The New House Rules

The New House Rules:

The old house rule that I was using for character death was as follows: 

Character Death: If your character is dropped to below zero hit points, You will roll Death Saves as normal, but if you fail all  3 Death Saves you are not dead. Instead, you will have to roll on the Lingering Injuries Table (DMG|p.272) and your character is knocked out for 8 hours.  All bets are off during the Season Finale, during this episode characters can die.

After a talk with some players about Lingering Injuries and that they would rather have a character die than take on a handicap that could permanent, I can up with this new house rule that goes as follows:

Character Death: If your character is dropped below zero hit points, you will roll Death Saves as normal, but if you fail all 3 Death Saves you are not dead. Instead, you will receive 2 levels of exhaustion and awake in an hour with full health. Exhaustion can be removed using the rules detailed on the Exhaustion Table (PHB|p.291). If a player manages to take on 6 levels of Exhaustion, they may choose to either have the character die or roll on the Lingering Injuries Table (DMG|p.272). This house rule stays in affect for the 12 normal episodes of the season, but on during the Season Finale episode the RAW death rules will apply and your character can die. 

As I stated in the last session during episode 2, we will be using Epic Heroism Resting (DMG|p.267):

This variant uses a short rest of 5 minutes and a long rest of 1 hour. This change makes combat more routine, since characters can easily recover from every battle. You might want to make combat encounters more difficult to compensate.

Spellcasters using this system can afford to burn through spell slots quickly, especially at higher levels. Consider allowing spellcasters to restore expended spell slots equal to only half their maximum spell slots (rounded down) at the end of a long rest, and to limit spell slots restored to 5th level or lower. Only a full 8-hour rest will allow a spellcaster to restore all spell slots and to regain spell slots of 6th level or higher.