How fun is death?

[zinycor]

Some time ago, a character died on one campaign that I was DMing, at this time the character were all lvl 3 and this particular character (Pigman, a half man/half pig [with half orc stats], fighter) decided to face the main enemy of that dungeon alone, despite what his friends told him. He naturally died in front of a challenge that was too much for him. We all had a big laugh about it, and the player that played pigman made another character.

Normally this would have been the end of his story (since the corpse was eaten by the evil guys reviving him is out of the question too), but since his death, the players decided to center their backstories, personalities and character development around that character. What lessons did he teach the other members of the partty (since he was the only good aligned memeber at the time), how they all had met because of him, how they cried his death, and how they remember him.

It has been very cool, and Pigman has been very beloved for all the character since his death and has developed a lot because of it.

Have you had nice experiences with death on DnD too? how has it affected your party?

[dropbear8mybaby]

I don't know how other people feel, but I love killing other people.

[Giant2005]

I had a pretty good experience with death.
The party got ourselves into an encounter that we had no reasonable means of surviving. My Paladin stayed behind and fought the villain and his cronies alone while the others escaped.
What made it noteworthy and rather enjoyable was how fantastically well he did against all odds. Sure he died as there wasn't much chance of anything else (The main villain was over double the Paladin's level and his 4 cronies were each more powerful than him too) but he seriously hurt his enemies and very nearly took down the main villain on his own. Cheers Bounded Accuracy.

[PoeticDwarf]

I got just killed by the wizard, but I knew he was going to do it. Now I have a fun ranger, but I still prefer my monk above him.
In fact, the wizard killed by because I helped an Arcanaloth killing the wizard. The wizard escaped with 3hp (teleport) and an abnormal amount of luck.

[Ninja_Prawn]

In fact, the wizard killed by because I helped an Arcanaloth killing the wizard. The wizard escaped with 3hp (teleport)

Was the Arcanaloth still alive by this point? Because they can cast Counterspell VII (even VIII if need be), and there's no compelling reason not to, if your mark is about to escape (unless you're out of spell slots).


and an abnormal amount of luck.

This is when death stops being fun. If you're going to kill a PC, at least do it fair and square.

[Darth_Versity]

I had Tiefling that was part of a group which helped a little hamlet to defend itself and expand, creating safe trade routes and prosperity throughout the area.

Eventually he was petrified by a gorgon that was causing problems within the area and no one had healing magic to save him, so he was carried back and put aside until they could find someone with enough power.

After that campaign ended we started a new one which was set 100 years later in the now thriving town, which had fountain in the center, with a curiously realistic statue of the towns founding father on top...

[Nifft]

Have you had nice experiences with death on DnD too? how has it affected your party?

Death is like slapstick: it's funniest when it happens to someone else.

Most of the characters that I've killed as a DM have been less-beloved. They're a player trying something new, experimenting, and sometimes finding out that whatever combat tactic the character had been built around was not actually effective.

Once, a player and I worked together to arrange for his PC to get Magic Jar'd (so he could switch to a new PC which he liked better). It was pretty effective -- the other players didn't know what was going on with their former-friend attacking them, and it gave that player a chance to PvP against his fellow players without long-term social consequences.


Of the two memorable times that my own character died, one was to a near-TPK which ended that whole campaign (on a sour note), and the other time, it was a random poison save-or-die which apparently caught the DM by surprise -- he asked me to re-roll the save two more times, and all three failed. The character got reincarnated as a Bugbear, which didn't help the character at all (pure Druid with no use for the racial bonuses, racial HD, or LA). That character swiftly retired.

[caden_varn]

This is when death stops being fun. If you're going to kill a PC, at least do it fair and square.

It does depend on the circumstances. If the PC brought it on themselves (through attacking something they knew was powerful, and that the rest of the party were unwilling to fight, as in the OP), it is justified IMO. In EnderDwarf's case it seems there was an element of PvP going on, which is likely to make for at least one PC death, and smart or prepared PCs in this situation are going to have a big advantage. (I don't personally like PvP in my games, but I am aware other people do).

I would agree that in a non-PvP game, a player should reasonably know if they are going up against something which they are unlikely to survive, and have the choice to do something else instead.

[ImSAMazing]

Was the Arcanaloth still alive by this point? Because they can cast Counterspell VII (even VIII if need be), and there's no compelling reason not to, if your mark is about to escape (unless you're out of spell slots).

I was the Wizard. In that round the Arcanaloth already counterspelled my shield.



This is when death stops being fun. If you're going to kill a PC, at least do it fair and square.
If he helps my Archnemesis to kill me...

[PoeticDwarf]

If he helps my Archnemesis to kill me...

I understand what he did, the situation was. The rogue and me were trying to stay in a dungeon, but the paladin and the wizard wanted to leave. So the wizard casted dominate person on the lv. 14 rogue (+1 wisdom saving throw). I saw that the wizard casted a spell and that the rogue immediately changed his opinion. The wizard casted suggestion very often so I tought, if I hit the rogue it's over. But the rogue rolled a 2 on the new saving throw. And the wizard + rogue then tried to kill me, I hit the rogue one time more and I ran away. Then the Arcanaloth came, and he casted banishment on the wizard, I saw it and came back. I tried to help the Arcanaloth killing the wizard, but the wizard was SO lucky. First he disentegrate my Monk (he was already hurt, 19hp so he was dead) and in the next round he could teleport away.

[Inevitability]

Was the Arcanaloth still alive by this point? Because they can cast Counterspell VII (even VIII if need be), and there's no compelling reason not to, if your mark is about to escape (unless you're out of spell slots).

Arcanaloth had already cast his higher-level spells.

[Atalas]

In a recent campaign we had a character who stole some gold off of his aunt's corpse after she died defending a hatchery (they were dragonborn) We gave him a lot of crap out of game, and then in the next dungeon he said "I'm gonna Magic Missile the next creature I see" with the spell at the ready. The creature? Half-blue dragon who promptly responded with breath weapon. Since his character was a blue dragonborn, he had the lightning resistance, but we forgot that for a minute. We were all level 3. 15 HP. That breath weapon did 30. He started ripping up his character sheet and was halfway done when I responded "Hey, don't you have lightning resistance?". He started copying it all onto a new sheet but then decided to just have his character commit suicide since his looting had been outed just after.


since then, we constantly tell this guy "You gonna cast Magic Missile into the darkness now?".

[PoeticDwarf]

In a recent campaign we had a character who stole some gold off of his aunt's corpse after she died defending a hatchery (they were dragonborn) We gave him a lot of crap out of game, and then in the next dungeon he said "I'm gonna Magic Missile the next creature I see" with the spell at the ready. The creature? Half-blue dragon who promptly responded with breath weapon. Since his character was a blue dragonborn, he had the lightning resistance, but we forgot that for a minute. We were all level 3. 15 HP. That breath weapon did 30. He started ripping up his character sheet and was halfway done when I responded "Hey, don't you have lightning resistance?". He started copying it all onto a new sheet but then decided to just have his character commit suicide since his looting had been outed just after.


since then, we constantly tell this guy "You gonna cast Magic Missile into the darkness now?".

Like the first time my wizard was going to kill my monk, I didn't fail the saving throw for disentegrate but still took 40 damage, I was at 40hp. Then I looked all the rules up and I found I forgot to write down my fall damage reduction last level up. So I was at 5hp and at the end I escaped. The wizard died (but he came back alive later, another story).

[Xetheral]

The best PC death I ever DM'd for was voluntary on the part of the character. The PCs were trying to destroy an artifact, and one of the possible methods would certainly be fatal beyond ressurection for whomever tried it. In the character's backstory was a long-lost love who had betrayed him and hurt him very badly. She turned up a bit before the climax, and based on the amazing RP between them, I was planning on having her sacrifice herself by way of apology should that method become necessary. As a result of how the final battle went, it did indeed come to that, but before she could follow-through, the character realized what she intended and sacrificed himself instead (all without the player letting the other players or me know what he was about to do). It was shocking and incredibly poignant, both in- and out-of-character.

[Kane0]

There is something to be said for the fun one can have sitting in smug silence as they watch their fellow players fumble to access a casting of speak with dead and otherwise spectate their antics.

[ImSAMazing]

Like the first time my wizard was going to kill my monk, I didn't fail the saving throw for disentegrate but still took 40 damage, I was at 40hp. Then I looked all the rules up and I found I forgot to write down my fall damage reduction last level up. So I was at 5hp and at the end I escaped. The wizard died (but he came back alive later, another story).
You didnt escape, but I decided if I killed him the other Party menbers would comw after me and kill me so I sacrifixed myself for the sake of the party.

[Millface]

Death can be a powerful tool!

If the death is epic, and the party succeeds because of someone's sacrifice, it's a story the players are going to tell for years to come. "I may have died, but I went out on the back of a White Dragon, pummeling it from my perch in the sky. As it fell I knew we'd won, and I knew the landing was going to be the end for me, but we did it. What better way to go than to fall to the earth on the back of the mighty Dragon, slayed by my own hand?"

If two characters have a strong bond with each other and death occurs this is a huge opportunity for some really deep character development. My LN Bard's best friend in the party sacrificed herself, but left a note behind, signed to him, not the whole party. I was a halfling, morally pretty ambiguous, right and wrong didn't matter, excellent story material did. In the note she said she saw only the best in me, and begged me to continue being the hero she knew I could be, that I had a light in me and when I embrace it I stand taller than a giant. Man, that had me teary eyed in real life. My alignment changed to LG from then on, when I would think to do something others perceive as bad I think of her and I would resist.

Death because the DM is frustrated at you, or because the players attack each other because of RL arguments can also be one of the worst things for your table. It really just depends. In my experience it has been almost exclusively awesome, though.

[Daishain]

This was in 3.5, not 5E, but we were a hair's breadth from a TPK at the hands of a lich. Pally was sitting at -5, wizard was out of useful spells, and the archer build favored soul was nigh useless from the start. My character was a fairly nutty barb prone to doing insane stunts for fun. Got the BBEG in a bear hug and jumped out a tenth story window. Laughed the whole way down. DM ruled that using the Lich as a bony cushion + my barb's numerous 'I laugh at getting hurt' features meant I survived just long enough to make a poignant farewell to the party (ok, so it was a snarky wisecrack about drinking all the good mead in Valhalla before they joined in). Party managed to find the phylactery (we had a good idea of where it was already), and destroyed it, securing the victory.

In another campaign, my rogue made a mistake and was captured. At a time the rest of the party was unable to do anything but watch, he was tortured, interrogated (told nothing but outrageous lies), mutilated, and eventually drawn and quartered. The DM and I worked out that death together, and the event was essentially the introduction to the campaign's primary BBEG.

A good death can be talked about for years. I don't particularly mind characters dying for the sake of a good story.

[GungHo]

Death is okay. Death penalties, however, suck. Especially the ones that would come take levels, xp, or other things away permanently. I also hated old-school level drains for the same reason.

[zinycor]

Death is okay. Death penalties, however, suck. Especially the ones that would come take levels, xp, or other things away permanently. I also hated old-school level drains for the same reason.

I loved old school level drains!! As players we were always terrified of the undead!!! So much fun

[Brendanicus]

D&D parties are like forests, they need to get burned down every once in a while for the ecosystem to remain healthy. If nobody dies in one of my games, players get content and bored due to the lack of stakes. Plus, players sometimes get bored with their characters and usually would rather give them a send-off in a blaze of glory rather than just having them leave at the next tavern. Of course, every group is different.

[Atalas]

campaign i'm in right now, our fighter and monk were facing a sea hag in her underwater temple. in a pocket of air. The rest of the party was an aarakokra rogue, so he refused to get wet ("I'm a crow, not a duck!"), a goliath paladin who, yeah, you expect one of THOSE to swim? and me, a half-elf bard who was busy making a magic item. Short of it, monk and fighter fail some saves, monk runs, fighter gets torn limb from limb. And the worst of it was all either of them needed to do was land one more hit. oh, and this is in a campaign world where high level casters are rare, so no Ressurection for the fighter. DM could have raised him thanks to the paladin, who was a devotee of the god of death in this world and asked for an intercession, but doing so the fighter would have been forced to multi-class into cleric every other level. Considering he was about to multi-class into sorcerer once we found his macguffin, this would have wrecked his character build. So we bid the fighter farewell, gave him a burial at sea, and went on our way.

[LaserFace]

Death can be fun or it can suck. A lot depends on how, where and why, and if it meshes with the themes of the setting and campaign. If you're playing a game where death lurks around every corner, and people expect to die, it can be really fun seeing who can stay alive and who eats it.

If you're playing in a way that resembles an Avengers movie, you probably don't want to force Iron Man to get wrecked because some derp got a lucky crit on him or whatever. I can't imagine many people enjoying that, especially if the heroes are built up that much, and there's some long narrative that places great importance on each individual character.

I like something that falls somewhere in the middle of these two, I think. When I DM I can certainly kill characters in regular combat, even if I'm not really looking to do it. I might also be merciful if I feel I was unfair, or if it would hinder the experience of everyone else at the table. But, I think only letting people die at moments of self-sacrifice in the last battle - or something else quasi-planned - is really stale. I try to maintain an air of "It can happen at any time, so make the most of what you've got".

[EvanescentHero]

Unless the party or the character is being stupid, I have a hard time letting characters die to random monsters. For bosses, major bad guys, and rivals, all bets are off. Dying in a cool fight can be fun and memorable, but losing a character because an orc got a crit? That sucks.

[JAL_1138]

Unless the party or the character is being stupid, I have a hard time letting characters die to random monsters. For bosses, major bad guys, and rivals, all bets are off. Dying in a cool fight can be fun and memorable, but losing a character because an orc got a crit? That sucks.

Back in 2e, I lost characters, in separate instances, to such creatures as a barnyard goat, a swan, a housecat, a dog, and a bunch of squirrels. Many others too, of course.

Character death only sucks when the DM screws you over somehow (the example I tend to give is the time the DM failed to inform us of a floor-to-ceiling stack of barrels that reeked of sulphur and affected the room layout on the mat. Anything someone with functioning eyes could see, and anyone with a functioning nose could smell, but didn't get described at all. Someone in the party--can't remember if it was me or the other arcane caster--cast Burning Hands or something like it, and then the barrels got described--just as the room exploded and killed me).

If it's a fair death because an enemy rolled well, that's just the game. Adventuring's a dangerous business, and if common enemies can never threaten me with death, what's the point of fighting them? There's no sense of accomplishment in killing an enemy the DM won't let kill me even if it should be able to. It's just a setpiece taking up time and whittling down resources; I'm just going through the motions to arrive at an inevitable, but hollow, victory.

[Malifice]

In a recent campaign we had a character who stole some gold off of his aunt's corpse after she died defending a hatchery (they were dragonborn) We gave him a lot of crap out of game, and then in the next dungeon he said "I'm gonna Magic Missile the next creature I see" with the spell at the ready. The creature? Half-blue dragon who promptly responded with breath weapon. Since his character was a blue dragonborn, he had the lightning resistance, but we forgot that for a minute. We were all level 3. 15 HP. That breath weapon did 30. He started ripping up his character sheet and was halfway done when I responded "Hey, don't you have lightning resistance?". He started copying it all onto a new sheet but then decided to just have his character commit suicide since his looting had been outed just after.


since then, we constantly tell this guy "You gonna cast Magic Missile into the darkness now?".

Jesus. He looted his own dead aunt?

Was he playing his character as a psychopath consistently?

[Atalas]

Not a psychopath, just stupid. That's why we ragged on him so much out of game. It was his first D&D game ever.

[EvanescentHero]

Back in 2e

This isn't 2e, and no one I play with started there. I know you're oldschool, but sometimes things change because they should. Losing characters to cats and squirrels, while hilarious to hear about, is not a fun design paradigm to many, many people, and I would be upset if it happened to me.

I'm sorry that I don't want my players to lose characters they put tons of time and effort into creating to random crap. I play with people who care about their characters. They spend time discussing them with me, describing them, coming up with histories. They roleplay. They have arguments with each other in character. More than once people have yelled at each other because their characters were yelling. These people are weaving a story. To have someone's story abruptly end because some monsters got lucky feels wrong to me. Dying gloriously is cool. Getting eaten by an ooze is less so.

It just seems like we feel differently, and that's okay. It's not like I'm really pulling punches anyway; I've had a couple characters in my campaign go down thus far. I just prefer to avoid premature character death. Certainly I wouldn't want freshly-rolled level ones dying to badgers. But I hope you continue to have fun the way you play, and I'll continue playing the way my group and I want to.

[zinycor]

This isn't 2e, and no one I play with started there. I know you're oldschool, but sometimes things change because they should. Losing characters to cats and squirrels, while hilarious to hear about, is not a fun design paradigm to many, many people, and I would be upset if it happened to me.

I'm sorry that I don't want my players to lose characters they put tons of time and effort into creating to random crap. I play with people who care about their characters. They spend time discussing them with me, describing them, coming up with histories. They roleplay. They have arguments with each other in character. More than once people have yelled at each other because their characters were yelling. These people are weaving a story. To have someone's story abruptly end because some monsters got lucky feels wrong to me. Dying gloriously is cool. Getting eaten by an ooze is less so.

It just seems like we feel differently, and that's okay. It's not like I'm really pulling punches anyway; I've had a couple characters in my campaign go down thus far. I just prefer to avoid premature character death. Certainly I wouldn't want freshly-rolled level ones dying to badgers. But I hope you continue to have fun the way you play, and I'll continue playing the way my group and I want to.

You took that kind of personal I feel...

But on the topic, I played a lot of 2e before 5e and things were never as bad as described by JAL, i do remember one time at level 1 one NPC released his dogs against us, which was quite effective, but I can see a similar situaton happening on 5e.

2e is a fantastic system (I like it way more than 3.5 that's for sure), combats were epic, and the characters had lots of personality, if you ever have the chance, try it out. It does have a ind of a hard learning curve, but it's completely worth it to learn.

[JAL_1138]

You took that kind of personal I feel...

But on the topic, I played a lot of 2e before 5e and things were never as bad as described by JAL, i do remember one time at level 1 one NPC released his dogs against us, which was quite effective, but I can see a similar situaton happening on 5e.

2e is a fantastic system (I like it way more than 3.5 that's for sure), combats were epic, and the characters had lots of personality, if you ever have the chance, try it out. It does have a ind of a hard learning curve, but it's completely worth it to learn.

After a few levels there was a massive drop in instant-lethality (though no-save and save-or-die were still a thing). I just like to bring up the ludicrous low-level deaths, or the character deaths from deliberately-Gygaxian campaigns, because they're funny. "Back in my day we died like flies and we liked it, ya dagnabbed whippersnappers," so on and so forth. My problem in a lot of those cases was being a first-level spellcaster in a small group with poor tactics, no henchmen/hirelings, and having a cursed d4 to roll HP with. :P I don't think I ever got a 4 with it.

It also depended on which initiative and other variant rules you used. It was practically three different games, with all the optional systems that could be dropped in or safely ignored. Part of what made it interesting is that it really was fairly modular, to a large extent, and experiences could vary wildly from table to table, or campaign to campaign.



[snip]

No offense meant.
I just don't like the idea of reserving danger for cool moments or epic boss fights. It doesn't sit right with me, because it makes the random encounters less cool. An ooze fight can be awesome. A pack of kobolds can be awesome. Because they're dangerous--they might have to get very lucky to be, in any given case, but they are. I've had campaigns spin off in entirely different directions because a random encounter was interesting, we lost people, and had to retreat and regroup--the quest to the Forgotten Fens of Flibbertigibbet or whatever could go on the back burner because holy crap, there's a (randomly rolled) medusa in the woods outside the old keep. And once we kill her we've got to figure out how to lug a bunch of statues to a much-higher-level cleric, or persuade the cleric to come help...

Tucker's Kobolds wouldn't be the legend it is if Tucker had kept the kobold fight a low-threat speedbump on the way to the demon fights below, and yet it's the kobolds the players remember instead of the unholy embodiments of pure evil from the Abyss, is all I'm saying. Doesn't work for every group, but "high-lethality random critters" is worth trying sometime.

[EvanescentHero]

No offense meant.

Yeah, I started out kinda harsh there, so my apologies. I see where you're coming from, but the in the campaigns I tend to run, high lethality doesn't really fit the mood I'm trying to set. Now partially that's because my groups usually fall apart before long due to people losing interest, and in the past couple of years I've mostly had to do single-player campaigns, but also, like I said, I have trouble killing a character that someone has put hours of time into. I've gotten lucky with my current campaign, because even if we meet infrequently (there are six of us, so it's tough to get everyone's schedule to line up), people are still interested and it hasn't fallen apart yet.

The other thing is that half this group is made up of new players, and I don't want them to have a bad experience and lose their first characters to random monsters when they're not playing particularly poorly. So I may have misrepresented some things overall. I was pulling some punches at first, but they're about to hit level five now. They understand how the game works and they know how to play their characters. I'm a lot likelier to let the dice fall as they fall now than I was earlier on. That doesn't mean I'll necessarily just let someone die randomly...I still don't know how I feel about that in this campaign. I guess we'll see.

Of course, it's a different story when someone is being an idiot. I have no qualms about letting someone die if they're playing stupid.

In the end, when someone puts as much effort into their created characters as my players have, I think death needs to be a major event, not an everyday occurrence. Like if the Fellowship were dying left and right and being replaced by be characters, people never would've gotten attached to anyone. Also, I tend to run lower-magic worlds where access to high-level spells may be hard to come by, especially reality-altering spells like Raise Dead, so turning a character death into a quest to bring them back has more weight to me than a character dying and their remains being taken to Clerics "R" Us to be revived like nothing ever happened, or the player tossing them aside and rolling a new character.

All of that being said, one of the campaign settings I voted for was Dark Sun because I really like the sound of a campaign setting where your most important goal is simply to survive. So I know that high-lethality settings have a place. I just usually don't want to include that sort of thing in my campaigns.

[Nifft]

This isn't 2e, and no one I play with started there. I know you're oldschool

Wait, 2e is supposed to be oldschool?

I think 2e was when people started expecting their characters to survive until the end of the campaign.

Also, I think character survival is not an expectation of oldschool D&D. Rather the reverse.

[EvanescentHero]

Wait, 2e is supposed to be oldschool?

I think 2e was when people started expecting their characters to survive until the end of the campaign.

Also, I think character survival is not an expectation of oldschool D&D. Rather the reverse.

2e is almost thirty years old now. I'd call that pretty oldschool. And characters not being expected to survive is kind of my point.

[Nifft]

2e is almost thirty years old now. I'd call that pretty oldschool.

Oh, I see. You use "oldschool" to mean nothing more than "old".

[zinycor]

2e is almost thirty years old now. I'd call that pretty oldschool. And characters not being expected to survive is kind of my point.

Characters are expected to survive on 2e, at no point is stated that they should die or that is expected of them in the PHB or the DMG. Some settings like Dark Sun are specially deadly, but on that the encounters are quite special, not like a bunch of squirrels trying to kill you.

BTW, I've found my games of 5e far deadlier than ADnD.

[EvanescentHero]

Oh, I see. You use "oldschool" to mean nothing more than "old".

Fine. It's almost thirty years old and contains overly complex and outdated mechanics that are completely unnecessary for actual enjoyment of the game. Its design choices and values are vastly different from those today and are less elegant than 5e's. That's to be expected. Things change over the years. I'm sure thirty years from now, 5e will look incredibly outdated too.

I've played 2e. It's oldschool. Frankly, even 3.P feels archaic to me now.

[Nifft]

Characters are expected to survive on 2e, at no point is stated that they should die or that is expected of them in the PHB or the DMG. Some settings like Dark Sun are specially deadly, but on that the encounters are quite special, not like a bunch of squirrels trying to kill you.

Yeah, that was my experience as well.

1e and OD&D were more ... puzzle-games. The puzzle was freqnetly, "How do I get out of this alive?"

2e was trying to use the 1e engine to get something cinematic, instead of an endless sequence of death-traps and murder-kobolds.

3e continued the trend of expecting characters to survive, and made character generation more involved -- but also more balanced, since it was created knowing that the characters would not be statistically balanced over time, since you'd probably just have the one.


Fine. It's almost thirty years old and contains overly complex and outdated mechanics that are completely unnecessary for actual enjoyment of the game. Its design choices and values are vastly different from those today and are less elegant than 5e's. That's to be expected. Things change over the years. I'm sure thirty years from now, 5e will look incredibly outdated too. ... seriously?

Are you just throwing around "oldschool" as a derogatory term, with no other understanding of how people use the word?

That seems kinda edition-warrior.

[EvanescentHero]

... seriously?

Are you just throwing around "oldschool" as a derogatory term, with no other understanding of how people use the word?

That seems kinda edition-warrior.

No. I'm not saying it's an inherently bad thing. I understand why some people like it. I'm just trying to explain why I don't. Frankly I don't care what edition people want to play. I know 4e had its fans, even if I personally can't stand it. And I know people still enjoy the older editions of D&D, and that's fine too. I didn't come in here to start an edition battle, so I'm sorry it got there. Can we drop this all and get back on topic? My apologies to anyone I offended.

[Nifft]

Can we drop this all and get back on topic?

See, here's the thing.

The topic of how death can be fun is intimately related to the expectations of the players, and the degree of attachment that the players have in relation to their character.

IMHO, oldschool gaming was characterized by:
- Expectation of death
- Attachment was casual unless the character survived a lot

This relates directly to the topic of the thread.

It has literally NOTHING to do with the age of the game or the elegance of the game's mechanics.

[RazDelacroix]

My kindergarten was AD&D 2nd Edition, where our PC's could never be as high in level as a human, and our humans started out as cafeteria chow. Man, my DM was straight up SADISTIC in his efforts to kill me. I was new to the game and so I gave many of my characters whole backstories and colorful personalities (well what constitutes as colorful for a 12-year old), and my DM would throw challenges at me I could never A) Hope to survive through, B) Actually Accomplish because I chose to play a class I liked rather than his favored, and C) Runaway from.

Man I hated dying in 2nd edition...

Then I got to play & die in 3rd/3.5. Things looked up a bit, there was level loss and there was permanent stat destruction... But I got out from under the heel of a malicious DM to one that was casual. I kept dying in attempts to help my group, and said help was almost never reciprocated while the character was alive, and I would get resurrected later and handed a bill that I would have to pay off thus at least one more reason to keep adventuring.

General table rolling luck as yielded some...unexpected deaths that were hilarious even at the time. We once had to help a priest who was possessed via cursed ring and so our group all got the drop on him and tried to subdue him. One player tackled the priest and initiated a grapple. Another player hit the priest with tanglefoot bags. The next player, me, went full-power attack for subdual damage. The player after that was playing a monk and with his grapple check we had the priest well pinned. The last player, however, decided to cut off the ring from the priest's finger. Simple enough right?

He was doing the cutting with a vorpal sword.

And he rolled a natural 20.

Then another 20...

So we tried to scramble about thinking of how the priest could possibly survive, perhaps cover bonuses? Said bonuses were all negated by the penalties we PC's had thrown down. And then our vorpaltastic fighter made mention that he still had to figure in the strength modifier to hit... Oh yeah, priest's head was lopped off, ring still intact on the finger too!

Okay, that wasn't a PC death, but it was the death of one of our objectives made hilarious by a silly player decision! Felt like sharing that.


However, there is one 3.0 campaign setting book that almost NEVER gets mentioned in the community today. It was never even cited or hinted at in 4th edition. And perhaps I need to take a crack at 5th edition converting it. And it dealt with death and what came after.

Ghostwalk.

You die, you wind up a ghost. And get to go on ghostly adventures. Yer not undead, just dead and grouchy. A unique setting with unique mechanics and if you could drag your cold corpse to a cleric you didn't suffer level loss as your spirit was RIGHT there to help the process of getting back to proper breathing.

Sure, your incorporeal form could be undone and resurrections would be costly again. But that encouraged risk-taking on part of adventurers!

[Baptor]

Was the Arcanaloth still alive by this point? Because they can cast Counterspell VII (even VIII if need be), and there's no compelling reason not to, if your mark is about to escape (unless you're out of spell slots).

I've played every edition of D&D and I don't ever remember a counterspell VII or counterspell VIII. Is that just your way of describing a counterspell cast from a 7th or 8th level slot? If not, where did you find these spells?

[XmonkTad]

I started D&D in 3.5 and lost only one character to actual adventuring (tried stabbing a guy who knew disintegrate). I did however play through the Tomb of Horrors, which gave me a taste of old-school insta-death type gameplay. Death is fun when you're expecting it. Other times? Can't really say.