D&D 5E So, how hard is it to kill PCs anyway?

[redrick]

Monsters who are not finishing off unconscious PCs are not playing to win. End of story.

That being said, it is perfectly reasonable for a DM to run a campaign where monsters are not playing to win. I don't really know why you would go for a TPK in such a campaign, though.

My experience is that PCs are very resilient against a TPK until they've been through a few encounters to start to wear their resources down, especially if you are hands off on unconscious PCs. On the other hand, it's not there hard to finish off a single PC, and once the risk of character death is on the table, encounters become much more threatening.

 

[CleverNickName]

Not hard, I found out last weekend. Magic Missile on a wounded character is lethal...the first one drops him to 0, and the next three wipe out all death saves. Game over.

 

[redrick]

Oh by the way, the monsters you are trying to kill, they may try to kill you back.

Personally I hate the new death rules for this very reason. It makes a DM have to appear like a jerk. How I run it is simple. Smart foes KILL unconcious PCs as soon as they realize that the party has healing ability. Animal type foes attempt to drag their kill off with them to feed on it in safety as soon as a yummy target goes down. Oh and being dragged off in the jaws of a hungry foe generally equates to an automatically failed death save.

It would be interesting to try an experiment. Give most monsters the same death save mechanics and access to healing that PC parties have. Remind players of the "gentleman's agreement" about not killing unconscious characters. See how long the players keep that up.

I've only run one truly lethal 5e campaign where monsters would regularly try to finish off PCs. It certainly upped the stakes. That said, we are usually not actually looking for that much of a challenge. With good characters, the game is actually quite enjoyable on easy mode.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Not hard, I found out last weekend. Magic Missile on a wounded character is lethal...the first one drops him to 0, and the next three wipe out all death saves. Game over.

Magic Missile is only one attack, so it only triggers one death mark, unless the sum of total damage is enough to kill them outright.

 

[CleverNickName]

Magic Missile is only one attack, so it only triggers one death mark, unless the sum of total damage is enough to kill them outright.

Well I'll be a...I'll let my DM know. *grumble grumble*

 

[Sleepy Walker]

It would be interesting to try an experiment. Give most monsters the same death save mechanics and access to healing that PC parties have. Remind players of the "gentleman's agreement" about not killing unconscious characters. See how long the players keep that up.

It adds a lot of rolls. Most cases the monsters/opposition would not be healing, so really only useful for certain humanoids or if there are healing spells flying about. Having said that, it does add an extra dynamic which can be quite interesting. Such a policy can be very entertaining to implement in an urban, honor bound, or lawful environment

 

[The Crimson Binome]

It would be interesting to try an experiment. Give most monsters the same death save mechanics and access to healing that PC parties have. Remind players of the "gentleman's agreement" about not killing unconscious characters. See how long the players keep that up.

The auto-death assumption is actually pretty reasonable, as long as enemies don't have healing magic. At that point, you're really just ignoring the 5% chance of a critical recovery.

Does anyone seriously run NPCs as instantly dying, while they still have healing support on their side?

 

[redrick]

It adds a lot of rolls. Most cases the monsters/opposition would not be healing, so really only useful for certain humanoids or if there are healing spells flying about. Having said that, it does add an extra dynamic which can be quite interesting. Such a policy can be very entertaining to implement in an urban, honor bound, or lawful environment

The auto-death assumption is actually pretty reasonable, as long as enemies don't have healing magic. At that point, you're really just ignoring the 5% chance of a critical recovery.

To be clear, I would never actually bother to run a campaign where NPCs all had death saves. The point of the experiment would simply be to (hopefully) demonstrate my hypothesis that monsters under GM control choosing not to attack downed PCs while there are other PCs still conscious is almost always a matter of a polite table convention and not actually intelligent or believable behavior on the part of those monsters. Players are bound by no considerations for creatures under DM control, so they would be much faster to adjust their strategy to whatever is the most effective.

 

[Ratskinner]

And on top of that... there are not many DMs who can effectively plan and run a 16-20 monster squad with effective and strong tactics, while at the same time trying to maintain table interest and cohesion and story.

Makes me think it would be neat to see some kind of effective "Horde Monster" rules. i.e. a "monster" that is a group of 6 "minions" with special (multi)actions to go with it.

Monster design is one area where I wish 5e had taken more cues from 4e or 13th Age.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

To be clear, I would never actually bother to run a campaign where NPCs all had death saves.

In 95% of instances, the difference between tracking death saves and not tracking death saves is negligible, because the enemy side doesn't have healing. It's just a matter of whether you have to go over there and finish them off after they stabilize into unconsciousness.

The point of the experiment would simply be to (hopefully) demonstrate my hypothesis that monsters under GM control choosing not to attack downed PCs while there are other PCs still conscious is almost always a matter of a polite table convention and not actually intelligent or believable behavior on the part of those monsters.

Depending on the prevalence of healing magic in the setting, there's no reason to believe that the enemies would think to finish off a downed target, unless they have personally witnessed you bringing someone back up. After all, if healing magic is rare, then 95% of everyone who drops in combat is out of the fight for good, so wasting an attack to finish someone off is putting spite ahead of personal survival. The smart move, if you don't know about healing magic, is to prioritize targets who are still up.

When you're talking about bestial foes that operate on instinct, healing magic would have had to be so prevalent in the distant past that attacking a downed target would confer a fitness advantage over attacking an active target, in order for that behavior to be selected for.

If magic only came into use within the last few millenia, then monsters would end up in a situation similar to moths, whose trait of navigating by extremely distant light sources ended up with them immolating themselves when artificial lighting came about.