Player survey: How often do you like to die?

[MaxWilson]

Obviously as players we all try not to die, but how difficult do you like the game to be, mathematically?

I've known some people who consider a 50% chance of dying over 30 game sessions unacceptable because then you "might not finish the campaign."

As a player I like games where 50% chance of death-from-math every single session exists. Sometimes this means playing with low stat rolls or "bad" subclasses. I.e. I want a game where the monsters are as strong as I am or stronger, so that managing to survive the session is a meaningful accomplishment, instead of having to survive 100 sessions. I just don't have the free time or interest to wait 100 sessions for a challenge. I want Darwin to show his face now! :)

I tend to run games where a 20-60% chance of any given PC dying in every adventure is plausible, based on math (and in FTF games, an adventure tries to be no more than one or two sessions long), although I then also try to lean back in the players' favor in being very open to their attempts to beat the math or bypass the math via PC abilities or player creativity. So my actual PC death rate ranges from zero to about 1 per session, which is 0-25% fatality rate per session, not the 20-60% that raw math would indicate. E.g. four 8th level PCs vs. three CR 9 monsters looks like almost a 50% chance of death per player, but in practice it isn't that bad.
As a player, how often do you like Death to show his face to you in 5E?

[ProsecutorGodot]

It's hard to say, in our Mad Mage campaign, which is now bordering on 3 years in length... Nobody has died. The number of close calls can be counted on a single hand. I enjoy the campaign, but I would prefer if there was a higher degree of difficulty.

I would love to take credit and say my Redemption Paladin is just that effective, but I don't think that's it.

I think my DM is a bit hesitant to try and kill us and I also think I'm the only player at the table who dislikes that.

So I don't really know what kind of odds I'd want, but definitely more than 0%

[Seekergeek]

I prefer a deadlier game, both as a DM and a player. I would be happy if a game presented a challenge and a real risk of death on a session-by-session basis. It makes the game more rewarding for me if I am in a position where death and danger are overcome rather than plot points that get written around.

That sentiment is unfortunately not shared by my very long-running table. We've been playing together since we were teenagers (we're old and in our mid to late 30s and playing remotely across the country now). For narrative purposes most of my group would prefer to finish a run with the same character they started with. Our main DM would prefer to have the same PCs finish as started which in his home brew work tends to lead to plot armour and DMPCs running rampant. If he's running a module, his preference tends to manifest itself as well, and often clumsily. I sometimes find myself actively trying to die just to see how he will creatively avoid it for me. It's not an adversarial table, nor an optimized one - we've been playing together for so long that the competitive edge has long since dulled. But even the most derpy of builds tends to survive start to finish unless we actively ask to retire a PC.

edit: We are also currently doign the Mad Mage - we're less than a year in still and have had one close call for the party but we were all immediately stabalized by the NPCs. I'm not sure if that was a published decision or the DM pulling punches but it really bothered me. We messed up, had horrible tactics and paid the price...only we didn't. After that, there was a potentially deadly side effect of our capture which was essentially overcome by DM fiat. Again, I don't truly know if it was a written solution or our DM avoiding our deaths for us. Either way, it's not how I like my dnd.

[Vegan Squirrel]

This is a very interesting question to put numbers to, and ultimately I feel like it should be as much in the hands of the PCs as the DM. I think I prefer a curve of changing odds over time, where you're likely to survive for the first few sessions to get to know the characters (make them memorable), then you face a higher chance of death through adventuring, then that chance of death goes down as the campaign becomes a long-term campaign and you're more invested in things (and growing more capable), then the chance rises continuously from there, as you take on epic challenges that could easily kill you.

But maybe I'm overthinking things. The chance of death should make sense for the situation the characters are in, but the characters should have some control over what situation they're in. Eventually (for good characters, at least), there should be a strong enough in-world threat that the characters are willing to sacrifice themselves to stop it.

As a DM, I generally try to place threats before the players which I think they can handle, but then I'll not hold back from using their enemies' abilities to the fullest extent. And if it would make sense, in-world, for the threats to be beyond them, the threats will be beyond them. I expect them to avoid those dangers. My characters have gone unconscious and made death saves quite a few times, and I've killed off NPCs they were fighting alongside, but so far the PCs have all survived. There have been death saves made with two failures already, so fate could easily have changed that outcome. They know the risk of death is real, and they usually take precautions accordingly. And I suppose my villains usually die trying to escape rather than die trying to bring the PCs down with them—if they were more fanatical, they may very well have succeeded in mutual destruction.

I'm currently DMing 11th level characters, the highest level and longest campaign I've ever run, and the villains on the horizon will definitely be deadly. The characters will have the chance to collect intelligence, allies, and magic items to aid them, but their enemies will, too.

[da newt]

I like to aim for a 50-50 chance that an individual PC will live to complete the campaign, but I also think it's very important for there to be a compelling reason for a person to choose to put themselves in a situation where the threat of death is real.

I prefer a fairly light hearted game with episodic periods of dire consequences. I don't like slogs where death is always one bad roll away, and I don't like games where the PCs are neigh-immortal. It's a definite Goldilocks principal sort of a thing for me (not too hot, not too cold, but just right somewhere between).

[Dravda]

As a player, I like a 50-50 chance of death. Not at any random time, mind you: I want the opportunity for my character to die gloriously if the perfect opportunity arises. Being filled with arrows while covering everyone else's retreat, or in a suicidal rush to take on one last important bad guy with me before I go? Awesome. I don't mind my characters dying at all, so long as it has narrative weight and meaning.

As a DM, I typically shoot for 1-2 character deaths over the course of a campaign. Enough to remind my players that death can happen from poor planning or bad luck, but not present at every turn. That said, it's been a while since a character actually died in one of my campaigns: I feel like I'm still mastering 5e!

[Pex]

When the DM boasts of his PC death count he needs to step away from the chair. It's not the DM's job to kill PCs. He is not the players' enemy. The DM should be just as saddened about a PC's death as the player. There's no defined number to say X is fine, X + 1 is too much. It's easier to talk about the extremes. If a PC dies every session the DM is doing something wrong. If a PC dies every other session the DM is doing something wrong. Every two sessions. EVery three sessions. Eventually you reach a point where it's just part of the game. If no PC dies during the campaign, wonderful. If there's only one death the entire campaign, fine. Two deaths, fine. You eventually reach a number where something is wrong.

Too many deaths, however many is too many, I blame the DM, but the DM is not to blame for all PC deaths. A player who does something Stupid that leads to death is not the DM's fault. It's the player's fault. Stupid is defined as something that is obvious by objective fact and reality shouldn't be done. A death can also be no one's fault. A player could make the wrong choice but wasn't Stupid about it. He took a risk and it failed. A player can do everything right, but the bad luck of dice rolls makes the Thing a failure that leads to death. DM's fault comes in when it's deliberate, the situation is stacked heavily against the player it takes mind reading or extreme luck to succeed, or the mysterious X + 1 number is reached when you realize something is seriously wrong with the game.

[NecessaryWeevil]

Death as in "Ooops, time for Revivify" or "Time to find an NPC to cast Raise Dead"? Or death as in "You're not coming back, create a new character"?
We've had one or two of the former in every campaign (both of the most recent incidents the same player...I guess that's why he plays so conservatively lately). We've only had one of the latter ever, and that was only because the Silver Flame doesn't believe in resurrection and going toe-to-toe with Lady Vol herself was a suitably epic departure.
I could accept about a 1 in 5 chance of permadeath per campaign.

[MoiMagnus]

I'm assuming you're talking here about "unwanted PC elimination".
So we exclude:
+ deaths followed by resurrections
+ deaths happening when a player was already set on changing character
+ deaths happening at the last session of a campaign, or during the epilogue
But we include events that are not technically deaths, but result in the character no longer being available as a PC (without the player's consent).

With this definition, I'd say that for a ~30 sessions campaign, I'd expect it to have one session in average where this happen to one or more players.

I definitely don't play D&D to live through some Darwin's natural selection. That looks like stress to me, and I don't need more of it. Additionally, I like to get to know the other PCs session after session. One death is interesting, but if they keep dying, that makes campaigns far less memorable to me.

[Xervous]

It's not the DM's job to kill PCs.

The term I strive for is Suicide by Adventure. It’s not my job to kill the characters, but I do tell them what may kill them. If they decide to pursue such risks or refuse to back down from a fight it’s simply a matter of delivering on a promise and keeping the world consistent. The key part is that it’s informed Suicide by Adventure.

[MaxWilson]

Death as in "Ooops, time for Revivify"? Or death as in "You're not coming back, create a new character"?
We've had one or two of the former in every campaign (both of the most recent incidents the same player...I guess that's why he plays so conservatively lately). We've only had one of the latter ever, and that was only because the Silver Flame doesn't believe in resurrection and going toe-to-toe with Lady Vol herself was a suitably epic departure.
I could accept about a 1 in 5 chance of permadeath per campaign.

I am not drawing a distinction between death and permadeath for purposes of this survey. Whether PCs have the means to reverse death is a separate topic. Right now I'm more intent on getting a feel for players' preferred tactical difficulty (from a raw math standpoint).

[CheddarChampion]

I think I'd like to have a character death approximately once in every 10 - 20 sessions.
Maybe more if returning to life is an option, maybe less if it's a long running campaign.

Both death and the possibility of death make it more meaningful and exciting when you survive.

[LtPowers]

The term I strive for is Suicide by Adventure. It’s not my job to kill the characters, but I do tell them what may kill them. If they decide to pursue such risks or refuse to back down from a fight it’s simply a matter of delivering on a promise and keeping the world consistent. The key part is that it’s informed Suicide by Adventure.

But is there a viable alternative to pursuing the risk? Or is it "pursue the risk or that's the end of the adventure"?


Powers &8^]

[KorvinStarmast]

I could accept about a 1 in 5 chance of permadeath per campaign. I am good with, on a campaign basis, 3 or 4 permadeaths if the campaign is a long one. New chars come and go.

It’s not my job to kill the characters, but I do tell them what may kill them. If they decide to pursue such risks or refuse to back down from a fight it’s simply a matter of delivering on a promise and keeping the world consistent. The key part is that it’s informed Suicide by Adventure.
Interesting approach, sounds a bit 'West Marches' in tone.

Max, about every three sessions if the chance of PC death isn't very real, my taste is "DM, please turn it up a notch and see how it goes for a few sessions"

A perma-death every other session, on the other hand, gets tiresome fast unless all of the players embrace that.

[Sherlockpwns]

I like to die once in a lifetime.

[PhoenixPhyre]

If every fight (or even every session) has a 50:50 chance of someone dying, then the chances of getting to T2 without a completely different party than you started with are...slim. And there's no resurrection in T1 at all (unless you're filthy rich).

In 6+ years, with 13 parties (not including one-shots), I've had 5 character deaths including those who were resurrected. Two permanent deaths.

1. A character died in session 1, from something that shouldn't have killed them--everybody screwed up at the player level, myself included. That ended up getting retconned with mutual consent.
2. A character perma-died when he, as a level 2 paladin, decided to solo a CR 9 dire yeti. After multiple rounds of "are you sure" and the monster stretching, being intimidating, etc. Massive damage is a pain.
3. A character died (but was resurrected) at about level 8.
4. A character perma-died when he was stunned and the mind flayer got a crit on the Extract Brain ability. No coming back from that without a much beefier resurrection spell than they had available. Especially since that was the party cleric.
5. A character died (but was resurrected) after he (with 98 HP max) faced a lich with power word: kill.

That's it. I've had lots of characters retire and get traded out during play though.

But I find death to be a boring failure state. I don't play to find out "will you survive", I take survival as a presumption. Instead, I'm more interested in "how does the world change because you've been adventuring in it? How have you changed? Who will you protect? Who will you sacrifice?" So failure states are more about the thing you wanted to do doesn't get done or backfires on you than you die and Bob #2 comes in to replace Bob #1.

[stoutstien]

For me it's more of a question of how much the chance of death fall on my decisions compared to relying on death based on RNG. If it's around a 80/20 split there I'm happy around a 20% chance of death everyday starting around T2.

[Rater202]

Not at all.

There should be risks where it feels like there's a chance I should die, but if my character dies it should be because I did something really stupid and failed.

Granted, this is becuase m first two-player character deaths were kind of crap.

Honestly, risk to the people around me(NPCs, other player characters, etc) makes the risk feel more real to me than danger to me. Danger to my character just annoys me becuase I'm here to have fun, not worry about every little thing.

[MaxWilson]

But is there a viable alternative to pursuing the risk? Or is it "pursue the risk or that's the end of the adventure"?

Powers &8^]

You never want the players feeling railroaded. But you can offer them interesting choices.

Consider: your 6th level players are sneaking back home after an illegal dungeon crawl. They run into a woman crying in the woods. Turns out a local demon has been courting her against her will, bringing her presents, attempting conversation, etc. It's grown angry at her obvious lack of reciprocation for its affections and after its last visit, it burned down her family's barn and killed the dog. She's terrified of what will happen next.
The players can take that as an interesting bit of world building and move on. Or they can choose to get involved, without knowing the precise risks (what are the demon's abilities? how many demonic allies?). This isn't part of any overarching plot, it's essentially a Gygaxian random encounter (i.e. one with context, not just a random monster attack that's over in a few seconds).

Would you classify this as "pursue the risk or that's the end of the adventure", or not?

[Xervous]

But is there a viable alternative to pursuing the risk? Or is it "pursue the risk or that's the end of the adventure"?


Powers &8^]

It depends on where they are for the given arc they’ve chosen to pursue. Sometimes it is indeed a matter of cutting things short or risking death. If the outcome is heavily desirable my players are willing to bet their characters’ lives on it. Though in true tabletop tradition the main near death experiences have been from optional encounters and (mostly but not wholly) well intentioned friendly fire in the most recent campaign.

Though hireling deaths. Party record for simultaneous losses is... 22?

[NecessaryWeevil]

I am not drawing a distinction between death and permadeath for purposes of this survey. Whether PCs have the means to reverse death is a separate topic. Right now I'm more intent on getting a feel for players' preferred tactical difficulty (from a raw math standpoint).

Ah, okay. In that case, 50% chance per ten sessions sounds about right, skewed toward the later levels when the party has access to resurrection (either internally or through cash or allies).

[KorvinStarmast]

Would you classify this as "pursue the risk or that's the end of the adventure", or not? That depends on how many different ways there are to deal with that demon.
Examples:
1. Combat
2. Negotiation
3. Trade
4. Learn its name and banish it
5. Secret weakness: pine nuts coated in nutmeg and honey
Et cetera

There being multiple paths to pursue to address the impact that demon has on the game world is what makes for an interesting challenge to overcome.

[Vegan Squirrel]

I'll try to hazard a numbers guess here, for the sake of the original question, but it's still hard to quantify. I think, as a player, something like a 5–10% chance of character death per session sounds about right. That will vary; some sessions will be risk-free (especially those without combat) while others will involve much greater risks (intentionally challenging the big bad).

And honestly, if resurrection magic is on the table, then I'd rather not see any death, because resurrection magic breaks the meaning of the game so much for me. Just redefine 0 HP as unconscious and eliminate death saves at that point. If death is permanent, then I don't mind character death happening. I'm sure that's the reverse of most people's opinions, but there you go. I'll go along with resurrection magic for the sake of the other players, but I don't like it on a meta level.

I could also enjoy an old school deadly campaign where you cycle through characters as each one inevitably fails to survive, but that would be a very particular experience that runs against the expectations of a standard campaign these days. And I'd want to simplify character building for that, probably using a much, much lighter system, because building 5e characters takes way too long to do every session.

[Rukelnikov]

For my it depends on the level, since dying doesn't carry the same threat across all levels of play.

Lvls 1-2 Dying is extremely easy, an unlucky crit and you are rolling death saves or die alltogether, and at those levels, death is usually permanent. On the other hand those characters haven't been played that long, so its not as much of a downer as it can be dying after 20 sessions. This is, to my taste, a bit more deadly than I'd like it to be, but its ok, especially if playing a sandbox instead of a more story driven (which is what my group usually does).

Dying is a real threat here, and because of that I don't want it to happen as often as it would without fudging rolls or intelligent enemies taking unintelligent decisions in combat.

Lvls 3-6 Death from unlucky crit/damage roll is still a possibility since HP hasn't bloated that much yet for most PCs but not as likely as lvls 1-2, and if you die access to Raise Dead may not be as readily available yet, so the threat is still there. Revivify does come into play at 5, and I think it already starts watering down the threat of dying, and thus of combat in general. 10 rounds of grace means if someone in the party is able to cast said spell, we can just finish the encounter and Revivify afterwards, however that person needs to have the spell slot, and not be the one who died.

Dying is a threat the party may or may not be able to circumvent (This is the sweet spot for me), and it should happen often enough to remind players that combat is dangerous, maybe one PC or two dead across those levels which may come back or not, in that uncertainty there is thrill.

Level 7 onwards Death in 5e is not much of a prob sadly, its extremely cheap to cast raise dead, and even if no one in the party can do it, you are high level enough to find someone who can, your odds of coming back at this level are pretty high honestly, and while you do have a couple of days of weakness, you don't lose a level, or a point of Con, or have a cap to the amount of times you can be revived, or roll to see if you actually revive or not or some other "lasting" complication. So... death means only a couple days of extra caution, and thus the only regular threats of combat become TPK, which is kind of extreme, I wouldn't want that to happen in most campaigns, or a couple days of weakness which can be bad if time is of the essence, but its negligible in effect if its not, there's no "middle" threat like there was in previous editions (that's why we play with lasting injuries, even if you come back, you may roll bad on the table and lose an eye, or leg which raise dead will not restore)

Death needs to be somewhat commonplace for there to be any threat at all (outside doom clocks), in my group by level 10 or so, its uncommon that two sessions go by without someone dying (we usually play one or two Deadly x N encounters per day).

At really high levels(16+?) "Death" can become a problem again, cause it can come via soul stealing/sealing, trapped in time, or some such to make revivification processes more difficult or impossible. Those types of death, which are real threats, shouldn't be as commonplace as merely dying, thus going back to the frequency death had thru levels 3-6, maybe once every couple levels is ok.

My main gripe with this, is that levels 7-end of the campaign (usually), are the "safest" levels of play, which is something I constantly try to thwart, cause those are the levels where pcs start being able to do serious stuff, but the only combat threats you can throw at them are TPK or none.

[MaxWilson]

That depends on how many different ways there are to deal with that demon.
Examples:
1. Combat
2. Negotiation
3. Trade
4. Learn its name and banish it
5. Secret weakness: pine nuts coated in nutmeg and honey
Et cetera

There being multiple paths to pursue to address the impact that demon has on the game world is what makes for an interesting challenge to overcome.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that the DM hasn't put a ton of effort into enabling secret weaknesses and stuff for this demon. He's open to creative solutions if you've got them, but fundamentally this is an open-ended, optional bandit encounter against a super-bandit of unknown strength, unless you as players come up with a way to determine that strength. (E.g. pretend to be a rival suitor and challenge the demon to an arm wrestling contest.)

But the options the DM has prepared for you are limited to "ignore it and move on to the next scene" and "get involved, probably wind up fighting it."

Given that it's essentially a random encounter, would you classify this as "pursue the risk or that's the end of the adventure", or not?

[JonBeowulf]

I've been D&D since the very beginning and I miss the days when adventuring was a very dangerous occupation only chosen by the foolhardy, the desperate, or those sent on a quest. OD&D was an unforgiving system that quickly eliminated careless PCs and frequently brought down a PC whose only mistake was to be played by someone rolled poorly that one time. It also prevented annoying characters because it drove a mentality of, "My life is on the line here. Why am I traveling with this idiot?"

A lot of the mechanics of that system were terrible, but the games themselves were a lot of fun.

My biggest complaint about 5e is how quickly a single character death can turn into a full-on TPK. It's hard to kill a character and once it happens, it's even harder to keep the whole thing from falling apart.

How do I, as a DM, create an adequate sense of risk and danger without risking the entire campaign? Too much work. I don't like it so end up running games that are fun and challenging but not really all that dangerous.

So yeah, I'd enjoy a group that accepts that permanent death could be waiting in every cavern, ruin, or dark alley and plays accordingly. I can't define a range, so "deadly enough" is as close as I can get. As a DM, it allows me to run the world and trust the players to play intelligently. As a player, it forces me (and others) to pay attention to what's going on.

[DeTess]

It depends a lot on the style of the campaign. A highly tactical very combat focused dungeon-of-the-week game I'd be a lot more okay with high risk of death than a long-running narrative game. The exact consequences of death also matter, as does the theme of the game.

Thing is, death isn't the only kind of consequence you can use, and if you're running a narrative focused game it's best to use it sparingly because killing a long-running character generally hurts the story, not helps it. The most tense moments I've had in narrative games weren't related to the chance of my character dying but to the chance that my character would fail at something they considered very important. Losing family or friends, or just not living up to their own ideals have a far bigger impact than having to bring a different character to the table the next session.

So, for a narrative game I'd say characters actually dying shouldn't happen all that often, and most of the time it should happen due to active choices of the character, rather than just bad luck on the dice.

On the other hand, if I was playing a game that's heavily focused on combat and tactical gameplay, rather than a long-running narrative I'd be far more okay with characters dying. Likewise, if there's a tone to the game that corresponds to lots of death I'd be fine with that as well. I've got GM notes lying around for a game in which the players are an ill-fated expedition into the unknown. I'd have them actually stat up the entire crew consisting of 30-or-so people and I'd happily start killing off those characters as disaster strikes both to set the tone of the game, and because losing these characters has an actual long-term impact (as there are no reinforcements coming, so losing the expeditions main doctor has serious long-term consequences).

Anyway, these are my rambling thoughts tl;dr I think death shouldn't be sued much, unless it really plays into the game's theme or the consequences of a character dying are pretty minor. For narrative focused games there are far better buttons to press in case of failure than killing off a PC.

[Omni-Centrist]

Obviously as players we all try not to die, but how difficult do you like the game to be, mathematically?

I've known some people who consider a 50% chance of dying over 30 game sessions unacceptable because then you "might not finish the campaign."

As a player I like games where 50% chance of death-from-math every single session exists. Sometimes this means playing with low stat rolls or "bad" subclasses. I.e. I want a game where the monsters are as strong as I am or stronger, so that managing to survive the session is a meaningful accomplishment, instead of having to survive 100 sessions. I just don't have the free time or interest to wait 100 sessions for a challenge. I want Darwin to show his face now! :)

I tend to run games where a 20-60% chance of any given PC dying in every adventure is plausible, based on math (and in FTF games, an adventure tries to be no more than one or two sessions long), although I then also try to lean back in the players' favor in being very open to their attempts to beat the math or bypass the math via PC abilities or player creativity. So my actual PC death rate ranges from zero to about 1 per session, which is 0-25% fatality rate per session, not the 20-60% that raw math would indicate. E.g. four 8th level PCs vs. three CR 9 monsters looks like almost a 50% chance of death per player, but in practice it isn't that bad.
As a player, how often do you like Death to show his face to you in 5E?

I want you to try to kill me in proportion to me taking risks or expressing myself in the world. If I'm doing laundry dont make me roll Initiative, if I'm traveling in a area known for kobolds and 100 of them pick up my trail, have them roll 100 attacks against me.

Make it real and rewarding.

[Waterdeep Merch]

I've got a reputation for being a killer DM among my players, but the permadeaths I've dealt out are extremely rare. Oh sure, I've had the party jump through some hoops once in a while to make a resurrection meaningful, but, hrm. Let's see...

*Player walked into an obvious beholder trap that the rest of his party told him was a trap and got disintegrated. They still laugh about it. Players had stables of characters, this meant the player had to grab a different character sheet.
*Two players got the wrong side of a random encounter table in unfavorable terrain and got eaten by eleven wyverns. This one's probably the most egregious to be honest, though we did agree to uphold strict rulings on things like this so that they could be exploited in turn (for things like leveling or deliberate hunting), and there was another method of travel that they willingly didn't use. Same campaign as above, the eaten characters were immediately replaced.
*I killed nine PC's in the Tomb of Horrors, but it was a one shot with multiple characters per player. No one completely ran out of characters.
*During a Christmas one-shot, a player got dominated and ended up using his very well-built barbarian crit fisher to absolutely murder his friend. This was the final boss battle.
*During a different Christmas one-shot with evil characters, two of them teleport-ditched the other three in front of the final boss. One then died while the other two pledged eternal servitude.

I think that's all of them. Five instances, three deaths that weren't one-shots, a total of fifteen, and none removed a player from being able to play for more than a single fight.

As a player, I've permadied three times.

*One-shot Cyberpunk where a fellow player spontaneously decided at the end when the GM started turning it into a full campaign to turn on and murder the rest of the party for no narrative reason. They weren't even against the campaign, they just thought it was funny to ruin it.
*One-shot 3.x hack of Call of Cthulhu where the DM had me as a traitor from the very start. The party killed me, but the damage was done and a Shoggoth finished what I started. I suppose that counts as a victory?
*3.5 game where I died due to a mutual narrative after returning to my home kingdom to discover my last living kin had joined my archnemesis. So rather than rolling dice, I agreed to an epic death after a duel.

So only one was outside of a one shot, and I personally agreed to it before it happened.

[firelistener]

I think it's best avoided as much as possible, both as player and DM, but I don't like fudging rolls or allowing do-overs. The only exceptions for me are when you just started a new campaign and the party wipes. I usually allow them to try a different strategy against whatever enemy wiped them out. My players usually don't bother with "plans" until that happens lol.

[Waterdeep Merch]

Reviewing my own history, as both a DM and a player, I'd say I'd prefer a straight up slug fest to generally be 40/60 in the enemy's favor, maybe even closer to 30/70. Mostly because a straight slug fest should not be rewarding enough to work reliably. I prefer when smart tactics, clever use of terrain and items, and resourceful ability usage is required to tip the scales into the players' favor, even to the point of running roughshod over encounters. An encounter is a puzzle to be solved, not a slot machine to be pulled.

Perhaps I should actually be increasing my difficulty levels.

[MaxWilson]

Reviewing my own history, as both a DM and a player, I'd say I'd prefer a straight up slug fest to generally be 40/60 in the enemy's favor, maybe even closer to 30/70. Mostly because a straight slug fest should not be rewarding enough to work reliably. I prefer when smart tactics, clever use of terrain and items, and resourceful ability usage is required to tip the scales into the players' favor, even to the point of running roughshod over encounters. An encounter is a puzzle to be solved, not a slot machine to be pulled.

Perhaps I should actually be increasing my difficulty levels.

As a player I'll say I love this kind of thing. Not necessarily constantly, not every hour of every a game session, but as the climax of a game session? Yes, absolutely. Winning the 70/30 fight because you decoyed away some of the enemy with a false flag operation, and brought reinforcements from the local populace (even if it's just four farmers with heavy crossbows they're not even proficient in), and also threw a Purple Worm grenade (Purple Worm polymorphed into a toad which you throw at the enemy and then back away and release concentration on), and then had reasonably good die rolls--winning that fight is the payoff for the whole rest of the adventure where you spied on the enemy and copied enemy uniforms and found the purple worm and won the confidence of the farmers and persuaded them this cause was worth dying for. Doing all that work for a fight that's 99/1 in your favor already just isn't any fun.

"An encounter is a puzzle to be solved, not a slot machine to be pulled." That is .sig-worthy.

[KorvinStarmast]

If I'm doing laundry dont make me roll Initiative, Unless the wash tub is a mimic. :smallbiggrin:

[RSP]

I prefer RP and story over combat, so, generally, I don’t like my PCs dying; particularly if it’s due to the DM putting a challenge out that’s above the PCs level. If you’re putting a lot of effort into the story, and that story suddenly ends through no fault of your own, well, I dislike that.

That said, I think there should be consequences to doing stupid things, and PC death can be a very good consequence in those situations.

[Kane0]

One party member (that isnt a redshirt) every dozen or so sessions, which for my table translates to roughly every six months on average

[Lord Vukodlak]

If every fight (or even every session) has a 50:50 chance of someone dying, then the chances of getting to T2 without a completely different party than you started with are...slim. And there's no resurrection in T1 at all (unless you're filthy rich).

So I was this Rogue in a Princes of The Apocalypse Campaign. While in T1, four out of five party members died, two while still at level one and another two died at level 3. Originally my rogue had the flaw "I am too enamored of ale, wine, and other intoxicants" as just kinda a fun bit. Well being the sole survivor of the original party it went from fun drinking to depression drinking.

About to enter a tough battle? take a drink. Survive a major fight? take a drink.

Finally at the end of the campaign after one last big fight, my rogue took out his flask poured it out on the floor and threw it away

[Guy Lombard-O]

I don't personally need any PC perma-deaths to have fun, unless we really do something stupid and badly mishandle a situation. But when we do screw up, I definitely want there to be consequences.

A year or two ago, my long-time group fought a big battle, got forced back to our base, but then refused to flee from an obviously bad situation. We then fought really stupidly, making multiple bad tactical decisions and all the wrong spell choices, which really deserved a TPK. When the DM had the NPCs come in a save the day, it left a really bad taste in my mouth. Especially because the 1 real threat, the sub-BBG, mostly wanted our McGuffin instead of winning the battle. So there was a really convenient and sensible way for the DM to pull off a non-TPK, non-death consequence for our stupidity. But he didn't impose any consequence at all, and instead just utterly pulled his punches.

Situations like that, I'd have far preferred a campaign-ending TPK, or even just a 2-3 player perma-death wipe and losing the McGuffin, than what the DM ultimately chose to do. Even in a pretty roleplay-heavy game, that's just BS. So, I've found that I'll now readily accept a perma-death or two while playing the game as the lesser of two evils - lack of consequences (and thus real stakes) being far worse.

[da newt]

More than anything, I want to believe I have agency in my PC's survival or death - I don't like it when that agency is taken away from me either because the DM pulls punches / a 'deus ex machina' even though you deserve to die, you don't, or the opposite 'no matter what I do the deck is stacked against me and my PC's death is inevitable.'

[Zetakya]

As a Player I don't mind Death, providing that the Death is meaningful. Heroic sacrifices are fine. Doomed last stands likewise.

Getting randomly shanked by a nameless mook in the 3rd room of a dungeon and bleeding to death = not fine.

[Trask]

I think death is refreshing and personally prefer campaigns with at least a low to moderate rate of character loss. It keeps the game exciting for me, its boring if I feel like all the challenges are toothless.

[PhoenixPhyre]

So I was this Rogue in a Princes of The Apocalypse Campaign. While in T1, four out of five party members died, two while still at level one and another two died at level 3. Originally my rogue had the flaw "I am too enamored of ale, wine, and other intoxicants" as just kinda a fun bit. Well being the sole survivor of the original party it went from fun drinking to depression drinking.

About to enter a tough battle? take a drink. Survive a major fight? take a drink.

Finally at the end of the campaign after one last big fight, my rogue took out his flask poured it out on the floor and threw it away

Yeah. I mean, that's one way to play. But I want players invested in their characters and in the setting and in their characters' connections to the setting. Meatgrinders don't do that for me. They encourage treating characters as disposable playing pieces, built almost entirely for mechanical "goodness". Which, to me, is both boring and awful.

I prefer my consequences to happen in other ways than character death. Because fundamentally, character death breaks existing narrative lines 90% of the time, and the contrivances needed to get another PC-caliber person into the right spot at the right time are way more immersion breaking (and bad for the setting) than most things.

That's not to say that I fudge attacks or otherwise conspire to keep the PCs alive. I just don't particularly aim for "trying to kill them" all the time. If they die, it's generally because
1) it was unavoidable (ie power word kill when you have less than 100 HP total)
2) they did something utterly stupid (like trying to solo something 7 CRs above you in a straight fight when you're not even optimized)

"Challenge" is not one of my motivations for gaming. At all. Failure is fine, but I want that failure to be meaningful. "You die so now you just have to respawn with a slightly different character" (no resurrection) or "you die so now your party has to spend a spell slot and some gold" (resurrection) isn't meaningful. It's boring.

Plus the whole "ok, 3 people died and now suddenly 3 more random people joined us. No connections to what we did[1], but they're committed to this quest" thing irks me.

[1] or suspiciously detailed connections that stretch credulity.

[MaxWilson]

"Challenge" is not one of my motivations for gaming. At all. Failure is fine, but I want that failure to be meaningful. "You die so now you just have to respawn with a slightly different character" (no resurrection) or "you die so now your party has to spend a spell slot and some gold" (resurrection) isn't meaningful. It's boring.

Just want to note that you're missing an important variation: instead of "respawn", it's "lose a PC and have to switch to a different one whom you've spent time building up from [whatever the starting level is]".

As a player, I don't want to play a game about inflicting death and destruction if there's no real risk of death and destruction being visited on me in return. That's like beating up a kindergartner. And if the game isn't about inflicting death and destruction in some form much of the time (see: the Promise of D&D (https://stirgessuck.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/the-promise-of-dd/)), then I should be playing some other system besides 5E, because it's really not good at anything else.


Let it be resolved that: The promise of D&D is that all the important problems in life can be solved with violence.

That’s sort of a big bold statement, so let me carry on with immediately backtracking and clarifying.

Look, if your own personal D&D game involves 90% of the time spent talking to people, or peacefully marching through the wilderness, or otherwise not sticking sharp pieces of metal into squishy bags of meat, that’s just fine. I’m not trying to tell you you’re playing D&D all wrong or missing the point or anything like that.

I might suggest that D&D, as a system, doesn’t offer as much support as several other systems for problem-solving methods beyond the immediate application of stabbing. But you probably already knew that, so let’s move on.

And if you solved a couple of your big important D&D problems without resorting to violence, out of dozens, that’s fine too. I don’t believe D&D promises that you must solve all your important problems with violence — merely that you could, if you felt like it, which you probably will.


Plus the whole "ok, 3 people died and now suddenly 3 more random people joined us. No connections to what we did[1], but they're committed to this quest" thing irks me.

[1] or suspiciously detailed connections that stretch credulity.

Yet another reason to build multiple PCs per player in advance: so you can establish context and relationships.

[loki_ragnarock]

Depends entirely on the style of the game, methinks.

If it's pitched to me as a dangerous setting where characters will die suddenly, often unexpectedly as they search the unknown in a desperate bid to find it before the unknown finds them first? Cool. I'm still going to play the character as if they want to live, but if they die, they die. I can go through 12 characters in a row going through a wood chipper and take it in the spirit of fun that's intended, and each of them will be different. Heck, you can kill two of *my* characters a session, and I'll mostly laugh about it. The expectation was set up, and that's the important thing.

If it's pitched to me in a different light and suddenly it turns into that? Well, that's kinda horse^&*%. Why did we go through a process of finding out how many brothers and sisters I had, and how many of them were still alive vs. dead from the plague, and what social strata my father was as it will reflect on my own, spend time determining family income levels and what portion of that counts as my inheritance since dad died in the plague along with Tabitha, John, Cecil, and Whitney, which leaves me as the firstborn survivor, and also spend time determining how much of that inheritance will have to go towards my surviving sister's dowry and my brothers apprenticeship *if* I'm also going to be chewing through characters like a paper shredder?

I'll play a character in a meat grinder, but I'm not going to bother realizing their full place in the world for one. And while people doing stupid heroic things dying horribly does have a certain realistic verisimilitude, and while having a full appreciation for where this character falls into the setting as they get food processed by an Umber Hulk at second level helps to outline and provide a deeper appreciation for the tragic arc of their life, that's more work than I'm willing to put in for a here today, gone tomorrow scenario.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Just want to note that you're missing an important variation: instead of "respawn", it's "lose a PC and have to switch to a different one whom you've spent time building up from [whatever the starting level is]".

As a player, I don't want to play a game about inflicting death and destruction if there's no real risk of death and destruction being visited on me in return. That's like beating up a kindergartner. And if the game isn't about inflicting death and destruction in some form much of the time (see: the Promise of D&D (https://stirgessuck.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/the-promise-of-dd/)), then I should be playing some other system besides 5E, because it's really not good at anything else.


Let it be resolved that: The promise of D&D is that all the important problems in life can be solved with violence.

That’s sort of a big bold statement, so let me carry on with immediately backtracking and clarifying.

Look, if your own personal D&D game involves 90% of the time spent talking to people, or peacefully marching through the wilderness, or otherwise not sticking sharp pieces of metal into squishy bags of meat, that’s just fine. I’m not trying to tell you you’re playing D&D all wrong or missing the point or anything like that.

I might suggest that D&D, as a system, doesn’t offer as much support as several other systems for problem-solving methods beyond the immediate application of stabbing. But you probably already knew that, so let’s move on.

And if you solved a couple of your big important D&D problems without resorting to violence, out of dozens, that’s fine too. I don’t believe D&D promises that you must solve all your important problems with violence — merely that you could, if you felt like it, which you probably will.

Yet another reason to build multiple PCs per player in advance: so you can establish context and relationships.

I disagree with pretty much everything in that indented block. It assumes that the rules (specifically the mechanical, action-resolution rules) are what makes the game. But it does not. I'd say that less than 1/3 of the real issues in any of my campaigns have been solved, ultimately, by sticking pointy sticks in them. And most of them cannot be solved in that manner. Yet I've had 13+ happy tables. Heck, I played two campaigns of 4e (which was way more on the tactical side) without issue...mostly not focusing on plots that can be solved by violence alone (violence may be involved, but it's not the core resolution method).

But even more, "having multiple PCs per player" means one of the following
1) you're constantly around a home base. And that those other PCs are leveling up along side you, despite not accompanying you. And that shatters worldbuilding IMO. And doesn't fit my style at all, which involves arcs that may be half-way around a continent from each other.
2) you're dragging N characters times M players around with you wherever you go. Which is prohibitive and obnoxious.
3) you're "conveniently" finding places to work them in in the middle of hazardous (obviously, someone died), out-of-the-way places. Which breaks verisimilitude.
4) you've got long downtime (out of character) before you get to play again, because the party has to go pick up your replacement. Which is boring for everyone.

Fundamentally, death is cheap while also being expensive. It's cheap because you can just sub in another character and the meta-game expects the party to find a way to work them in. It's expensive because the stress that it puts on the meta-game is tremendous when it happens. This doesn't mean it shouldn't happen. Every program needs exception handling. And death is an exception (in the programming sense). It's something that needs to be accounted for, but shouldn't decide flow control[1]. Expecting it to happen frequently just for a sense of "challenge" incurs way more expense than I'm willing to put up with.

Fundamentally, 5e is not a game designed for "challenge". And the pursuit of challenge is what causes people to find "broken" things--they're not broken, assuming you're actually using them as intended. But when you step so far outside the bounds of the system's expectations, things break. Inevitably.

[1] unless you're in Python, where the calculus is slightly different

[KorvinStarmast]

I think death is refreshing and personally prefer campaigns with at least a low to moderate rate of character loss. It keeps the game exciting for me, its boring if I feel like all the challenges are toothless. yes.




[I][INDENT]Let it be resolved that: The promise of D&D is that all the important problems in life can be solved with violence. Nope. It is one of the ways to solve problems. There are others. The assertion is needlessly reductionist.

[Rukelnikov]

yes.

Nope. It is one of the ways to solve problems. There are others. The assertion is needlessly reductionist.

I have to agree, the last challenges my most played PC faced couldn't be solved thru violence at all, his descendants were fighting for the throne, so even when he had fought gods in the past and prevailed, all his combat prowess was completely useless for most of that campaign. The only time they came into play was when I prevented the leader of the winning side from killing the leader of one of the losing sides, and there was no combat involved either:

My PC: "I won't let you do this"
Winning side leader: "Screw you father!" (leaves)
Losing side leader: "I didn't ask or wanted to be saved by you!" (leaves)

So yeah, not all problems can be solved thru violence.

[Isaire]

People who don't want any death in their campaigns - how long are your campaigns?

My group meet pretty erratically, but the campaign has been ongoing for 2-3 years and.. I just get bored of being the same character. I've died once before, and want to retire my current character as it's just been too long. Only had one other character death in the campaign, and while I'd be happy with more death, it's very much run as a combat as sport campaign, so outside of boss fights it's pretty hard to get close to death. Not my preference, but we all make compromises for friends, and I don't have to DM, so winning!

[MaxWilson]

But even more, "having multiple PCs per player" means one of the following
1) you're constantly around a home base. And that those other PCs are leveling up along side you, despite not accompanying you. And that shatters worldbuilding IMO. And doesn't fit my style at all, which involves arcs that may be half-way around a continent from each other.
2) you're dragging N characters times M players around with you wherever you go. Which is prohibitive and obnoxious.
3) you're "conveniently" finding places to work them in in the middle of hazardous (obviously, someone died), out-of-the-way places. Which breaks verisimilitude.
4) you've got long downtime (out of character) before you get to play again, because the party has to go pick up your replacement. Which is boring for everyone.

IMO, as long as PCs are assumed to have their own active lives "off-screen", #3 is no more verisimilitude-breaking than all the other convenient things that tend to happen to PCs, like adventure hooks landing in their laps. In some sense it's verisimilitude-breaking for a 20th level PC to encounter a demon invasion that needs to be stopped, but it's better than the DM just declaring, "Nothing that exciting ever happens to you again and eventually you die a frustrated old man," or (equally bad) the DM forcing you to actually play through all of those decades of non-events before dying of old age.


Fundamentally, death is cheap while also being expensive. It's cheap because you can just sub in another character and the meta-game expects the party to find a way to work them in. It's expensive because the stress that it puts on the meta-game is tremendous when it happens.

I think you're generalizing from your own experience. In my experience the opposite is true: there is no tremendous stress. Maybe one reason for that is because I don't run "plots" or "adventure paths", I just run campaign settings. I don't usually run "campaign arcs" per se, I just run adventures where it's my responsibility as DM to make sure interesting choices are available to be made, and if a PC dies in one adventure it doesn't mess up my planned metagame because I have no plans; an adventure is designed to be dramatically complete in and of itself even if it's linked to other adventures. So nothing bad happens if PCs A, B, C, and D do one adventure, and then for whatever reason (PC death, PC being busy with other things like spell research, player desire to play a different PC, etc.) A, B, and D aren't available for next week's adventure, and it winds up being handled by E, F, C, and G. They may have organizational or other kinds of links to each other to explain why E, F, and G know some of the things A, B, and D did, and the fact that C is there can certainly help explain that.

If I were running a certain other kind of campaign, like running DramaSystem in D&D, I can see how it might cause a lot of stress, but I wouldn't run those kinds of games in 5E in the first place, and I probably wouldn't run them in AD&D or Shadowrun. (GURPS or FUDGE maybe. I'm sure there are even better systems that would work even better--I'm not familiar with that many RPG systems.)

==========================================


yes.

Nope. It is one of the ways to solve problems. There are others. The assertion is needlessly reductionist.

Let's go back to that demon scenario we were discussing on a different thread recently. A D&D player will (rightfully?) expect that that problem probably can be solved with violence. Maybe there are other ways, but let's say the players pull out all the stops and kill the demon before it can hurt the girl's family any more. In order for the Promise of D&D to be incorrect, violence would have to fail to solve the problem. Maybe the demon's master finds out that the demon was slain, and the family gets in legal trouble, and the girl gets thrown in prison because the adventurers killed the demon to protect her, and a new demon comes along and starts mistreating the villagers just like the old demon did. Maybe the only effective solution to the problem was nonviolent: framing the demon for something that would greatly embarrass it to its peers, and then blackmailing it to keep it away from the girl but still in power (because dead demon => replacement demon whom you don't have blackmail material on), and even then it still winds up abusing other villagers.

That would stink, wouldn't it? The Promise of D&D is that that won't happen to you. Maybe it's possible that another, even bigger demon army does come along and you have to kill it too, maybe, but the DM isn't going to put you in a situation where no matter what you do tactically, the outcome is going to stink, because the Promise of D&D is that violence actually works!

Now, I do agree that the promise is a little bit simplistic--a DM can certainly create some problems for players that aren't supposed to be solved by violence, like an annoying political antagonist who enjoys legal sanction and therefore cannot be kidnapped or killed or otherwise forced to stop making trouble, or a drunken brother-in-law who's bad news for your sister and always will be, no matter how many dragons you slay. But if more than 20% or so of the problems PCs face cannot even potentially be solved by violence, I don't think 5E is a good system for that game. And if I'm playing as a player in a game which is 80% or more about violence or potential violence (including mental force like Suggestion, and stealthy stuff like using Invisibility and Pass Without Trace and Teleport to steal what I want without directly causing HP damage to anyone if all goes well), then I want that potential violence to be big enough to have a good chance of killing me.

Random example from Kobold.club: if I and three other PCs are going to fight two Vampire Spawns and four Bugbear Chiefs, I don't want to do it at 15th level as an optimized Necromancer. What's even the point of spending table time on that? I should just be able to tell the DM "we kill them" and he should accept that and move on. But as a 7th level Necromancer it's mildly interesting, and if I'm a 7th level Barbarian 5/Rogue 2 working with two other Barbarians and a Purple Dragon Knight then it's potentially quite fun. But games that are about "resource drain" instead of death just aren't worth my free time.

I realize I'm an outlier so the games I run for other people aren't as difficult as what I've just described, but my own preferences do bias what types of games I'm willing to run. If risk of death isn't present in a given scene, at least I can try to trick the players into feeling like it might be. Risk of minor HP loss is boring, but uncertainty, mystery, and psychological tension aren't boring. I'll spend table time on those things.

[Cikomyr2]

The term I strive for is Suicide by Adventure. It’s not my job to kill the characters, but I do tell them what may kill them. If they decide to pursue such risks or refuse to back down from a fight it’s simply a matter of delivering on a promise and keeping the world consistent. The key part is that it’s informed Suicide by Adventure.

See, here's one thing. I get what you are saying about "don't do stupid stuff", but there's wacky power move the player can try to pull off because that's the fantasy he's trying to achieve with his PC. And obviously, there's what you imagine the level of wacky world breaking you will tolerate.

You have to reach of level of compromise between your player achieving their fantasy and still having limits.

[PhoenixPhyre]

IMO, as long as PCs are assumed to have their own active lives "off-screen", #3 is no more verisimilitude-breaking than all the other convenient things that tend to happen to PCs, like adventure hooks landing in their laps. In some sense it's verisimilitude-breaking for a 20th level PC to encounter a demon invasion that needs to be stopped, but it's better than the DM just declaring, "Nothing that exciting ever happens to you again and eventually you die a frustrated old man," or (equally bad) the DM forcing you to actually play through all of those decades of non-events before dying of old age.


Huh? How does that help in finding these particular people who happen to have connections to your plot in the middle of a gods-forsaken temple of unholiness deep in the jungle of don't-go-there? I mean it can be fit in, but every time I've seen it done it's been an explicitly meta thing.

And I much prefer having PC-classed people be quite rare. As in, my setting currently has exactly 1 group of level 11+ adventurers in it (at least in any of the areas we know about). That group being the current PCs. There are maybe 5-6 groups of level 7-10 adventurers, each of which has a stable reason for being where they are. There are no level 20 adventurers standing around.



I think you're generalizing from your own experience. In my experience the opposite is true: there is no tremendous stress. Maybe one reason for that is because I don't run "plots" or "adventure paths", I just run campaign settings. I don't usually run "campaign arcs" per se, I just run adventures where it's my responsibility as DM to make sure interesting choices are available to be made, and if a PC dies in one adventure it doesn't mess up my planned metagame because I have no plans; an adventure is designed to be dramatically complete in and of itself even if it's linked to other adventures. So nothing bad happens if PCs A, B, C, and D do one adventure, and then for whatever reason (PC death, PC being busy with other things like spell research, player desire to play a different PC, etc.) A, B, and D aren't available for next week's adventure, and it winds up being handled by E, F, C, and G. They may have organizational or other kinds of links to each other to explain why E, F, and G know some of the things A, B, and D did, and the fact that C is there can certainly help explain that.

If I were running a certain other kind of campaign, like running DramaSystem in D&D, I can see how it might cause a lot of stress, but I wouldn't run those kinds of games in 5E in the first place, and I probably wouldn't run them in AD&D or Shadowrun. (GURPS or FUDGE maybe. I'm sure there are even better systems that would work even better--I'm not familiar with that many RPG systems.)

Effectively, that's running a bunch of one shots with (some) continuing characters around a (fixed) base of operations. Which is one way to play. Not my favorite, by far. I want continuity, and I want to go all over the map. I don't do grand plots either, at least until the PCs make one happen. There are many things going on in the world. Some of them happen to be linked together.

But let's look at my current campaigns:
1. Campaign one just had its climax (wrapping up the campaign for various IRL reasons). That campaign was location based--go there, dig through that ruin. Go over there, dig through that ruin, ending up delving into the heart of an ancient extraplanar war-machine factory (thing) to shut it down. In exactly one of those cases would a PC death been replaceable without stress and without having to have that player wait multiple sessions before a new character could be introduced. And that case was over with in the first two sessions. After that, they only returned to civilization every few sessions, and every other place was completely abandoned or taboo, inhabited only by murderous beings. So intentionally[1] throwing in character death would have put extreme stress on the campaign from both an in-universe and meta sense.
2. Campaign two, other than the introductory adventure, has not really been in society much. We've seen some character substitutions, but those were planned in advance. But this one is tightly driven by the characters and their connections. If one of those breaks at this point, it'd be a mess and really put a cramp in the established narrative. Two of them more than the others.

Note None of this means that I reject death as an option. If it happens, it happens. But I don't go out of my way to try to kill players. Nor the reverse. I mostly just put the things that I think would be reasonable in places. And then, mostly for personal reasons[2], not be very tactical/aggressive in combat. Exceptions aren't forbidden, they're just not something I plan to have happen. I'm completely fine (as are my plans) if no one dies. I'm not trying to "beat" my players in any sense. Nor are they trying to beat me. And that works just fine for us.

Edit: And yes, I'm talking from my own experience. Because I'm expressing my own personal tastes about what I prefer to see and do in a game. Not some universal facts about gaming. When I say that death is boring as a failure state, I mean for me death is boring. When I say that frequent death puts strains on campaigns and settings, I'm saying that for me and the games and settings I play in, death does that.

[1] I wasn't going to take measures to stop them dying, but I also wasn't intentionally seeking to kill them.
[2] I'm not a tactically-minded person. Takes way too much effort for too little return. And when I'm DM'ing, I've got enough mental overhead already that half the time I forget to use Legendary Actions, etc. NPCs take actions based on their character, not really based on some game-level notion of "effectiveness". I care more about getting in a good quip or having a memorable interchange than about optimizing my turns. Plus, my dice like my players way more than they like me. All I can roll effectively are saving throws.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Yeah. I mean, that's one way to play. But I want players invested in their characters and in the setting and in their characters' connections to the setting. Meatgrinders don't do that for me. They encourage treating characters as disposable playing pieces, built almost entirely for mechanical "goodness". Which, to me, is both boring and awful.

I prefer my consequences to happen in other ways than character death. Because fundamentally, character death breaks existing narrative lines 90% of the time, and the contrivances needed to get another PC-caliber person into the right spot at the right time are way more immersion breaking (and bad for the setting) than most things.

That's not to say that I fudge attacks or otherwise conspire to keep the PCs alive. I just don't particularly aim for "trying to kill them" all the time. If they die, it's generally because
1) it was unavoidable (ie power word kill when you have less than 100 HP total)
2) they did something utterly stupid (like trying to solo something 7 CRs above you in a straight fight when you're not even optimized)

"Challenge" is not one of my motivations for gaming. At all. Failure is fine, but I want that failure to be meaningful. "You die so now you just have to respawn with a slightly different character" (no resurrection) or "you die so now your party has to spend a spell slot and some gold" (resurrection) isn't meaningful. It's boring.

Plus the whole "ok, 3 people died and now suddenly 3 more random people joined us. No connections to what we did[1], but they're committed to this quest" thing irks me.

[1] or suspiciously detailed connections that stretch credulity.

Oh I was invested in my character, we all were. I was so invested that when we had to retreat to avoid a TPK and leave an unconscious but stable party member behind. My rogue went back alone to save him because he’d have rather died then lose one more friend.

I would prefer to keep mostly the same party from start to finish. My campaigns has reoccurring npcs and plot arcs. Ending the story with a different cast then when you started is not appealing.

When I ran an E6 campaign in Pathfinder rather then death. You got three strikes. Instead of dying you got strike and some permanent scar. One character got an auto mail arm another and eye patch. If anyone had gotten to three strikes they’d have died.

[Zhorn]

When the DM boasts of his PC death count he needs to step away from the chair. It's not the DM's job to kill PCs. He is not the players' enemy. The DM should be just as saddened about a PC's death as the player. There's no defined number to say X is fine, X + 1 is too much. It's easier to talk about the extremes. If a PC dies every session the DM is doing something wrong. If a PC dies every other session the DM is doing something wrong. Every two sessions. EVery three sessions. Eventually you reach a point where it's just part of the game. If no PC dies during the campaign, wonderful. If there's only one death the entire campaign, fine. Two deaths, fine. You eventually reach a number where something is wrong.

Too many deaths, however many is too many, I blame the DM, but the DM is not to blame for all PC deaths. A player who does something Stupid that leads to death is not the DM's fault. It's the player's fault. Stupid is defined as something that is obvious by objective fact and reality shouldn't be done. A death can also be no one's fault. A player could make the wrong choice but wasn't Stupid about it. He took a risk and it failed. A player can do everything right, but the bad luck of dice rolls makes the Thing a failure that leads to death. DM's fault comes in when it's deliberate, the situation is stacked heavily against the player it takes mind reading or extreme luck to succeed, or the mysterious X + 1 number is reached when you realize something is seriously wrong with the game.
Wanting to throw my +1 in support of Pex's take on it.
It never sits well with me to find out the DM is actively trying to kill the PCs, or is intentionally throwing encounters at the party that guarantee PCs will hit 0 hp no matter what they do.
If death is unavoidable, then it is no longer a game, and I have no interest in participating.

[Rukelnikov]

But I find death to be a boring failure state. I don't play to find out "will you survive", I take survival as a presumption. Instead, I'm more interested in "how does the world change because you've been adventuring in it? How have you changed? Who will you protect? Who will you sacrifice?" So failure states are more about the thing you wanted to do doesn't get done or backfires on you than you die and Bob #2 comes in to replace Bob #1.

You should try Tenra Bansho Zero, the possibility of death only appears when a player chooses for it to be there. And the characters effectively "level up" by changing their motivations.


One party member (that isnt a redshirt) every dozen or so sessions, which for my table translates to roughly every six months on average

Do you mean permadeaths, or any kind of death?


If death is unavoidable, then it is no longer a game, and I have no interest in participating.

By contrast, if surviving is guaranteed, dungeon crawling is basically a chore.

If the DM doesn't intend for chance to be part of an encounter (any kind of encounter), dice rolls shouldn't be called for.

[Zhorn]

By contrast, if surviving is guaranteed, dungeon crawling is basically a chore.

If the DM doesn't intend for chance to be part of an encounter (any kind of encounter), dice rolls shouldn't be called for.
True, but there's a big difference between
You are on 4 hp and take 1d8 damage
vs
You are on 4 hp and take 11d6 fireball damage from a bandit captain throwing every bead from their necklace of fireballs they suddenly have after the 5th round of combat, which they are including themselves in the blast also, and the DM rules it burns up everything they had on them so the surviving party members cannot loot anything after the combat.

^ the later is an example from a game a couple weeks back, and I'm staring to see this as a trend of the DM and not a one-off thing

[MaxWilson]

True, but there's a big difference between
You are on 4 hp and take 1d8 damage
vs
You are on 4 hp and take 11d6 fireball damage from a bandit captain throwing every bead from their necklace of fireballs they suddenly have after the 5th round of combat, which they are including themselves in the blast also, and the DM rules it burns up everything they had on them so the surviving party members cannot loot anything after the combat.

^ the later is an example from a game a couple weeks back, and I'm staring to see this as a trend of the DM and not a one-off thing

Wow, that sounds awful (and arbitrary).

[Herbert_W]

yes.

Nope. It is one of the ways to solve problems. There are others. The assertion is needlessly reductionist.

I think you misread the quoted text. The point being made was that DnD promises that all problems can be solved by violence - not that violence is the only solution. The promise described here merely states that, whatever the viable solutions are, violence will always be one of them.

That's an easy mistake to make given how the original writer made a statement that is bold both typographically and in meaning, and then put an important clarification several paragraphs down.

Hopefully I can avoid this mistake, because I'm about to do something similar:

Bringing this back to the original question: campaigns make promises too, and different campaigns make different promises. IMO the rate and consequences of mortality should fulfill those promises.

This means that the answer can't be cleanly generalized. It inevitably depends on the type of campaign being played. It also inevitably depends on whether death means permadeath or some form of temporary setback. I know that OP said that they'd like to ignore this last distinction for the sake of this post - but, at least for me, this last distinction can't be ignored.


In one-shot horror games, I'd be happy with a mortality rate anywhere from 10% to 100% during the session. Having at least some risk of death is almost necessary to make this genre work. Inevitable death is also fine, just so long as the players don't know that death is inevitable when they start the game.
In one-shot tactical games, I'd prefer to have the rate of death depend primarily on player performance. Groups who screw up should almost always suffer at least one death, although I'm fine with there being a significant element of randomness here. Groups who play at the expected skill level should win. I'm OK with occasionally winning by pure chance when we should have lost and I'm OK with never winning by pure chance; I don't care for loosing by pure chance when we should have won.
Short story-focused games are rare. I'd be fine with anything, so long as I know what sort of campaign I'm making a character for before I start making that character.
Longer horror games are tricky. On one hand, death (or fates worse than death) should be a real and impactful possibility. On the other hand, having dead PCs replaced with more PCs arbitrarily joining breaks immersion and having no replacement makes the game less fun. I think I'd be happy with a system where dead PCs still play, but join the DM behind his screen and control monsters. That makes every death doubly impactful, lets dead players still play, and lets the survivors face a growing number of opponents IRL as challenges mount in-game. I've never seen this put into practice though.
I prefer long games with a heavy tactical element to tie that element to mission success or failure and not to PC survival. Otherwise the game gets weird - you have the appearance of a story-focused game with PCs gaining levels in a way that's clearly supposed to represent character growth, but you also have death as an inconsequential thing that sometimes costs the party a spell slot and often results in a PC with a new build arbitrarily showing up, and the later thing breaks the immersion in the narrative that the former thing creates.
In story-focused games, I'd prefer to have players choose their own level of risk. Death makes more sense for some character concepts than for others. Having a 0% chance of permadeath should always be an option for players who want to play the same character throughout the entire campaign.
In deconstructive RAW 3.5e parody games, I don't care how often I die - because the "dead" condition is pure fluff and has no mechanical effects!


Since OP has stated an interest in preferred death rates from a purely tactical standpoint, we can distill this into a quick and snappy set of points.


For primarily tactical games:


With skillful play, I'd prefer that death almost never happen.
When the players screw up in a one-off, I'd prefer to usually see at least one death.
When players screw up in a longer game, I'd prefer to see mission failure and only rarely death.

[jaappleton]

Depends.

I always see PC death as an opportunity for a new story. And in D&D, and tabletop in general, there’s always more stories to tell.

There’s one or two characters I’ve had, and I’ve had dozens of not close to a hundred different characters I’ve played.... There’s one a small, tiny handful that have been truly special. Like “No these ones are precious and I never want anything bad to happen” levels of special to me.

[Battlebooze]

If I wanted casual death I'd roll up a first edition Traveler character.

Death during "mundane" adventuring is pretty disappointing, though a challenge is still fun

Death doing something important and or risky, that is fine. In a fight against the big bad, or even a well crafted lieutenant baddy, I prefer to have a little risk.

I've seen several great characters die pathetic and ignominious deaths doing nothing important at all. All of these deaths briefly diminished the game to some degree, though the campaigns recovered. Playing in a game where the characters had a 50% chance to die every other session would mean I wouldn't put any role playing into the characters, it would be a waste of time.

Also, when I say death.. I mean permanent deaths. At least in 5th edition recovery from death isn't that huge past level 6 or so, if you make plans.

(Edit, wanted to make sure I clarified I was talking about permanent deaths)

[Kane0]

Do you mean permadeaths, or any kind of death?

Oh thats actually a good point. I would say proper not coming back deaths, not dropping to zero or getting rezzed within a session or two.

This would also apply to swapping characters i suppose, just to liven up the party. Change of scenery y'know?

[Rukelnikov]

True, but there's a big difference between
You are on 4 hp and take 1d8 damage
vs
You are on 4 hp and take 11d6 fireball damage from a bandit captain throwing every bead from their necklace of fireballs they suddenly have after the 5th round of combat, which they are including themselves in the blast also, and the DM rules it burns up everything they had on them so the surviving party members cannot loot anything after the combat.

^ the later is an example from a game a couple weeks back, and I'm staring to see this as a trend of the DM and not a one-off thing


Wow, that sounds awful (and arbitrary).

And overt! Like he really wanted to drive the point home.

[Rukelnikov]

Oh thats actually a good point. I would say proper not coming back deaths, not dropping to zero or getting rezzed within a session or two.

This would also apply to swapping characters i suppose, just to liven up the party. Change of scenery y'know?

Yeah, knowing you meant leasting deaths, once every six months or so sounds right for me too.

[Mastikator]

True, but there's a big difference between
You are on 4 hp and take 1d8 damage
vs
You are on 4 hp and take 11d6 fireball damage from a bandit captain throwing every bead from their necklace of fireballs they suddenly have after the 5th round of combat, which they are including themselves in the blast also, and the DM rules it burns up everything they had on them so the surviving party members cannot loot anything after the combat.

^ the later is an example from a game a couple weeks back, and I'm staring to see this as a trend of the DM and not a one-off thing

"Rocks fall everyone dies" is a cue for the DM to take a break. This is a red flag of DM burnout.

Edit-
To answer OP: I think player death should be at least twice per campaign. Once from an enemy encounter, once from misadventure. I'd also like to see one death to the big bad evil guy. I do play in groups the size of 6 players, I understand that a smaller group should see fewer deaths. IMO adventuring should be very dangerous.

[Zhorn]

Wow, that sounds awful (and arbitrary).

And overt! Like he really wanted to drive the point home.

"Rocks fall everyone dies" is a cue for the DM to take a break. This is a red flag of DM burnout.

The worst part is I like the DM personally, and the other players are all a great bunch who I play online games with regularly. I like to believe the mantra of "no D&D is better than bad D&D", but when you know departure will be taken as a critical statement, it's hard to leave without sparking something worse. Even offers to DM instead would be taken poorly.

Have tried talking to them about parts of how they run their games before... and it does not go over well (short fuse, doubles down, etc), so have learned that trying to offer constructive feedback is off the table.
Again though, awesome dude most of the time. But when combats go for more than 4 rounds, suddenly there's some massive AoE coming into play in a 'nuke everything' ploy that no one in the group would have the hp to reasonably be expected to take.

I don't want to burn this bridge... but it is made of very dry and brittle wood :smallfrown:

[Cheesegear]

Obviously as players we all try not to die, but how difficult do you like the game to be, mathematically?

I plan my sessions around the DMG guidelines:

1. A party should be able to handle 'this much' XP per day.
2. A party should be able to handle 6-8 Medium/Hard encounters per day, with two Short Rests.

I almost always make the second-last, or last encounter of the Session, a Deadly (or Deadly+), which means throw in an Easy, or just not have an encounter.

If I take away my players' ability to Short Rest, that increases the difficulty of the session again. I know this. I plan everything.


I've known some people who consider a 50% chance of dying over 30 game sessions unacceptable because then you "might not finish the campaign."

The character wont, the player should. The only reason you would ever - ever - not finish a campaign is if your players - or you, the DM - have the mentality that Death = Game Over. Just roll a new character. With everything you know about the campaign so far, you should be able to come up with a new backstory almost on the spot, because you know so much about what's happened and how you can be invested. Not even 'TPK = Game Over'.


s a player I like games where 50% chance of death-from-math every single session exists.

I wouldn't want a game were any given player has an even chance of dying every. Single. Session. But certainly, there should be some amount of risk that a player could die if they make poor decisions. The DM shouldn't actively try and kill players. But they should design challenges in such a way that if a player attempts something by themselves, with no Plan B, with no escape plan, and the odds stacked against them; They should probably die.

I think most importantly, a player should always know why they died, and what they could have done differently.

An NPC tells you that there are 4 hostiles in a room.
- Half the party walks around the back of the room, when we give the signal, that's when you go.
- Instead of waiting for the signal, Player A opens the door and sees one hostile in the room. The hostile sees them, and combat starts. The player runs towards it immediately on the highest initiative.
- The hostiles have next initiative, and the one in the open, attacks. The other three attack from Hidden, with advantage.
- The player dies.
- The other players hear the noises coming from the room but are not in a position to help due to poor initiative.

The player was told there were four hostiles in the room, even though they only saw one.
The player knew that the rest of their party was not in a position to help, yet.

The player who died, should know why they died, and not just because 'The DM rolled big damage numbers.'


As a player, how often do you like Death to show his face to you in 5E?

Often enough that my players should realise that if they make stupid decisions, they die.
But not so often that my players don't get attached to their own characters, and start making stupid decisions on purpose because they know that dying and rolling a new character is just a revolving door and nothing actually matters.

[MaxWilson]

The worst part is I like the DM personally, and the other players are all a great bunch who I play online games with regularly. SNIP

I don't want to burn this bridge... but it is made of very dry and brittle wood :smallfrown:

This might be one of cases where it's worth pulling the DM aside to say, "I like you, but I need you to know I had a terrible time last season. I just didn't believe that the bandit captain had an 11d6 Necklace of Missiles all along. It felt like a retcon, especially the way it nuked all of his possessions too. It just didn't feel like something that would really happen, it felt blatantly unfair, and I just want you to know that I hated it. How did you expect me to feel about it?"

[Thunderous Mojo]

I, myself, would be interested in reading how likely it is for someone to get up, and not wind up outright: Dead---after failing Unconscious, and Dying?

Some tables expect the opposition to not target Dying PCs.

[Cheesegear]

Some tables expect the opposition to not target Dying PCs.

Typically, I reserve attacking Dying PCs until after someone has dropped to 0, and then the HealerTM heals them.
Then, the hostiles go 'Nope. If we take someone down, they have to stay dead.' Then they switch to targeting dying PCs and PCs that they have seen cast healing spells.

More intelligent and experienced hostiles will target dying PCs if they have an action economy advantage over the players. They can 'spare' the action(s) to make sure that their opponent is dead.

Beasts, might attempt to 'rag doll' a creature that they have dropped to 0 hit points.

[Rukelnikov]

I, myself, would be interested in reading how likely it is for someone to get up, and not wind up outright: Dead---after failing Unconscious, and Dying?

Some tables expect the opposition to not target Dying PCs.

Well, if the party doesn't have a healer, attacking a downed character doesn't do anything for the opposition, they are spending their turn without diminishing their foes capabilities. So unless they are bots or have a personal gripe with the fallen character, they really have no incentive to attack the downed character, if they pretend to live thru the battle.

[Dark.Revenant]

This question is meaningless. You can't reduce such a complicated topic to such as a simple question without losing context. For most people, the answer depends entirely upon factors such as:
1. the length of campaign
2. the tone of campaign
3. availability of resurrection
4. plausibility of character replacement
5. ongoing character story threads
6. extant party chemistry

In short, you won't get good data points unless you narrow down the criteria.

[KorvinStarmast]

Let's go back to that demon scenario we were discussing on a different thread recently. A D&D player will (rightfully?) expect that that problem probably can be solved with violence. Maybe? Depends on the group.
Replace "a D&D player" with "a video game or MORPG player" and I agree.

Some D&D players will reflexively use violence as a first choice. (I've got a wizard in my brother's world who is very much in that school of D&D). He's very much a "patience my ass, I wanna kill something" kind of player.
Others will not.
No few players love finding clever ways around 'the obvious' in solving a problem.
(For example, using suggestion to defuse and avoid a potentially violent encounter. Seen that done multiple times in this edition).

And beyond that, some encounters cannot be solved with violence.

(As an aside, I am pretty sure that the Huge metal werewolf statue problem you have presented us with in the PbP game most likely 'solvable' without violence, I just haven't figured it out yet, and our group may never figure that out, and at the moment I suspect that using movement to avoid it is a best approach ...)

I think you are making an uncharitable assumption (in terms of being too narrow) about how D&D players approach an encounter.

I think you misread the quoted text.
I read the whole article, and I find it to be of very low value.
The problem that the combat systems of D&D have always had is how to balance the amount of verisimilitude/realism, and how much pure gamism and abstraction to toss in for the sake of playability.
(The decision to move away from "treasure yields XP" model, combined with MUDS, MORPGs, CRPG, ARPG, and MMORPG amplified that by inextricably linking XP to slaughter; that's not a "promise of D&D" that's a case of taking the purely mechanical and overriding all else in a series of poor design decisions).

As an aside, with the Chainmail rules and Original D&D, roll the six sided dice and you are done. The lethality level was so high that between Gygax's group and Arneson's group (before publishing) they figured out how much "too far in one direction" that was and the alternate combat system was dreamed up - but making the choice to initiate combat was still incredibly lethal. Success was measured in XP, and a great deal of that XP came from treasure, not strewing the battlefield with your enemies.
That's the promise of D&D: dare the dangers of the unknown and recover treasure, save the princess, dethrone the evil overlord, etc.

People who don't want any death in their campaigns - how long are y Not my preference, but we all make compromises for friends, and I don't have to DM, so winning! Bravo! :smallsmile:

[Tanarii]

As a player, I like to die never. I also like to clearly fail never.

OTOH, I also like to feel like my decisions are meaningful and encounters were serious enough that they were thwarted only by my quick thinking always.

Have fun reconciling that! :smallamused:

My experience with players is their likes come pretty close to mine.

And of course, the solution as a DM is: people can't always get what they like.

But it's important to keep in mind that players feel they're in far more danger than a DM thinks they are actually in, constantly. If a player feels like they have a 50/50 chance of dying mathematically, they probably have a 5% chance. If a DM feels they have a 50/50 chance of dying mathematically, they probably have a 75% or even 100%.

Like, MaxWilson, the encounters I've seen you present historically in many threads as overcomable with smart tactics and a 50/50 chance of death, IMO would pretty much be a well over 50% chance of a TPK for the average group of pickup players without heavy optimization experience and constant tactical board game experience, if they were part of an adventuring day of say 3 encounters. Not a 50/50 chance of one PC dying.

[fbelanger]

Sometime when my character concept is going nowhere, and the plot go nowhere, it is an interesting thing to have an elegant last performance and die.

[Tanarii]

I read the whole article, and I find it to be of very low value.I didn't find it of much value either. OTOH then I went on to the follow up article, and found it was pretty accurate. And probably informed the opinions of the first one.
https://stirgessuck.wordpress.com/2014/09/26/violence-through-the-ages-of-dd/

Or as you said:

(The decision to move away from "treasure yields XP" model, combined with MUDS, MORPGs, CRPG, ARPG, and MMORPG amplified that by inextricably linking XP to slaughter; that's not a "promise of D&D" that's a case of taking the purely mechanical and overriding all else in a series of poor design decisions).Thats the problem between the fairly accurate analysis of motivations in the second article, and the mistake that this change in motivations for players is some kind of "promise of D&D" in the first. WotC D&D has a clash/mismatch between the claims (e.g. see the 5e PHB Intro on "story") and the actual game rules and the resulting player (not PC) motivations.

[MaxWilson]

(As an aside, I am pretty sure that the Huge metal werewolf statue problem you have presented us with in the PbP game most likely 'solvable' without violence, I just haven't figured it out yet, and our group may never figure that out, and at the moment I suspect that using movement to avoid it is a best approach ...)

Yes, it is solvable without violence (yep, movement counts as nonviolent*), but it is also solvable with sufficient violence. I would feel like I were cheating you guys if you killed the metal werewolf and then found that violence is not the answer/violence just makes problems worse, or if I made the werewolf unkillable.

In DramaSystem or even some GURPS settings, I would not feel like I was cheating you if violence turned out to just make things worse.

Example of a non-violent solution that involves movement and having a safe zones:


Riddle: A farmer wants to cross a river and take with him a wolf, a goat, and a cabbage. There is a boat that can fit himself plus either the wolf, the goat, or the cabbage. If the wolf and the goat are alone on one shore, the wolf will eat the goat. If the goat and the cabbage are alone on the shore, the goat will eat the cabbage. How can the farmer bring the wolf, the goat, and the cabbage across the river?

"Kill the wolf" is one way, but in the riddle game you can't take it. "Kill the wolf" isn't the only way to solve this riddle in D&D, but it generally works.


But it's important to keep in mind that players feel they're in far more danger than a DM thinks they are actually in, constantly. If a player feels like they have a 50/50 chance of dying mathematically, they probably have a 5% chance. If a DM feels they have a 50/50 chance of dying mathematically, they probably have a 75% or even 100%.

Like, MaxWilson, the encounters I've seen you present historically in many threads as overcomable with smart tactics and a 50/50 chance of death, IMO would pretty much be a well over 50% chance of a TPK for the average group of pickup players without heavy optimization experience and constant tactical board game experience, if they were part of an adventuring day of say 3 encounters. Not a 50/50 chance of one PC dying.

FWIW, my track record is that when I frankly say to the players, "I think you guys are all about to die here," about 75% of the time they don't. Take that with a grain of salt because I have learned from past mistakes and am no longer so quick to believe they're all about to die, but that's where my opinions that you're quoting come from: pushing the limits and observing how often they don't die. And not with tactically sophisticated players, either, just with high school kids using unoptimized characters. 5E characters have surprising defensive depth and I have found that when it feels to everybody including the DM like they're all out of gas and about to die, they're probably not yet.

On the other hand, charging a dozen Umber Hulks solo, attacking Recklessly, and relying on Rage to save you... that will kill you about as fast as one would expect.

As for players feeling like they're in great danger, yes, exactly, that's what this thread was about. I personally like to feel like I'm about 50% likely to die this game session, and then try my hardest not to, because it lets me game a lot of gaming done in a single session. I don't want to wait 100 sessions for Darwin to show up, I want to feel like the Grim Reaper is here tonight. Maybe I would feel differently if I played 5E as a player more often. Or, maybe I don't have the attention span or free time to play as a player more often, and this is how I try to get my jollies in anyway. [shrug] But it appears that I'm even more of an outlier than I thought, based on thread responses.

[MrStabby]

I like to feel campaigns are dangerous. Its pretty tough to make them feel like hazards are real if they get pulled away at the last moment... half the party is bleeding out, the wizard is out of spell slots but the dragon fails that dex save vs sacred flame and hoes down just as a TPK was in the offering. Sure it can happen from time to time but too often feels forced.

The only way to actually be confident threat is real is for the DM to prove it. This means character death has to have some realistic prospect of happening sometime.

On the other hand too dangerous a campaign leads to bland optimised characrers making optimised decisions. If doing something characterful might get you killed, it is a powerful incentive not to do it. Do you try and parlay with your enemy, expressing your character, motivations and view of the world as well as giving a chance for your enemy to express the world back to you... or does the party hide, spring an ambush and try and give them the surprised condition for maximum chance at survival.

Honestly, there can be room for both but it does require a bit of telegraphing from the DM to tell which circumstance is which.

So to put a number on it... 10% chance over 20 sessions, but that probability concentrated into about 4 sessions of serious danger and the rest having a little more latitude for RP over optimal play.

[loki_ragnarock]

FWIW, my track record is that when I frankly say to the players, "I think you guys are all about to die here," about 75% of the time they don't. Take that with a grain of salt because I have learned from past mistakes and am no longer so quick to believe they're all about to die, but that's where my opinions that you're quoting come from: pushing the limits. And not with tactically sophisticated players, either, just with high school kids using unoptimized characters. 5E characters have surprising defensive depth and I have found that when it feels to everybody including the DM like they're all out of gas and about to die, they're probably not yet.


I had a long running Pathfinder game where - when I was presenting a challenge in the session somewhere that had a good chance of killing a few party members - I would apologize in advance, at the start of the session, letting them know that what was coming up had a good chance of killing them.
Never. Once. Happened. Natural twenties, Gonzo crits, beating every save; everything always worked out in the players favor, and what should have killed some party members never did. There was a ranger who rolled a natural twenty on something like 5 finger of death spells in a row over various sessions. Eventually, I just said the gods had spoken and he was immune to the spell.

However, because I did this, my players would start asking me jokingly at the start of the session if their players were going to die this time. They came to dread the reply "Nah, you guys should be fine. Tonight's easy street." Because this is when PCs died. Things that should have been cake walks were beset with loads of critical hits in the other direction, botched saves, failed perception checks, monsters that could not fail despite the math indicating that their chances of success were so slim as to be vanishing. It always went badly for them, when it really shouldn't have. They were very rarely in fights that were delicately balanced enough where things should be that swingy; the dice just decided to make a liar of me every night. The ranger that took 5 fingers of death full in the face wound up being crit several times in a row by monster's whose main powers were crit related, who would have not focus fired were it not for the party arrangement on the board; cake walks but for a small percentage of the time, they just stomped him into the ground the night I said "Nah, you guys should be fine." What should have been one, maybe two dramatic hits spread out to make them say "rut-roh" became 5 dramatic crits directed at one character. Yeesh.
I had narratively baked in unique resurrection mechanics for each character, so it wasn't the end of the world and mostly served as a mechanism for introducing new drama... but the dice just always, always made a liar of me.

The take away is that I am a bad arbiter of what's going to challenge the PCs and don't balance things particularly well, I suppose. But you can't DM for very long without coming away from what you thought was a breazy encounter leading to a bunch of near dead or dead PCs all of a sudden. Run an encounter enough times, the edge cases will arise. And those edge cases drip blood.

[Pex]

People who don't want any death in their campaigns - how long are your campaigns?

My group meet pretty erratically, but the campaign has been ongoing for 2-3 years and.. I just get bored of being the same character. I've died once before, and want to retire my current character as it's just been too long. Only had one other character death in the campaign, and while I'd be happy with more death, it's very much run as a combat as sport campaign, so outside of boss fights it's pretty hard to get close to death. Not my preference, but we all make compromises for friends, and I don't have to DM, so winning!

They last as long as real world interference will let them. My barbarian game I've talked about lasted 3 and a half years. My paladin game started in 2014 playing once every three weeks with a Virus Apocalypse break. I was in a Pathfinder game for 3 years. I had a 3E group play 4 campaigns over 12 years. Other games ended earlier because of Life. There have been PC deaths. It happens. Not wanting that X + 1 death does not mean any PC death > 0 is the most horrible thing ever. The circumstances matter, both in PC actions and how the DM runs the game. I see nothing wrong where a campaign death count is 0 given no shenanigans play, but that doesn't mean it must be 0. However, I do not apologize for not declaring a campaign must have Y PC deaths, 0 < Y < X + 1.

[Yora]

I guess surviving two out of three campaigns to the end would be okay.

Now how long is a campaign? No clue.

I guess a statistical chance of 5% to die every time you play a character would be fine. When the ability to resurrect characters comes into play, it could go a lot higher.

[MaxWilson]

I guess surviving two out of three campaigns to the end would be okay.

Now how long is a campaign? No clue.

I guess a statistical chance of 5% to die every time you play a character would be fine. When the ability to resurrect characters comes into play, it could go a lot higher.

Is that 5% before or after accounting for tactics? If the chance to die with bad tactics/decisions is 50%+ but good tactics can make it 5% or less, would you enjoy that?

[EggKookoo]

But it's important to keep in mind that players feel they're in far more danger than a DM thinks they are actually in, constantly. If a player feels like they have a 50/50 chance of dying mathematically, they probably have a 5% chance. If a DM feels they have a 50/50 chance of dying mathematically, they probably have a 75% or even 100%.

This is how I see it. I try never to kill the PCs. I don't construct encounters to kill them -- in fact I tend toward making them easier than harder. But I try to frame the encounter and conflict in a way that the players aren't sure if this is the one that will finally get them. I try to play on their fears a bit. Or give them a deliberately easy fight followed by something bit harder (but still not designed to outright kill them). The contrast pushes buttons, and the players worry about their PCs' survival, even if in all probability they're not in much greater danger than typical. That's all the game needs at my table.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I guess a statistical chance of 5% to die every time you play a character would be fine. When the ability to resurrect characters comes into play, it could go a lot higher.

A quick bit of math, assuming a 5% per session death rate for a single character and 1 adventuring day per session (1-5 adventuring days per level, starting at 1 and then leveling out at ~5 by level 5 or so).



Session
Level
Chance of having survived to session's end


1
1
95%


7
4
70%


10
5
60%


20
7
35%


40
11
12%


70
17
3%



Take from that what you will. If, instead, you had a 5% per encounter, with 3 per adventuring day, the probabilities of reaching each tier without having died would be
T2: 24%
T3: 0.2%
T4: 0.002%

[MaxWilson]

A quick bit of math, assuming a 5% per session death rate for a single character and 1 adventuring day per session (1-5 adventuring days per level, starting at 1 and then leveling out at ~5 by level 5 or so).



Session
Level
Chance of having survived to session's end


1
1
95%


7
4
70%


10
5
60%


20
7
35%


40
11
12%


70
17
3%



Take from that what you will. If, instead, you had a 5% per encounter, with 3 per adventuring day, the probabilities of reaching each tier without having died would be
T2: 24%
T3: 0.2%
T4: 0.002%

Where are your assumptions about leveling velocity coming from? I see that you are assuming DMG standard XP budgets every season, but I'm asking WHY you assume them (and also assume no "quest awards" or XP from treasure). It stands to reason that great risks bring great rewards. Die quicker OR level up quicker, it's all about getting more done per game session.

BTW I don't see it as a bad thing if getting to T4 is a rare and difficult achievement. I just think the assumptions driving your calculations are implausible, which means reaching T4 in a deadly-ish campaign is not as rare as your numbers are predicting.

P. S. Harry Dresden's odds of having survived up to book 17 are perhaps less than 1%, but that's precisely what makes his adventures fun to read about and vicariously experience. As a player I like THOSE kinds of situations where you're badly outgunned and outnumbered and probably gonna die if you don't think of something quick. Just like I don't want to read a book about the other 364 days a year where Harry has everything under control, I don't want to waste play time on the easy and boring parts of a PC's life.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Where are your assumptions about leveling velocity coming from? I see that you are assuming DMG standard XP budgets every season, but I'm asking WHY you assume them (and also assume no "quest awards" or XP from treasure). It stands to reason that great risks bring great rewards. Die quicker OR level up quicker, it's all about getting more done per game session.

BTW I don't see it as a bad thing if getting to T4 is a rare and difficult achievement. I just think the assumptions driving your calculations are implausible, which means reaching T4 in a deadly-ish campaign is not as rare as your numbers are predicting.

Quick napkin math is quick napkin math. And using a well-established baseline.

XP from treasure isn't even a variant rule, it's a nebulous house rule with possible variation >>>>>>> any other factor. "Quest awards" also vary, but I've rarely seen them worth more than 1-2 medium encounters. And more risk means that you're not staying at 5%. The further you push, the more exponential that death rate grows.

And that second set of numbers is for a death rate per encounter. Which is what you pushed for (except you said 50%, not 5%). And any appreciable death rate per encounter means that either your "encounters per level" number is way off the standard or you're running the campaign of Theseus. Even 1% per encounter means that your chances of reaching level 11 (let alone higher) are minimal. Unless, of course, you play the "new characters come in at the same level as the old one died at and there aren't narrative consequences" card. In which case death is absolutely trivial and meaningless.

As a note, I don't personally use XP at all. Not even quest XP. Current policy (which is a bit too fast IMO, but I'm not changing it during a campaign) is 1 level per 3 sessions of active adventuring (except levels 1 and 2, which are 1 and 2 sessions respectively). Doesn't matter if they have 2 encounters or 25. More about simplification than anything (letting me use homebrew monsters for which I don't bother calculating CR for one thing, as well as giving incentives to avoid the "farming XP" mentality). Next set of campaigns I may either

1) actually try using XP stock. I've been wanting to do a "baseline" campaign (no feats, no multiclass, sticking to the DMG's guidance on treasure & XP, etc) for a while.
2) Pull back to something slower. Probably "sessions to next level == current level" through T1 and then 5-ish sessions per level after that.

[MaxWilson]

Quick napkin math is quick napkin math. And using a well-established baseline.

XP from treasure isn't even a variant rule, it's a nebulous house rule with possible variation >>>>>>> any other factor. "Quest awards" also vary, but I've rarely seen them worth more than 1-2 medium encounters. And more risk means that you're not staying at 5%. The further you push, the more exponential that death rate grows.

And that second set of numbers is for a death rate per encounter. (A) Which is what you pushed for (except you said 50%, not 5%). And any appreciable death rate per encounter means that either your "encounters per level" number is way off the standard or you're running the campaign of Theseus. Even 1% per encounter means that your chances of reaching level 11 (let alone higher) are minimal. (B) Unless, of course, you play the "new characters come in at the same level as the old one died at and there aren't narrative consequences" card. In which case death is absolutely trivial and meaningless.

(A) I think you're misremembering. Pushing for 50% per encounter doesn't sound like me. It would make all encounters the same, which is boring, and prevent you from having interesting social encounters. It sounds like bad pacing, and so I don't believe I ever said what you're saying I said. I said, "As a player I like games where 50% chance of death-from-math every single session exists."

(B) Or unless you're using character trees. (Originally popularized by Darksun in 2nd edition but still good for deadly 5E.) Or have access to resurrection.

Let's assume that you have a 50% chance to die each adventure with poor decision making, and a 5% chance to die from sheer bad luck even with good decision making. Assume further that each adventure takes one or two game sessions and yields enough XP for two levels. These numbers are reasonable because they approximate games that I run myself, although fitting an entire adventure into one or two game sessions requires good pacing and is still somewhat aspirational for me. (I'm still learning how to DM better.)

Then perfect play gives you a 0.95^10 = 60% chance of reaching 20th level after ten adventures (think: a ten-novel series), about fifteen game sessions. Terrible play gives you a 0.5^10 = 0.1% chance of making it to 20th level anyway. Perfect play is not likely achievable, but on the other hand death mitigators like Revivify can make up for imperfect play, so let's say a skilled but imperfect player can make it to 20th level about 40% of the time, after about fifteen sessions, if real life doesn't kill the campaign off first and if he doesn't get tired of the character.

I don't expect you to agree but to me that sounds like a fun campaign. It makes 20th level achievable but not something to take for granted, and answers the question of why the world isn't full of 20th level archmages: they died before they could get there, and lots of other people never even tried because they would rather stay home and grow crops than die too in crazy-dangerous adventures. In character, nobody sane wants to be Harry Dresden if they can help it.

[Tanarii]

Personally I'd rather have such a deadly campaign still progress only level 8-9 after 15 sessions (3-4 hours each), but your math does make some kind of sense given your inputs. Becoming a demigod that fast never feels right to me. OTOH that would only be 4-5 weeks by my standards. I might feel differently if it was monthly play. :smallamused:

Furthermore combat XP would be higher. As an example, if you feel that Deadly x3 combats, three times per "adventuring day" (long rest), two adventuring days per adventure, is really only a 5% chance of death per character ... combat XP alone would be significantly faster than a DMG 'standard' difficulty campaign.

[MaxWilson]

Personally I'd rather have such a deadly campaign still progress only level 8-9 after 15 sessions (3-4 hours each), but your math does make some kind of sense given your inputs. Becoming a demigod that fast never feels right to me. OTOH that would only be 4-5 weeks by my standards. I might feel differently if it was monthly play. :smallamused:


Wow, fifteen sessions in 4-5 weeks? For me that's more like a year and a half of play, or more if you don't focus exclusively on that one PC the whole time. Would you do ten adventures in those 4-5 weeks? I can't imagine writing ten adventures in a month. I don't have that kind of time or creativity.

Ideally, those ten adventures cover 5-10 years of game time. Like a series of ten novels or ten movies, each with an individual sense of closure but sometimes with connections back to previous adventures. The adventure is about the most bonkers week of the PCs' year, skipping over the 51 relatively calm and easy weeks where everything is under control.

That's how I like it, anyway. YMMV.

[Tanarii]

Wow, fifteen sessions in 4-5 weeks? For me that's more like a year and a half of play, or more if you don't focus exclusively on that one PC the whole time. Would you do ten adventures in those 4-5 weeks? I can't imagine writing ten adventures in a month. I don't have that kind of time or creativity.Realistically as a player, probably more like 7-8 weeks, assuming i could find a DM running twice weekly or it was offical play.

And 1 adventure per session is my norm and the offical play norm when I last ran it. Also one long rest per session. Because its pickup and you'll never know who'll show up. And in 3-4 hours IMC most players could handle roughly 1-1/2 DMG adventuring days before they were at risk due to low resources. Otoh they also were at low risk once they'd stopped playing like it was AL and just waltzing into encounters blindly. (Mostly because assessing encounters, or even researching areas before going to them, meant not walking into Deadlyx3 encounters back to back, and they could pull out of the area before a TPK.)

I suspect if you'd played IMC you'd have been advocating to go in over your head, even if it meant you might have to pull out of the area early. ;)

4e had their adventure paths that were multiple sessions for official play, I ran a couple of those but the stopped in the weekly game store fornat at level 3. 5e has them published too but i never got to play or run one.


Ideally, those ten adventures cover 5-10 years of game time. Like a series of ten novels or ten movies, each with an individual sense of closure but sometimes with connections back to previous adventures. The adventure is about the most bonkers week of the PCs' year, skipping over the 51 relatively calm and easy weeks where everything is under control.

That's how I like it, anyway. YMMV.
How many encounters in an adventuring day (per long rest) is what interests me. Skipping time forward doesn't really have an impact if theres just one group of players/ characters.

[Cheesegear]

Some D&D players will reflexively use violence as a first choice.

Across my three groups that I DM, almost all players inevitably slide towards Neutral Evil (do whatever they can get away with) or Chaotic Neutral (do whatever is most advantageous for them).

My players - for the most part - are also incredibly poor role players. In a previous thread I asked how I can encourage my players to use a non-combat method to destroy monster in a room, and the response was simply 'Don't put something your players can tangibly fight, in the room.' It sounds obvious when you say it out loud.


The problem that the combat systems of D&D have always had is how to balance the amount of verisimilitude/realism, and how much pure gamism and abstraction to toss in for the sake of playability.

The problem with the combat system is that it's very clearly the most well-realised and most thought-out part of the rules. When all else fails, go to combat. It's just numbers.

When you're roleplaying your way through a social encounter; A lot of players simply wont know what to say. They wont know enough. They wont have the real world player intelligence or charisma to think up what to say to an NPC. It's guesswork a lot of the time.

The same with a puzzle. The players have to think like the DM. The DM has had all the time in the world to pre-plan and prepare their perfect puzzle. But the players can't solve it. So they get frustrated by the sandbag, and they resort to 'I want to break the puzzle.' and then the Barbarian uses his Greatsword to try and shatter the crystal orb that is the centrepiece of the puzzle.

Combat...Isn't that; Roll a dice. Hit. Deal Damage.

It's the easiest part of the game:
You don't have to interact with the DM, you don't have to guess how the DM has fudged a social DC.
You don't have to think your way through the problem or use environmental clues, or read dumb handouts that the DM gives out.

You attack, with the fixed numbers on your character sheet. Vs. the fixed numbers on the DM's statistics which you may or may not even know. There's no guesswork. It just happens.


"Kill the wolf" is one way, but in the riddle game you can't take it. "Kill the wolf" isn't the only way to solve this riddle in D&D, but it generally works.

See; Chaotic Neutral and Neutral Evil players.


"I think you guys are all about to die here," about 75% of the time they don't.

Usually if I let one of these slip out, one character dies.


I personally like to feel like I'm about 50% likely to die this game session

I'm still confused as to where you're pulling your percent chance-to-die from. How do you calculate that?


As a player I like THOSE kinds of situations where you're badly outgunned and outnumbered and probably gonna die if you don't think of something quick.

But people don't think of something quick.
They take half an hour to plan and prepare...Often that represents maybe 1-2 minutes of game time.

I've had an encounter start, where my six players took half an hour before the player with initiative even took their turn. As they were planning - out of game - who was to tackle which hostile, and whether or not it was worth burning abilities and spell slots on each specific hostile.

In game? Less than six seconds. Sure.
But that wasn't quick thinking. Not by a longshot. You might say that the characters figured out exactly what to do in less than six seconds the instant that the room and its occupants were revealed. But that only happened because of a crazy time dilation effect that allowed the characters to spend 30 minutes telepathically talking to each other, where 1 second in the real world equaled 5 minutes inside their heads.


As a note, I don't personally use XP at all. Not even quest XP. Current policy (which is a bit too fast IMO, but I'm not changing it during a campaign) is 1 level per 3 sessions of active adventuring (except levels 1 and 2, which are 1 and 2 sessions respectively).

If I use DMG methods of creating encounters, with Easy/Medium/Hard/Deadly, and 6-8 encounters per day.
...My players level up when I run out of ideas for the area they're in, for the level they're at.

When I run out of different ways to say "You come across six Kobolds." is when my players level up. It doesn't take long.

[MaxWilson]

I suspect if you'd played IMC you'd have been advocating to go in over your head, even if it meant you might have to pull out of the area early. ;)

...

How many encounters in an adventuring day (per long rest) is what interests me. Skipping time forward doesn't really have an impact if theres just one group of players/ characters.

My character would probably be advocating caution and a rational plan. At the same time, I as a player would be asking the DM to blindside me with a totally unexpected and improbable threat that will coincidentally render my precautions mostly useless and give me good war stories afterwards.

But I do want it acknowledged that this is an improbable threat and that those precautions make sense in situations other than this totally messed-up situation in find myself in.

I want to play adventures about... the D&D equivalent of Tremors, Aliens, or Snakes on a Plane.


I'm still confused as to where you're pulling your percent chance-to-die from. How do you calculate that?

A approximately 50/50 fight (by raw math) is any "fair" fight, where you're honestly not sure which side will win unless you know who's playing who. It's a DM's to roleplay monsters which generally means underplaying them to some degree, so this winds up favoring the players, but as a rough example I'll point to three CR 6 Onis and a CR 8 Mind Flayer Arcanist fighting two 7th level Evokers and two 7th level Barbarians. I'd call that a 50/50 fight in the sense that I could enjoy playing either side of it with the expectation of winning. Maybe I'd lose but it doesn't seem like a forgone conclusion. In contrast, a typical Medium/Hard/low Deadly encounter is a forgone conclusion, so slanted in the PCs' favor that the rational thing for the bad guys would be to just immediately run away, if they had all the facts. I don't know what the odds are on those but it's not 50/50.



In game? Less than six seconds. Sure.
But that wasn't quick thinking. Not by a longshot. You might say that the characters figured out exactly what to do in less than six seconds the instant that the room and its occupants were revealed. But that only happened because of a crazy time dilation effect that allowed the characters to spend 30 minutes telepathically talking to each other, where 1 second in the real world equaled 5 minutes inside their heads.

Yep. That's what I mean about players having an advantage over the DM's monsters. Monsters don't think in bullet time. PCs... sort of do. You can rationalize it as offscreen pre-planning, or just a consequence of being old comrades, or not rationalize it at all, or even try not to do it (just as the DM tries not to do it), but it's the one key asymmetric advantage players have, and they should, to keep the game fun. They don't need the math tilted in their favor on top of that via cakewalk encounters, or at least I don't want that.

Although 30 minutes is also way longer than I want to spend coming up with a plan. That only should happen when the players are just starting to get to know each other yet. Once the team gels, it should be closer to five minutes than thirty.

[Tvtyrant]

I prefer to die about once every campaign or two. Twice if I didn't die last campaign at all is fine.

[Tanarii]

I want to play adventures about... the D&D equivalent of Tremors, Aliens, or Snakes on a Plane.

I'm generally looking for Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider, the first Mummy. Ancient secrets and relics, traps, relevant monsters, maybe competing treasure seekers. Maybe a goal outside the adventuring site that spins out of it.

But I can see how Aliens can work.



Yep. That's what I mean about players having an advantage over the DM's monsters. Monsters don't think in bullet time. PCs... sort of do. You can rationalize it as offscreen pre-planning, or just a consequence of being old comrades, or not rationalize it at all, or even try not to do it (just as the DM tries not to do it), but it's the one key asymmetric advantage players have, and they should, to keep the game fun. They don't need the math tilted in their favor on top of that via cakewalk encounters, or at least I don't want that.If you're giving your players bullet time to think before deciding on their action on their turn, let alone talk about strategies when they don't have Rary's up, it's no wonder they perform above the curve.

There's still some of that because they can use the other players turns thinking ... except as I recall in your system they all have to declare at once, don't they?

[Cheesegear]

A approximately 50/50 fight (by raw math) is any "fair" fight, where you're honestly not sure which side will win unless you know who's playing who. It's a DM's to roleplay monsters which generally means underplaying them to some degree, so this winds up favoring the players

The DM shouldn't have to underplay their creatures.
If the encounter is fair, the PCs should die or not die depending on their own choices and dice rolls.


Yep. That's what I mean about players having an advantage over the DM's monsters. Monsters don't think in bullet time. PCs... sort of do.

Better. Monsters are precognisant.
You - the DM - should know everything that your players can do. You - the DM - are aware of your players' classes and abilities, and have designed challenges with which to test them. The monsters already know what to do, in almost every fight.

The DM always has the advantage. It's up to the DM not to abuse that advantage. Especially in homebrew content. In a pre-published module, it's much harder to argue that the DM is abusing their power, since 9 times out of 10 they're 'just following the book'. If a player dies during a module, most of the time, the DM is doing what they were supposed to do, in that challenge. If a player dies during a homebrew adventure, things can get a bit more awkward since it goes from:

'A challenge designed to test a party', to 'A challenge specifically designed to test this party, because it's literally tailored against them.'


Although 30 minutes is also way longer than I want to spend coming up with a plan.

It was an encounter with multiple creature types. Some with Resistances, others with Immunities. Based on what the party knew about the Demons they'd encountered before, as well as Zombies that die to radiant damage, as well as Skeletons with vulnerability to bldgn...

'Here is a Demon that is raising skeletons and zombies...'

Seems like a fairly standard encounter. On paper, it didn't seem so difficult. When I mapped it out, the players freaked out for some reason.

Have you tried using 'Channel Divinity; Turn Undead'?
Of course not. Channel Divinity is only used for dealing max Thunder/Lighting damage. I've never even used Turn Undead in my entire life and I'm not gonna start now.
Alright...The encounter is now way more difficult because the Cleric forgot about a core class feature. :smallsigh:

[MaxWilson]

The DM shouldn't have to underplay their creatures.

You said it yourself--monsters don't think in bullet time. Unless they're super-geniuses of course. Playing Demogorgon or Tiamat or Illithilich as a tactical genius who thinks in bullet time is kosher. Some random Bodak, Salamander or Armanite, not so much.

Even for monsters that do think in bullet time, coordination issues should and do arise when it's not a solo scenario. Players can perfectly time a pincer attack if they want to, even if there's twenty skeletons and two elementals and ten animated objects in play to command. This doesn't mean players do always coordinate perfectly--it's fully possible for half of them to wind up charging while the other half retreat--but they have the capability. Monsters on the other hand should find it at least as tough as players, and good roleplaying is often going to mean monsters miscoordinate their efforts to some degree.

[TyGuy]

Guess I'm in the minority of players that generally doesn't want my PC to die. If I'm going to role play a character I'm going to put effort into making the character. If I'm going to put effort into the character I'm going to get attached to it. If I get attached, I want to see its fullest possible arc.

Interestingly, I've played both extremes. My first campaign was with an adversarial DM that chose meat grinder in ToA on our behalf. Lost two characters by level 7 before the tomb and the table fizzled. Later I played with a DM in dragon heist that said explicitly he will not kill our PCs. Even with death off the table, I had a lot of fun.

What I realize in hindsight is that the first campaign incentivized heavy meta game and min/max play while the latter allowed for tons of narrative flavoring and improv. Between the two extremes I like the latter so much more.

[Tanarii]

Even for monsters that do think in bullet time, coordination issues should and do arise when it's not a solo scenario. Players can perfectly time a pincer attack if they want to, even if there's twenty skeletons and two elementals and ten animated objects in play to command.
For conjured creatures, depends how the DM runs them. Since most allow the player to control them and have they can perfectly execute the PCs verbal commands in complicated ways, I agree it's usually an advantage.

With animate dead and animate object it's explicit, as long as they use a bonus action.

[Cheesegear]

Guess I'm in the minority of players that generally doesn't want my PC to die. If I'm going to role play a character I'm going to put effort into making the character. If I'm going to put effort into the character I'm going to get attached to it. If I get attached, I want to see its fullest possible arc.

Death can be part of your character's arc. Your 'fullest possible' might just be dying in an unknown alley where nobody sees to three lucky crits in a row.

Nobody likes to die. The entire thread is based on a faulty premise.

But, the thread is actually asking:

Should a DM put character death on the table? If yes, how often?

I feel like characters should be able to die. If they can't, then you need to put persistent injuries on. But not both.
I want to feel like my players can have their characters 'fullest possible arc' cut brutally short...And if they don't want that to happen, they need to play smarter.
But, I don't want my players to feel like their characters don't matter, and if they don't play smart, then they'll just die, but it's fine 'cause they can just roll a new one. I don't want my players to feel like death has no consequences.

But I also want them to feel like death is always on the line if they're stupid and/or unlucky. I would never explicitly tell my players that they can't die. It's not like I'm going to try to kill them. I don't want their story to end, about as much as they don't either. But I don't want them to be straight up 'Condition Immunities. Death.'
But if it happens, it happens, and I'm not going to pull my punches so that they don't die, either.

If you get Pack Tactics'd by six opponents and fall down...You're probably dead. I didn't make that happen. You ran into combat alone without backup. I feel like that's on you.

Where is the line between a low number of meaningful deaths, and a large number of meaningless deaths?

[Zhorn]

Yes, death should definitely always be on the table.
Not restricted to just the big centrepiece moments of the campaign.
If it bleeds, it can be killed, and that goes for the PCs too.

It's a matter of making the risk of death reasonable for the game and the narrative.
Both, not one or the other.

Reasonable for the game in that it needs to be fair for the players. The agency should be respected and their choices should matter. Like many have repeated in this thread so far it's about 'play stupid games, win stupid prizes' and 'smart choices decisions lead to favourable outcomes'.
If you have either an unwinnable situation or an unlosable situation, that eliminates the need to even play.

Then there's reasonable for the narrative. This part is making sure the encounters you do have and the mechanics involved make sense. Whatever happens, good or ill, the players need to be able to say 'yes, I can see that making sense'. Nothing that feels like it's pulled out of a backside or comes across as skewed or rorted, like common highway bandits having 18 AC but only wearing padded leather when you loot their bodies, or the prisoner your 5th level party is rescuing from the hag coven starts throwing around 7th level spells round after round.

[noob]

Obviously as players we all try not to die, but how difficult do you like the game to be, mathematically?

I've known some people who consider a 50% chance of dying over 30 game sessions unacceptable because then you "might not finish the campaign."

As a player I like games where 50% chance of death-from-math every single session exists. Sometimes this means playing with low stat rolls or "bad" subclasses. I.e. I want a game where the monsters are as strong as I am or stronger, so that managing to survive the session is a meaningful accomplishment, instead of having to survive 100 sessions. I just don't have the free time or interest to wait 100 sessions for a challenge. I want Darwin to show his face now! :)

I tend to run games where a 20-60% chance of any given PC dying in every adventure is plausible, based on math (and in FTF games, an adventure tries to be no more than one or two sessions long), although I then also try to lean back in the players' favor in being very open to their attempts to beat the math or bypass the math via PC abilities or player creativity. So my actual PC death rate ranges from zero to about 1 per session, which is 0-25% fatality rate per session, not the 20-60% that raw math would indicate. E.g. four 8th level PCs vs. three CR 9 monsters looks like almost a 50% chance of death per player, but in practice it isn't that bad.
As a player, how often do you like Death to show his face to you in 5E?

I think that if the players have such high odds of dying that maybe you should stop doing base jump and playing Russian roulette with them.
As for the not finishing campaign angle there is a simple solution do not do a 30 session campaign: do a campaign in 3 or 4 sessions.

[Bigmouth]

For me, I want death to only be a result of blatant stupidity. Not lack of information or bad rolls. If they want to fight something that is going to put them in serious danger, I want to give them a warning that they are pursuing something not balanced for their party. If they go ahead...well, death is okay. Sometimes groups need coaching (especially if they come from games where everything in the world is balanced to them. People from those sort of games tend to think that if you mention a threat, it must be something they can handle...so off they go to take out the Legendary Dragon at lvl 1).

The math of 50% amused me however. Only 4 adventures in you'd most likely have no one playing their original character. You're just as likely to have a player whose has had to play a new PC every session as to have one survive those 4 adventures. What a slaughterhouse. The money you'd need to earn to keep the party rezzed up would be crazy. You'd need a baggage train of spare characters to follow you about. "Wizard 13! You're up!"

Lethality is a pretty difficult thing to manage, especially if you're not fudging. One character death in a big fight is very likely to end up with a TPK if you're pushing difficulty to the bleeding edge in order to get that constant threat of death. Are all those deaths going to happen in the last battle of the session by design, or the last battle by necessity...well, Wizard13 died, so we got to go out, handle the rezz and/or pick up a replacement before we continue or else we are all going to die.

[noob]

The math of 50% amused me however. Only 4 adventures in you'd most likely have no one playing their original character. You're just as likely to have a player whose has had to play a new PC every session as to have one survive those 4 adventures. What a slaughterhouse. The money you'd need to earn to keep the party rezzed up would be crazy. You'd need a baggage train of spare characters to follow you about. "Wizard 13! You're up!"


It was 50% per 30 session: I had a dnd campaign with way higher character death rate(oh so you got here and fought an opponent? each of you make a save or die).

[Lokishade]

I don't know about the mathematical odds, but I do know that I don't like it when a DM pulls the punches. The dice should not be denied, nor should the story be warped to accomodate sensibilities.

[noob]

I don't know about the mathematical odds, but I do know that I don't like it when a DM pulls the punches. The dice should not be denied, nor should the story be warped to accomodate sensibilities.

You can pull the punches either by fudging or just by tailoring encounters.
If you are pulling the punches by tailoring the encounters and the story it can make safe adventures.
If the bbeg is plotting a coup but is lacking the support of the populace and have only 20 soldiers and was planning on mind controlling the king then you can possibly have the adventure end by the adventurers fleeing as soon as they have enough proof or once they fight and defeat the bbeg and his entire 20 soldier army at once but as you can see it does not stretch suspension of disbelief nor look unreasonable that the enigmatic hidden bbeg could not recruit a real army or recruit enough skilled soldiers to be a threat for the team.
Not all stories have to be about fighting alone the demon lord king ruler of all the 10^49 demon lords that holds the staff of clubbing people so hard they explode in a shower of blood violently enough for the galaxy they are in to be destroyed by the near light speed blood splatters.

[KorvinStarmast]

P. S. Harry Dresden's odds of having survived up to book 17 are perhaps less than 1%, but that's precisely what makes his adventures fun to read about and vicariously experience. As a player I like THOSE kinds of situations where you're badly outgunned and outnumbered and probably gonna die if you don't think of something quick. Just like I don't want to read a book about the other 364 days a year where Harry has everything under control, I don't want to waste play time on the easy and boring parts of a PC's life. Another advocate for player skill. :smallbiggrin: (And a bit of luck)

The problem with the combat system is that it's very clearly the most well-realised and most thought-out part of the rules. When all else fails, go to combat. It's just numbers. Nope, not a problem. The combat system being that detailed is a requirement of make believe combat where player agency is an issue an you don't just roll 2d6 like in Chainmail. Also, the Magic System is very detailedl - that accursed spell list never stops growing, like a cancer. Magic is the longest section in the PHB. And a good many of those spells are not combat spells.

It's the easiest part of the game:
For players with low player skill, perhaps, and for some new players, but I think you'd be surprised how often new players really get into the role play and social interaction and then immediately stumble (with some definite lack of an ability to think tactically) when combat starts by the time honored tradition of "roll initiative" input from the DM. (Heck, I have a few old players who are still decent role players and poor tactical thinkers).

@Tanarii: the second article is much more aligned with my experience, so I think it's fair to say that in WoTC-era D&D, the point Max pulled out has some merit.

[Tanarii]

Another advocate for player skill. :smallbiggrin: (And a bit of luck)

plus eventually the odds caught up and he didn't survive.

[PhoenixPhyre]

plus eventually the odds caught up and he didn't survive.

Not picking on you, but on that topic:

I find invocations of authored fiction characters to ring hollow in this context. Because they have either a 1.0 survival probability or a 0.0 survival probability. Their fate is entirely up to the writer. There's no uncertainty. They have no agency--they exist only as the writer determines.

PCs are different, in that the player is not the DM. And there are external uncertainty resolution mechanics that play a large role.

/Rant

[Tanarii]

Not picking on you, but on that topic:
Not feeling picked on, accurate rant, 10/10, would read again

Edit: similar goes for our use of movies to describe feels for adventures we want. Movies and books aren't the best medium to use to describe that. For example, the movies I chose, 2 out of 3 are a solo character or solo plus sidekick. Only one features (2 competing) party of adventurers dungeon delving.

Solo characters in movies usually means a protagonist, and even the party of adventurers movie turns out to have one. And also movie again have writer/plot controlled death. RPGs usually lack both of these.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Not feeling picked on, accurate rant, 10/10, would read again

Edit: similar goes for our use of movies to describe feels for adventures we want. Movies and books aren't the best medium to use to describe that. For example, the movies I chose, 2 out of 3 are a solo character or solo plus sidekick. Only one features (2 competing) party of adventurers dungeon delving.

Solo characters in movies usually means a protagonist, and even the party of adventurers movie turns out to have one. And also movie again have writer/plot controlled death. RPGs usually lack both of these.

Exactly. TTRPGs are kinda sui generis. Computer RPGs are closer to authored fiction, because they have the fixed nature of the narrative, plus the ability to save and reload. And even there, you generally have one person playing all the characters that matter.

Personally, I want narratives and themes that grow organically out of the setting and the characters. I don't start by thinking "ok, I'm running a heist game". I start out with "ok, these people are in this place. What's going on there that's interesting to put in their path?"

[Zevox]

In the six years that my group has been playing, we've had no PCs die. And none of us has any issue with that.

Which isn't to say that the threat of death doesn't exist - I honestly find it baffling that for some people, that threat can only seem real if PCs do die regularly, personally. We've had fights where characters have their health hit 0 and one of us needs to scramble to get them some healing to keep them from dying. We've had fights where the tactical situation is dire enough that you think "****, how are we going to handle this one?" and we need some combination of good strategy and luck to pull through. We've had one particular PC strike off on his own and get into dangerous situations where, had he pushed things any further or had the dice fallen much more against him, he could have died due to his own stupidity. Those things aren't constantly happening every session, but they do occur.

But honestly, the threat of death isn't something that I, at least, find is even remotely one of the interesting parts of the game. Interacting with the world, characters, and events going on around us is. Sometimes that's by fighting things, often it isn't. In doing this I get attached to the characters and the relationships that we build, and I certainly wouldn't want those being regularly cut off. I know our main DM has commented before about how he's played in games where death was common, and disliked how it lead to players not putting much effort into crafting memorable characters, or getting at all attached to them, due to the expectation that they could die at any moment, and I can easily see how that would make things less fun personally.

Which isn't to say that I'd never want my character to die, but if they do, I'd want it to be because of something I chose to do. Whether that's a heroic sacrifice type of situation or a boneheaded, exceedingly dangerous stunt that the dice decided wasn't going to go my way, or something else along those sorts of lines. But certainly not because every fight is so stacked against us that one crit becomes the difference between surviving and dying. Death of a PC should be something special if and when it happens, in my opinion, never a matter of course. At least not in any game I'd want to play in.

[Cheesegear]

For players with low player skill, perhaps, and for some new players...

I've ran Dragons of Icespire Peak many times, and Mines of Phandelver almost as many.
Combat is the easiest part of the game.


but I think you'd be surprised how often new players really get into the role play and social interaction and then immediately stumble when combat starts

I wouldn't be surprised at all. They stumble because they don't know how to combat, because they're new.

What's initiative?
What's an attack roll?
What's a damage roll?
How does Help work?

Here's the kicker. The answer to all of those questions is written very, very clearly in the PHB. If you can read, you know how combat works by the end of the first encounter if your DM is worth anything at all. I've coached many, many new players through Phandelver and Icespire Peak. The only players who have ever had trouble by the...Middle...Of the adventure, are the players playing spellcasters.

Roleplaying is easy because there's no dice involved. So as long as you roleplay as yourself, you'll do exactly fine. The questions you're asking, are the questions you would ask. The choices you make, are the choices you would make. You literally don't have to do anything except exactly what you would do. Roleplaying is easy, because most new players in my experience, don't roleplay.

What's not written in the PHB, is what the local constabulary want. How much should you bribe a Guard? How do you blackmail someone when you don't even know who they are? The PHB doesn't have the complex socio-economic web of the local town written down. You have to figure that out. Wait...Who was the guy you're looking for? Are we sure we want to do this? Maybe the DM's other plot hook sounded safer, and we'll come back to this one later? What do you mean that local barkeeper wont just tell me information for free, information doesn't cost anything!? What the ****!? NPCs can lie!? So we went all this way for nothing!? Why didn't we just kill them back before when we wanted to...

When dice are involved, the DM loses power. Combat, is arguably when the DM has the least control over the game, because combat is the equaliser between players and the DM. Combat - almost in its entirety - come down to dice rolls, and numbers. The fixed numbers are arbitrary, and the dice are random...But so are the players'. So as long as the DM isn't overtly breaking combat encounters, the game goes smoothly.
Roleplaying, is where the DM has all the power. The DM knows the entire session, and the entire storyline, and the DM gets to choose what information they dole out to the players, so that when roleplaying, players are at a significant disadvantage, because it's the DM who holds all the cards - sometimes literally.

Suddenly, roleplaying sounds a lot less fun and less easy than combat. Hence why players start gravitating towards combat, eventually, because they learn it.
Roleplaying has no rules. The DM can do whatever they want when there are no dice involved. You can't learn the DM...

Well, you can, sort of:
*Set up a sexy times scene, maybe if the players play their cards right...*
'[Cheesegear] doesn't do these scenes - this is a trap! Explicitly not doing these scenes is his #2 rule...Something's wrong.'

[MaxWilson]

Not picking on you, but on that topic:

I find invocations of authored fiction characters to ring hollow in this context. Because they have either a 1.0 survival probability or a 0.0 survival probability. Their fate is entirely up to the writer. There's no uncertainty. They have no agency--they exist only as the writer determines.

I feel like you're missing the point. Invocation of Harry Dresden in this context is 100% appropriate because it conveys the experience I'm looking for: Harry is frequently up against enemies with far more raw power than he's got (the Naagloshii, Cowl, Dracul, et al.), and I can even point to cases where he really almost did die (e.g. Michael pulls him out of the way of Asher's fireball just in time) to support my contention that his survival up to this point is maybe only 1% probable. (Maybe less than that considering Mab's therapy in Cold Days.) In a game context you'd have to roll the dice instead of relying on the author, but that's irrelevant to my reason for invoking Harry's adventures. I'm saying that going up against the Genoskwa sounds as fun to me as a player as it probably does to Jim Butcher, even if I wind up getting squashed in the ice compactor. It's far more interesting than the other 364 days of the year when Harry was just running Parkour on the island and mastering the defenses.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I feel like you're missing the point. Invocation of Harry Dresden in this context is 100% appropriate because it conveys the experience I'm looking for: Harry is frequently up against enemies with far more raw power than he's got (the Naagloshii, Cowl, Dracul, et al.), and I can even point to cases where he really almost did die (e.g. Michael pulls him out of the way of Asher's fireball just in time) to support my contention that his survival up to this point is maybe only 1% probable. (Maybe less than that considering Mab's therapy in Cold Days.) In a game context you'd have to roll the dice instead of relying on the author, but that's irrelevant to my reason for invoking Harry's adventures. I'm saying that going up against the Genoskwa sounds as fun to me as a player as it probably does to Jim Butcher, even if I wind up getting squashed in the ice compactor. It's far more interesting than the other 364 days of the year when Harry was just running Parkour on the island and mastering the defenses.

Whereas I see his survival as 100% guaranteed via protagonist plot armor. His survival, as with anything in authored fiction, is entirely independent of what he does or what/who he faces. It's entirely dependent on what the author decides.

That's not a good model for any game where there are multiple people with agency.

Edit: to be a bit more charitable, if your point is "I like facing strong threats where my survival is down to luck and optimal play", say that. The comparison to something that's entirely decided in advance (having neither of those elements) is inapt.

[MaxWilson]

Edit: to be a bit more charitable, if your point is "I like facing strong threats where my survival is down to luck and optimal play", say that. The comparison to something that's entirely decided in advance (having neither of those elements) is inapt.

I've said that numerous times including the OP, but yes. Dresden Files novels are examples illustrating approximately how outgunned I like to be (although Battle Ground is over my limit) and what I want my successes to feel like. Maybe you're not aware of the potential for failure in those novels, but I am and Harry is (“Okay, kid,” I said. “We survived. I only had some very limited plans to cover this contingency.”) and my PCs are, and that makes it fun and worth spending table time on. I like being dropped into crazy-dangerous adventures even though my PCs hate it.

[Sigreid]

It depends. I want there to be a serious chance of dying if major mistakes are made. I don't want the DM either saving or murdering a character just to achieve their idea of the ideal balance.

[KorvinStarmast]

Combat - almost in its entirety - come down to dice rolls, and numbers. Not true. Figuring out when to do things, and what to do, matters as does positioning as well as deciding to break off combat, etc.

That disagreement considered, there's a lot of good in your post, thanks for taking the time to elaborate further.

[Sigreid]

True, but there's a big difference between
You are on 4 hp and take 1d8 damage
vs
You are on 4 hp and take 11d6 fireball damage from a bandit captain throwing every bead from their necklace of fireballs they suddenly have after the 5th round of combat, which they are including themselves in the blast also, and the DM rules it burns up everything they had on them so the surviving party members cannot loot anything after the combat.

^ the later is an example from a game a couple weeks back, and I'm staring to see this as a trend of the DM and not a one-off thing

Ok, that's ridiculous. When I DM, my players know that first I don't pull punches and second not all encounters are fair and third that if an encounter isn't going to be fair I'm not going to force them to engage with it. I'm not out to kill the characters. That's stupid as I have the power to kill them whenever I feel like it. Some encounters are easy and if they take them they get to see how powerful they've become. Other encounters are more even fights and they know they're not going to automatically win but the odds are somewhat in their favor. Finally, there are encounters that they can try if they want a desperate battle or they can not engage and either leave it or come back when they feel more ready. If the 5th level characters learn the location of the Lich's castle, it's on them if they decide to go for it. On the other side, I don't purposefully overwhelm them with encounters that they can't avoid because I have some weird story set that "OK, I need them to be captured now so I'll send 20 death knights to do it".