The latest One D&D UA gave us new, simplified exhaustion rules, that use 10 levels of exhaustion with incremental numerical penalties. Generally I really like this simplification, since exhaustion rules are much more memorable that way and scale more naturally. I persume this will make exhaustion a more widely used mechanic. There are however some minor changes I would take into consideration:
Firstly I find it a little unintuitive that the movement speed is not affected at all. The old "your speed is suddenly halved, then zero" may be a bit much, but a more scalable approach would be nice. Hence I'd suggest reducing a character's speed by 5 feet with each level of exhaustion. Alternatively introducing movement penalties starting at around exhaustion level 3-5 may also be feasible. That way you don't have that sudden change from "you're completely mobile" to "you're dead" and long distance travel will also be incrementally affected by exhaustion.
The second change I'd like to see relates to player death at exhaustion level 10. I personally prefer having a realistic chance but no inevitability of death. So instead of letting a player die from level 10+ exhaustion right away, I'd make them fall unconscious and roll death saves instead. So there's a good chance of death, but a forced rest is equally possible.
What do you think? Anything I overlooked? Would you also like to see those additional mechanics?
I have also been thinking that incremental movement penalties should be included. I thought at first maybe something like -1, -2, or -3 feet of movement per level of exhaustion, but since in the game movement effectively comes in blocks of 5 feet, how about -5 feet for every other level of exhaustion. this would be a smooth reduction, but wouldn't take a character's movement fully away until the very end.
I don't think death saves are necessary, it is not like 10 levels of exhaustion happen to someone all of a sudden. If they have let it go that far without doing something about it, then they deserve to die, but I can see your point of view as well.
I think character's dying after 10 days of exhaustion is just unrealistic, 3 days without water, sure, 14 days without food, possible but 10 days without sleep? that is usually just going to end in a coma, not death. Character's should have to roll each day to maintain being awake and checks to awaken them should increase by 2 for every level of exhaustion. So essentially the DC becomes so high it's near impossible to wake somebody who reached too high a level of exhaustion. Then a character who is comatose for a full day should lose 2 levels of exhaustion a day instead of 1, since they are basically sleeping for 24 hours straight.
Note: death saving throws are a d20 test. They would be at -10 when at 10 levels of Exhaustion. Therefore only a natural 20, with its automatic stabilization, would work, and after that you have a state conflict where the character is at ten levels of exhaustion which triggers automatic death saves, but also stable and thus not needing to do death saves.
Let Exhaustion be. The new rules are excellent, no need to muck with them.
Note: death saving throws are a d20 test. They would be at -10 when at 10 levels of Exhaustion. Therefore only a natural 20, with its automatic stabilization, would work, and after that you have a state conflict where the character is at ten levels of exhaustion which triggers automatic death saves, but also stable and thus not needing to do death saves.
Let Exhaustion be. The new rules are excellent, no need to muck with them.
The rules are better than use to be, but essentially automatic death still remains a very weird part of it. Generally speaking, exhaustion is actually tiredness, it isn't not eating or sleeping and tiredness usually would lead to comatose before death.
Note: death saving throws are a d20 test. They would be at -10 when at 10 levels of Exhaustion. Therefore only a natural 20, with its automatic stabilization, would work, and after that you have a state conflict where the character is at ten levels of exhaustion which triggers automatic death saves, but also stable and thus not needing to do death saves.
Let Exhaustion be. The new rules are excellent, no need to muck with them.
The rules are better than use to be, but essentially automatic death still remains a very weird part of it. Generally speaking, exhaustion is actually tiredness, it isn't not eating or sleeping and tiredness usually would lead to comatose before death.
Exhaustion is not just “tiredness.” Exhaustion is to tiredness as Rage is to anger. It’s a category beyond. It is most certainly possible to die from exhaustion.
I do agree that it's unrealistic that simply not sleeping for 10 days is enough to just straight up die, but I think it's still a fair abstraction for the sake of gameplay. Especially if the changes to Exhaustion make it more common in-game.
I think the thing to keep in mind is that there's a lot of room to adjust how this kind of thing works. For example... RAW, a character could willingly commit suicide by sheer virtue of living out a perfectly normal life and simply refusing to sleep. But a DM might decide that, no... you can't just will yourself to not sleep and just force the player to pass out unless some kind of outside force is keeping them awake. With that in mind, the only way you could stay awake for that long would be if someone is deliberately torturing you and forcing you to stay awake for that length of time. It puts a lot of onus on the DM and players to insert some realism into the system, but that's fairly common in D&D already.
Note: death saving throws are a d20 test. They would be at -10 when at 10 levels of Exhaustion. Therefore only a natural 20, with its automatic stabilization, would work, and after that you have a state conflict where the character is at ten levels of exhaustion which triggers automatic death saves, but also stable and thus not needing to do death saves.
Let Exhaustion be. The new rules are excellent, no need to muck with them.
The rules are better than use to be, but essentially automatic death still remains a very weird part of it. Generally speaking, exhaustion is actually tiredness, it isn't not eating or sleeping and tiredness usually would lead to comatose before death.
Exhaustion is not just “tiredness.” Exhaustion is to tiredness as Rage is to anger. It’s a category beyond. It is most certainly possible to die from exhaustion.
Exhaustion is not taking a "long rest", which essentially means sleep for 6 hours, that literally is just tiredness. Your character could be taking it easy for 10 days straight but as long as they don't sleep, they die. The exhaustion mechanic in 5E and D&D one, is not actual exhaustion, despite the mechanic being called that, it's tiredness.
I do agree that it's unrealistic that simply not sleeping for 10 days is enough to just straight up die, but I think it's still a fair abstraction for the sake of gameplay. Especially if the changes to Exhaustion make it more common in-game.
I think the thing to keep in mind is that there's a lot of room to adjust how this kind of thing works. For example... RAW, a character could willingly commit suicide by sheer virtue of living out a perfectly normal life and simply refusing to sleep. But a DM might decide that, no... you can't just will yourself to not sleep and just force the player to pass out unless some kind of outside force is keeping them awake. With that in mind, the only way you could stay awake for that long would be if someone is deliberately torturing you and forcing you to stay awake for that length of time. It puts a lot of onus on the DM and players to insert some realism into the system, but that's fairly common in D&D already.
Yea, it's a weird state to get into. Generally if you're that exhausted you should be actively fighting off falling comatose or collapsing earlier on rather than just falling dead. DMs certainly can and do work it differently, Exhaustion in 5E was crazy punishing for staying up 1 minute past 24 hours.
I think the trouble about exhaustion is that, RAW... it's just not sleeping. But I feel that the intent is to be that you, as an adventurer, are out taking on stressful, deadly encounters. It's one thing to not sleep for 10 days when you're sitting at your home with coffee and food, maybe a cold shower to hop into whenever you start drifting to sleep. But it's quite another to stay awake for 10 days while also marching across a fantasy kingdom, fending off owlbears and carrying a 100lb+ backpack full of all your adventuring supplies. Just the thought of wearing a suit of armor for a full day, even without also doing adventuring activities, sounds absolutely exhausting.
I think I might, as a DM, rule that refusing to sleep in a comfortable, stress-free environment wouldn't induce exhaustion, even if that's not 100% what the rules say. If anything I would just rule that you can't recover from existing exhaustion under those circumstances.
Exhaustion isn’t just no sleep, it’s pushing your body to use reserves it doesn’t really have, sleep is part of that but not all. Consider that it may include limited/insufficient food, alertness, motional stress (worry, fear, etc) as well as limited/no sleep and or rest as well as strenuous physical activities. The -1 per level on D20 rolls makes sense to me as well as -5’ movement every 2 levels thru L8 makes sense as well.
I would change it to every level at Levels 9+. ( 30’ MR -> 25’ at L2, 20’ at L4, 15’ at L6, 10’ at L8, then 5’ at L9, and 0’ at level 10.) When movement reaches 0’ the person falls unconscious and will not wake on their own for 12+ (12+1 d12) hours. If forced to stay awake and active until movement drops to -5’ he individual passes out, must make death rolls, and cannot be woken up for 12+ (12+1d20) hours if they stabilize.
this also allows folks like rangers and monks to push deeper not exhaustion before becoming incapacitated.
Exhaustion is given by 2 things, not long resting and berserker barbarian. If you don't eat, drink or sleep you get 1 point of exhaustion since you can not long rest, which is the problem here. Since you can both drink and eat but get no sleep, thus it makes no sense that exhaustion by itself is deadly. Yes a character can be stressed which doesn't help but then a character can be stressed without exhaustion too, those really aren't part of the mechanics, neither is alertness. You can't say mediate as any character to slow down the speed at which you gain a level of exhaustion. Also the latest UA for ranger really does make exhaustion look like it's just tiredness, since they can recover a level of exhaustion on a short rest, which technically means ranger never needs to eat anymore. Funnily enough the feature name is Tireless
But it's really an aside from the point, you can get 10 levels of exhaustion from just not sleeping, which is odd that it'd kill you. It should be more along the lines that food and water are tracked separately, if you want a survival element to the game then these exhaustion rules are not sufficient, if you want a normal game, most of the time exhaustion will never come up anyways since you'll always sleep in a camp, tavern, house, etc and rations are dirty cheap. Some classes get spells that just invalidate the need to find food or water anyways, if you got a Cleric, Paladin or Artificer they can even magically create the food, and let's not forget about druid with goodberry.
The current explanation for exhaustion says 'Some special abilities and environmental hazards, such as starvation and the long-term effects of freezing or scorching temperatures, can lead to a special condition called exhaustion.'
I most commonly give characters exhaustion for environmental conditions: traveling over freezing mountains, elemental planes, poor sleeping arrangements. I also give it for pushing too long without rest, which happens occasionally. And I give it any time a character falls in battle and has to make death saves. That last one is not RAW, but I think it adds a lot to the game and represents serious injuries elegantly.
No character is staying up 11 days in a peaceful environment (Interestingly, that IS the world record for no sleep). If they are just relaxing at home, they'll just eventually fall asleep. The only way a character is reasonably going to stay up that long without rest is under extreme duress. They are being tortured, forced to fight day and night in some nightmare realm, etc. Just a few days of no sleep, in a completely peaceful environment, starts causing hallucinations. The more you push it, the more you risk serious serious side effects. I think it's completely reasonable that the situations an adventurer would be in to accumulate that much exhaustion could be deadly.
Exhaustion is a great tool for a DM. It gives weight to decisions, consequences for actions, and realism to tough exploration. I like the flavor of the 5e rules, but they are very punishing so you can't use it much. I'm totally happy with the new rules. Realistically, most players will choose to rest after they start rolling with -5 on everything.
You can add movement penalties if you want. But it will start to have the same effects as the current rules, where an exhausted character just can't reasonably continue. And you can change it from death to some kind of roll, or forced sleep. I think both are fine options depending on the circumstances. But the new rules are definitely more DM friendly overall, and will open up a lot more exciting options.
If we are being technical by the UA, Exhaustion doesn't exist anymore, it was replaced by exhausted, which gives no description of what it actually is.
If we are being technical by the UA, Exhaustion doesn't exist anymore, it was replaced by exhausted, which gives no description of what it actually is.
Haha that's true. I guess we get to apply it to whatever we want. Freedom!
If we are being technical by the UA, Exhaustion doesn't exist anymore, it was replaced by exhausted, which gives no description of what it actually is.
Let’s take a look
5e:
Exhaustion
Some special abilities and environmental hazards, such as starvation and the long-term effects of freezing or scorching temperatures, can lead to a special condition called exhaustion. Exhaustion is measured in six levels. An effect can give a creature one or more levels of exhaustion, as specified in the effect's description.
If an already exhausted creature suffers another effect that causes exhaustion, its current level of exhaustion increases by the amount specified in the effect's description.
A creature suffers the effect of its current level of exhaustion as well as all lower levels. For example, a creature suffering level 2 exhaustion has its speed halved and has disadvantage on ability checks.
An effect that removes exhaustion reduces its level as specified in the effect's description, with all exhaustion effects ending if a creature's exhaustion level is reduced below 1.
Finishing a long rest reduces a creature's exhaustion level by 1, provided that the creature has also ingested some food and drink. Also, being raised from the dead reduces a creature’s exhaustion level by 1.
1DND: EXHAUSTED [CONDITION] While you are subjected to the Exhausted Condition (known in older books as Exhaustion), you experience the following effects: Levels of Exhaustion. This Condition is cumulative. Each time you receive it, you gain 1 level of exhaustion. You die if your exhaustion level exceeds 10. d20 Rolls Affected. When you make a d20 Test, you subtract your exhaustion level from the d20 roll. Spell Save DCs Affected. Subtract your exhaustion level from the Spell save DC of any Spell you cast. Ending the Condition. Finishing a Long Rest removes 1 of your levels of exhaustion. When your exhaustion level reaches 0, you are no longer Exhausted.
so exhausted is the same as exhaustion except for the listed changes so you could combine the two to give a full description of the UA version:
EXHAUSTED [CONDITION] Some special abilities and environmental hazards, such as starvation and the long-term effects of freezing or scorching temperatures, can lead to a special condition called exhaustion. Exhaustion is measured in six levels. An effect can give a creature one or more levels of the exhausted condition as specified in the effect's description.While you are subjected to the Exhausted Condition (known in older books as Exhaustion), you experience the following effects: Levels of Exhaustion. This Condition is cumulative. Each time you receive it, you gain 1 level of exhaustion. You die if your exhaustion level exceeds 10. d20 Rolls Affected. When you make a d20 Test, you subtract your exhaustion level from the d20 roll. Spell Save DCs Affected. Subtract your exhaustion level from the Spell save DC of any Spell you cast. Ending the Condition. Finishing a Long Rest removes 1 of your levels of exhaustion. When your exhaustion level reaches 0, you are no longer Exhausted.
The old table is changed to the new which makes for some interesting commentary: 1) under the old rules you only had 6 possible levels and then you died - and no one was complaining about it. Now you have 10 levels and folks are complaining What? 2) movement used to be cut in half at the start, now it’s unaffected and so everyone (including me) is trying to homebrew putting movement penalties back in. What? 3) a long rest (6hours of sleep , a meal and a bathroom break) removes 1 level so let’s see, my personal record for no sleep + High stress is 6 days (so 6 levels) so that means 6 long rests or about 42-48 hours of sleep - yep sounds about right ( after that idjit run I did sleep from Friday nigh5 about 6-8 pm until Sunday afternoon about 1-2 pm) . This actually looks really good for a tabletop rules extraction - a few spells/special abilities/ DM distress ion based on events and a fairly accurate description of reality. (I was hwy driving the last 4 hrs before hitting the sack and leaving huge spaces as I knew my reactions (saves) were off and my decisions (skill rolls) were slowed).
What people are after is something usable in two scenarios, 1st is normal play and the 2nd is gritty realism. The new rules are definitely far easier to remember, I can't really say I ever saw exhaustion used in normal play because party gunna party, late into the night and then get drunk and wake up after a long rest. I assume for gritty realism people will homebrew around these rules tho, they are less extreme than the old ones. Since generally exhaustion doesn't kill in 6 days, which was the weirdest part, the only thing that kills that quickly in regards to exhaustion is dehydration. 10 days is more reasonable for sure if we are accounting for not drinking, eating and sleeping.
A lot of people misread I think. It is exceeds 10. So once you hit 11. The longest one has gone without sleep is 11 day II don't think that is connected) It is a mechanic. If they increased it or let death savesafter hitting 10 people would just keep pushing it. It has to have a price.
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The latest One D&D UA gave us new, simplified exhaustion rules, that use 10 levels of exhaustion with incremental numerical penalties. Generally I really like this simplification, since exhaustion rules are much more memorable that way and scale more naturally. I persume this will make exhaustion a more widely used mechanic. There are however some minor changes I would take into consideration:
Firstly I find it a little unintuitive that the movement speed is not affected at all. The old "your speed is suddenly halved, then zero" may be a bit much, but a more scalable approach would be nice. Hence I'd suggest reducing a character's speed by 5 feet with each level of exhaustion. Alternatively introducing movement penalties starting at around exhaustion level 3-5 may also be feasible. That way you don't have that sudden change from "you're completely mobile" to "you're dead" and long distance travel will also be incrementally affected by exhaustion.
The second change I'd like to see relates to player death at exhaustion level 10. I personally prefer having a realistic chance but no inevitability of death. So instead of letting a player die from level 10+ exhaustion right away, I'd make them fall unconscious and roll death saves instead. So there's a good chance of death, but a forced rest is equally possible.
What do you think? Anything I overlooked? Would you also like to see those additional mechanics?
I have also been thinking that incremental movement penalties should be included. I thought at first maybe something like -1, -2, or -3 feet of movement per level of exhaustion, but since in the game movement effectively comes in blocks of 5 feet, how about -5 feet for every other level of exhaustion. this would be a smooth reduction, but wouldn't take a character's movement fully away until the very end.
I don't think death saves are necessary, it is not like 10 levels of exhaustion happen to someone all of a sudden. If they have let it go that far without doing something about it, then they deserve to die, but I can see your point of view as well.
I think character's dying after 10 days of exhaustion is just unrealistic, 3 days without water, sure, 14 days without food, possible but 10 days without sleep? that is usually just going to end in a coma, not death. Character's should have to roll each day to maintain being awake and checks to awaken them should increase by 2 for every level of exhaustion. So essentially the DC becomes so high it's near impossible to wake somebody who reached too high a level of exhaustion. Then a character who is comatose for a full day should lose 2 levels of exhaustion a day instead of 1, since they are basically sleeping for 24 hours straight.
Note: death saving throws are a d20 test. They would be at -10 when at 10 levels of Exhaustion. Therefore only a natural 20, with its automatic stabilization, would work, and after that you have a state conflict where the character is at ten levels of exhaustion which triggers automatic death saves, but also stable and thus not needing to do death saves.
Let Exhaustion be. The new rules are excellent, no need to muck with them.
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The rules are better than use to be, but essentially automatic death still remains a very weird part of it. Generally speaking, exhaustion is actually tiredness, it isn't not eating or sleeping and tiredness usually would lead to comatose before death.
Exhaustion is not just “tiredness.” Exhaustion is to tiredness as Rage is to anger. It’s a category beyond. It is most certainly possible to die from exhaustion.
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I do agree that it's unrealistic that simply not sleeping for 10 days is enough to just straight up die, but I think it's still a fair abstraction for the sake of gameplay. Especially if the changes to Exhaustion make it more common in-game.
I think the thing to keep in mind is that there's a lot of room to adjust how this kind of thing works. For example... RAW, a character could willingly commit suicide by sheer virtue of living out a perfectly normal life and simply refusing to sleep. But a DM might decide that, no... you can't just will yourself to not sleep and just force the player to pass out unless some kind of outside force is keeping them awake. With that in mind, the only way you could stay awake for that long would be if someone is deliberately torturing you and forcing you to stay awake for that length of time. It puts a lot of onus on the DM and players to insert some realism into the system, but that's fairly common in D&D already.
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Exhaustion is not taking a "long rest", which essentially means sleep for 6 hours, that literally is just tiredness. Your character could be taking it easy for 10 days straight but as long as they don't sleep, they die. The exhaustion mechanic in 5E and D&D one, is not actual exhaustion, despite the mechanic being called that, it's tiredness.
I will say that loosing 5 ft of movement for every 3 levels of exhaustion seems reasonable.
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Yea, it's a weird state to get into. Generally if you're that exhausted you should be actively fighting off falling comatose or collapsing earlier on rather than just falling dead. DMs certainly can and do work it differently, Exhaustion in 5E was crazy punishing for staying up 1 minute past 24 hours.
I think the trouble about exhaustion is that, RAW... it's just not sleeping. But I feel that the intent is to be that you, as an adventurer, are out taking on stressful, deadly encounters. It's one thing to not sleep for 10 days when you're sitting at your home with coffee and food, maybe a cold shower to hop into whenever you start drifting to sleep. But it's quite another to stay awake for 10 days while also marching across a fantasy kingdom, fending off owlbears and carrying a 100lb+ backpack full of all your adventuring supplies. Just the thought of wearing a suit of armor for a full day, even without also doing adventuring activities, sounds absolutely exhausting.
I think I might, as a DM, rule that refusing to sleep in a comfortable, stress-free environment wouldn't induce exhaustion, even if that's not 100% what the rules say. If anything I would just rule that you can't recover from existing exhaustion under those circumstances.
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Exhaustion isn’t just no sleep, it’s pushing your body to use reserves it doesn’t really have, sleep is part of that but not all. Consider that it may include limited/insufficient food, alertness, motional stress (worry, fear, etc) as well as limited/no sleep and or rest as well as strenuous physical activities. The -1 per level on D20 rolls makes sense to me as well as -5’ movement every 2 levels thru L8 makes sense as well.
I would change it to every level at Levels 9+. ( 30’ MR -> 25’ at L2, 20’ at L4, 15’ at L6, 10’ at L8, then 5’ at L9, and 0’ at level 10.) When movement reaches 0’ the person falls unconscious and will not wake on their own for 12+ (12+1 d12) hours. If forced to stay awake and active until movement drops to -5’ he individual passes out, must make death rolls, and cannot be woken up for 12+ (12+1d20) hours if they stabilize.
this also allows folks like rangers and monks to push deeper not exhaustion before becoming incapacitated.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Exhaustion is given by 2 things, not long resting and berserker barbarian. If you don't eat, drink or sleep you get 1 point of exhaustion since you can not long rest, which is the problem here. Since you can both drink and eat but get no sleep, thus it makes no sense that exhaustion by itself is deadly. Yes a character can be stressed which doesn't help but then a character can be stressed without exhaustion too, those really aren't part of the mechanics, neither is alertness. You can't say mediate as any character to slow down the speed at which you gain a level of exhaustion. Also the latest UA for ranger really does make exhaustion look like it's just tiredness, since they can recover a level of exhaustion on a short rest, which technically means ranger never needs to eat anymore. Funnily enough the feature name is Tireless
But it's really an aside from the point, you can get 10 levels of exhaustion from just not sleeping, which is odd that it'd kill you. It should be more along the lines that food and water are tracked separately, if you want a survival element to the game then these exhaustion rules are not sufficient, if you want a normal game, most of the time exhaustion will never come up anyways since you'll always sleep in a camp, tavern, house, etc and rations are dirty cheap. Some classes get spells that just invalidate the need to find food or water anyways, if you got a Cleric, Paladin or Artificer they can even magically create the food, and let's not forget about druid with goodberry.
The current explanation for exhaustion says 'Some special abilities and environmental hazards, such as starvation and the long-term effects of freezing or scorching temperatures, can lead to a special condition called exhaustion.'
I most commonly give characters exhaustion for environmental conditions: traveling over freezing mountains, elemental planes, poor sleeping arrangements. I also give it for pushing too long without rest, which happens occasionally. And I give it any time a character falls in battle and has to make death saves. That last one is not RAW, but I think it adds a lot to the game and represents serious injuries elegantly.
No character is staying up 11 days in a peaceful environment (Interestingly, that IS the world record for no sleep). If they are just relaxing at home, they'll just eventually fall asleep. The only way a character is reasonably going to stay up that long without rest is under extreme duress. They are being tortured, forced to fight day and night in some nightmare realm, etc. Just a few days of no sleep, in a completely peaceful environment, starts causing hallucinations. The more you push it, the more you risk serious serious side effects. I think it's completely reasonable that the situations an adventurer would be in to accumulate that much exhaustion could be deadly.
Exhaustion is a great tool for a DM. It gives weight to decisions, consequences for actions, and realism to tough exploration. I like the flavor of the 5e rules, but they are very punishing so you can't use it much. I'm totally happy with the new rules. Realistically, most players will choose to rest after they start rolling with -5 on everything.
You can add movement penalties if you want. But it will start to have the same effects as the current rules, where an exhausted character just can't reasonably continue. And you can change it from death to some kind of roll, or forced sleep. I think both are fine options depending on the circumstances. But the new rules are definitely more DM friendly overall, and will open up a lot more exciting options.
If we are being technical by the UA, Exhaustion doesn't exist anymore, it was replaced by exhausted, which gives no description of what it actually is.
Haha that's true. I guess we get to apply it to whatever we want. Freedom!
Let’s take a look
5e:
Exhaustion
Some special abilities and environmental hazards, such as starvation and the long-term effects of freezing or scorching temperatures, can lead to a special condition called exhaustion. Exhaustion is measured in six levels. An effect can give a creature one or more levels of exhaustion, as specified in the effect's description.
If an already exhausted creature suffers another effect that causes exhaustion, its current level of exhaustion increases by the amount specified in the effect's description.
A creature suffers the effect of its current level of exhaustion as well as all lower levels. For example, a creature suffering level 2 exhaustion has its speed halved and has disadvantage on ability checks.
An effect that removes exhaustion reduces its level as specified in the effect's description, with all exhaustion effects ending if a creature's exhaustion level is reduced below 1.
Finishing a long rest reduces a creature's exhaustion level by 1, provided that the creature has also ingested some food and drink. Also, being raised from the dead reduces a creature’s exhaustion level by 1.
1DND:
EXHAUSTED [CONDITION]
While you are subjected to the Exhausted Condition (known in older books as Exhaustion), you experience the following effects:
Levels of Exhaustion. This Condition is cumulative. Each time you receive it, you gain 1 level of exhaustion. You die if your exhaustion level exceeds 10.
d20 Rolls Affected. When you make a d20 Test, you subtract your exhaustion level from the d20 roll.
Spell Save DCs Affected. Subtract your exhaustion level from the Spell save DC of any Spell you cast.
Ending the Condition. Finishing a Long Rest removes 1 of your levels of exhaustion. When your exhaustion level reaches 0, you are no longer Exhausted.
so exhausted is the same as exhaustion except for the listed changes so you could combine the two to give a full description of the UA version:
EXHAUSTED [CONDITION]
Some special abilities and environmental hazards, such as starvation and the long-term effects of freezing or scorching temperatures, can lead to a special condition called exhaustion. Exhaustion is measured in six levels. An effect can give a creature one or more levels of the exhausted condition as specified in the effect's description.While you are subjected to the Exhausted Condition (known in older books as Exhaustion), you experience the following effects:
Levels of Exhaustion. This Condition is cumulative. Each time you receive it, you gain 1 level of exhaustion.
You die if your exhaustion level exceeds 10.
d20 Rolls Affected. When you make a d20 Test, you subtract your exhaustion level from the d20 roll.
Spell Save DCs Affected. Subtract your exhaustion level from the Spell save DC of any Spell you cast.
Ending the Condition. Finishing a Long Rest removes 1 of your levels of exhaustion. When your exhaustion level reaches 0, you are no longer Exhausted.
The old table is changed to the new which makes for some interesting commentary:
1) under the old rules you only had 6 possible levels and then you died - and no one was complaining about it. Now you have 10 levels and folks are complaining What?
2) movement used to be cut in half at the start, now it’s unaffected and so everyone (including me) is trying to homebrew putting movement penalties back in. What?
3) a long rest (6hours of sleep , a meal and a bathroom break) removes 1 level so let’s see, my personal record for no sleep + High stress is 6 days (so 6 levels) so that means 6 long rests or about 42-48 hours of sleep - yep sounds about right ( after that idjit run I did sleep from Friday nigh5 about 6-8 pm until Sunday afternoon about 1-2 pm) .
This actually looks really good for a tabletop rules extraction - a few spells/special abilities/ DM distress ion based on events and a fairly accurate description of reality. (I was hwy driving the last 4 hrs before hitting the sack and leaving huge spaces as I knew my reactions (saves) were off and my decisions (skill rolls) were slowed).
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Yeah I think it's about as close to being 'realistic' as we could ask for, while still being very easy to remember and usable in games.
What people are after is something usable in two scenarios, 1st is normal play and the 2nd is gritty realism. The new rules are definitely far easier to remember, I can't really say I ever saw exhaustion used in normal play because party gunna party, late into the night and then get drunk and wake up after a long rest. I assume for gritty realism people will homebrew around these rules tho, they are less extreme than the old ones. Since generally exhaustion doesn't kill in 6 days, which was the weirdest part, the only thing that kills that quickly in regards to exhaustion is dehydration. 10 days is more reasonable for sure if we are accounting for not drinking, eating and sleeping.
A lot of people misread I think. It is exceeds 10. So once you hit 11. The longest one has gone without sleep is 11 day II don't think that is connected)
It is a mechanic. If they increased it or let death savesafter hitting 10 people would just keep pushing it.
It has to have a price.