Players don’t have to die for their to be stakes in DND

[bhoolbela92]

So there’s been a lot of discussion about wether or not the low tier fights in the published materials are overtuned and a lot of talk in general about when it’s appropriate to kill PCs.

One thing I’d like to point out is that, there are ways of making your PCs realize they’ve failed without killing them.

One example of this for me is a WDH campaign I was a part of. Our DM tuned down the encounters a bit and despite us almost getting killed by some sturges at the start, we rarely feared dying in combat. But we still failed, like, a lot.

He had a home brew element of the game that involved rescuing the son of a dead PC (he was killed in a “cutscene” because his player wanted to leave the group because he was too busy). And there were a lot of times where we could literally see him being dragged down the hallway, but (and this was part of a combat sequence) we just couldn’t get to him before he teleportation circled out of there. And then when we finally did find him, it was too late. They’d tortured him so bad that, (through the influence of my warlock’s patron, who my warlock hated and wanted to be free of) he became an evil possessed demon child.

Watching the kid we were trying to save turn on us after we told him his father was dead, that felt like failure, even if it wasn’t a combat death. Because we knew, there were absolutely times we could have saved him. I remember one time where we were so close that I felt truly drained and a bit bummed that we hadn’t gotten to him.

I recognize the idea that combat deaths raise the stakes for combat, but I’d also like to offer up the idea that, narratively speaking, there are many ways to slap your players with failure that don’t involve killing them.

[Corran]

Only problem is if a player starts suspecting that. Then you might start seeing increasingly daring or stupid things being done by that player's character, either in order to test that suspicion, or just to test the limits. Or you might not. Knowing that you cannot fail can make a campaign boring for some people as you imply, same as knowing you wont get killed can make combat a waste of time for some people. It all depends on the people in question and on how they want to play. Though these things specifically is not something you'll want to discuss with the players as a DM, cause I doubt knowing you are going to win will be as sweet as enjoying it when it (inevitably) happens.

[Yakk]

I don't know if that is right. I mean, I get that lesser stakes, or even just pretending that there are lives in the line can raise tension, but unless an actual player dies, people don't take the dice seriously.

Sure, the dead player causes complications; you have to clean up the dice, character sheets, clothing you are wearing.

But the look on the other player's faces when they realize "this game is real" and "why is the door locked" and "I don't want to die" makes the work required to dig the grave, frame someone else, and hold captive the witnesses worthwhile.

[MoiMagnus]

I fully agree with OP that having PCs that don't die (either by luck, or by design) does not prevent to have high stakes.

Total failure doesn't require death. And stakes don't require a possibility for total failure either. Anything which is a relative failure is enough, as long as it is something players care about.

And that here all the point: player most of the time care about their character, making character death one of the easiest way to have an effect on something players care about.
(Players not caring any more about their characters can be a consequence of the DM very badly handling character death. Be careful when handling character death, as you can kill your stakes too.)

But once your players are immersed enough in the universe, you won't be missing things your players care about, so you don't need to rely on PC death any more. IMO, potential failure at the personal motivations of the PCs is better at building stakes than death ... if the PCs have motivations stronger than just "tag along and see what's happening in the plot".

Especially for RPGs that start low stakes, it's totally fine to have a set of things that are assumed "safe" (no character death, no loosing equipments, ...) to put the players in confidence and low-stress environment. You should be able to find other sources of stakes latter on.

Note however that if death is not an option, you will need to work on your encounter design to have resolutions others than "one side is completely eliminated". IMO, building stakes without character death is more difficult as a DM, but leads to much more satisfying gaming sessions.

[cutlery]

Combat is mostly pointless without character death as a real possibility.

Just skip it.

[stoutstien]

Combat is mostly pointless without character death as a real possibility.

Just skip it.

OTOH combat where character death is the only risk is also pointless. Striking the balance of factors is something each table has to do individually. Once you find that range that works for a group you have to figure out how to stat there. Managing tension is the hardest part of Dming.

[MoiMagnus]

Combat is mostly pointless without character death as a real possibility.

No character death doesn't mean the whole team cannot end up unconscious on the floor after a disastrous fight, waking up powerless in a prison somewhere.

Alternatively if the fight drags and the PCs take too much time to win, the enemy could just run away with the loot.

[Ajustusdaniel]

Combat is mostly pointless without character death as a real possibility.

Just skip it.

Categorically disagree- as someone who regularly runs combat where character death is a real possibility. It's only meaningless if the only goal the players go into the combat with is 'to survive.' I've also run or played in sparring matches, duels to the first blood or to the yield, and fights against enemies who primarily sought to rob, escape, or capture PCs. As long as victory and defeat are distinguishable and achievable states, and one is preferable to the other, combat has a point.

(Well, I guess if everyone in the party agrees that defeat is preferable to victory, they might consider combat pointless and elect to surrender instead).

[SiCK_Boy]

There's no black or white, all or nothing rule, in regards to creating intense stakes for your players and how character death (through fights or other means) as a possibility contributes to this.

Using an NPC death as a way to create tension or an emotional moment, as suggested by the OP, will work, but only if your players and their characters have been able to really invest and bond with that character in the first place. If you start your campaign in a village and, right at the beginning of the first session, as the players gather into the local tavern, you describe a goblin tribe descending upon the village and starting to massacre everyone, you may get your players to act (mostly to protect themselves once the goblins enter the tavern), but they won't really care about those imaginary villagers in a visceral sense. That would hold true even if you describe the goblins committing all kinds of atrocities, or targeting all of the PCs family members living in that village (in fact, starting with too much atrocities may even turn off some players). On the other hand, a similar scene happening after 10 or 20 sessions (say with a gang of Ogres instead of Goblins, by then) would have your players jump to the rescue of the local armorsmith they've made numerous purchases from, and risk neck and limbs to save the tavern maid who's been building a love affair with one of the PCs.

As for character death in combat (and the threat thereof), it will once again vary greatly for each player. I am a player that enjoys combat as its own tactical minigame within the greater game of D&D. Even if I know that the rules and mechanics of D&D 5e make it extremely difficult for a DM to kill a PC, even in a deadly encounter (calculated using the rules in the DMG), I still enjoy combat as a way to see if we can win as efficiently as possible. I'll still be angry with myself when I realize I moved to the wrong spot and put myself in a situation where a subsequent attack is not as efficient, or when I see I could have set up a potential Attack of Opportunity. Other players just love rolling dice and seeing how much damage they can inflict in a single turn. But character death does have to play a part in combat, and again, it's usually something that needs to be built up to: you'll see players sometime becoming cocky or take unreasonsable risks if they start thinking there is no way the DM will be able to kill them (or that the DM would never throw a deadly x 10 encounter at them); in those situations, death is a way to impress upon the players that there are real stakes. One challenge as a DM is to have it be a single death rather than a TPK; that's especially hard in D&D 5e, where monsters killing a single players and running away with the body is almost impossible to accomplish without magic / teleport. Often, by the time the players realize they are overmatched, they can't really run away. The DM thus has to be creative: maybe have the PC arrive on the scene of a fight between a powerful NPC (someone the players already know the relative strength of, compared to their PC) and have the monster kill that NPC right away. But even then, some players will still assume they're more special and won't care. Another way to achieve a similar sense of loss could involve the destruction of a particular item (again difficult to achieve with the current ruleset, except by using monsters such as Rust Monster).

In the end, character death should only ever be used (and hopefully only happen - although there may be good fate miscalculations on the DM or player's part that result in accidental death) in a fashion that makes sense within the story and the game world. It should never be something a DM does just to "punish" a player. The DM should be aware (and the players as well, to a certain extent) that the game is not designed to have character death be a significant threat to players in most combats. If a group wants to play with only deadly or more encounters, they can do so, but that would have to be part of the session 0 discussion. If the DM feels the players need that threat to keep themselves motivated through combat during the game, then he should have a discussion with them. Otherwise, the DM should clearly telegraph the stakes of an encounter, give outs to the players if the encounter is designed as a deadly++ threat (or even worse, is designed as unwinnable); if the players have enough awareness of the stakes, they'll be able to make conscious decisions, take a level of risk they're comfortable with, and maybe even decide that sacrificing their PC is worth it if the cause is good.

One of the big frustration wth the way encounters are presented in a lot of WotC modules, especially the early levels, is that those encounters are often way too deadly with little purpose. It just feels like the designers often did not test out their encounters themselves, or have forgotten what it's like to be a lvl 1 PC. As an example, the initial Goblin Ambush encounter in The Lost Mine of Phandelver is a known deadly encounter (for 4 PCs). The adventure itself acknowledges this, and suggests that the DM let the players survive by having them just fall unconscious and the goblins simply loot them. As nice as it is to give a way to new DMs and PCs to avoid the finality of losing that fight, it makes absolutely no sense, both rules-wise (because of death saving throws, you could certainly have PCs die if the whole party falls) and especially within the fiction of the gameworld. Why would the goblins not kill the players? If they really don't want to kill them, why not capture them like they did with Sildar and Gundren? Has anyone ever seen a party of players deliberatly let a group of unconscious goblins live through and wake up naked 4 hours later? I guess you could always have a random patrol pass by just as the players are getting downed, but then you're teaching your players to expect deus ex machina to save them any time they face a difficult challenge... But then, even if you have all the PCs really die, what do you accomplish as a DM: you end up (assuming you want to continue the campaign after this initial catastrophe) with a new group of PC that has no connection to Gundren (the primary motivation for PC in 3/4 of the adventure) and may very well want to skip the entire first chapter (because why would they even go in the surrounding lands and happen upon Cragmaw Hideout). As a teaching, first time encounter, this one isn't much a success in my book. It teaches a few rules (about surprise), it tells the players that the world is dangerous, and it gives them a chance to maybe start interacting with monsters (if they don't kill all the goblins), but then it teaches all kind of wrong lessons (like don't worry if you lose the fight, the DM won't really kill you).

We could go over each module one by one and find similar set up (fighting an Adult Blue Dragon in Hoard of the Dragon Queen? That ice killer in Rime of the Frostmaiden?). These things may work for an experienced group of players who does sign up for a deadly campaign (think: playing the hard mode, permadeath mode in a videogame); but for most groups, the DM is left praying the dice fall in his player's favor, having to dumb down his monsters (having the goblins spread all their arrows instead of focus-firing one PC after another, having the goblins move into melee combat when they could stay hidden and pop up to snipe at the players with their arrows using their bonus hide action, etc.), or come up with deus ex machina solutions if things go bad. All that criticism, to go back to the main topic, to say that a key thing in relation to character death is game world immersion, having it happen (or increase the risk of it happening) at key moments in the story, and giving solid consideration to all key strategic factors when designing your encounters (type and number of monsters, but the terrain, the tactics the monsters will use, the "goals" of each faction in the encounter, etc.).

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Maybe it’s the setting, but I run a Pokémon game and I’ve not had trouble finding meaningful consequences without killing anything. Maiming the players’ Pokémon or putting them in the hospital for a few in-game days (...which I guess in a non-Pokémon game would equate to having their favorite weapon break or losing the help of a friendly NPC) inconveniences the PCs without being lethal.

Mind, I also don’t recommend completely avoiding death, as there are some occasions where mere injury isn’t appropriate. But if they weren’t invested in that character to begin with the death isn’t going to hit them like it should anyway.

[noob]

Easy way to set stakes in a pokemon world: if you do not win the tournament and place too low you might not even be admitted back the next year and waiting a year might as well mean that specific adventure was lost.
Likewise in dnd: if you did not beat all your opponents fast enough they do awful things like sacrificing a child or bullying an innocent soul eating lich or whatever made the bad people be bad people you had reasons to punch to death.

[Cybren]

Absolutely zero of your players should die during roleplay. Wow.

[stoutstien]

Absolutely zero of your players should die during roleplay. Wow.

When exactly do you consider the point when the players are not roleplaying their PC?

[Cybren]

When exactly do you consider the point when the players are not roleplaying their PC?

I mean ideally they aren't dying outside of roleplay either.

[stoutstien]

I mean ideally they aren't dying outside of roleplay either.

Hehe. Now that's a high stake game.

[LibraryOgre]

Only problem is if a player starts suspecting that. Then you might start seeing increasingly daring or stupid things being done by that player's character, either in order to test that suspicion, or just to test the limits. Or you might not. Knowing that you cannot fail can make a campaign boring for some people as you imply, same as knowing you wont get killed can make combat a waste of time for some people. It all depends on the people in question and on how they want to play. Though these things specifically is not something you'll want to discuss with the players as a DM, cause I doubt knowing you are going to win will be as sweet as enjoying it when it (inevitably) happens.

Reminds me of this Full Frontal Nerdity (https://ffn.nodwick.com/?p=21)

[fbelanger]

In thirty years I don’t have see any death or even the smallest injury for Players around me!

[Spiderswims]

I recognize the idea that combat deaths raise the stakes for combat, but I’d also like to offer up the idea that, narratively speaking, there are many ways to slap your players with failure that don’t involve killing their characters.

This is really only true if your players care about role playing or the game plot, story and alternative reality. Many players don't: They "fail" in some way, and just don't care. Oh we did not save the princess, oh well, can we fight something now GM?

Really character death is the only meaningful thing to many players.

[Darzil]

I find the best type of character death is the one in which the player (or players) are complicit.

We had a recent TPK (in another system) where there was the dawning realisation (stretched out over some minutes) as they realised how thoroughly they'd sealed their own fate.

Death through random dice is no where near as effective as death through player overreach.

In my characters I have to say that I have more memory of those who died meaningful (or my mistake) deaths than those that survived.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I had a really high stakes combat recently. The only one at risk was the NPC hostage--the enemies weren't going to do a single point of HP damage to anyone but her if it came down to a fight. But if she died[1], the party would be kicked out of town, they'd fail that mission, plus other bad things would happen to people they cared about. Possibility of player character death? 0. Literally. Stakes? Very high.

It didn't come down to a fight, because the enemy offered some information in exchange for being allowed to leave. But it was a seriously close thing, and letting them go meant letting some really nasty pieces of work who'd pissed the party off go.

Another time, I had a high-stakes fight because the enemy had dominated their pet NPC. Both players and characters had every motivation to fight there--I've never seen players so spitting mad. It was beautiful.

When players are engaged in the world, character death ceases to be the only major motivating factor. If the only tool you have is threatening the characters with death due to being mechanically overpowered by the enemies, you've missed the key (to me) part of the game. Getting inside characters in a fictional world and treating them as if they're real. You might as well be playing chess, just abstract gameboard pieces and tallying wins and losses.

I've killed a total of 2 characters over 14 groups and nearly 40 people I've played with over the last 6 years. One was his own darn fault (trying to solo a Dire Yeti at level 2, despite being given every opportunity to turn around and walk away is a bad idea), the other failed like 3 saving throws in a row and got crit Extract Brain'd by a mindflayer. Plus was stupid enough to block the doorway so his party couldn't really help him. Yet there have been significant stakes throughout. Some concrete, some abstract. All of them tied to the characters and to the world.

[1] Death Saves are on for all "named" NPCs in my campaigns.

[Sigreid]

Yep, there are other kinds of stakes and ways for the players to lose.

It's pretty hard to feel like the hero risking it all if you don't know death is a real possibility and sometimes probability.

[MoiMagnus]

Many players don't: They "fail" in some way, and just don't care. Oh we did not save the princess, oh well, can we fight something now GM? Really character death is the only meaningful thing to many players.

I've not encountered a lot of players that cared about they character dying, but didn't care about
(1) Losing potential rewards they want (namely XP and loot), or rewards they previously won ("you fall unconscious, when you wake up they took all your magical objects"). This also include temporary losses ("you will need to track them and get clever to get back your stuff").
(2) Suffering permanent or semi-permanent damages with mechanical consequences (like losing a limb)

I mean, some players don't care at all about those, but they also tend to not care if their character die (and have John Smith the 7th ready to take the place of John Smith the 6th). If anything, if your table as a policy of "rerolls get the same level as existing characters", they might even enjoy their character dying so that they can build a new one.

[Moreover, if you reach high level, death is just another kind of "being unconscious until healed by the adequate spell"]

[noob]

Some dnd 5e gms gives no magical loot.
So if you could not get above level 1 due to repeated death then death is no longer a stake at all: you literally lose only the effort to increase the counter on your Bertrand from Bertrand the fifth to Bertrand the sixth.

[Sorinth]

Typically character death should be an RP/Story thing. Your character should only die if you are doing something heroic like sacrificing yourself to buy time for others to escape, etc... On the whole your PCs are supposed to "win" and defeat the bad guys. There are of course adventure/campaign styles where this isn't true and truthfully 5e isn't a good edition to run that type of game without homebrewing things.

There does need to be some aspect of verisimilitude where your characters can die, but the idea that death needs to be hanging over the PCs every action in order to create tension sounds to me like either the DM doesn't know how to create actual tension or the players aren't invested in the story.

[Corran]

Reminds me of this Full Frontal Nerdity (https://ffn.nodwick.com/?p=21)
Heh. Yep, the level of lethality surely determines the tone of the game. Too lethal might prevent you from playing your character as heroic (silly antics included) as you'd like or as often as you'd like. Too much in the other direction, and you may start feeling that the decision making element is missing. Either way, it might be important to have a good idea about the lethality of a game/campaign you are joining, but that's something that the DM needs to communicate very subtly and with care (perhaps the safest option is to find out during play even). The game can be easy or hard mode, but you have to at least think that your are succeeding or failing because of your choices, otherwise they dont really matter. The OP's claim is misleading. Success and failure dont have to translate to character survival or death. In fact it can be a lot better if the stakes are even higher than that (or better, if the motivation does not only come from live-or-die). But that's not a good enough reason to remove character death out of the equation. It's just a necessity for when you do remove character death out of the equation for other reasons (such as because of campaign tone). For that to work, the pc's must work with the DM closely in order to find something, which if the DM threats, then that automatically raises the stakes high enough for them to care. That's not something easy to be doing on a regular basis, because it can easily get repetitive enough. You must also match very closely the pc's personalities and/or backgrounds with what's going to be happening around the pc's, which is very limiting for either the DM or for the player. I think that most of the time, the issue being discussed actually starts from that last thing. Connecting a story to the pc's is an easy way to make them play that story (so that you wont have to go to uncharted waters and improvise mid session; which I'll grant, it can seem scary). But doing so, that means that the pc's cannot really die, cause that will make things awkward. But you still need to challenge the pc's, and if character death is out of the equation, then your have to ''raise the stakes''. Every time.

[Gtdead]

It really depends on the players.

Unless there is some agreement between the players that they want to roleplay heavily, how do you stop them from picking fights for the simplest thing if they are impossible to die? And if the players are used to npc death, how are they going to care about failing to save the farmer's son from the orcs?

This is a design dilemma that is present in almost every rpg game, from pnp to videogames. Granted, the majority of people want to just roleplay while a small minority cares about the complexities of combat. However it's proven time and again that no player wants to feel that they are on training wheels. Which is why videogame developers moved from naming the difficulty settings as "easy, normal, hard" to stuff like "story mode, balanced mode, unfair mode", so no one feels left out.

Combat is essential. It's the most important part of the experience. You can affect the social pillar more by finetuning the frequency and lethality of combat than creating elaborate narrative hooks that the players may or may not care about.

[Waterdeep Merch]

Stakes requires consequences and chance. While I don't believe death is or should be the only type, taking that away undermines a lot of things in a combat-oriented game like D&D. I had a friend DM for a group just a few months ago that took this route by making the players functionally immortal and had every reason to regret it as the players took more and more ridiculous actions. They completely removed any and all sources of tension, then whined that there was nothing to do. Like you're suggesting, he tried adding NPC's they might care about and- oh, they decided it would be better to harm all the NPC's themselves since the players were immortal and the other people weren't, therefore they were a burden and it was just easier that way. It fell apart in four sessions and I'm surprised it took that long.

You might be able to get away with it in another game system, but something like 70-80% of D&D rules is all combat mechanics. They should include the obvious consequences that would follow combat, else I'd say you'd be better off choosing a more RP-heavy game.

[Asisreo1]

I run the rule that if you die in the game you die in real life. Hopefully the police don't catch on.

Anyways, its all a player-by-player circumstance.

If the player is very fond of the family he created from his background, he'll want to protect it. If the player values their spellbook, they'll miss it when its gone. If the player values their home town, the threat of it getting raided may be enough.

What you don't want to do, however, is overdo it. Otherwise, they may think that you'll always target whatever they like and they'll try to disassociate with the game more.

Instead, reward the players with enhancements of what they value so the rare moments you threaten them feels more important.

Give their struggling baker mother a super nice restaurant using the funds the players earned through adventuring. Use their ever increasing fame to boost the restaurant's popularity. Have their noble contacts sponsor the mother's cooking and even commission cakes for higher nobility. Then, when things are reaching a climax, have the mother be kidnapped by the BBEG. The player character may not be in immediate danger of death, but the player may be even more motivated to succeed.

[noob]

I run the rule that if you die in the game you die in real life. Hopefully the police don't catch on.

Anyways, its all a player-by-player circumstance.

If the player is very fond of the family he created from his background, he'll want to protect it. If the player values their spellbook, they'll miss it when its gone. If the player values their home town, the threat of it getting raided may be enough.

What you don't want to do, however, is overdo it. Otherwise, they may think that you'll always target whatever they like and they'll try to disassociate with the game more.

Instead, reward the players with enhancements of what they value so the rare moments you threaten them feels more important.

Give their struggling baker mother a super nice restaurant using the funds the players earned through adventuring. Use their ever increasing fame to boost the restaurant's popularity. Have their noble contacts sponsor the mother's cooking and even commission cakes for higher nobility. Then, when things are reaching a climax, have the mother be kidnapped by the BBEG. The player character may not be in immediate danger of death, but the player may be even more motivated to succeed.

The problem is that a smart bbeg would have a reliable way to cause the death of the kidnapped npc when they are incapacitated or captured or killed and would store the npc in a divination protected place in another dimension.

[MoiMagnus]

The problem is that a smart bbeg would have a reliable way to cause the death of the kidnapped npc when they are incapacitated or captured or killed and would store the npc in a divination protected place in another dimension.

Obviously, if you want to have classical hero adventures with good guys saving captured friend and families from the bad guys in heroic actions, you also need to have in front of your PCs classical villains that are going through potentially unnecessary complex, suboptimal and fragile plans (like having crucial hostages tied in the back of the room of the final fight).

The "kind of reality" the campaign takes place in will change the ways you have to proceed as a DM.

[Asisreo1]

The problem is that a smart bbeg would have a reliable way to cause the death of the kidnapped npc when they are incapacitated or captured or killed and would store the npc in a divination protected place in another dimension.

Obviously, if you want to have classical hero adventures with good guys saving captured friend and families from the bad guys in heroic actions, you also need to have in front of your PCs classical villains that are going through potentially unnecessary complex, suboptimal and fragile plans (like having crucial hostages tied in the back of the room of the final fight).

The "kind of reality" the campaign takes place in will change the ways you have to proceed as a DM.
He has a point. The BBEG, if he be powerful enough to hold the captured NPC in a divination-protected area, would do so. They may also have killed the NPC before the players arrive.

However, this makes it even better. It allows for a higher-level conflict to take place. If the players can't rely on spells to immediately locate and access the location the NPC is held, they'll have to try harder.

And if the PC's have access to resurrection magic, they have a time limit. If the NPC died for longer than 10 days, then not even a 9th level cleric can help them. But if they can acquire their information, reach the destination, retrieve the component, and get to the NPC before 10 days pass they succeed.

No need for any contrived storylines to put a time pressure on the adventure and no questioning why the party even wants to help the NPC. It would be self-evident and natural.

[Composer99]

So there’s been a lot of discussion about wether or not the low tier fights in the published materials are overtuned and a lot of talk in general about when it’s appropriate to kill PCs.

One thing I’d like to point out is that, there are ways of making your PCs realize they’ve failed without killing them.

One example of this for me is a WDH campaign I was a part of. Our DM tuned down the encounters a bit and despite us almost getting killed by some sturges at the start, we rarely feared dying in combat. But we still failed, like, a lot.

He had a home brew element of the game that involved rescuing the son of a dead PC (he was killed in a “cutscene” because his player wanted to leave the group because he was too busy). And there were a lot of times where we could literally see him being dragged down the hallway, but (and this was part of a combat sequence) we just couldn’t get to him before he teleportation circled out of there. And then when we finally did find him, it was too late. They’d tortured him so bad that, (through the influence of my warlock’s patron, who my warlock hated and wanted to be free of) he became an evil possessed demon child.

Watching the kid we were trying to save turn on us after we told him his father was dead, that felt like failure, even if it wasn’t a combat death. Because we knew, there were absolutely times we could have saved him. I remember one time where we were so close that I felt truly drained and a bit bummed that we hadn’t gotten to him.

I recognize the idea that combat deaths raise the stakes for combat, but I’d also like to offer up the idea that, narratively speaking, there are many ways to slap your players with failure that don’t involve killing them.

I'll agree that the risk of PC death is not required in any given encounter or scene for there to be meaningful stakes for the players. The extent to which the risk of PC death is required overall in a 5e game otherwise depends on the table culture, although personally I do think the game requires at least some risk of PC death.

[Battlebooze]

Personally as a player, I don't want to play in any game that could get me killed.

:D

As for characters, I agree. Death can be motivation, but it really shouldn't be the only one driving a character. However, a slowly progressing terminal illness can be a great motive for a character.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Easy way to set stakes in a pokemon world: if you do not win the tournament and place too low you might not even be admitted back the next year and waiting a year might as well mean that specific adventure was lost.

Not that kind of Pokemon game. :smallamused: More like, 'your Pokemon was stolen and got Shadowed, experimented on and had both front legs amputated before you got it back.' Those kind of stakes.

[GravityEmblem]

I don't like to kill my players, but I do try to show them the consequences of their actions. In an example from my current game, four of the five players staged an elaborate jailbreak, making no effort to be sneaky, and only two of them disguised their faces. They were able to successfully free everyone from the prison, but now they're all wanted criminals. They can't go to any of the major cities, and I'm planning a quest where their criminality is used to extort them into doing a shady job for a corrupt noble.

CONSEQUENCES!:biggrin:

[noob]

Not that kind of Pokemon game. :smallamused: More like, 'your Pokemon was stolen and got Shadowed, experimented on and had both front legs amputated before you got it back.' Those kind of stakes.

That is low stakes: pokemon is entirely around the fact that humans does not cares about using slaves and making them fight in gladiatorial combat as long as they look sightly different from themselves.
"good" and "bad" trainers do the exact same atrocities to their pokemons: the only difference is that "good" trainers pretends to care about their pokemons while they do not for if they did they would not go adventuring and would do real jobs.
So anything about pokemon death or torture is low stakes(due to complete lack of empathy from trainers) relatively to things like not getting the opportunity to participate in a tournament again or having your human friends kidnapped.
The reason your players care about their pokemons is that they are munchkins (steal the boots of a munchkin and eternal vengeance and curses for seven generations happens as soon as possible) but their characters would almost definitively care less about their pokemons than about their human friends.
The entire pokemon world is based on racists.

[jjordan]

I'm going to echo what other people have said: it depends. This is where establishing expectations in session zero comes in.

Some people view D&D as a fantasy tactical miniatures game. The roleplaying, such as it is, is simply establishing the context for the next tactical scenario. For others it's more strategic and they are considering logistical concerns that span several combats (though the magically heal all hit points after a long rest kind of wears this down).

For other people D&D is cooperative storytelling and there's very little risk of the character dying at an inopportune time. Social interactions are as important, or more important, than combat, which can be rare.

And there are a whole slew of options in between. Determining which type of game you're playing is important and so is consistency. Players may not like the rules or implementations/interpretations of the rules but you have to be consistent and fair or they're really going to go off the deep end, and with good reason.

Looking specifically at combat it can help to consider goals. Not all combat is a do-or-die fight until one side is eliminated. Most combat isn't. Each side has specific goals they want to accomplish. Each individual combatant has motivations. Most combat units became combat ineffective if they took 10%-20% casualties and would rout under those circumstances. That means that if a group of 10 bugbears took 1-2 casualties they would probably end the combat. The condottieri of 14th-16th century Italy frequently engaged in wars of maneuver that accomplished their goals without having to engage in a pitched battle that would result in losing valuable horses, men, and equipment.

[GravityEmblem]

That is low stakes: pokemon is entirely around the fact that humans does not cares about using slaves and making them fight in gladiatorial combat as long as they look sightly different from themselves.
"good" and "bad" trainers do the exact same atrocities to their pokemons: the only difference is that "good" trainers pretends to care about their pokemons while they do not for if they did they would not go adventuring and would do real jobs.
So anything about pokemon death or torture is low stakes(due to complete lack of empathy from trainers) relatively to things like not getting the opportunity to participate in a tournament again or having your human friends kidnapped.
The reason your players care about their pokemons is that they are munchkins (steal the boots of a munchkin and eternal vengeance and curses for seven generations happens as soon as possible) but their characters would almost definitively care less about their pokemons than about their human friends.
The entire pokemon world is based on racists.

Well, not to get into a flame war, but I'm not sure you've ever played Pokemon.

[noob]

Well, not to get into a flame war, but I'm not sure you've ever played Pokemon.
In the pokemon world pokemons are described as being intelligent and yet people throws them in fights.
If all pokemon were replaced by mute humans I think many pokemon players would see there is something wrong in capturing humans in small balls and throwing them in fights. (they would still play pokemon because doing wrong things in a videogame is not a problem or else nobody would play call of duty)

[ff7hero]

Well, not to get into a flame war, but I'm not sure you've ever played Pokemon.

Definitely hasn't read the manga.


In the pokemon world pokemons are described as being intelligent and yet people throws them in fights.
If all pokemon were replaced by mute humans I think many pokemon players would see there is something wrong in capturing humans in small balls and throwing them in fights. (they would still play pokemon because doing wrong things in a videogame is not a problem or else nobody would play call of duty)

Pokemon are repeatedly shown to enjoy battling, and responsible trainers make sure their Pokemon are not at risk of real harm. The "small balls" have been shown to be essentially climate controlled pocket dimensions.

[noob]

Definitely hasn't read the manga.



Pokemon are repeatedly shown to enjoy battling, and responsible trainers make sure their Pokemon are not at risk of real harm. The "small balls" have been shown to be essentially climate controlled pocket dimensions.

People within a given lifestyle often does not thinks it would be better if things were different in a completely orthogonal direction.
If you go far enough in the past you could find people considering it was a great thing to go in other countries and pillage and the attraction of power does push people toward horrible behaviours(see the people that reach power and autocrats) and since pokemon grows in power from fighting it can spontaneously push them toward behaviours that are bad for themselves or others.
There is no proof that thousand of years later people and pokemon in the pokemon world will not look back to the past and think it was utterly atrocious.

The opinions of the watched characters in the manga are not proof it is good behaviours for their world.
There is mangas where people are killing each other cheerfully and it does not makes it less bad.

[MaxWilson]

I run the rule that if you die in the game you die in real life. Hopefully the police don't catch on.

I came here to say that this thread title makes me giggle internally every time I see it. It appears I'm not the only one. :)

[Asisreo1]

People within a given lifestyle often does not thinks it would be better if things were different in a completely orthogonal direction.
If you go far enough in the past you could find people considering it was a great thing to go in other countries and pillage and the attraction of power does push people toward horrible behaviours(see the people that reach power and autocrats) and since pokemon grows in power from fighting it can spontaneously push them toward behaviours that are bad for themselves or others.
There is no proof that thousand of years later people and pokemon in the pokemon world will not look back to the past and think it was utterly atrocious.

The opinions of the watched characters in the manga are not proof it is good behaviours for their world.
There is mangas where people are killing each other cheerfully and it does not makes it less bad.
In pokemon, there's good trainers and bad trainers, generally.

The good trainers have a friendship bond with their pokemon. If their pokemon are incompatible with the current trainer, they'll either give them to a more compatible trainer, send them to a profession caregiver, or return them into the wild.

Bad trainers force their pokemon to do stuff no matter what. The pokemon may not enjoy fighting but they'll be forced to do so anyways. These are usually "Team" members but there's also individual trainers who aren't good to their pokemon.

There is indeed a tension between if a pokemon should even be owned by "good" trainers as some still see it as slavery.

In fact, Mewtwo saw it that way in the Mewtwo movie and I believe N saw any pokemon ownership as slavery too. The outcome of these conflicts usually end with a clarification that the Pokemon love humans and their bond is more similar to a symbiotic friendship.

I mean, if humans were actually just out to hurt pokemon, the pokemon would just rip their trainers to shreds with ease.

[GravityEmblem]

I always viewed Pokemon battles like sports: football, soccer. Actually, Pokemon battles are probably less dangerous than professional tackle football matches. Especially because of the magic healing machines in every town.

[PhoenixPhyre]

A little back-of-the-envelope math:

If there is a p (0 < p < 1) chance of a PC dying in any given fight, what is the chance that you'll get through a campaign with the original characters? Conversely, how high does p have to be for there to be "stakes" or "risk of death"? 1%? 2%? 10% 50%?

Assuming 3 Deadly fights (p chance of character death) per adventuring day, and 3 adventuring days per level after level 3 (so really 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, ...),

p = 0.01 implies a 20% chance of dying in T1 and a 50% probability of having died in T2.

p = 0.02 implies that you've got a 35% chance of dying in T1, and a 77% chance of having died by T3.

p = 0.1 implies a 50% chance of dying by level 3, a 90% chance of not making it to T2, and a 99.95 chance of dying before level 11.

p = 0.5 implies a 99.9999762% chance of not making it to T2, and basically infinitesimal chances of making it to T3.

So if the risk of death is required for stakes to be "real"...how big does that risk have to be? And how much turnover are you willing to have? For me, a 1% risk of death isn't anything I can feel. I mean, there are numbers and I can calculate it, but it isn't real to me. 5% is about as low as I'd go in this context. And my sense from people talking is that they're running much higher.

If I had that high of character turnover (even the 2% risk category), it would do the opposite of making things tense. Meatgrinders end up with less player involvement in the events IMX, not more. You just have a stack of backup characters and you run it like a tactical wargame. No "roleplay" there at all--they're just counters on a boardgame. When death is easy, death is cheap. And it plays merry hob with trying to have a coherent narrative IMX unless the setting is dripping with resurrection, and that plays merry hob with setting consistency.

As a note, the deadliest battle in American history (Antietam during the US Civil War, from a quick google search anyway) had a total casualty rate on the Union side of about 16%. That's killed, wounded, and captured. Union deaths work out to about 2.2%. And that was and is still considered a horrible bloodbath.

[Corran]

A little back-of-the-envelope math:

If there is a p (0 < p < 1) chance of a PC dying in any given fight, what is the chance that you'll get through a campaign with the original characters?
This probably deserves a thread on its own, at least IMO. ''Are all fights supposed to be of roughly equal difficulty'' is as big of a question as ''are all fights supposed to be very deadly'', and I am not getting how do they justify anything that has been said so far (though I may have missed something).



Conversely, how high does p have to be for there to be "stakes" or "risk of death"? 1%? 2%? 10% 50%?
I like math, but in this case I would be asking myself something else. To what degree does my suspension of disbelief support my character's actions (luck included) being disassociated from their expected outcome? Or, to what degree would I like (as a player) to be able to influence p? Followed up by a question about tone of the campaign (like an idea about what constitutes improving this chance as opposed to reducing it, eg does shooting myself on an enemy ship from a canon mean that my character will die, or does it mean that it's a fast way to enter combat?).


Enjoying the game does not equate to fearing character death. But knowing or strongly suspecting that it's too unlikely (up to maybe practically impossible) for this to happen, can hinder the enjoyment of the game (at least for some people). P does not really matter too much in that sense, but what your players think of p might matter to them.

[Waterdeep Merch]

-snip-

Personally, I keep relatively high difficulty/chance of death because we're playing D&D and there's resurrection. I'm a bit more lax in tier 1 because they have no normal access to extra lives, but only a little since it's also much faster to make a new tier 1 character should a death stick. It makes wealth an important factor in what the players can and can't survive since you can literally buy your life back.

In your worst case scenario, which I'm presently doing in a long term campaign that has seen double digits in player deaths (around seven or so have been permanent, too), I also have the players create multiple characters and brief them on why during session zero. Though this difficulty is usually due to me making a game non-linear and not balancing everything according to the players at any given state. A fight can be embarrassingly easy or impossibly hard depending, and it's usually telegraphed far enough in advance that it's the players pushing their luck when they die. As much as I like harsh difficulties, I feel like your death should come down to decisions you got to make more than things you couldn't possibly account for or bad luck against the dice.

[TigerT20]

Hi! Pokemon professor here.

Not only do Pokemon enjoy battling, the storylines of the anime, films and games have explored the concept of Pokemon slavery, always reaching the same conclusion: it's good intentions being misplaced. Hell, it gets even deeper with N as he was indoctrinated into believing Pokemon were mistreated so that Ghetsis could have a puppet with which to achieve his aims: ownership of all Pokemon in the region. Additionally, a common theme of the villains in the Pokemon world are that they see Pokemon as more of tools, rather than freinds. The opposite is true of the protagnonists. This is reinforced by how Pokemon become stronger and gain new abilities, possibly even evolving due to their Freindship (the exception being the move Frustration, which is powered by hatred. Yet everyone uses Return, it's opposite, instead...). In more recent games, there has also been Affection and... Enjoyment? The one that doesn't actually have any purpose. Not to mention Ash-Greninja. So clearly Pokemon run off the Power of Freindship - this is enhanced by how if your Pokemon are too strong, they will refuse to fight for you as they don't respect you. This clearly shows that the relationship between Trainer and Pokemon, certainly any successful duo, is one built off freindship, trust and mutual repsect.

On consequences: Yup, you can punish characters in non-fatal ways. These ways are often better IMO unless the players have grown attached to a character, as they are drive the story forward and make the game more interesting while so far all character deaths I've experienced have been 'Oh no! Anyway..."

[KorvinStarmast]

In thirty years I don’t have see any death or even the smallest injury for Players around me! I got a paper cut once while leafing through a monster manual ...

I run the rule that if you die in the game you die in real life. Ever had a DM melt down the miniature figure with a soldering iron when the character dies? :smallwink:

[noob]

In pokemon, there's good trainers and bad trainers, generally.

The good trainers have a friendship bond with their pokemon. If their pokemon are incompatible with the current trainer, they'll either give them to a more compatible trainer, send them to a profession caregiver, or return them into the wild.

Bad trainers force their pokemon to do stuff no matter what. The pokemon may not enjoy fighting but they'll be forced to do so anyways. These are usually "Team" members but there's also individual trainers who aren't good to their pokemon.

There is indeed a tension between if a pokemon should even be owned by "good" trainers as some still see it as slavery.

In fact, Mewtwo saw it that way in the Mewtwo movie and I believe N saw any pokemon ownership as slavery too. The outcome of these conflicts usually end with a clarification that the Pokemon love humans and their bond is more similar to a symbiotic friendship.

I mean, if humans were actually just out to hurt pokemon, the pokemon would just rip their trainers to shreds with ease.

The problem you do not see is that each of those villains propose only one alternate that is another extreme.
None of those scenarios considers the possibility of pokemon living with humans and not fighting.
In all the scenarios the end result would be pokemons fighting either because they are in the wilderness or because they follow trainers.
At no point do they consider making a setup where pokemon do not fight.
So captured pokemons find themselves in a setup where they think they got the best possibility because they are not in the wilderness killing each other.
So because they can compare their living conditions to pokemon who have way more horrible living conditions they think they have good living conditions despite their living conditions also being horrible but less so.(it is something that happens with humans so pokemon being comparably smart could possibly have the same way of thinking on that aspect)

There is also in the pokemon setting a place where people befriends and feed pokemon without capturing them but it is localised in a small place so people have low awareness of that so most pokemon are not even aware of the fact they could have better living conditions but it means that there is people who considered a way of living that is neither the extreme of not interacting with pokemon and letting them kill each other in the wilderness nor the extreme of capturing pokemon to make them fight and at no point are those people faced with opponents saying they are doing something morally reprehensible.
So in the long term it could be possible that this way of living spread and if it happens then people would look back at the past and see how wrong they were.

[KorvinStarmast]

I am sure that there is a pokemon forum somewhere; how about we ask the mods migrate the pokemon discussion to there?

[MoiMagnus]

p = 0.01 implies a 20% chance of dying in T1 and a 50% probability of having died in T2.

p = 0.02 implies that you've got a 35% chance of dying in T1, and a 77% chance of having died by T3.

p = 0.1 implies a 50% chance of dying by level 3, a 90% chance of not making it to T2, and a 99.95 chance of dying before level 11.

p = 0.5 implies a 99.9999762% chance of not making it to T2, and basically infinitesimal chances of making it to T3.

1) Death proba are rarely evenly distributed in a party (though the repartition change from encounter to encounter). IMO it's better to consider the proba of at least one PC dying rather than going character-by-character.

2) T2 and latter, resurrections start being available, making deaths in non-TPK usually reversible. In general the higher level the character are, the more the "death-related stakes" become "how much resources are you forced to survive (including cost of resurrection)" and less "what is the probability of someone dying".

[PhoenixPhyre]

1) Death proba are rarely evenly distributed in a party (though the repartition change from encounter to encounter). IMO it's better to consider the proba of at least one PC dying rather than going character-by-character.

2) T2 and latter, resurrections start being available, making deaths in non-TPK usually reversible. In general the higher level the character are, the more the "death-related stakes" become "how much resources are you forced to survive (including cost of resurrection)" and less "what is the probability of someone dying".

1) sure. But that would have been more math. And actually makes it worse--lower chance of having no-one die than of one particular person not dying.

2) If res is available, then the "stakes" of death are just a resource drain. Weee. "Cheap" resurrections mean that death has even less of a sting. So you've got a choice. You can either make death expensive and common (and thus have stakes, at the cost of making a lot of players, myself included, completely tune out any thought of roleplay and immersion), or you can make it rare and/or cheap (and thus not have significant stakes).

I don't personally believe that the risk of death should be set to 0. But I think that useful stakes, useful tension in D&D comes much less from player death than the "killer players/DMs" make it out to be. My most impactful combats have had very little risk of character death. But very high chances of having things occur that the players didn't want. Such as foreclosing "good" ends to arcs. Or loss of objectives.

If death is the only thing on the table, then I'd say that there can be no meaningful stakes. Because that requires frequent and expensive death, but that destroys narrative and immersion, which is where the stakes come from. No one really cares about death in a meatgrinder--you can afford to throw away a character to learn how to bypass an obstacle. The characters are just playing tokens, and there's more Bob N's where that one came from. Maybe in a plotless dungeon crawl where the only meaning is "how much loot can we get away with". But that style doesn't fit a lot of people these days.

And here's the other thing--character death isn't all that much fun unless you have resurrection right at hand (which cheapens the death entirely). You're telling someone "you don't get to play the rest of this session. Maybe more if there's not a good way to bring in an alternate character." And that's boring. I've seen (in games I played in, not DM'd) people just entirely lose interest in what's going on. They're cut off from the game and their engagement goes to pot.

For my games, I only rarely kill characters. 3 total deaths, of which one got nullified due to a special ability the character had because of things that had happened (basically a one-time "cheat death" boon). The other two were permanent--one happened at level 2, the other would have required True Resurrection (which the campaign never got close to, and no NPCs can cast in my setting). So p != 0, but p is pretty darn small.

[Chalkarts]

If characters can die, players will make better decisions.

[ProsecutorGodot]

If characters can die, players will make better decisions.

No one is saying they shouldn't be able to die, just that it isn't the one single motivator that should be used. A character can be just as motivated to make a quick decision through a threat of death as one realizing this next decision could cost a nearby village their livelihood or a close allies safety over the long term.

There are ways to motivate action and raise stakes that involve no bodily harm to players, let alone their characters.

[PhoenixPhyre]

If characters can die, players will make better decisions.

I question the general applicability of this statement. It depends on the circumstances. If character replacement is as simple as dropping in an already-made replacement, then players might (not will, but might) simply try to brute-force through obstacles, drowning them under a wave of bodies. And if not, there's only a limited amount you can learn from "if they crit, you're dead". Which is how the bulk of character deaths happen early on, which is where the bulk of the character deaths can happen (due to the nature of 5e).

Now it can teach people things, but IMX (as a teacher), people don't usually learn that well from bare experience. A character dying, in and of itself, doesn't teach them anything. They have to be guided, shown the chain of avoidable events that led up to that death. And if any of those were bare chance, the lesson often gets lost.

[MaxWilson]

1) sure. But that would have been more math. And actually makes it worse--lower chance of having no-one die than of one particular person not dying.

2) If res is available, then the "stakes" of death are just a resource drain. Weee. "Cheap" resurrections mean that death has even less of a sting. So you've got a choice. You can either make death expensive and common (and thus have stakes, at the cost of making a lot of players, myself included, completely tune out any thought of roleplay and immersion), or you can make it rare and/or cheap (and thus not have significant stakes).

Well, sort of. I'm not a huge fan of 5E's "no consequences to anything" approach, but even in 5E, if death and resurrection are both on the table, death becomes two things:

(1) Something that a prepared party can prepare to overcome (e.g. by having a healer and protecting that healer), therefore a party niche.

(2) A potential source of uncertainty and dramatic tension, if resurrection is possible but not immediately available.

If a 13th level party discovers that a favorite NPC has been kidnapped and probably murdered by unknown parties for unknown reasons, that death isn't just a resource drain--it's a mystery to solve! Who dunnit and where is the body? Solve the mystery quick enough and you might be able to reverse the tragedy via resurrection magic (and maybe some offscreen therapy/counseling to the victim).

Likewise, a party exploring a dungeon or a dragon's lair might get separated by a trapdoor or have a PC snatched by a dragon--even if death occurs, all hope is not yet lost, maybe. It's more than just a resource drain, but it's not necessarily final either. It depends on what the players do.