I wasn't sure which board this should go in honestly, but I've been struggling for a while trying to figure out why this rule exists.
When you hit 0 hp, why do you fall unconscious? Like obviously mechanically you're going to be on the ground, unable to move or act, but why make it so the player is completely unable to play? I would think at least they should be able to speak, able to ask for help or, conversely, say something like "Go on without me". When a character is dying is when they would MOST want to actually roleplay, but the whole process is supposed to be comatose. It's not just a flavor thing, it's written directly into the rules, heck you can't even regain consciousness when stabilized until you regain hp. Obviously you could just DM things differently but it's written that way on purpose. When was the last time you saw a character in fiction die while unconscious? I really just can't justify it to myself at all.
Your thinking about it wrong, have you ever read a book and the main character gets absolutely wrecked, you know, maybe they get drowned, they get hit by a ceiling.
And they’re dead, completely dead, but the sidekick does CPR or something else, and suddenly the character coughs and they regain consciousness.
Thats how it works with D&D, they die, they go past their limits, but sometimes, they can survive with help from their allies, through magical or manual healing.
If your players do it right, that cost of 20m sitting their is worth so much more for the roleplay.
Hit points are an abstraction showing how long a character can fight, so taking hit point damage isn't always your character taking a hit, as it may be the exertion of avoiding a hit. 0hp is when the character is so injured or exhuasted that they can't do anything any more. Logically, your character should have declining ability to fight as their hit points get closer to zero, but instead of doing that, the game designers decided to allow characters to have full combat capability right up until they fall unconscious.
It's just for simplification of the game rules and streamlining gameplay.
As always, the DM is able to add, remove or modify any rules they like for the game they're running. They're also allowed to make once-off rulings, etc.
DnD 5E tries to run a relatively minimal level of rules and detail to keep the game simple and basic for new players and allow DMs to more easily add rules rather than modifying or removing them. As a result, there are many traits that don't represent real world actions. RAW you can fall to 0hp, fail 2 death saving throws, have someone with the healer's feat heal you with a medical kit back to only 1hp (I.E. mundane, not magical healing) and suddenly the character that was near death is back on their feet with their 1hp, fighting just as well as they did when they were at full health.
DM's add all sorts of things to make it more realistic. Some will allow talking. Some will allow even the item interaction. I read of one that allowed characters one more turn before they collapse where they cannot attack are at half speed and disadvantage for all ability checks. Even getting back up there are DMs that rule players to gain a level of exhaustion when they recover from 0hp or that players have a level of exhaustion whenever their HP falls below a certain level to represent problems from the damage.
Even players can put to the DM that they'd like to be capable of talking for RP purposes and get approved or declined. It's just a game mechanic to represent the general health, constitution, stamina and vitality of the characters in combat, but its worth remembering that by the time they've fallen and are making death saving throws they could be 18-30 seconds away from drawing their last breath... if they're breathing at all.
Mechanically, if you start letting people speak, there’s spells they could cast, even though they’re supposed to be, basically, dead.
But if a player wanted to say Go on without me, or Tell my son I love him. Or some other last words type speech, I can’t imagine a DM having a problem with that.
Dying rules makes you unconcious at 0 hit points because there's so much the body can endure before the mind snaps, falling out into coma.
Another thing that contrast with non-fiction is that D&D character are as effective at max HP than when reduced down to 1, which is where you'd imagine some concious yet disabled condition could be found.
The oddity with the rules is NOT that a character falls unconscious at zero hit points. The oddity is that all the damage received before hitting zero hit points has NO effect on the character or their abilities.
The moment for a character to role play being badly injured and needing help would likely be when they are < 10 hit points or some other limit. However, healing is more efficient if you wait until they hit 0 hit points and RAW there is no reason to use it sooner unless the character is concentrating on an essential spell or some other less common reason.
So if you are looking for a rule to blame because it seems unrealistic to you that characters just drop unconscious at zero hit points, then you need to look at the lack of rules causing any mechanical impact for damage other than when a character drops to zero.
Unconscious is a very easy delineation to make in the rules since when conscious you can take actions and move while unconscious you can't. Anything else requires more complex rules.
I wasn't sure which board this should go in honestly, but I've been struggling for a while trying to figure out why this rule exists.
When you hit 0 hp, why do you fall unconscious? Like obviously mechanically you're going to be on the ground, unable to move or act, but why make it so the player is completely unable to play? I would think at least they should be able to speak, able to ask for help or, conversely, say something like "Go on without me". When a character is dying is when they would MOST want to actually roleplay, but the whole process is supposed to be comatose. It's not just a flavor thing, it's written directly into the rules, heck you can't even regain consciousness when stabilized until you regain hp. Obviously you could just DM things differently but it's written that way on purpose. When was the last time you saw a character in fiction die while unconscious? I really just can't justify it to myself at all.
Your thinking about it wrong, have you ever read a book and the main character gets absolutely wrecked, you know, maybe they get drowned, they get hit by a ceiling.
And they’re dead, completely dead, but the sidekick does CPR or something else, and suddenly the character coughs and they regain consciousness.
Thats how it works with D&D, they die, they go past their limits, but sometimes, they can survive with help from their allies, through magical or manual healing.
If your players do it right, that cost of 20m sitting their is worth so much more for the roleplay.
Hit points are an abstraction showing how long a character can fight, so taking hit point damage isn't always your character taking a hit, as it may be the exertion of avoiding a hit. 0hp is when the character is so injured or exhuasted that they can't do anything any more. Logically, your character should have declining ability to fight as their hit points get closer to zero, but instead of doing that, the game designers decided to allow characters to have full combat capability right up until they fall unconscious.
It's just for simplification of the game rules and streamlining gameplay.
As always, the DM is able to add, remove or modify any rules they like for the game they're running. They're also allowed to make once-off rulings, etc.
DnD 5E tries to run a relatively minimal level of rules and detail to keep the game simple and basic for new players and allow DMs to more easily add rules rather than modifying or removing them. As a result, there are many traits that don't represent real world actions. RAW you can fall to 0hp, fail 2 death saving throws, have someone with the healer's feat heal you with a medical kit back to only 1hp (I.E. mundane, not magical healing) and suddenly the character that was near death is back on their feet with their 1hp, fighting just as well as they did when they were at full health.
DM's add all sorts of things to make it more realistic. Some will allow talking. Some will allow even the item interaction. I read of one that allowed characters one more turn before they collapse where they cannot attack are at half speed and disadvantage for all ability checks. Even getting back up there are DMs that rule players to gain a level of exhaustion when they recover from 0hp or that players have a level of exhaustion whenever their HP falls below a certain level to represent problems from the damage.
Even players can put to the DM that they'd like to be capable of talking for RP purposes and get approved or declined. It's just a game mechanic to represent the general health, constitution, stamina and vitality of the characters in combat, but its worth remembering that by the time they've fallen and are making death saving throws they could be 18-30 seconds away from drawing their last breath... if they're breathing at all.
Mechanically, if you start letting people speak, there’s spells they could cast, even though they’re supposed to be, basically, dead.
But if a player wanted to say Go on without me, or Tell my son I love him. Or some other last words type speech, I can’t imagine a DM having a problem with that.
Dying rules makes you unconcious at 0 hit points because there's so much the body can endure before the mind snaps, falling out into coma.
Another thing that contrast with non-fiction is that D&D character are as effective at max HP than when reduced down to 1, which is where you'd imagine some concious yet disabled condition could be found.
The oddity with the rules is NOT that a character falls unconscious at zero hit points. The oddity is that all the damage received before hitting zero hit points has NO effect on the character or their abilities.
The moment for a character to role play being badly injured and needing help would likely be when they are < 10 hit points or some other limit. However, healing is more efficient if you wait until they hit 0 hit points and RAW there is no reason to use it sooner unless the character is concentrating on an essential spell or some other less common reason.
So if you are looking for a rule to blame because it seems unrealistic to you that characters just drop unconscious at zero hit points, then you need to look at the lack of rules causing any mechanical impact for damage other than when a character drops to zero.
Unconscious is a very easy delineation to make in the rules since when conscious you can take actions and move while unconscious you can't. Anything else requires more complex rules.