Greetings one and all, and welcome to this weeks article! Pull up a chair and take a load off - this one’s going to be exhausting!
Ferrun was shattered. Aside from his arm, rapidly swelling inside his vembrace, which may be literally shattered - he daren’t look, not until he got somewhere safe - his eyes were starting to blur; his legs were threatening to give in to the weight of the past three days bearing down upon them, three days of slogging across country, battling the scenery as much as the local populace of monsters which lurked in the jungle. The last one had been a huge brute of a troll, three mismatched arms wielding a variety of clubs, sinisterly augmented with barbs and spikes. The fight had almost cost him more than his arm, and it still might - on his good shoulder, Fyla’s body bounced. He thanked his stars again that he had been travelling with a gnome and not a goliath, and staggered up the next slope.
As he crested the slope, he looked down in bleary-eyed surprise at the shallow-pitched roof of an old hovel, hunkering in the bushes to his left. Were it not for the sizeable hole in the mossy shingles exposing the beams within, he might well have missed it - gods, was he ever tired. He needed to bring Fyla back, and to do that, he needed to rest, and this was as good a place as he was likely to find out here.
Inside the hovel was damp and dark, but nothing leapt out at him fangs-first when he pushed the rotting slats of the door out of the way and made his way inside, so that was a good start. It didn’t take much to check the place - one room, with a rusting caudron at one end and a rectangle of ferns at the other, which he assumed must have been the bed. The hole in the roof let in a view of darkening sky and the hillside above, the thickset stone walls keeping what wind there was. Ferrun had enough left in him to lay out the two bedrolls on the floor, lay Fyla gently out on hers, and then gently tumble into his own. His arm was numb, and he knew that was a problem, but until he had rested, he couldn’t do anything about it. He dropped into a deep sleep, and dreamt of all the things he hadn’t done - the perimiter was unchecked, the door unbarred, there was no water for the morning, there was no fire to keep the insects away. Even in his dreams, he was too tired to care.
The sunlight stabbed at him; he snapped his eyes open, regretted it immediately, snapped them shut again and rolled over to shield them from the light. The pain in his arm jabbed him further into wakefulness, and he opened his eyes again to meet the vacant gaze of Fyla. He took a breath, and felt some of the exhaustion of the day before still clinging to him. However, he could feel some of the currents of energy flowing in him again - he was ready to go to work.
He scribed out the symbols on the floor - scraping the moss carefully away with his sickle to reveal the uneven stone underneath - and began the ritual. The chirps and calls of the jungle faded, the heat of the foreign sun cooled, the whisper of the wind in the strange trees seemed to chant with him. His words, passed down to him by the father who taught him, rose not in volume nor pitch, but somehow in meaning - the world around him seemed to strain to listen, as though the purpose behind his words might be the most important that anything would hear. The world listened, the ground listened, the sky listened; and Death listened too. He felt the gentle creaking of the fibres of the world being pulled at, teased apart. Something reached through, that he couldn’t see or touch or sense, but he knew it was there, clawed hand reaching out.
The claws snatched. The diamond cracked with the sound like the piercing ringing of a bell, and as it did so, Fyla gasped in a breath; her eyes flickered into startled life, the pale waxiness of her skin flushed suddenly with vitality. She rolled onto her side and coughed out the dead air that had gathered in her lungs, the two halves of the diamond blown as dust on the wind by her breath. Ferrun cried out, and fell forward to her, gathering her up into his arms. Their tears mingled - hers of anguish for failing to save anyone, and his of joy for managing to save one.
Gritty, Consequential, and Impactful Dying
When it comes to D&D, there is an inherent issue which manifests in gameplay, which is sometimes referred to as “Pop-up Party”1. The issue is that, as hitpoints bottom out at 0, and a character gets a round at least of death-saving throws before they’re dead-dead2, there is often no benefit to healing people who are not already dying! The maths has it, with the 5e system - why heal someone up to 15hp for them to take a 25hp hit, when you could let them take that hit, lose 5hp to 0, and then pop them back up with 10hp - hence, Pop-up Party3.
Well, the first of the supplements I’m bringing you today solves this issue, whilst also addressing the problem of a lack of player agency and decision-making at the end of their character. Death is possible the greatest defining feature for many characters in many stories, and Dungeons and Dragons - along with many other Tabletop Roleplaying Games - is a collaborative storytelling experience. The current structure has characters drop to 0hp and immediately become catatonic - no chance for Boromir, captain of Gondor, to prove his quality4. No chance for the wounded Predator to start casting a delayed-blast fireball. No chance for the hero who went down and presumably out to throw away the last bit of their energy in some dramatically self-sacrificial way.
Well, my friends, the Guide to Grittier, Consequential, and Impactful Dying changes all of that.
The Guide to Grittier, Consequential, and Impactful dying5 has a set of rules which take over the moment that a character drops to 0hp. The crux of it is that there is a new condition - Mortally Wounded - which slots in before the character is declared “Stable” or “Dead”. Whilst Mortally Wounded, you can still act - but it is probably a really, really bad idea. Choosing to act will adversely affect your death saving throws.
“That’s no problem”, I hear the crowd speak; “I will just heal myself, and get right back up!”
Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you. Too bad this sort of dying is “Gritty”!
Healing a Mortally Wounded character doesn’t work the same way as it used to. No more popping up, I’m afraid - it’s better to keep people up than it is to get them up, so I’d recommend not saving your healing for those who are already dying any more!
No, healing anyone who’s rolling for death saving throws instead gives them a positive modifier for their next death saving throw - meaning that a concerted effort to heal them will indeed help a character to get back up, but you’re looking at three turns of it - which is not great in a fight!
So let’s say you’ve been Mortally Wounded and you’ve saved 3 times - congratulations, now you’re stable! Stable means that you can be healed normally, which is how you’re going to get back up. You can still choose to take actions and move, but there’s a good reason paramedics say not to move someone who’s hurt - you’ll be back to making death saving throws if you do!
Finally, when you Recover (are healed up to 1+ hp), there are lingering injuries. The extent of these injuries depends on how many failed death saving throws you rolled - none, and you’re fine6, whereas if you failed some, you risk short-term, long-term, or even life-changing injuries. These injuries are quick & simple to apply (no rolling on tables every time you do something) and means that even if you devise a method for popping-up, you will have lasting repercussions if you do.
Now, if you’re Stable and there’s nobody about to help you, you can recover your hitpoints by resting. And that is where the next problem comes in!
The Gritty Guide to Realistic Resting
One of the running jokes about D&D, and many other systems7, is that a long rest cures everything. Recently eviscerated? good nap ought to sort that out. Lost a finger? Sleep it off8. The only thing which consistently hangs over from the night before is Exhaustion, and even that can be removed whilst also recovering enough HP to populate a village with commoners, spell slots to arm a warband of minor mages, and abilities and hit dice besides.
The long and short of it: Rests are too powerful. You can sleep overnight in a field and it will have a greater effect than the most powerful of healing potions. So, I set out to try and make an optional set of rules to make them a little more gritty. Behold, the Gritty Guide to Realistic Resting!
Now, this one has been “addressed” in the Dungeon Master’s Guide9, where they suggest making long rests last 1 week and short rests last 8 hours. Essentially, these rules exist to slow the adventure down, and they do so in possibly the most boring way available10. Instead of saying “you rest for 8 hours”, you say “You rest for 168 hours” and then carry on as before. If they’re safe, then it has no effect. If they’re not, then you as a DM have to screw up their rest, over and over again. Oh, you only made it 5 DAYS without an attack, then it was interrupted - time to start again! No, it’s a bad system. It doesn’t mesh with spells designed for long rests (like the Tiny Hut) and it makes an adventure boring.
As you may imagine from my rant in the above paragraph, I wanted to make things interesting - not boring. My theory was that the issue of a long rest was not how long it takes, but how much it does. Thus, I decided to link hit-dice to everything. Recharging an ability? Costs you a hit-dice. Gaining spell slots? Hit-dice. Ki points? Hit-Dice.
The result: a set of rules which you only need to whip out when resting (which makes resting almost like a resource-management minigame) and which carrys over long rests - you don’t get everything back for free, so you have to spend hit dice on them. And if you are hurt - healing costs hit-dice too.
This makes a game where having 2 long rests in a row without expending resources will pretty much bring anyone back up to full power. It also means that multiple days of slogging combat and ability-use will start to wear a character down - they will have less and less hit-dice at every rest, and eventually, they will have to admit that they need a break.
That’s what I wanted. I wanted my players to see their own abilities slowly dwindle and make educated decisions11 as to when to start resting more often, rather than suddenly needing to rest but needing somewhere to hunker down for a week to do it. The game can remain fast-paced, but have consequence!
And that, I believe, is what I delivered with the Gritty Guide to Realistic Resting. But, it does more than that!
Some of you may be aware of the “issue” where some subclasses fall behind because their abilities are… (checks notes) Boring. Let’s take the classic punchbag for this - the Champion Fighter.
Champion Fighters are ordinarily a simple martial build - not ineffective, but lacking in abilities. However, when you use the Gritty Guide to Realistic Resting12, the Champion becomes a potent build - they have few abilities to recharge13, as most of theirs are passive, so when they rest, they can focus on their hit-points and not on regaining efficacy14. Thus, the Champion can weather the onslaught of days of combat more easily than the multiclassed tricked-out character with multiple feats that grant abilities and spell slots and so forth.
Finally, it also makes spellcasters take a little more to recover than martials, which helps to narrow that gap which so many have complained about over the years - that Martial builds are less potent than Magic builds at higher levels.
So there you have it! These two supplements (which I can’t bundle due to reasons15) will give some really simple rules, which importantly you don’t need 90% of the time, that add some serious grit to the game. And, the Gritty Guide to Realistic Resting is scalable too, so you can adjust the Grit to suit the job16!
Thankyou all for reading! I can say that as a thankyou for the support, the Gritty Guide to Realistic Resting is currently on sale! In case you missed all the links I sprinkled through this article17, here they are as buttons!
(Yes, the second one’s full title was too long for the button!)
Thank you all for reading! I wish you all happy slaying, and come back soon!
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Well, if it wasn’t referred to as this before, it should be!
At which point there’s usually nothing left to do except go through their pockets for loose change.
There we go, said it again. It rolls off the tongue!
Yes, I am aware that this quote pertains to Faramir, Boromir’s brother and definitely not a reused character sheet brought out when Boromir died. Boromir does, however, prove his quality by fighting on whilst guaranteed death. That is what is lacking in D&D!
Originally this was going to be called “Heroic Last Moments”, but I realised it would not really tell the casual observer what it was about, so I changed it!
Possibly just being over-dramatic, to be honest.
But let’s be honest, mostly D&D!
Or should that be on? Sleep it on? I don’t know. I’ll sleep on it.
Page 267, under “Gritty Realism”.
No hate for them for writing it like this, but it solves nothing and they should be ashamed of themselves.
Oh look, there’s player agency again!
This sentence suddenly sounds like it’s being pitched by a pair of irish conmen in 17th-century Scotland.
I double-checked, and it’s literally just Second Wind, Action Surge, and Indomitable.
Alternative word: Efficaciousness.
I started out publishing on DM’s Guild, and then moved to Drivethru RPG. One is on one site, the other is on the other. Thus, I cannot make a bundle of them, which makes me sad.
Like some cosmic sandblaster, removing the multi-layered paint of patched mechanics to reveal the beautiful bare metal below!
Even the images - I wanted to make it easy to find for you all!