Hey there, you adventurers! With the announcements of the dates of the new basic books, I believe that just like me, you should also be anxious (or not, you will know hahaha).
However, I also have a question to know the opinion of the staff... What do you think about how the "unconscious" condition works?
Do you think that simply reaching 0 life points and thus making a death save is a good idea or do you think that another mechanic could be better ( example, instead of 0 life points, the points become negative)?
Leave your opinion so we can make a healthy discussion to know how each one thinks about this subject and leave your suggestions so that other masters have new ideas!

Good games and good rolls!

I believe Unconscious being the failure state for 0hp is boring.

It removes the chance for epic last stands, creates a weird binary play state (fully capable above 0hp, then completely out), completely cuts player engagement out once they're Dying, and conflates Unconscious with Dying, confusing it's use as a standalone condition.

I'd much rather Dying not send you Unconscious, instead limiting your action economy or effectiveness (but not both) so you have to choose whether to keep desperately fighting as you bleed out or retreat to stabilise yourself. Maybe allowing you to exert yourself and take your turn normally at the expense of an automatically failed death save.

Unconscious should just be a single distinct state (rather than different rules by whether it's sleep/spell or due to 0hp). You could include abilities and rules for being knocked Unconscious for massive damage, special abilities, Con save when taking damage while Dying, etc.

Quote from Bearbug1941 >>

I believe Unconscious being the failure state for 0hp is boring.

It removes the chance for epic last stands, creates a weird binary play state (fully capable above 0hp, then completely out), completely cuts player engagement out once they're Dying, and conflates Unconscious with Dying, confusing it's use as a standalone condition.

  isn't that what makes Relentless Rage and Relentless Endurance special? and for everyone else you can exercise your right to avoid a deadly combat or retreat when wounded. additionally, the UA tested monsters not having critical attacks which is something that can reduce the perceived need to have a mechanism for surviving an unanticipated deadly blow.

I'd much rather Dying not send you Unconscious, instead limiting your action economy or effectiveness (but not both) so you have to choose whether to keep desperately fighting as you bleed out or retreat to stabilise yourself. Maybe allowing you to exert yourself and take your turn normally at the expense of an automatically failed death save.

Unconscious should just be a single distinct state (rather than different rules by whether it's sleep/spell or due to 0hp). You could include abilities and rules for being knocked Unconscious for massive damage, special abilities, Con save when taking damage while Dying, etc.

 one criticism of healing today is that it's 'wack-a-mole' play: why heal multiple times in a battle if you can just wait until someone dies, healing them enough to get to their feet, let them attack, die again or not, then rinse and repeat. being able to uncork your own health potions just seems like an extension of that.

I mean, the DM can let you play around with exactly how "unconscious" you are, particularly if this is a big scene, but the dramatic holding action stuff starts at about 1/4 HP in terms of your theoretical staying power. 0 HP isn't when you're starting to give out, it's when you've been beat down to the point you can't act. And, additionally, the expenditure of features pretty well covers the loss of capability; you've pulled some of your big moves and now have less in the tank. Plus to a certain degree it's just a case of keeping combat simple so one encounter doesn't take an entire 3 hour session (I've actually had that happen, but to be fair there were 15 of them and 5 of us). Throwing in conditional calculations like this would bog down play a lot. And the DMG does have optional rules for giving lasting injuries on things like crits or being downed if you want a little more grim and grit in your combats.

I tend to view 0 hit points as hors d' combat.  You're out of action.  I don't think that the condition itself is boring, I think being unable to do anything but make death saving throws kinda boring, but at the same time, the game should be able to kill.  Just not quite as easily as in say, 2e.

I don't find having only a single class able to make heroic last stands particularly good or interesting design.

The problem is that 5e combat rules don't lend themselves to withdrawing or knowing when to avoid combat. It's heroic fantasy with all the dials turned up. Other people have highlighted the various issues so I won't dive into them. It's easy enough to solve with an experienced DM that knows how to telegraph danger, player's familiar with that GM's level of threat, and a competence from the DM and players to withdraw as the rules as written are lacking (requires rulings or home brew and the players to be au fait with he option).

But that's gotten a little of topic.

Monsters not having crits was a playtest idea seemingly abandoned and also doesn't address the key issue. This isn't about survivability, it's about maintaining player agency until the last breath.

I think you'd be surprised how many players kept on fighting while failing death saves and could see this actually making things more lethal 😅! But I agree, whack-a-mole healing is awful so their should be some form of consequence to hitting 0hp. I like the suggestion of gaining a level of Exhaustion. 

Also, conditional calculations wouldn't take noticeably any longer than any other save effect or massive damage calculation: "You took 28 damage, that drops you to Dying. Your max hp is 26? Well that means you get KTFO by that big honking swing from the giant. The rest of you see Glorious Gobbo, your courageous goblin wizard, lying unconscious and bleeding out."

I like the idea of after the character falls unconscious, if he gets up, gaining point of exhaustion. I think it’s a great idea that I hadn’t thought of before... It could be something to be enhanced in the new books (obviously, delirium on my part to think they will do something like this, haha). But I also think that the idea of the guy reaching simply 0 life points and the guy simply not having to do death save, is a very bad idea added by Wizard in 5E. I think it gives less chance for the characters to die (not that I like killing the characters, but it would give the player a feeling that he might lose the hero he created if he doesn’t play right or value his character).

If they adopt the "new" Exhaustion rules proposed early on in the UA (or some version of it), I'd like to see them integrate it into the hit point system somehow. Suffering a point of Exhaustion for every time a character returns to consciousness is one idea that I like. Some other ideas could be: 

Taking a point of Exhaustion at certain hit point levels. Perhaps 1 point at half hp and a second point at 1/4 hp. This would represent the growing debilitation of the character's mounting injuries. And it would definitely place a premium on healing. Of course, this would work both ways, so enemies would also be subject to it.

Taking a point of Exhaustion when suffering a Critical Hit. This would add to the "oomph" of a Critical hit, which again would work both for and against players, But it would help to alleviate the sting of rolling low damage for when your character scores a crit (unless they change how Crit damage works, but that's another conversation.)

A side effect of all of this Exhaustion would be the elevation in value of anything that alleviates Exhaustion, like Lesser Restoration spells or the Ranger's "Tireless" feature. Perhaps features could be amended to alleviate Exhaustion, like the higher level Paladin Lay on Hands, or the Monk's Self-Restoration, or the Fighter's Second Wind.

But, maybe these ideas aren't balanced. Or maybe they're too hard to keep track of (when is 1/4 hp? How many points of Exhaustion do I have? Etc) Or maybe they'd slow down play. I dunno. They've not been vetted or tested. It's just some ideas I've had sloshing around the inside of my skull for a bit. 🤷‍♂️

Quote from Bearbug1941 >>

I don't find having only a single class able to make heroic last stands particularly good or interesting design.

The problem is that 5e combat rules don't lend themselves to withdrawing or knowing when to avoid combat. It's heroic fantasy with all the dials turned up. Other people have highlighted the various issues so I won't dive into them. It's easy enough to solve with an experienced DM that knows how to telegraph danger, player's familiar with that GM's level of threat, and a competence from the DM and players to withdraw as the rules as written are lacking (requires rulings or home brew and the players to be au fait with he option).

 I disagree. You can absolutely telegraph danger and have deadly encounters that players can flee from. What is really going on is we are in the "videogame generation" most players aren't coming from previous versions of D&D that were very deadly, they are coming from videogame RPGs. And videogame RPGs train you to mash through any combat put in front of you, and just reload if you lose. At my table only 1/5 players wants the game to be scary and deadly, the others like it to be 'easy mode'.

heck I come from the old school, and I don't want my precious to be dying too. 

The unconscious state is exactly what it means.  You are out, unaware of anything or possibly knocked unconscious. 

Quote from Agilemind>>

I disagree. You can absolutely telegraph danger and have deadly encounters that players can flee from. What is really going on is we are in the "videogame generation" most players aren't coming from previous versions of D&D that were very deadly, they are coming from videogame RPGs. And videogame RPGs train you to mash through any combat put in front of you, and just reload if you lose. At my table only 1/5 players wants the game to be scary and deadly, the others like it to be 'easy mode'.

Combat in D&D is so boring if there's no threat – for all that combat is the focus of 5e it's one of the weakest areas unless the DM really pushes the limits to make it stressful and tense, otherwise you're just aware of how slow and boring it really is, because your usual tactics will just work every time

In that respect I do much prefer systems that track injuries rather than hit-points, like Blades in the Dark, where you don't really have health, instead you can only take one critical injury, a second will kill you, but below that you can take two major injuries and two minor (taking more causes one to promote up a level). Each injury type imposes some form of penalty so there's real stakes to being injured, and things can go from bad to worse quickly, but then it's a game designed around managing that risk.

I do sometimes use permanent injuries in D&D, but that's usually as a cost for reckless behaviour, or as a devil's bargain so a character can escape otherwise certain (or highly likely) death but not unscathed, e.g- if the group is struggling against a creature that's swallowed a player, I might allow the player a way to escape but losing a limb in the process, triggering a side quest to then replace that somehow.

I've been toying with the idea of adding "temporary injuries", basically the same effects as the permanent injuries but as a result of something treatable; so a player might lose the use of an arm to a particularly nasty wound as an impediment in combat, but it's treatable during a short or long rest, similar for temporary blinding, unable to speak and such. I particularly like the idea of this for surprise rounds as an alternative to damage, e.g- an enemy assassin tries to silence a caster rather than just doing a bunch of extra damage which is less interesting to me.

But it's a super difficult thing to balance in a system like 5e where characters have much more distinct roles, different amounts of hit-points and so-on; I think injuries work so well in Blades in the Dark because all characters have the same basic durability and combat prowess, even if some can add bonuses here and there. For 5e the balancing act is to avoid just punishing people for doing poorly, which only makes a bad time worse, rather than being a fun twist or challenge to overcome.