I have an idea for a what. Looking for help with the why.

I am DMing a game for my wife and kids. My wife (the wizard) is constantly worried about their next long rest to heal, etc. I get it. Heal up. Get her spells back. Yada yada. The other day my son and I were laughing about the concept of "just sleep for a while as a cure all." Today I heard someone mention making sure to put something memorable in towns. I kind of do this instinctively. A statue in town square. Some tradition. You get it. Now I'm thinking about merging the two things. Hear me out. lol

What if there is a town where every morning at breakfast, right in the middle of town, a certain person is stabbed with a sword. No one bats an eye. It's normal. People are just walking around, eating breakfast, shopping, go to work, you get it. And while they are going about their business, dude is just run through by the guard on watch or the mayor or something. Once it's done, the guy just stumbles home, takes an 8 hour nap, and goes about the rest of his day in the afternoon. Everyday. Same guy. It'd be hilarious to point out this funny mechanic of the game, while watching the party trying to figure out what is going on. Or, maybe in reverse. Same guy stabs someone, but it's some random person each time. Either way, it's normal to the town's people.

The part that I'm stuck on is the why. Is it a punishment for something? A ritual that prospers the town? Is he the night watch, and they want him use to pain "just in case?" Maybe it happened as an accident to him years ago, and they think it's funny to reenact it everyday? IDK I'm kind of stumped on this one. 

Help. LOL 

IMO meta-gaming stories like this don't really work, it takes the players out of the game and is immersion breaking. It will just communicate to your players that you don't take the world seriously so neither should they and they should feel free to break/exploit mechanics regardless of if they break the world.

To be more explicit, by doing this kind of story you'd be saying "Haha, isn't it funny how D&D rules break the reality of the world, let's all make fun of them." So your players will probably go "Oh, so we shouldn't take the world seriously, let's try to find other rules that break the world, that will be a funny joke." Will you still be laughing when the party is using Prestidigitation to make a diamond ring that they sell to various shop owners? When they use the Invisibility spell to rob everyone in town? When they try to use the peasant rail gun to kill your next BBEG? 

I think Agile has a good point about it undermining the seriousness of the setting but having said that I think you could do a reasonably entertaining one or two shot with the concept, maybe a serial killer who each day kills a different person who is fine later that day. Don't lampshade it by pointing out it's the long rest mechanic but have the entire town trapped in either a timeloop or a hell dimension with a demon feeding on the pain, terror and confusion of the townsfolk who know at any point they could be the one killed but that they won't be permanently dead but that the process will still hurt and terrify them

Above posters have some good points about possible problems with it. If characters see this happening, is the party likely to stick around in town to see the guy is ok the next day? Wouldn’t they intervene?

Now to answer the OP’s question, this really just seems like a variation of a sacrifice story. The old, throw a virgin into the volcano so it won’t erupt kind of thing. So maybe the town believes stabbing one person a day will stop an army from coming to stab everyone at once. A daily offering to a god. (Or they think it’s a god, but really it’s some kind of fey who feeds on the fear, or just thinks it’s funny.) 
Then you just have to decide if the deal is real. If this entity is actually protecting the town, and the PCs stop the tradition, how long before an army appears on the horizon?

One VERY important thing to consider is that hit points are NOT meat points: they represent stamina and skill at avoiding injury. With your idea, the commoner getting stabbed meant he was dropped to zero HP, so he's dead.

I have a slightly different take on the difference between D&D Adventurers (Player Characters) and common folk in worlds. In my worlds, D&D Player Characters are inherently special. Classes are a magical thing. A representation of their natural inclination toward magic abilities. 

This at least is my explanation of why most NPCs don't get death saving throws. 

Magic and the predisposition toward magical abilities is what means that a player character who has been slashed by a monster's claw to the point of death can recover with 8 good hours of rest. It's also the key to low-magic settings. The player characters become the exception to the rule, the special people who can do things that ordinary folks just can't. 

Using that logic then, are the rest of the folks in town magically inclined? Are they just commoners with no special abilities? If so, then we can use the same 'special' reason that your PCs operate by.

My suggestion might be that this guy was found as an orphan, has no parents and doesn't know his past. I'd have them be immortal. No explanation, no mechanical reason why. Just have him be unable to die. For the last maybe 200 years, the village have gone through a few cycles. At first they saw he didn't age after reaching maturity and believed that he was using some sort of undiscovered magics. When a visiting mage attempted to kill him for the secrets, the poor guy was nearly buried until he woke up. This filled the villagers with fear of something like him being undead. Over time, perhaps they accepted he wasn't undead. Then, when the harvest failed that year the village began to believe that his presence was the reason. In trying again to kill him and spill his blood into the soil they noticed they didn't have another failed harvest. Over time this then became the weekly ritual - stab the immortal guy and wipe his blood into the soil so that the crops grow.

Mythologising the figure is likely the best way of getting to the 'why' that you're looking for. Terry Pratchett does an awesome job of explaining human ritual and stupid mythologies in Hogfather. He toys with the idea that if something happens the sun won't rise. Of course it's then revealed toward the end that a giant ball of flaming gas would appear in the sky the following day. Spilling blood is a terrible human idea for everything from crops growing to the sun coming up in the morning. Any even cursory scholar of history, myth or sociology will be familiar with how will the rituals that we as humans develop. Lean into that. This has become a ritual for a really silly and obviously nonsense reason.

We all know that there is no real basis for the erection of a Christmas tree in many countries and yet it still happens year after year. It becomes even more absurd if we choose to trace a Christmas Tree's origins to pagan origins. Bringing in of a plant to keep nature alive over the cold winter so that new life can occur in spring. Human beings are weird and curious creatures who create all sorts of nonsense to understand the world around them. Few of these creations make any kind of logical sense and yet they happen. Give it enough time and the 'why' doesn't really matter any more. If you're a Christmas Tree person did you ever ask yourself seriously 'why', or do you do it because it's tradition and what you're 'supposed to do'. I'd wager the latter.

Thank you all!

The best I had come up with was something along the lines of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. Where, instead of a child being treated poorly constantly, there was someone in the town that they had figured out could come closer to death than other without dying and therefore the decision was made for him to once per day deal with the pain "for the good of the town." Maybe to satisfy a bloodlust fiend of some sort who protects the town so it can feed off of the pain inflicted energy again the next day, which would play well into what Xalthu was saying.

I had also toyed with an idea of it happening reverse, like CunningSmile, where one person does the slashing but it is to a random person each day. Maybe a tsujigiri type set up where instead of it being a samurai testing their sword, it's the night watchman proving he can still protect the town each night or he loses his job.

I have to admit, I like martintheactor's multi-layer approach of commoners' lack of understanding better. Repeated correlation therefore assumed causation, I think gives the balance of humor and seriousness they may like. "What the heck just happened?" turned to "check out these dummies" and wrapped up with a "wait! What really is going on?" I like the this, then this, then this, backstory of it.

Let me see what I can come up with, and probably merge. I plan to run it as a city stop on their way to their next destination, so I have a little time.

Feel free to keep sending ideas. Everything is very much appreciated. 

Quote from martintheactor >>

I have a slightly different take on the difference between D&D Adventurers (Player Characters) and common folk in worlds. In my worlds, D&D Player Characters are inherently special. Classes are a magical thing. A representation of their natural inclination toward magic abilities. 

This at least is my explanation of why most NPCs don't get death saving throws. 

Magic and the predisposition toward magical abilities is what means that a player character who has been slashed by a monster's claw to the point of death can recover with 8 good hours of rest. It's also the key to low-magic settings. The player characters become the exception to the rule, the special people who can do things that ordinary folks just can't. 

Using that logic then, are the rest of the folks in town magically inclined? Are they just commoners with no special abilities? If so, then we can use the same 'special' reason that your PCs operate by.

My suggestion might be that this guy was found as an orphan, has no parents and doesn't know his past. I'd have them be immortal. No explanation, no mechanical reason why. Just have him be unable to die. For the last maybe 200 years, the village have gone through a few cycles. At first they saw he didn't age after reaching maturity and believed that he was using some sort of undiscovered magics. When a visiting mage attempted to kill him for the secrets, the poor guy was nearly buried until he woke up. This filled the villagers with fear of something like him being undead. Over time, perhaps they accepted he wasn't undead. Then, when the harvest failed that year the village began to believe that his presence was the reason. In trying again to kill him and spill his blood into the soil they noticed they didn't have another failed harvest. Over time this then became the weekly ritual - stab the immortal guy and wipe his blood into the soil so that the crops grow.

Mythologising the figure is likely the best way of getting to the 'why' that you're looking for. Terry Pratchett does an awesome job of explaining human ritual and stupid mythologies in Hogfather. He toys with the idea that if something happens the sun won't rise. Of course it's then revealed toward the end that a giant ball of flaming gas would appear in the sky the following day. Spilling blood is a terrible human idea for everything from crops growing to the sun coming up in the morning. Any even cursory scholar of history, myth or sociology will be familiar with how will the rituals that we as humans develop. Lean into that. This has become a ritual for a really silly and obviously nonsense reason.

We all know that there is no real basis for the erection of a Christmas tree in many countries and yet it still happens year after year. It becomes even more absurd if we choose to trace a Christmas Tree's origins to pagan origins. Bringing in of a plant to keep nature alive over the cold winter so that new life can occur in spring. Human beings are weird and curious creatures who create all sorts of nonsense to understand the world around them. Few of these creations make any kind of logical sense and yet they happen. Give it enough time and the 'why' doesn't really matter any more. If you're a Christmas Tree person did you ever ask yourself seriously 'why', or do you do it because it's tradition and what you're 'supposed to do'. I'd wager the latter.

 This idea makes sense, except for one thing: If all classes are magical, does that mean that a Fighter loses second wind, extra attack, indomitable, et cetera, in an Antimagic Field?

Quote from Maruntoryx >>

 

 

 This idea makes sense, except for one thing: If all classes are magical, does that mean that a Fighter loses second wind, extra attack, indomitable, et cetera, in an Antimagic Field?

One could certainly make that judgement if you were to run a low-magic world, especially that in 5e even a druidic wildshape drops their shape as they enter an AM field. That would be a GM's judgement though. I personally would probably handwave it and ask players for some poetic licence in order be able to rule more in their favour and not limit their abilities. Ruling that a fighter loses all their extras though might present new tactical options if players make frequent use of anti-magic field however. It would be a discussion to be had with the specific players at the table and inform them well before they began playing the adventure in that world.