Exhaustion and Fatigue

 

Exhaustion is described in the Player's Handbook in Appendix A.  I read it as being rather clear and understandable as well as punishingly debilitating.

The high level of punishment is my driver for this post.  Exhaustion is used in 5E as a penalty for extended forced marches, long term exposure to extreme conditions, chases of a minute or so duration and a few other things.

Recovering from exhaustion requires a long rest to heal one level, meaning that a character that has pushed forward for days and reached 5 stacks of exhaustion is going to need 5 days of rest to fully recover.  That is a lot, but it is an extreme level of exhaustion from great and extended effort.  A chase, run RAW, can result in that same level of exhaustion in 8 rounds, less than a minute of running.  This implies that a far number of people running a quarter mile sprint end up incapacitated for the better part of a week before they are back to normal and suggests that longer sprints are just impossible.   

Activities that Risk Exhaustion

I'm thinking it should be possible to separate the activities that risk exhaustion into those that cause short-term or long-term consequences.  As examples:

• Trudging across the antarctic on foot risks bone numbing long term exhaustion,
• Running a quarter-mile sprint typically cause nothing more than short term fatigue.

I'll enumerate some of the exhaustion risks in 5E. I likely have missed something, but this seems a good sampling:

1. Not having a long rest in a day (or longer) -- Xanther's Guide to Everything: Sleep
2. Hunger / Thirst -- PHB: Food & Water
   
3. Extreme weather conditions -- DMG: Weather
4. Walking for more than 8 hours in a day -- PHB: Speed (Forced March)
5. Certain Diseases -- DMG: Disease 
6. Chasing for more than 3 rounds -- PHB: Chase
   
7. Some special abilities, e.g. Barbarian: Path of the Beserker - Frenzy

I can see the first 5 of these being able to impose an extended disability requiring days to recover from.  In the extreme all of these can result in death.  That leaves me feeling Exhaustion as written is a good fit for these.  They are very punishing and should generally be avoided.

The last two of my sample triggers for exhaustion are just entirely different.  Sprinting for a minute causes very few people to drop dead.  A barbarian who rages needing a day to recover and possibly dropping dead from using a class ability seems wacky. 

I feel a need for something like exhaustion, that is a bit less punishing, can't directly cause a death and most importantly is easier to recover from.  Something that reflects the fatigue we feel after intense but short term physical effort.

 

Defining Fatigue

I've talked myself into wanting to define a new condition, similar to Exhaustion that I will call Fatigue.  I first wrote about Fatigue in my posting on the Chase mechanic.  I'll be going back to revise that to refer to this definition.  At this point, I'll define Fatigue, modeled on Exhaustion like this:

Fatigue

Some special abilities and extended effort,  such as chases and beserker frenzy, can lead to a special condition called fatigue. Fatigue is measured in six levels. An effect can give a creature one or more levels of fatigue, as specified in the effect's description.

If an already fatigued creature suffers another effect that causes fatigue, its current level of fatigue increases by the amount specified in the effect's description.

A creature suffers the effect of its current level of fatigue as well as all lower levels. For example, a creature suffering level 2 fatigue has its speed halved and has disadvantage on ability checks.

An effect that removes fatigue reduces its level as specified in the effect's description, with all fatigue effects ending if a creature's fatigue level is reduced below 1.

Finishing a short rest reduces a creature's exhaustion level by 3, provided that the creature has also ingested some drink. Finishing a long rest removes all levels of fatigue, provided that the creature has also ingested some drink.

I think this creates a short term disability similar to Exhaustion that is largely corrected by a short rest.  This makes more sense to me than the days long recovery period caused by a short but strenuous run.  It may also be useful as a potential risk from other activities where exhaustion is just too extreme.

It also makes Barbarian Berserker a tad more attractive, which seems like a good thing.