exhaustion linked to hitpoints
Possibly a crazy idea but hear me out— I’m starting a group that will be playing in-person one-shots. I have a couple ideas to make these one-shots interesting and to encourage players to experiment with new ‘disposable hero’ characters.
- Killing is deadly. as in, if you kill an enemy, you will likely die (because of the gods or some curse on the land, whatever)
- At half HP, all creatures (monsters or characters) gain a level of exhaustion. it increases as more HP is lost (it’s going to take some experimenting to figure out how much—and probably bosses have some degree of exhaustion resistance)
- Drinking water or eating food reduces exhaustion.
I would be offering pre-generated characters to take the sting off of dying (in any case where players deem an enemy worth finishing off)
I just like the idea of even monster death being something reserved only for the really bad ones— and having exhaustion of most enemies as a goal just feels more impactful, makes the fight against evil feel like an evolving situation.
I feel like this could work, but i’ve never tried homebrew rules that could be so game-changing. The main thing is of course that I want everyone to have fun.
I would really appreciate any suggestions or feedback before I try it out, well, that is, if my new party is on board with the idea.
I’ll let you all know how it goes!