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In our campaign, we have a Half-Orc Barbarian. Very original. We are going along this cliff-side fortress and are worried about falling off. The Half-Orc's player jokingly says that he'll be fine, due to his Relentless Endurance. But I was thinking about it, and it seems like he's right, but this seems excessive.
Could he really survive the fall? Or survive lava? Or anything else that should kill instantly?
The half-orc feature specifically mentions this in the text of the Relentless Endurance racial feature (PHB, p. 41):
Relentless Endurance. When you are reduced to 0 hit points but are not killed outright, you can drop to 1 hit point instead. You can't use this feature again until you complete a long rest.
If you take enough falling damage such that the excess damage exceeds your hit point maximum, Relentless Endurance cannot save you. If you do not take quite enough damage to exceed your hit point maximum, it can save you and you drop to 1 hit point instead of being put on death saving throws.
For reference, the Instant Death rules:
Massive damage can kill you instantly. When damage reduces you to 0 hit points and there is damage remaining, you die if the remaining damage equals or exceeds your hit point maximum.
For example, a cleric with a maximum of 12 hit points currently has 6 hit points. If she takes 18 damage from an attack, she is reduced to 0 hit points, but 12 damage remains. Because the remaining damage equals her hit point maximum, the cleric dies.
The text of the Half-Orc's Relentless Endurance feature states that it only applies:
When you are reduced to 0 hit points but not killed outright
Which is to say that if you would be instantly killed by some effect, either because it simply automatically kills you, or it does so much damage that the instant death rule applies, this trait does not save you; it only applies if damage reduces you to 0HP without also causing immediate death. For example, the spell disintegrate vaporises the target if it reduces it to 0HP, so the Half-Orc could not use Relentless Endurance to recover from that.
However, it should be noted that D&D heroes are often capable of surviving effects which would realistically be instantly lethal, and that's part and parcel of being a mythical hero. For instance, falling damage caps at 20d6 so can deal a maximum of 120 points of damage, but a mid-level barbarian would most likely tank that fall and get up again afterwards; by level 11+ they probably have more than 120 hit points anyway, so couldn't possibly be instantly killed by a fall even if they only had 1 actual HP remaining (instant death requires the excess damage to be greater than the subject's maximum HP). Even at lower levels, the ability to enter a Rage and gain resistance to bludgeoning damage makes it easy to survive a long fall.
The rules support Relentless Endurance both applying and not applying in this case.
To die by massive damage, the damage must reduce you to zero hit points:
Massive damage can kill you instantly. When damage reduces you to 0 hit points and there is damage remaining, you die if the remaining damage equals or exceeds your hit point maximum.
(Separately, you can die by massive damage if you're at zero hit points already, but we're not considering that case.)
If you assume Relentless Endurance applies, it prevents you from being reduced to 0 hit points. You drop to 1 hit point instead of 0, which means the damage doesn't reduce you to 0 hit points, and we don't even check whether there's enough leftover damage to kill you outright. You aren't killed outright, so Relentless Endurance is indeed allowed to apply.
On the other hand, if you assume that Relentless Endurance doesn't apply, then you do drop to 0 hit points and are killed outright, and thus Relentless Endurance shouldn't apply.
(Even if Relentless Endurance does protect against this, there are causes of instant death that will get around it, such as power word: kill, getting Strength-drained by a Shadow, or having your maximum HP reduced to 0 by a Wraith. So neither ruling would completely negate any part of the rules.)
