My point was that most games don't even give you the option of anything but death when you hit zero HP, so you're already ahead in D&D. Yeah, most games also give you very easy ways to rez too, so it remains to be seen how balanced it is between how easy it is to die vs how it easy it is to rez. Rezzing needs to be challenging enough to not make dying trivial, though (as is far too often the case).
Ideally, AI should use tactics a human would. Creatures don't go unconscious, but if they did, you know we likely wouldn't leave them there to finish them off after the fight, lest they get revived. The AI shouldn't either. However, it is fair to perhaps give us more options to protect a fallen party member than just get them up with 1 HP, such as by being able to drag them away or shield them.
As for having to waste your turn or whatever to tend to someone who went down because they are going to get killed very soon if you don't, I don't see the problem. In fact, I think it lends a lot of excitement. You need to adjust your plan for the unexpected. Getting to someone's defense, whether that means leaving off your present opponent to take on others, navigating to avoid attacks of opportunity, using spells or scrolls you didn't intend to have to use, or any number of things is just part of the overall experience.
What I was saying, and I think I wrote it unclearly, was that if you are an enemy and you have 3 greatsword attacks, then attacking an unconscious bard to finish him off instead of immediately turning to the wizard who is about to cast disintegrate on you wouldnt be the smartest thing to do. If enemies ran to heal unconscious buddies, I would abuse the hell out of that. Every person they bring back up to 4 hp is an attack they didnt make on me and a fireball i got to cast on them. That is why I was saying the economy is so tilted. 20 goblins with 1 hp all get a full attack turn. You losing one person, over and over, where you lost your turn helping them, and they lost it getting back up, just took 50% of your team away for 2 rounds. NPCs have a big advantage in the fact they are 100% until dead, and then no one cares. You set up encounters specifically to be attrition battles. Its not the first battle thats hard, its the 3rd, and then you dont have time to rest before you fight the boss. Thats why they are at the end of the dungeon, you have a hard time sleeping without getting jumped and losing almost as many resources as you just got and now you have to fight something powerful that is going to go full force until they die, cursing you with their last breath.
When I DM, again, these are 6 second rounds technically. This is fast paced combat and a rangers bear charging towards you, or a shadow rising behind a tiefling as satan starts channeling energy into their body is going to be a lot more concern than a cross-eyed wizard on the ground who just crapped his robes from being body-slammed so hard. Part of DMing is the narrative you weave in combat after a player's turn. "Ok, Tempest, youre up. You look across the battlefield and see Ardin stumbling back after the orc just slammed his axe into his shield, and theyre squaring off. To your right you see 2 goblins that are drawing their bows and starting to aim towards you. What are you going to do?" that kind of "this is realtime, this is happening now" narrative usually precludes "ok, ill ignore the people about to shoot me or helping ardin and make a dagger poke at this guy to finish him off."
Most of the time, in a constant time flow narrative, it doesn't make sense as the likely reaction given the rapidly evolving circumstances. I say this based on having dialed in which enemies to do what. A goblin wouldn't know that the arrow to the chest merely knocked them out, theyd probably think theyre dead. A lich can sense life, he wants your soul. And then the things inbetween. Players have exclaimed "What? Why would they do that?" in circumstances where I was testing their threshold for that and its hard to justify someone knowing the difference between down and dead in a combat scenario.
