating conditions outside RAW such as injuries and radiation poisoning.
 
Basically I'm adapting the mechanic because I want to make more use of it in pacing - especially for overland travel.

I think having the first few levels of exhaustion trivial is a good thing. Exhaustion should creep up on you!

I definitely don't want to remove it during a short rest. It needs to be attritional so it can used in overland travel.

It's particularly important if you're adapting the Journey rules from Adventures in Middle Earth as that makes use of the exhaustion mechanic heavily - but can lead to the situation in which, if the players roll badly enouh, you pretty much have to give them a chance to rest so the adventure can continue, undermining the importance of the bad rolls.

And sure you can stop players turtling up, by making them continue - but if you make players continue when they're failing everything then the game stops being fun for them pretty quickly. I want players to feel like they can meaningfully contribute.

The idea here is to give players something they feel they can live with in the initial levels - but still has a noticeable impact.
I think you're underestimating the impact of a 1 in 12 chance of failing everything!

The 4E equivalent was too lose healing surges, but that didn't work too well either. If the players had a lot of surges than they didn't feel the impact at all. I want there to be constant reminder of the condition so the players have that sense of their characters being slowly beaten down.

Even Mike Mearls has said he doesn't use the exsting mechanic in his own games.
 
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I've altered it slightly.

I should say that these rules would go along with the slow natural healing variant from the DMG p.267. In which PCs don't fully heal up after a long rest but instead regain their hit dice only.


Level123456
DieD12D10D8D6D4D3
Chance of Spell preparation failure01-51-101-15CertainCertain
OtherA long rest is needed to recover short rest class featuresCannot recover Hit dice on long rest.
 
The point of my previous post was to determine what you were trying to do with your rules hack; the ultimate goal is to help you make it more elegant and intuitive. Please don't take this the wrong way, but right now it's a subsystem with zero relation to any other 5e mechanic kludged onto the Exhaustion rules like it's 1979.
 
I dig the Exhaustion rules but haven't used them much. Interested in different ways of aplying them.
 
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