Which edition had more PC Deaths

[Drowbane]

No differences.

PCs (often) die when they do something stupid.

 

[Nifft]

PCs (often) die when they do something stupid.

As the party who is often curious stupid, I must agree with this analysis.

Dead again, -- N

 

[Agamon]

Huh, I dunno. It seems to me that it depends more on the play style and campaign than the edition.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

I have only ever played 3.X, so i can not really comment on how much character death happened in earlier editions. But I will say I think it depends on DMing style too. the game I play in currently tends to have characters die every once in a while, but not every session. Where as when I DM the PCs usually kill each other.

 

[Delta]

There was an old Dragon article (OD&D/1E) where someone had a statistical analysis of PC deaths in their campaign, and it added up to hundreds and hundreds of deaths by different causes. I don't think anyone's going to claim the same thing in a 3E campaign.

 

[ThirdWizard]

I believe my first three 3e games were TPKs by the third session. I never had that kind of death rate in prior editions. That was partially due to players catching on to creating good characters, but it was scary easy to kill PCs in 3e. A small group of orcs can take down a 1st level party. That never happened before!

Nowadays in my 14th level campaign, the PCs are doing really well if nobody dies in a session. It's getting to be where that's almost unheard of.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Why are 1E and 2E lumped together? There was a dramatic difference between them, IME.

 

[Goblyn]

Many, many, more deaths in 3.x than either 1e or 2e.

 

[Umbran]

More's the question - if you notice a difference, why is there a difference?

With changing times, most folks have experienced other changes - changing desires, groups, DMs. Pinpointing the root cause (if there is one, instead of just chance), can be very difficult.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I voted 2e. (Never played 1e.)

More's the question - if you notice a difference, why is there a difference?

With changing times, most folks have experienced other changes - changing desires, groups, DMs. Pinpointing the root cause (if there is one, instead of just chance), can be very difficult.

3e can kill PCs in many ways 2e never could. In 2e, high level characters were virtually never killed by save-or-die spells, whereas in 3e I've seen many PCs either get killed by an insta-death spell or hit by Hold Monster and then CdG'd.

3e has lots of tools that didn't exist (or didn't work) in 2e that make it deadlier, but since 3e PCs tend to be tougher than their 2e counterparts, they're more likely to survive more mundane threats.

In 2e, I don't recall losing any PCs by monsters. They were all pretty weak, even the tarrasque. PCs tended to get killed by traps instead. I think I lost one PC to NPCs that was my fault... I was playing a 10th-level mage (first time playing a mage) and neglected to cast any defensive spells. Whoops. Instant pincushion! I never made that mistake again (in 2e or 3e).