I am curious why this is a problem. Is there some deep need to kill PC's off?
If one or more PC's can't die, then there is no threat to a combat (at least for them); you can give them narrative reasons to care, but you can't force them to, just as you can't force them to care if the rest of their party dies.
It does depend on the player though; if they're just using it as extra time to get healing then that's fine, it's just extra time. But if they start using to just wail on enemies that can't kill them until eventually they win, then it will quickly render a bunch of encounters basically pointless.
It's a very weird mechanic IMO, it would have been better to give the zealot some kind of limit on how many death save failures they can accumulate while fighting on, e.g- bump it to six or something while raging, so they're still encouraged to do something about it rather than just mindlessly fight on knowing you only need one round of Rage left to heal yourself. 10 rounds fights are pretty uncommon so Rage is unlikely to end, as others have pointed out Barbarians eventually get unlimited Rage.
That said, I'm with UrthTheThoughtless on stacking Rages (starting one before the other ends); you still end up with two instances of Rage active at once, they just don't have any stacking effect, and the first will still end once its duration runs out, thus triggering death, so you are limited to that one minute timer. So an alternative might be to just change the rule to say "when your current Rage ends" or such, to clarify it.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
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If one or more PC's can't die, then there is no threat to a combat (at least for them); you can give them narrative reasons to care, but you can't force them to, just as you can't force them to care if the rest of their party dies.
It does depend on the player though; if they're just using it as extra time to get healing then that's fine, it's just extra time. But if they start using to just wail on enemies that can't kill them until eventually they win, then it will quickly render a bunch of encounters basically pointless.
It's a very weird mechanic IMO, it would have been better to give the zealot some kind of limit on how many death save failures they can accumulate while fighting on, e.g- bump it to six or something while raging, so they're still encouraged to do something about it rather than just mindlessly fight on knowing you only need one round of Rage left to heal yourself. 10 rounds fights are pretty uncommon so Rage is unlikely to end, as others have pointed out Barbarians eventually get unlimited Rage.
That said, I'm with UrthTheThoughtless on stacking Rages (starting one before the other ends); you still end up with two instances of Rage active at once, they just don't have any stacking effect, and the first will still end once its duration runs out, thus triggering death, so you are limited to that one minute timer. So an alternative might be to just change the rule to say "when your current Rage ends" or such, to clarify it.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.