Any homebrew to make the thirst and starvation rules realistic?

[St Fan]

Is there any widely accepted homebrew to replace the thirst and starvation rules?

The current 3.5 rules have been, rightly, mocked for causing only non-lethal damage, and never implying that death could result of starvation and thirst.

I started looking into it while pondering about the "Ritual of Purity" among the bonding rituals in the Dungeon Master Guide II.
14 days of meditation and fasting (with water allowed). This ritual is trivially easy if you have enough hit points.

Starvation and thirst should be not be dependent of your level, IMO.

My first reflex was to keep the rules as-is, except for replacing the 1d6 non-lethal damage with 1d6 Constitution damage (likewise, un-healable by magic until you started eating/drinking anew).
This not only affect the hit points total, thus weakening the character, but also speed up the process since it's based on Consitution checks once you start losing points.

I've tested the Ritual of Purity then; whatever the level, doable with characters of Constitution 16 with the Endurance feat, but barely so.

[Tzardok]

In our group., we always assumed that it worked the same way as with damage trough hot or cold surroundings: as soon as you fall unconscious, further non-lethal damage becomes lethal damage.

[icefractal]

I always assumed it worked like that - the damage becoming lethal once you dropped from it. Well I'd definitely adopt that as a house-rule.

The Con damage seems like way too much though, it leads to people starving unrealistically quickly and takes longer than it probably should to heal from.

Also, I personally wouldn't agree with the assertion that it should be independent of level. Being higher level makes you more likely to survive fires, cave-ins, toxic substances, getting stabbed in your sleep, traps where you fall down a greased pit and land on a floor completely covered in spikes, etc, etc. Lots of things that would "realistically" kill you if you were still essentially a normal human. Saying that it doesn't mean an actual increase in vitality causes a lot more logic problems than it fixes. So with that in mind, I don't see why it wouldn't keep you from starving for longer as well.

[ShurikVch]

The current 3.5 rules have been, rightly, mocked for causing only non-lethal damage, and never implying that death could result of starvation and thirst.
But once you're unconscious - you can't eat anymore, and without eating - you can't restore your nonlethal damage (even with magic). Catch 22
You're worse than dead - because you can't even be resurrected from it...


I started looking into it while pondering about the "Ritual of Purity" among the bonding rituals in the Dungeon Master Guide II.
14 days of meditation and fasting (with water allowed). This ritual is trivially easy if you have enough hit points.
One (extremely obese) woman starved for 249 days - staying conscious the whole time
Reality is unrealistic (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealityIsUnrealistic)...


Starvation and thirst should be not be dependent of your level, IMO.
They kinda noted it in the Rules Compendium:

The suffocation rules are one of the places where the D&D rules make a nod toward realism. Most other rules obey a strange sort of heroic physics (see Falling). But the suffocation rule is one of the deadliest in D&D. Nothing based on your level can save you.

[sleepyphoenixx]

But once you're unconscious - you can't eat anymore, and without eating - you can't restore your nonlethal damage (even with magic). Catch 22
You're worse than dead - because you can't even be resurrected from it...
You can feed unconscious people with the right technique. And there's also spells like Hydrate (Sa) and Refreshment (BoED) which explicitly heal damage from starvation and dehydration.


They kinda noted it in the Rules Compendium:

I rather like it that way too. High level PC's are more like greek heroes than normal mortals anyway.
There's no point getting hung up over someone surviving without food for a few weeks when you don't blink an eye at him jumping several stories high or punching through solid stone with his bare hands. It's just part of the genre.

[St Fan]

You are taking my comment that starving shouldn't be dependent of level too much at face value. OF COURSE higher-level characters will have more options to avoid starvation in the first place, and to fend it of while it start happening (maxed-out Constitution, items raising the Con score, spells/items/class features/other perks giving bonus to checks, etc.).

Linking it solely to hit points, though, is excessive in my book, and it advantages too much the high-HP class versus others.

And it's true my rule would make recovery longer, but only if you're solely relying on natural healing. A character with the heal skill can speed up the process, and magic healing can make it instantaneous.

What would make it especially deadly, I admit, is if some other condition get grafted over it. Starving while also suffering from a disease would make things much worse, since the Fortitude saves are based on Constitution. Which, again, I guess makes it much more realistic.

[PraxisVetli]

I personally just import 5e's Exhaustion rules. I really like how they play it out as tiers instead of flat penalty. If you don't want to incorporate (Dis)Advantage, it's effectively -4.
Just add one level of Exhaustion every day they don't eat or drink.

[Rebel7284]

Meh, I am pretty sure that thirst and starvation rules being a little more lax than average in real life is the same reason most folks are not playing level 1 commoners with 10s in all stats... this is a heroic fantasy game. Starving to death, while sort of supported by the rules, is usually pretty anticlimactic.

[St Fan]

I would have thought, considering how often I see rants on this forum about the rules being too unrealistic, that it would have been more of a sticking point.

Well, at least the 3rd edition had such rules from the get-go. Unlike 2nd edition, where you could find TWO separate sets of rules incompatible with each other (from Dark Sun and from Spelljammer).

[Tzardok]

*shrug* People who rant obviously get more attention than those who are quitely content, so they appear overproportional.

Besides, we (or at least I) have often seen people try to inject more realism into games and fail miserably because the endresult was less enjoyable to play. That's the thing you always need to ask when changing a game: will this be more fun?

[St Fan]

That's the thing you always need to ask when changing a game: will this be more fun?

For the GM or for the players?

Joking aside, my problem isn't so much whenever a rule happens not to stick much to reality, but when the players abuse it by having their characters act knowingly upon it.

Treating thirst and starvation as serious as it is in real life is good role-playing. Letting their characters go without eating for long stretches of time knowing the rules makes it barely a slap on the wrist is bad role-playing, but the poor rules are as much at fault as the players here.

[AnonJr]

I've always figured that if you dropped unconscious from non-lethal starvation/dehydration in the wilderness (or even some towns...) something (or someone) would be by before too long to make sure your friends needed a good cleric and a diamond handy.

[King of Nowhere]

is there really a need to fix the starvation rules? How many times are they actually used?
is this a thought experiment or a campaign help? because in the latter case, I'd suggest handwaving it

[Darg]

is there really a need to fix the starvation rules? How many times are they actually used?
is this a thought experiment or a campaign help? because in the latter case, I'd suggest handwaving it

*Raises hand* I don't hand wave inventory space just because someone is strong enough to carry it all. Quite a few times I've had characters pass out from hunger because they got chased away from their stash of supplies. This usually only happens at lower levels though.

[Saintheart]

Is there any widely accepted homebrew to replace the thirst and starvation rules?

The current 3.5 rules have been, rightly, mocked for causing only non-lethal damage, and never implying that death could result of starvation and thirst.

I started looking into it while pondering about the "Ritual of Purity" among the bonding rituals in the Dungeon Master Guide II.
14 days of meditation and fasting (with water allowed). This ritual is trivially easy if you have enough hit points.

Starvation and thirst should be not be dependent of your level, IMO.

My first reflex was to keep the rules as-is, except for replacing the 1d6 non-lethal damage with 1d6 Constitution damage (likewise, un-healable by magic until you started eating/drinking anew).
This not only affect the hit points total, thus weakening the character, but also speed up the process since it's based on Consitution checks once you start losing points.

I've tested the Ritual of Purity then; whatever the level, doable with characters of Constitution 16 with the Endurance feat, but barely so.


Others have sort of touched on it already, especially pointing out that starvation and thirst become trivial issues at higher levels, but I think the real question is -- what sort of dynamic or aesthetic are you aiming for? Shaping something to operate like it does in reality doesn't necessarily add to the experience you're trying to impart to your players; why not introduce granular rules about X number of breaths to be taken per minute, if we want to model reality?

I can only read tea leaves from here, but my guess is that what you're looking to do is make resource management a more present thing in the players' minds, and make it a more significant thing they have to manage.

And that's fine and all, but balanced against that is the fact that there are obvious countermeasures to obviate the entire issue: namely, when the players start picking up wands of Create Water, or share the cost of a Sustaining Spoon (SRD), or go luxury and each buy a Clear Ioun Stone (SRD) or a Ring of Sustenance, or an Everfull Mug, or Everlasting Rations, or a Decanter of Endless Water, at which point the starvation/thirst minigame is over -- unless you're going to up the ante and periodically deny the players access to these helpful items completely, which gets a similar response from players to throwing the high-level Christmas Tree fighter into an antimagic zone. If you're fine with them making those purchases on the basis that they have decided to pay a cost to not have to worry about that part of the rules, then there's nothing else to be said.

However, it seems to me that while you're looking to alter the starvation/thirst rules, what you're really looking to do is make consumable resource management a more prominent part of the game. That takes a few more moving parts than simply altering the starvation/thirst rules. It means you track encumbrance, rations, and also the starvation/thirst of any mounts or pack animals the party brings with them. It may mean you come up with slightly better foraging rules than 3.5 provides, since the party without food or water surely is going to try and live off the land. It may take a more flat-out fiat that magic items which allow endless food or water are banned. You're within your rights to do that for the purposes of making the game appropriately challenging, by the way, it doesn't require any justification that 'this hews closer to reality'.

And the thing about starvation/thirst rules is that on their own they don't do much; resource management of all forms requires that time becomes a real, ticking factor in the game. This is easier when the party has limited resources and has to travel on foot to a remote area to find an unpleasant-looking hole or ruin to go and futz around in for a while; then, they either bring their supplies with them and arrange for a base camp, or they build themselves characters like rangers who can get along in the wild for a few days at least.

It doesn't work if the dungeons or the places you're having them adventure are within spitting distance of a town or settlement of some kind, and that mainly because it's generally hard to find a justification why the locals won't sell the players a single scrap of food or water (and usually for a pittance if you go by the SRD default prices).

So, yeah. Upping the starvation/thirst rules to do CON damage rather than nonlethal hitpoints will certainly focus the players' attention on the stat, since there's a lot less CON than HP generally, and it hits things like Fort saves, physical skills, and Concentration checks ... but you're really just trying to alter how resource management works in the game, and it's important how that ruleset works before adjusting how starvation/thirst works.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Others have sort of touched on it already, especially pointing out that starvation and thirst become trivial issues at higher levels


Not just at high levels. Feeding yourself is a DC10 survival check, both in the wild and in urban settings.
Any first level character with a non-negative wisdom mod can do it untrained by taking 10.

You have to actually be trying to starve in most environments, straight from level 1.

[Saintheart]

Not just at high levels. Feeding yourself is a DC10 survival check, both in the wild and in urban settings.
Any first level character with a non-negative wisdom mod can do it untrained by taking 10.

You have to actually be trying to starve in most environments, straight from level 1.

This is true, and it's why I basically don't use that DC for my parties in my campaigns, and why I also have a small suite of houserules for overland travel and foraging even in low level campaigns.

On the other hand, again trying to make the wider point that resource management by itself doesn't mean much unless it ultimately takes into account the subject of time -- note that making that Survival check imposes an overland speed cost: you can only roll once every 24 hours, and you have to move at half your overland speed, i.e. it halves your movement for the full day.

Which addresses the rough 'reality' of the situation - you can't realistically be on the march and picking berries and looking for waterholes at the same time - but it does give us a useful tradeoff, and therefore a small decision point. Check Survival and you're all but assured of not starving in the wild. But you get from one location to another half as quickly.

That tradeoff probably had more significance in older editions of D&D where the default model was to travel somewhere horrible, die a lot and then start limping back to town to level up some more before attacking the Somewhere Horrible again, at which point the monsters not uncommonly pursued you. Not so much in third ed, clearly -- but it does again suggest they had in some small measure the idea that there needed to be some cost for an assured food supply at low levels.