One of the most terrifying aspects of delving dungeons, battling dragons, or being with a bard at the bar is the increased likelihood of getting killed.
…So why does dropping to 0 hit points in D&D 5e feel like it’s not that big a deal?
Well, when half your party is capable of bringing you back to life either a magical word of encouragement or a healing touch, and the other half have at least some idea about how to stabilizing a dying body, the potential for actually dying doesn’t feel all that likely.
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Not to mention the fact that it takes anywhere from 12 seconds (at the fastest!) to as long as half a minute for someone to reach a conclusion to their death saving throws –giving the party ample time to stabilize.
But I don’t think that makes for nearly as dire of circumstances as literally dying should warrant, so here are two homebrew rules and one RAW way to make those death saving throws a little more exciting.
Hidden death saving throws
One of the main things that completely ruins the tension of a party member dying is the meta knowledge that the rest of the table gets regarding how they’re doing.
As much as good players try to avoid metagaming, it’s easy to let that dying fighter go on dying if you, the player, know that they’re at 2 death saves and 0 fails.
Yes, this can be explained away in-game by the party looking over at the soon-to-be corpse each round to see how much they’re breathing, bleeding out, etc, but I feel like actually gaining that knowledge should require at least some sort of perception check, perhaps at the expense of a bonus action.
Which is why DMs should be instituting hidden death saving throws.
This is much easier now that most of us are playing virtually, as all you need to do is have the player roll secretly (be it with a virtual dice or a physical one at home) and then send you a private message about the outcome.
If you’re playing in person, have the player come over and roll behind the DM screen. Try to keep your expressions as blank as possible when you see the result (unless it’s a nat 20, of course).
The fact that a natural 1 = two automatic fails means that your party will be rushing to at the very least check on you after that first round that you’re down… rather than letting you stew in a puddle of your own blood for three or four rounds as those death save successes pile up.
It gets the dying player back into the fight faster, and it lights a fire under everyone else’s asses to makes sure they don’t lose a party member for good. Wins all around.
A throw right off the jump
So the Players’ Handbook officially states that “whenever you start Your Turn with 0 Hit Points, you must make a Special saving throw, called a death saving throw, to determine whether you creep closer to death or hang onto life. Unlike other Saving Throws, this one isn’t tied to any ability score. You are in the hands of fate now, aided only by Spells and features that improve your chances of succeeding on a saving throw.”
The key wording here is whenever you start your turn.
Well, if you want to make your campaign a little grittier, have your players roll an initial death save the moment that they are dropped to 0 hp.
When paired with the previous rule, it gives the slim chance that the player could roll a fail and a nat 1 all in the same round — so you’d better believe that your party members will be dropping whatever they’re doing and coming to your aid, as you’d expect a friend to do in the first place.
One of the worst things about being left dying is how boring it can be. You only get to roll one die, and while it’s a pretty dramatic die to roll, it doesn’t really feel like all that important when you’re sitting at 0 saves and 0 fails, 1 save and 0 fails, or even 1 and 1, because you likely aren’t going to see any sort of a conclusive outcome that round.
Making the player roll an initial death saving throw the moment they’re dropped unconscious simply speeds up that process, bringing them closer to the terrifying, edge of your seat experience that is rolling at 1-2, 2-1, or 2-2 for death saving throws.
Give em a smack
This one’s completely legal following D&D 5e RAW, but your party may be a little pissed at you.
The players handbook notes that, when a PC drops unconscious, they’ll suffer an automatic death saving throw failure if they take any damage.
“Damage at 0 Hit Points: If you take any damage while you have 0 Hit Points, you suffer a death saving throw failure. If the damage is from a critical hit, you suffer two failures instead. If the damage equals or exceeds your hit point maximum, you suffer Instant Death.”
Here’s the juicy part. If you head over to Conditions-Unconscious, you’ll see the note that “any attack that hits the creature is a critical hit if the attacker is within 5 feet of the creature.”
So if you’ve got a Death Knight hacking away at your backline who has already seen the damn wizard get brought back up from zero, this time around be might decide to try finish the job by using his last multiattack to swing down on the already unconscious mage.
He rolls with advantage against the unconscious creature and hits.
Bam. Just like that, your wizard needs immediate medical attention, because they’re sitting at 0-2 and this knight is planning to finish him off on his next turn — though an unlucky roll on the wizard’s next turn could also do the trick.
This may seem like it’s putting your party in a tough situation, but tough situations are exactly where heroics shine through. The Barbarian can use his turn to leave the frontline and step in between the Deathknight and the dying body. The Paladin can rush over, Lay Hands, and then cast Compelled Duel on the knight as a bonus action.
Hell, the standoffish Rogue can finally prove they care about the party by leaving their hiding spot and putting themselves in harm’s way to force feed a Goodberry or healing potion to the Wizard, who wakes up just in time to see the Rogue take a slash to the back for them.
If you don’t want things to get THAT dire, you can always hit the unconscious body with some AoE damage, or a rogue arrow, or a magic missile, which will only result in one automatic fail because it wouldn’t count as a critical hit.
In conclusion…
Anyone who has dropped unconscious knows that those first few rounds of dying don’t feel all that dire.
If you’re just left to either stabilize or bleed out on your own, the numbers are actually in your favor, too.
I’m sure it was a deliberate decision on WotC’s part to make it so that 1-9 are fails and 10-20 are successes, but the fact that they didn’t instead rule 1-10 as fails and 11 to 20 as successes means that it isn’t a straight 50/50 chance each roll; it’s actually 45/55.
Add in the fact that a nat 20 saves you automatically but a nat 1 doesn’t kill you outright, and the deck is stacked even more in favor of stabilizing.
This obviously reduces both the chances of outright dying when dropped to 0 HP as well as the urgency you’d expect from allies, because those players know how the mechanics works and know that, unless they’re being peppered with arrows or an enemy is actively trying to finish them off (which a lot of DMs don’t wanna do) odds are that they’re going to survive if left to stabilize on their own.
And I just don’t think that that’s what many characters would actually decide to do if their friend was dealt a fatal blow, so you may just have to raise the stakes a little bit.
But that’s just my two coppers.
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