D&D 5E Lethality in 5e: what is your preference and how do you achieve it?

[Li Shenron]

Threads like this (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?402623-How-do-you-kill-a-10th-level-character/page12) always confirm me that there is hardly a playstyle choice in a RPG that can cause more problems than lethality, if the different players have different preferences or expectations about it!

It seemed to me since the playtest that 5e is clearly more slanted towards low lethality. Perhaps this is the wanted result by the majority of gamers these days, but it's undeniable that others prefer a higher level of lethality, and at the same time 5e promised us high degrees of customizations, so it should be easy to change lethality as well.

In this thread I'd like to hear from everyone what are their typical preferences/expectations on questions such as "how often should the game see a PC die" but also "how often should a TPK happen", "how easy should it be to reverse death" or "how costly should it be to reverse death".

With that, I also want to know how do you achieve those expectations in 5e (in case it doesn't already match them for you), what do you change in the core rules to "dial" the different lethality parameters in your game?

 

[Li Shenron]

For the record, I have myself more than one preference

On one hand, I am completely fine with an old-school high-lethality game where you have no guarantee that the encounters will all be balanced to your current party level, and save-or-die traps or spells are in. When you play this kind of game IMO you should treat it as watching a horror movie: you just know that many are going to die, so a major part of the fun is in finding out how. The trick is not to get attached to your PC, should you be required to create a new one when you least expect it.

On the other hand, I do not want to alienate players who do get attached to their PCs, and I can too enjoy a game where you are supposed to develop your PC's story and character to the fullest.

Eventually, the problem for me is that I cannot tolerate the middle ground, and the majority of rule systems and gaming groups do exactly that, for fear of making too much of an extreme choice.

 

[delericho]

"how often should the game see a PC die"/"how often should a TPK happen"

I'm broadly of the view that PCs should die for one of two causes: poor choices on the part of the player, or "outrageous fortune".

The first of these is pretty clear - if the PCs rush in when they really should take a rest first, or they don't make appropriate preparations, or they take on that dragon at 1st level, or they refuse to flee when they should, or similar, then I'll have no hesitation in killing one or more PCs.

The second of these is more of a wild-card: I want a game where characters can and do die unexpected deaths, and where even long-standing and indeed cherished PCs can die simply because that's what the dice dictate. But I don't want that to be too common. So, to give an example, because 5e has a crit on a natural 20 (and thus 5% of all attacks), I don't want a single crit from a "level-appropriate" threat to be enough to one-shot a PC. But if the dice really turn against a character, then I have no problem with him dying. Indeed, perhaps the best balance I've found there is "three strikes and you're out" - one bad roll shouldn't kill a character, but a crit, followed my max damage, followed by a second crit probably should.

In practice, I would like to see that lead to two to three character deaths in a campaign from "outrageous fortune" (more in the event of bad play, of course).

IMO, the frequency of a TPK should really depend on how the remaining PCs respond when the first PC dies. If they promptly realise they're over-matched and seek to retreat, my preference is to allow them to do so. If they fight on, though, then the gloves are off - if the dice don't fall their way, they're done.

It has been a long time since I've had a TPK. (Well, excluding my first session of "Lost Mine", but that only had 2 PCs, so doesn't really count.)

"how easy should it be to reverse death"/"how costly should it be to reverse death"

My preference here is that it should be very costly - to the extent that the player will almost always just prefer to create a new character instead.

However D&D has tended towards the opposite, at least once you get to mid-high levels. That being the case, I think I'd actually be inclined to play a different game entirely if I wanted both that cap on resurrection and that power-level in use.

With that, I also want to know how do you achieve those expectations in 5e (in case it doesn't already match them for you), what do you change in the core rules to "dial" the different lethality parameters in your game?

'fraid I can't answer this one - to date I've only managed two sessions of 5e. I'll need several more sessions before I even know whether the default settings suit, never mind have any thoughts on how to 'fix' them.

 

[Trickster Spirit]

I'd say my preferred level of lethality is a tug-of-war between both those extremes - 1), I want death to always be a legitimate threat to the PCs, as that supports both willing-suspension-of-disbelief and the kind of stories I want to tell, and 2) I want any given character to have good odds of making it all the way through a campaign (i.e. while I expect some characters to die along the way, I want to avoid TPKs and am always rooting for the PCs to survive). This probably puts me squarely in the middle ground you say you can't tolerate, heh.

I've not experienced higher level 5E play yet and I fully expect player life expectancy to climb, but at lower levels 5E seems to fulfill my needs pretty squarely - in our first session with the system I had them face a home-brewed coin dragon as the final encounter (basically re-fluffing the animated armor from the MM as an animated treasure horde shaped like a dragon and giving it a rechargable coin-spewing blunt damage breath weapon). The opening breath weapon attack dropped 3 out of 5 PCs in the first round, one of whom was the cleric - I was sweating bullets too, as I was pretty sure I'd just ensured a TPK with my half-baked rules tinkering.

Fortunately the survivors managed to split up and drag their downed comrades to cover on opposite sides of the room (I ruled they moved at half-speed while dragging and even still one still had enough leftover movement to go back for the druid) and get the cleric up with a healing potion. I never had to pull any punches as they made short work of the monster, but it was an edge-of-your-seat encounter - it very much felt like character death was a very real possibility the whole time.

I'd agree with what others have said around here, that with the death rules as written it's a lot easier to down characters in 5E than it is to kill them, and that suits me just fine - it satisfies #2) above while at least giving the illusion of #1). That said if you prefer higher lethality games I think that's easily achievable by making the monsters finish off fallen PCs (advantage on attack roll, automatic critical, two failed death saves for criticals) and turning down the healing dials with the options in the DMG.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

Lethality has always been an issue in any game with level-scaled hit points. I like the death mechanic in 5e. I've had characters go down a few times and it's always mincy about whether they're going to get back up again. The fact that they usually do is okay, since I like to keep playing and like my PCs. But the Grim Reaper is always lurking about...

 

[the Jester]

I prefer a game where death is a real possibility, but smart play will usually avoid it. (There's always the dumb luck factor when you're using dice, though- sometimes you just roll a crit that does too much damage for the pc to survive.)

Since I run a sandbox, the pcs can choose their own difficulty to a great degree, so it's possible for a group to dial down the lethality by choosing easier challenges. This often results in slower accumulation of treasure and other rewards (e.g. political favors owed, land grants, etc).

I don't have a real "I want a pc to die every x sessions" approach and don't twist the dials very much. However, I don't dumb monsters down (though I try to play them as their stats indicate, so stupid monsters do act stupidly), and I don't fudge the dice (well, maybe once every 6-10 sessions I'll make a minor fudge, but it's extremely rare). I don't have a problem with pcs dying, or even with a TPK; I put the integrity of the milieu itself well ahead of any one pc's survival or 'story'.

Overall, in 5e so far, I've seen an average death rate of probably around 1 pc/session. This is still a low-level group, however, and there have been a number of... let's say suboptimal choices on the parts of the pcs (such as a 1st level pc with 4 hps remaining charging in at a pair of horrible monsters, one of which had already taken about 30 hp of damage and was still standing). Some sessions have been no-death, several have been one-death, and a couple included several-to-many-deaths. At least two or three pcs were killed by other pcs, too. Also, there was a stretch when part of the party fell into a slide trap in a dungeon that dropped them several levels, where about half of that part of the party died. The others emerged higher level.

 

[Authweight]

I see lethality as something that is rightfully part of campaign/genre tone. A high heroic game should feature few random deaths, a gritty game should make it more common, and a one-off death dungeon should kill people off constantly (think tomb of horrors).

5e out of the box doesn't offer a whole lot in the rules to tweak death. It offers a lot of healing tweaks, but I don't think that affects lethality so much as pacing. 5e is easy to hack for different lethalities though. Off the top of my head, to increase lethality you could bring in the -10hp death rule, you could make death saving throws harder, you could make everyone do two death saves every round they're down, or you could include death by massive damage (lose half your max hp from one hit? Make a con save!). To decrease lethality, you could make it so you need more failed saves to die, you could do away with death by damage altogether, or you could make saves easier.

Something I've done in games before is said you can't actually die directly, but if you're "killed" you are wounded so badly you cannot continue. Your allies then have a choice to bail on the adventure (suffering various negative consequences) and carry you back to town, where you will need a long time to recover, or they can leave you and let you die while continuing the adventure. It's well-suited to games where you want death to feel more dramatic and be a sacrifice rather than bad luck.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I don't try and kill my players but things happen, this is all discussed during my pre-campaign start, along with my house rules. Things like, you fall in lava (and fail saves), you are dead, a 20 ton block of stone falls on you (and fail saves), you are dead.

Saves are more based on role-playing than rolls, IF a player can't tell me how they made it out alive with an entertaining story, I will give it to them. I don't like to hear I rolled a 17, I saved, give me a good story!

 

[Tormyr]

I ask the player what they want to do. In the one character death I have had so far, the player said they still had story elements he would like to explore with the character. So I modified his trinket to have a 1 shot raise dead which marked the character as property of a devil that will show up later in the campaign.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I don't have a set "this is how often a TPK should happen". Those things should largely happen organically. I'm an old school player, and prefer the TSR era level of lethality. Death should be a real risk. I'm actually finding that in actual play, 5e comes close to that RAW. Yes, it has death saves, but those go by a lot quicker than people realize. Especially when you're still taking damage when down. The only real change I have made to fit my preferences is to tone down healing. I don't use heal to full at a long rest. You only get back hit dice.