D&D General character death?

[Older Beholder]

The main attraction of a roleplaying game for me is the roleplaying.
The possibility of death doesn't really change this. So, it's never been in issue for me one way or another.

One thing I'm not interested in is a sense of competitiveness, which can sometimes come with exceptionally lethal games.

 

[Lanefan]

But they were different conflicts, no? It was not literally the same fight, at the same time, in the same place.

In two cases (of four), yes: the conflicts were well separated in time, and in one case* also place. In both cases the opponent was a Dragon.

In the third, however, the conflicts were a day apart and - to begin with - almost carbon copies of each other: the Dwarf (along with the rest of the party) charged in against a Beholder, the Beholder shot its death ray, the Dwarf failed its (pretty easy!) save and died. The only real difference otherwise is that the party was better prepared for the second go-round, and managed to prevail; where the first time they had to grab the body, retreat, cast Raise Dead, and rethink.

The fourth one is quite bizarre, in that the "opponent" was actually friendly fire from a fellow PC - mis-aimed lightning bolts in both cases.

* - this one was a PC of mine, killed by a named Dragon in one adventure and then again in another; the odd thing here is that the Dragon also died in both battles.

 

[Lanefan]

Refreshing, until the series actually got going, and you realize that there are plenty of characters that won't just randomly, unceremoniously die, because that would be boring.

For the TV show, it was always a marketing ploy. For the books, it was a shockingly successful like, two or three characters that die early on--and after that, nada. Remember how much of a thing they made of Khal Drogo's death, how "bringing him back" was a horrible choice that left him in a permanent vegetative state, killed Danaerys' child, and basically had zero positive consequences?

And then remember how Jon Snow got resurrected scot-free (in the show)? Zero consequences? Something GRRM must have approved?

We can only assume so, given as it remains unclear just how much say he had in the show and-or whether his books (if they ever come out) will follow the same plot line.

That said, keep in mind the person who "brought back" Khal Drogo was in fact out for revenge against he and his people, so her corrupting the process on purpose isn't any great surprise in hindsight.

My problem with rogue-likes is mostly that I run into some kind of impassable skill ceiling in most cases, which leaves me demoralized and frustrated. It happened with Rogue Legacy, this one Doom roguelike, FTL, and some other roguelike I've played but can't remember the name now.

I find I get to those ceilings, stay there a while, then find a way to punch through them and keep going; lather rinse repeat until I beat the game (which might take me years if not decades!).

I enjoy the mid-to-late game of strategy stuff. The early game is usually quite boring to me, because it's always pretty much identical for any given game. Civ 6? Kill the 2-3 barb camps in your area, fail to get the Great Bath, try for a few early wonders, squeeze out as many cities as you can, pray you get some useful city-states nearby. Stellaris? Explore the dozen-or-so systems in your area, fling colony ships at every colonizable world in reach, achingly slowly work your way through the traditions, hope you get one of the moderately-interesting events because you've seen all ~24-ish before and know what every choice works out to be.

Honestly, I feel the same way about 5e. The first few levels are incredibly boring, but everyone seems to want them to last forever and be a painful, ungodfully long slog before you're allowed to get to anything actually interesting or engaging. Levels where you have to play a mostly-useless rube so green around the ears, folks wonder if you're related to the Jolly Green Giant, where a single unlucky crit can potentially kill you outright from full HP.* Because apparently churning through six characters before you ever get to see level four is how we have fun nowadays. I'd rather have a fingernail pulled.

I'm almost completely the reverse of this: I very much like the sheer chaos of low-level play where you sometimes need a program to tell who's in the party this week and you never know who's going to die or be the hero tonight and simple survival is a victory in itself, while I find that at higher levels seeing and playing the same characters week after week with little to no turnover can eventually add a level of boredom due to the predictability.

 

[Andvari]

Deadliness is one of the reasons I have quick and simple character generation and advancement in the homebrew system I'm working on. If somebody bites the dust, it's easy to spin up a new character and get back to the game quickly. Essentially you make something similar to a "save" (I use an attribute called Fate for this) when reduced to 0 hp, and immediately die if you fail. If you succeed, you must "save" again at the end of each round to stay alive. Stabilizing a dying character doesn't require a roll, however - it just succeeds.

You can add your level to most Fate checks, so higher level characters are less likely to die when downed.