How often do your PCs make death saves?

[Spiritchaser]

Lying on the ground twitching is seldom satisfying.

Oh sure there’s the time the pally knowingly took one for the team and everyone made it home because she did...

And there’s the campaign that you wanted to be unbelievably creepy so you made lots of monsters with no observable indication of their power level... the PCs had to go into every encounter without knowledge of what to do, and that can easily leave a lot of hats on the floor.

But in general it’s bad luck or poor planning, or more interestingly DM error in encounter design...

How often to you see this happen? If I could request: Let’s restrict most discussion to levels 3 to 16... I know the first couple levels are pretty swingy... and things just get weird after 16.

I generally see one pc on the floor about every second play session. This “feels” like it might be a bit high.

[Catullus64]

How often to you see this happen? If I could request: Let’s restrict most discussion to levels 3 to 16... I know the first couple levels are pretty swingy... and things just get weird after 16.

I generally see one pc on the floor about every second play session. This “feels” like it might be a bit high.

My experience about lines up with yours; I would frame it in terms of every third or fourth combat encounter. The rate seems to slow up a bit when running published adventures: make of that what you will.

As for it being too much, I don't mind it so much, but it's a consequence of my preferred playstyle as DM; I tend to favor fewer encounters per adventuring day than the "combat-combat-short rest-combat-combat-short rest-combat-combat-long rest" formula that seems to be the standard, and as such I prefer to make those encounters deadlier so that players still feel pressed to manage their resources. In consequence, more people end up bleeding out on the floor.

[NRSASD]

I've got 1-3 PCs on the ground every 2 fights. But then again, I only through 2 or 3 fights per adventuring day, so I make sure they're a doozy.

No deaths so far though, but that's only because the team is quite good at keeping everyone alive and upright.

My other campaign, which is very much a monster-of-the-week series, sees a lot more KOs and deaths. Last mission had 8 knockouts in 1 fight, evenly distributed across the party. It was a good fight.

@Catullus64- That's my style as well. Fights take a bit to set up, so why have 6 small forgettable fights when 2 big memorable fights are an option?

[McSkrag]

A lot of my players are kids at the moment so we only get through about 3 encounters a session. Kids are much more upset about character death than adults so I think about 1 character knocked unconscious during the big boss battle is about right for drama and excitement. But I make sure no one gets permakilled - so far so good. I also added a scroll of Revivify to one of their early treasures as a backup.

[MrSalty]

At least one per encounter, unless they've really got their stuff together that fight. I tend to structure fights around the notion that my job is to disrupt their formation and make them sweat. Smart enemies go after the squishies. Tanks get their bad saves exploited. The works. A fight where they weather all that without some kind of brush with death is a reward for exceptional play, not the rule.

[PhoenixPhyre]

It's pretty rare for me, for a few reasons.

* My dice love my players. Seriously. Attack rolls or saves for monsters? Crap. For helpers? Great.
* My players (mostly relatively new people) are pretty cautious and concerned about character death. So they're much more defensively-minded than most, even when it's not "optimal." This means backing off, healing while still conscious, defensive spells, defensive builds, etc.
* I don't personally find fun in challenge. Character death, to me, is boring. So I tend to plan for mostly medium/hard combats (and only rarely deadly).
* Because of the above, I'm not too tactically minded. It takes most of my mind to make sure everything's happening right and fun, so I tend to forget complex tactics or heavily-synergistic abilities. Spell-casters are used seriously sub-optimally, because the flow of the combat is more important. Taking an action now, even if it's a poor one, is better than holding things up while I think about their choices. Same reason I'm not great at chess. :smallannoyed:

But my players remember when they go to zero and treat it as a big deal. Because they're not bouncing off zero all the time and getting blase about it, their expectations for what a challenge is are different. And I appreciate that.

[BloodOgre]

It seems like someone drops to zero at least once a session. But quite often, the cleric gets to them before their next turn, so they don't have to make a death save.

[jas61292]

All the time. Someone usually gets over to help them before they have a chance to die, but if at least once character (and usually more) does not go down per session, it probably means it was a session heavy on social interaction.

[GlenSmash!]

About 1 in every 3 combats.

[PhantomSoul]

I use Windows 10, so pretty much constantly.


Jokes aside, it's probably every two or three sessions in the campaign I DM (and usually it's twice+ in that session), but part of that is that we've got a character who... uh... values hitting things more than he values being conscious to hit things. (Actually, the player played a similar character in the campaign I'm a player for, with similar consequences!)

[JeffreyGator]

Hard and Deadly fights, it shouldn't be unusual for PCs to be making a death save - but they do get up again. Getting up again is much more likely amongst PCs than my NPCs - although there were days of fighting clerics that seriously annoyed my players. :) My various players are much more likely to force NPCs to fail death checks than the NPCs are.

My current group has two characters (and often an NPC) that stay in the back and two more melee focused characters and a beast master pet in front. One of the two will likely drop. Last session this didn't happen partly thanks to dice - that character was at 2 hp (45max). The GM is particularly fond of killing the beast pet. The injured wolf took a 37 point critical last week. I also expect to replace the owl-familiar 1-2 times per session.

[MrStabby]

A character death about once per year.

A PC making death saves... obviously depends on how combat focused the sessions are. Uncommon - maybe once every three adventuring days, corresponding to about once every 6 to 7 PC days once investigation and downtime is factored in.

I have been tasked with running a "hard" campaign - which oddly enough has resulted in relatively few deaths. The lethal elements are those things that don't leave a PC just making death saves. Fire elemental, vitriolic spheres and other things that do damage even after a player is down are pretty brutal. Instant kill effects like a mind flayer eating a brain are also risky. My party has 4 our of 5 people with access to healing magic though so getting people back on their feet is relatively easy if the party survives. Only a TPK or the instant death effects have much risk.

5th is as hard as you make it, but there is a huge number of ways to keep a party going as most classes can manage some healing effectively. This does mean that surviving 0 hp isn't too tough which in turn means that PCs CAN be reduced to 0 more often without disrupting the campaign.

[Vorpalchicken]

When one of my players complained they were making death saves too often I started using disintegrate more.

[Demonslayer666]

In the game I run, it doesn't happen very often. I'm not sure how many death saves have been rolled, but every third session or so, one of the party gets knocked unconscious.

I stopped having people make death saves until someone checks on them.

[Waterdeep Merch]

In combat-heavy sessions, at least two players will be making death saves. Deaths themselves aren't all that common except when I run them through hyper deadly one-shots. I probably kill a player about once a year otherwise.

[Spectrulus]

I place my players in the every 2-3 sessions someone goes under 0 hp realm. Every time they get just a little too sure of themselves.

[MrStabby]

I probably kill a player about once a year otherwise.

Should we alert the authorities?

[MarkVIIIMarc]

As DM, I don't feel like I'm doing my job if at least one player doesn't go down once in a session.

I like to make these things somewhat tense.

[Vessyra]

Not counting levels 1-3, I had one character going unconscious roughly twice for every three sessions. However, it was only one character; this is because that character was a wizard (later a warlock) who didn't particularly mind getting into melee, despite being the weakest of the group. Since he died and turned into a ranged fighter who realised that he needs to stay at range, the amount of times that characters have had to make death saves has dropped almost to zero.

It would have been zero, save for during this one combat. Funny story: they were in a dungeon and they knew what would was in the next room. I had assumed that they players would come up with a plan, to either surprise or slip past the monsters. However, just before they players had finished planning, this one players got bored and yelled "Charge!".

It was almost a TPK. Each players went to zero between 2-3 times, and one of them went to zero 4 times.

Aside from the previous battle wizard/warlock, and the almost TPK, the players have not made death saves.

[Asmotherion]

Every time they deserve it.

I have planed an adventure, and stick to the plan. If they deserve a Death Save, it bites them.

My Campains revolve around Horor, were Death is not the end of a Character, but they loose items, Exp, quest progression, and other important things.

Sure, you didn't die, but you didn't accomplish anything either, and you lack information of what happened in between, which makes the world an even darker place. Why are you alive? Were are you exactly? Were are your party members? At what cost comes your resurection?

I don't like to hold back my game just to give my players an easy win. If they win, they have to deserve it. After all, I design the game in order for it to be winable, yet a challenge.

[MaxWilson]

But in general it’s bad luck or poor planning, or more interestingly DM error in encounter design...

How often to you see this happen? If I could request: Let’s restrict most discussion to levels 3 to 16... I know the first couple levels are pretty swingy... and things just get weird after 16.

Or good DM planning in getting the PCs to willingly stick their heads in holes where they'll get whacked off.

Sometimes I feel like it's not a good session unless I can tempt a player into doing something suicidal. :-P I'm not sure what the frequency is, and even when they do suicidal things they still survive maybe about half the time (which is why it's a temptation in the first place), but overall I'd guess that making death saves is slightly less frequent than actual deaths: it might be something like one death per one to two sessions on average, and somebody making death saves once every two sessions. (I.e. going straight to "dead" from taking a bunch of hits all at once is slightly more common than going to "dying but not dead yet," because Combat As War.)

[ruy343]

I typically have players go down at least once per session/every other session. I try to spread it out among the different players, but my monsters are played smart (if they're most scared of the wizard, they'll target him first - same goes for any other PC). A lot of DMs are afraid to have their monsters actually play smart, but when they realize that the enemy is as wily as they are, they get a glint in their eye for revenge that's so sweet...

And then there was the Strahd campaign where I killed 3 of the original 5 party members. One died because he was dumb enough to going the Vallaki "Book Club" entirely on his own, and two died at a very dramatic and climactic encounter - Strahd lost something he really loved, and knew he wasn't getting it back. Strahd became unchained, and had no problem nearly killing all of them. My players still talk about those moments - their character deaths wre actually a positive thing.

[Treantmonk]

It's not easy to kill a PC, that is clearly be design. However, PC's do end up falling to 0Hp fairly regularly. Generally, you should be able to get them up again right away, and they shouldn't have to do more than one death save (if any).

Simplest solution I've discovered is a hawk familiar with goodberries. PC goes down, hawk pops a goodberry in their mouth, they are back to 1hp. No healing word required.

It does make "Spare the Dying" a pointless cantrip.

[MaxWilson]

It's not easy to kill a PC, that is clearly be design. However, PC's do end up falling to 0Hp fairly regularly. Generally, you should be able to get them up again right away, and they shouldn't have to do more than one death save (if any).

Simplest solution I've discovered is a hawk familiar with goodberries. PC goes down, hawk pops a goodberry in their mouth, they are back to 1hp. No healing word required.

It does make "Spare the Dying" a pointless cantrip.

Also, it's an illegal use of Goodberries, which each require an action to consume and therefore cannot be consumed by a PC at 0 HP (unless they're a high-level Zealot or Samurai).

(And from a real-world perspective, I'm not sure that force-feeding an unconscious person even makes medical sense. What I can find seems to indicate (https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/wellness/1990/06/26/feeding-the-comatose-patient/25afbd5a-f2a8-41b1-a8e7-b065b07e8949/?utm_term=.fd8efa17dac5) that feeding an unconscious person requires a tube, because they obviously don't swallow.)

[Tanarii]

It's not easy to kill a PC, that is clearly be design.Its extremely easy to kill a PC once they go to 0 hps. All a DM has to do is have monsters decide to finish them off before another PC can act.

Of course, many players will call foul if you do that.

[Treantmonk]

Also, it's an illegal use of Goodberries, which each require an action to consume and therefore cannot be consumed by a PC at 0 HP (unless they're a high-level Zealot or Samurai).

(And from a real-world perspective, I'm not sure that force-feeding an unconscious person even makes medical sense. What I can find seems to indicate (https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/wellness/1990/06/26/feeding-the-comatose-patient/25afbd5a-f2a8-41b1-a8e7-b065b07e8949/?utm_term=.fd8efa17dac5) that feeding an unconscious person requires a tube, because they obviously don't swallow.)

If your DM allows someone to feed an unconsious player a healing potion, then a goodberry should be allowed as well. As Potions also require an action to consume.

Of course, if your DM does not allow healing potions to unconsious PC's, then obviously goodberries are also no good.

I have yet to play with a DM that forbids healing potions to unconsious players, but perhaps my experience is not the standard.

[Treantmonk]

Also, it's an illegal use of Goodberries, which each require an action to consume and therefore cannot be consumed by a PC at 0 HP (unless they're a high-level Zealot or Samurai).

(And from a real-world perspective, I'm not sure that force-feeding an unconscious person even makes medical sense. What I can find seems to indicate (https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/wellness/1990/06/26/feeding-the-comatose-patient/25afbd5a-f2a8-41b1-a8e7-b065b07e8949/?utm_term=.fd8efa17dac5) that feeding an unconscious person requires a tube, because they obviously don't swallow.)

Actually, did a google. It's legal to feed a potion to an unconsious PC (DMG pg 139 - the person feeding the goodberry or potion can take the action - also answered with sage advice)

Link (https://www.sageadvice.eu/2015/09/04/can-potions-be-administered-to-unconscious-characters/)

[lperkins2]

So, after the first couple levels, it's pretty rare for PCs to go down unless they go after something above their pay grade. On the other hand, when the do go down, they often stay down, unless they get immediate, serious, intervention. At level 5+, most of the things I throw at them that can manage to knock them out either are mindless enough to just start munching the downed PC (oozes and some undead), or intelligent enough to identify the party cleric and coup de grace downed PCs before the cleric can bring them back into the fight (I don't run side initiative, so a fair portion of the time, the cleric gets to go before another enemy can finish off the downed PC).