D&D 4E Is character death acceptable in 4e? If so, how often?

[DrSpunj]

Forked from: Expertise justification?

As an LFR DM who's had two TPKs out of 20 or so sessions, I'd like to say that while the difference between a moderate battle and a hard battle is much THICKER than it looks, the difference between a hard battle and a TPK is much THINNER than it looks.

I think you were closer to a TPK than you think you were. That the difference between 2 PCs at death's door and a TPK is a very small one.

I'd suggest running a "it was just a dream" scenario. Stat out a hard encounter for the group, and then run it really trying to kill them instead of doing the normal DM thing of slightly pulling punches. Drop the leaders first. Try to set things up so you can drop all of them on the same turn. Then just focus fire on every one else, leaving the battlerager for last. I expect you'll be able to put down the with much less effort than you think.

Once the leaders are down, the other players really just stop bouncing up. And then the fight's just over except for the rolling. Once the monster side can eliminate the source of the PCs buffer (the leader's ability to trigger surges), PCs tend to stay down and hard fights (or even medium fights) turn into TPKs.

This is a good topic and deserves its own thread IMO. So here's some posts from the other thread before we decided to create this one:

Nail said: Exactly, kilpatds. We really were right there at the edge of TPK-land. We were just able to pull it back from the brink with a little luck and all of our resources.

DrSpunj said: Thanks for the comment, kilpatds. But I want to ask you & anyone else like Nail who agrees with you: Should there be a middle option at the end of a tough battle between "Short Rest and we're probably good to go if nothing really mean is around the next corner" and TPK? In tough battles with bad luck or tactics (or especially both!) on the PCs part I think one PC death is an acceptable part of the game.

So what do people think? Or what have people experienced in their games?

I don't think PC death should be common, but with Raise Dead an 8th? level ritual it's not something that is likely to ruin most games if it occurs rarely and, IMO, appropriately when the party is faced with really bad luck with the dice or very poor party tactics. With either one I think the danger of a PC dying should be at least a distinct possibility. With both I think a TPK should be a distinct possibility.

Caveat: my party of 7 PCs has two leaders (TacLord and Battle Cleric) and they're all level 4, so my experience in 4e is limited to that campaign over the last several months and a one shot delve we ran with 8th level PCs.

Thanks

 

[Akaiku]

I don't think player should stay down forever unless they really want to, but that's my opinion and all.

Thing is, that has been my experience thusfar, with one exception. Death is a revolving door penalty box. The one time that wasn't the case, the gm was ACTUALLY trying to get rid of a few people, case too many were in the party.

Do you define death as character over forever, enter high score or kiss ground, find a cleric for rez? Seems to be somewhat important for direction.

 

[KarinsDad]

4E is kind of funny with regard to this.

For the most part, PCs are basically ok at the end of an encounter, or it is a TPK. Rarely does one see a single PC die without the others unless it was due to the Leader being out of heals and the downed PC was taking ongoing damage or some such. Typically, some unusual circumstances have to be occurring for just one (or two or three) PCs to die.

So, having Raise Dead means little in the game. If the entire party dies, who is going to Raise Dead them?

I do think that moderate or lesser threatening encounters are not a threat at all. The players can typically adjust their tactics and keep individual seriously threatened PCs relatively safe (or at least healed).

It's the hard encounters that are up for grabs. A few bad dice rolls can spell doom, even for an encounter where it looked like the PCs would win. This also tends to happen at lower levels more where two back to back 20s on the dice can make a difference quickly.

This happens less frequently at higher levels due to the fact that monsters do less relative damage at those levels. So a PC will be merely wounded whereas the same PC would have been unconscious at lower levels. Plus, the PCs have so many options at higher levels that there is almost always something that one or more PCs can do to handle a serious problem.


As far as I am concerned, PC death will typically only happen if the DM presents the players with a hard encounter and the dice go against the players (or the DM presents the players with too hard of an encounter).

As such, I don't have a problem with PC death because I think it is extremely rare. The only real downside to PC death is that PC death is often synonymous with TPK and that I do think is a slight flaw of 4E. It's difficult to house rule this (unless you make normal unconsciousness more threatening) because it's all about action economy. One PC out of five down decreases PC actions per round by 20%. The encounter just got more difficult.

 

[Regicide]

There's no level loss. Unless you've just hit a new tier and the raise cost inexplicably has jumped on you, all death means is you lose a little gold.

The good side is as a DM you don't feel guilty if you splatter a few cocky strikers who don't know their positioning.

 

[Nail]

Good posts so far.

For my part:
"Is character death acceptable in 4e?"

Sure!

But: it's just not going to happen like it did in earlier editions of D&D. Remember that standard D&D tradition of the death trap? Removed. "Save or die" powers? Removed. How about massive crit damage? Removed. Only the cleric can heal? Removed. Low PC hps? Removed. Etc.

If so, how often?
When it happens, it will be rare, and quite possibly only part of a TPK. Death will happen if:

• TPK. I'm thinking of some of the Irontooth stories I've read. TPKs happen because of over-leveled bad guys, maybe?
• The party is out of HS access, and the battle is not almost over.
• You (the DM) gang tackle the leaders, and put them both down. Of course, then we'll all die (or run!). I am - of course - now going to expect my DMs to start to do this!
• A really huge blunder, either by the PCs or by the DM. Yep, the DM can screw up and kill PCs too, just as players can. (Small tactical mistakes, or minor runs of bad luck, probably won't kill PCs.)
• Some role-playing reason comes up for "letting" a PC die.

 

[Nail]

As an aside: If the DM keeps telling the players "It's really hard to die in 4e", then they start to feel that way too, and some of the fun drains away. If the DM plays his cards a little closer to his/her chest, things feel dangerous - and fun - and no one but the DM feels the difference.

Suspension of disbelief and successful story-telling requires a few things....but brutal honesty isn't one of them!

 

[Obryn]

My group has two leaders, so death is rather rare. This past session was the first one in a while in which anyone came extremely close to dying - and that's because (1) he was one of the two leaders, (2) the other had already used both of his heals for the encounter, and (3) the chamber had a special feature wherein an unconscious character gets whisked away inside a coffin until rescued.

He failed the first two death saves, but successfully saved 3 times in a row until he was finally rescued.

...well, now that I think about it, immediately before that encounter, the party's Barbarian was brought to -37 HPs by two rounds of 4 sneak attacking Dark Stalkers. And on the second round, all of them hit and two of them critted... So he was almost there by damage, but not quite.

So yeah. I think character death can happen, but it's likely to be either right at the start of a fight where a single character is under intense focused fire; or near the end of a fight, when the party's healing resources are sapped.

-O

 

[Iron Sky]

I think PC death is less scary not only for the reasons above, but, at least in my group, the sheer number of different characters we want to try. Lost your Paladin? Sweet, now I get to try out the Avenger. Lost your Wizard? Cool, let's see how an Invoker does. Etc...


We haven't had any PC deaths in our level 1 to 16 campaign (though we did have two people turned to stone by basilisks at level 11).

We've had a couple times where it was close - cleric had no healing left, people bloodied at the end of the fight, taking on 10-12 same level non-minions at once, etc - but as long as we kept a decent supply of healing potions and didn't run out of healing surges, we pulled through. Our DM did say he pulled his punches in one fight at level 3, but we told him not to do it again and since he hasn't.


My roomies and I are running 3 6th level PCs through Bordrin's Watch (Scales of War Adventure 2) and ended the last monestary fight with 2 PCs down making death saves and a bloodied sorcerer (that solo'd the last 3 orcs...).


My buddy in CA has had a few PC deaths in his game, though 3 of them were PC vs PC(roleplaying reasons). He did have 1 PC die(drown) and nearly have a TPK as the low-level PCs were crossing a river... if it weren't for the Water Genesei, it probably would have been.

I made a 4-encounter mini-adventure for him too that did end with one enemy (Illithid) escaped, 3 PCs dead, 3 PCs unconcious and stable, and two PCs with single digit hp at the end of the last encounter. Those are the only other PC death examplse that I know of, and that's about as close to TPK as you get without being a TPK.


Overall, I agree that the fight either is on the border of TPK land or is firmly in OK land. The only exception would be is the DM has monsters regularly Coup-de-grace PCs that are down; he's going to see lots more individual deaths.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Attack downed PCs.

Problem solved.

Don`t forget to include them in area attacks etc.

In older editions i usually won´t attack a downed character or I forget to include them in area attacks, because i don´t want to kill a character just because of bad dice rolls. I want to kill characters who did stupid things

 

[blargney the second]

Generally speaking I think the likelihood of PCs dying should be proportional to how aware they are of the danger of confronting a given encounter.

Springing a surprise round from Orcus on 1st level PCs in their first encounter? Not cool, unless you want a TPK for some specific story reasons.

Letting the same PCs know that they will be fighting Orcus in 20 levels? Fun! He'll be way over their heads at 21st level, but at least they've got time to prepare for it.
-blarg