Players dissatisfied with level of danger in 4e

[SWAT]

To varying degrees, the players in the 4e game I co-run feel that combat doesn't feel dangerous enough, mainly due to the death and dying rules. One even wrote an analysis of the situation, which I've included below.

Indeed, over 16 levels (from 1 to 16), no PC has ever died, and only once has anyone ever failed 2 death saving throws. In this case, I have no problem with making my players happy, so we're currently discussing rules changes, but I'm curious as to why I don't recall ever seeing a similar situation on these or other boards. Could it be because we often have only one encounter per day, though it's invariably at (PC levels + 3) or more?

So, what are your experiences with regards to danger and risk of death in 4e?

And here now is the analysis one of the players wrote, with names removed at their request. Note that near the end he mentions rules changes I've made, but these were purely to reduce combat length (we average 60-75 minutes per combat, with only 3 players... ugh), and have had limited impact overall on degree of danger.

So, as I promised, here are my thoughts on death and danger in D&D.

First, let me give you my basic assumptions upon which this is all based.

Assumption 1: There should be some risk of character death. Why? Because it's not heroic to walk down a safe empty street. It's heroic to run down a path with bullets strafing the area. Without risk, without danger, there's nothing to overcome. That which is gained has greater value if the winner had something at stake.

Assumption 2: RPGs should be fun. Players should be engaged in what's happening and should have a real interest in what's happening. In a combat, much like in an RP situation, the player should be actively involved.

Assumption 3: There must be challenge. Similar to point 1, but sublty different. Point 1 is about risk. This is that people don't want easy victories. They want a sense that the victory is earned. They want to work for their success.

Those are my assumptions. They're purely subjective and from my point of view. I'm not presenting them as fact, merely as my beliefs so you'll see where I'm coming from.

Now, using those three assumptions, you get to my first conclusion:

Conclusion 1: D&D is broken. Badly broken? Of course not. It's still entirely playable, but it's not perfect. And am I talking about the whole thing? I suspect you've already guessed that I'm only really interested in the Death and dying rules here. So, why is it broken?

My argument is that the Death rules violates the first two of my earlier assumptions. There should be a chance of losing something and the players should be actively involved. I know, assumption 3 doesn't come in yet, but it will eventually.

As it stands now, when one is reduced to 0, you don't die until you fail 3 death saves. You have a 55% chance of passing, so on average, you can lie there dying for 7 rounds, and that's not counting racials, feats, etc... Note as well that 7 rounds is a long time, especially when a single fight can only be 10-15 rounds sometimes.

In addition, you can go into the negatives up until your bloodied score. I don't have loads of HP, but I personally have ~100 HP so though I'm unconscious at 0, I'm not dead until ~-50. The odds of me getting anywhere close to -50 are highly unlikely. Especially since monsters will probably not target someone who's down, when there are mobile threats remaining.

So, between those, assumption 1 is violated since there's isn't much chance of death.

Where does assumption 2 come in? Let's say we're halfway through a fight. The fight itself takes 1 hour, which I'm sure you'll agree is conservative. At that midpoint, someone goes down. What happens next? They lie there and wait for the fight to end since healing is not always available/viable. I know what you'll say now... you'll point out that *** went down twice last fight, and each time got back up to return to the fight. Yes, he did, since I went out of my way to heal him once, as did ###. I don't know about ###, but I acted to preserve ***'s entertainment more then the life of his halfling, charming though he may be. Lying there dying, is not the most stimulating way to spend a fight.

I mentioned assumption 3 earlier. One real danger is that if we try to keep people from going down, to solve the problem with assumption 2, we risk creating a problem with assumption 3. We can't trade entertainment for a lack of challenge.

Conclusion 2: The rules must be modified to maintain the fun of the game.

SWAT's already come up with some wonderful ideas. They add strategy to the game, and may do something to improve the speed of combat. That said, do they address point 1? If we increase monster damage, they hit harder. Consequently, we drop faster. But once we hit 0, we still have the same problems with the death and dying rules. So, challenge is added, but not risk.

If you've made it this far, you hopefully see where I'm going. The proposed combat rules are great. I fully support less HP on monsters and multiple dice rolls and increased monster damage. These are great. What we need though, is revised death and dying rules as well. We need to find a way to make combat more dangerous, though not to the point that we die ever session. This isn't easy, and it won't be fast to fix, but it's my thought on how to improve things.

As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments. If you think I'm right or wrong, I'm interested either way.

 

[UniversalMonster]

Remember that if a character goes down, fails a save, and then gets stood back up.. his death saves don't reset. He still only has two left.

If you want to kill PCs, try using a slightly overmatched monster that does ongoing damage. That's how I got killed the last time: ongoing 10 poison damage. I reached -30 in 3 rounds and I was done.

 

[Nightson]

With three players killing one player treads perilously close to a TPK. But it is entirely possible to kill your players. They're literally asking for it. Alpha strike a character down to zero and coup de grace him. Kick an unconscious PC into a river. Knock a PC down to zero with ongoing damage on them. Include environmental effects that hit everybody.

The size of the group really is the main problem in my view, and reducing combat length also contributes to it. How much healing is available to the group? With three people each heal goes a long way, are they not panicking even when they just have one heal left? They may have been lured into overconfidence.

 

[Rechan]

With three players killing one player treads perilously close to a TPK. But it is entirely possible to kill your players. They're literally asking for it.a

Killing players treads perilously close to going to jail.

Killing characters? Totally different.

An unconscious character in the auto-attack area of a swarm is also harsh. I almost died from that.

Typically, the threat of death isnt' as bad as the threat of no healing. When all the heals in a combat have been used (second winds and leader heals), everyone is on edge.

The other way to really make the point: nuke the healer. If you're dealing with intelligent opponents, their best bet is to focus fire on the healer. As soon as the healer goes down, the other two PCs are out of luck.

 

[Piratecat]

Try increasing monster damage by 5 pts per tier, and reducing monster hit points to about 75% their normal amount. Then have monsters who are willing to deliver a death blow once a character is down and unconscious. You may be really pleased with the result.

 

[Cadfan]

Random thoughts:

1. Having one combat a day turns daily powers into encounter powers. This definitely affects the degree of risk your players will experience.

2. There are a number of ways to damage downed characters, although you may want to use them sparingly since no matter what your players say now, they will probably be unhappy when their character gets killed while unconscious. I often have animalistic monsters continue to attack a downed PC- a wolf that's dragged down a character seems likely to continue biting and tearing for at least a few moments after the character is downed. Area effects hit characters who are unconscious, as do aura effects. You can also do plot related things, like having a monster drag an unconscious PC (or a conscious but unable to escape PC) away from the group.

3. Count up the number of healing surge triggers your PCs can bring to bear in a single fight. Count second wind as 1/2, since using it gives up your attack and often results in you getting hit again for an amount of damage similar to what you gained. Count daily powers as 1/2, since they can't be used every fight, but will often be used in the most important fight (count them fully if you only use one fight per day). The result is your real "target" as a DM. Is your group's number of healing surges higher than typical? Do you have a lot of surge-less healing available?

4. I have two groups. One tears throw monsters like a hot knife through butter. The other suffers semi regular pc deaths. If I had to guess at the reason for the difference, its probably that the first group has a very dedicated healer and three melee characters, two of which are defenders. The second group has a healer who's a bit more of a dilettante, and only two melee characters. So this makes a pretty significant difference.

5. The best fight we had for nearly killing every single PC but not actually doing it was in the Dungeon Delve- the one with the monster in the well that grapples PCs and then drops them down the shaft of the well. It split the party, which created an awful lot of tension.

 

[Victim]

Between ongoing damage, monster auras, and area attacks, it can be pretty easy to pile damage on a downed character even without enemies making a deliberate effort to finish them off. A number of monsters can isolate characters with abilities like swallow whole (and whatever devourers do), preventing other characters from assisting the threatened character.

One (or just very few) encounter per day makes a huge difference. It becomes pretty easy to pick up once per day healing so there's always plenty to go around. Characters can almost always go all out. Healing surges don't matter because you'd have to work pretty dang hard to use up the minimum number in a fight.

I strongly recommend changing the requirements for getting the mechanical benefits of an extended rest, if it doesn't make sense for you to pack several fights into a day. Separate just plain sleeping for a night from getting all your goodies recharged so your 'adventuring day' might be taking place over several real days.

 

[Rechan]

Then have monsters who are willing to deliver a death blow once a character is down and unconscious.

ESPECIALLY if the monster is one that grabs, and gets extra damage on grabbed targets.

It makes more sense for a monster with a grabbed target to munch on them when they go unconscious (or escape with the unconscious body).

 

[ppaladin123]

I tend to agree that 4e is not dangerous/fatal enough. The trick is adding the danger without shortening the adventure day. Reducing surges (number or size), for example, would likely just entice players to go to bed early each day. You don't want the danger to come only from limits on a resource over which the player has some control unless you can reliably force them to continue fighting beyond their comfort zone.

In addition to lowering monster HP and increasing their damage (which it looks like you are doing), you might try a couple of other things:

1. Players die at negative surge value rather than negative bloodied value.

2. Every failed death save does some random damage (xdx) that scales up with level/tier. I have no idea where to set this value but it is something my group has been toying with.

 

[darjr]

Green slime and stacking area damage and something like the guard drakes that do a LOT more damage when in close groups, plus I think they knock people prone.

Green slime will kill your character dead with help from the other PC's.