D&D 5E Death, dying and class balance

I've had no problems with PC in my 5e games dying. Its easily as often as it was in 3e or 1e.

Libramarian said:

TL;DR: If I make it easier to kill characters, do hard-to-kill builds become OP?

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I'd say that, if this is the ultimate question, we can't really answer without how you intend to "make it easier to kill characters". I'll go ahead and assume something like adjusting death saving throws would be pointless since it seems your PCs never get to 0 HP to begin with. So, then what's left?

If it's the case of monsters doing more damage, then, yes, builds that can absorb them become more powerful relative to the rest of the party.

If it's the case of monsters hit more easily and are hard to hit themselves, then yes, builds that excel at defense (abjurer) or offense (reckless attack) will be more powerful relative to the rest of the party.

If it's the case of the monsters using powers, spells, etc. that go from 60 to 0 HP in a turn, then players with powers or items that negate those spells/powers (Indomitable) will be more powerful than the rest of the party.

In order to spread it out you'd have to probably do a bit of all three, and that's a lot of changes just to force a few death saving throws.

Libramarian said:

A few posters recently have expressed dissatisfaction with how soft the rules for death and dying are in 5e. I share this sentiment and would like to make 0HP a scarier prospect with a houserule or two, but I'm concerned with how this would impact class balance.

There seems to have been a considerable effort made to balance the damage output of the classes across a full adventuring day, but far less to balance them defensively.

I'm thinking in particular of the Bear Barbarian and Moon Druid. Also the Abjurer, to a lesser extent. It seems to me that they're balanced under the default assumption of plentiful and very "liquid" healing, so that PCs live and die with the party and relative sturdiness is not very important for class balance. I.e. in vanilla 5e, one PC's 70 temp HP is close to being the party's temp HP, for all intents and purposes, as healing resources are pooled together. If PCs were more likely to die at 0 HP, would these classes (and possibly other defense-oriented builds) become overpowered?

I don't have these classes IMC (PCs are Warlock, Ranger, Cleric, Fighter) but I don't want them to be obviously superior choices for the next PC.

For the purpose of illustration let's consider an extreme case: dead at 0 HP, and the Revivify spell is removed from the game. Is a Barbarian overpowered in this game (compared to say a Fighter)? Is a Druid overpowered compared to a Cleric?

TL;DR: If I make it easier to kill characters, do hard-to-kill builds become OP?

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OP? I doubt it. However, options with stronger survivability are likely be more popular with players who don't see their characters as disposable. Risky options (like Reckless Attack) are likely to be used less often. Some players may want to rest after every encounter, to make certain they're not down resources in the next encounter, so you'll either need ways to prevent resting (certainly feasible) or account for it in designing encounters.

Defensive options aren't likely to become superior from a game balance perspective if you make death more likely. If a player's Evoker character dies, he rolls up a new character and moves on. Defensive options might certainly be a superior choice from the point of view of players who don't want their characters to die though. In other words subjectively, rather than objectively, better.

I'm considering this house rule: 1) When you drop to zero, make your first death save right away; 2) If you're dropped to zero by a crit, you automatically fail a death save and THEN have to make your second one right away.

The goal is just to speed up the process slightly so a character can die as early as the 2nd round down. It's a little gentler than going to best-of-3 because it's still best-of-5, you just start it 1 round sooner.

[MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION] Thanks, great post. That's the kind of deep system knowledge I'm looking for here. You didn't touch on the Druid's Wildshape temp HP though; do you not think that's a concern? It looks like that makes them really hard to kill. I think I'm OK with summoning being really powerful (I like summoners). In general I am good with this changing player strategy and making different strategies a bit better or worse. I just want this pressure to be relatively equally distributed across classes, with no characters having a massive undeserved advantage just because of their class. I'm sure you know what I mean.

lowkey13 said:

Not sure you're defining your terms quite correctly. Remember that back in the day, magic users received d4 hit points, usually had no constitution bonus, wore no armor (and there was no mage armor), and 0hp = kill.

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I actually did have balance issues running AD&D, not so much between MUs and Fighters but we all felt that one Fighter with 50-something HP at level 5 had an undeserved advantage compared to the other Fighter with 20-something HP at the same level. I think nonrandom HP gain is a very reasonable houserule with Basic and AD&D.

Oofta said:

It's really not hard to kill PCs if that's what you want to do.

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I don't want to kill PCs! I just want them to die more often. I don't like to attack downed PCs, it feels antagonistic. I only do it if it really makes sense for the monster.

jgsugden said:

PCs might never feel like they're in risk of dying in any of these 'battles', but they can feel challenged. I think that is what you really want.

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I know what I want, thanks! I'm very concerned with fairness and conflicts of interest while DMing. I'm confident in my ability to run a high risk, high reward game where PCs die without the players thinking that I had an inappropriate influence on the outcome.

I appreciate the effort you put into your post but I didn't like your scenario very much. It seems with every step you assumed success in the previous step, which means either the challenge is illusionary, or you're willing to scrap the entire scenario if the players fail somewhere along the line. I'm familiar with that style of play from running Call of Cthulhu. That can be fun for sure, but I think that works best with a good AP and an "invisible" system like BRP.
[MENTION=53980]Fanaelialae[/MENTION] Thanks for your perspective.

Libramarian said:

I'm thinking in particular of the Bear Barbarian and Moon Druid. Also the Abjurer, to a lesser extent. It seems to me that they're balanced under the default assumption of plentiful and very "liquid" healing, so that PCs live and die with the party and relative sturdiness is not very important for class balance. I.e. in vanilla 5e, one PC's 70 temp HP is close to being the party's temp HP, for all intents and purposes, as healing resources are pooled together. If PCs were more likely to die at 0 HP, would these classes (and possibly other defense-oriented builds) become overpowered?

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I find this a rather false assumption.

5e healing is a lot less "liquid" than any previous edition other than 4th. Editions 1 through 3.5 relied on healing through magic from specific sources, whereas 5e has a significant amount of healing on a per-character basis from HD. Compare to the editions where rest healing was a few points per day, where healing resources were actually pooled together.

Furthermore, in 5e compared to 4th ed (and 3rd ed in some cases), defensive-capable classes are much less "sticky". This leads to damage being spread around the party a lot more, rather than the Defender-type classes being able to focus much of the incoming damage upon themselves. In those editions, temp HP given to those classes would almost definitely be used, and thus count as "party temp HP", whereas in 5e there is no guarantee that the character you had just given temp HP to would be the one who would be taking damage. The Moon Druid's temp HP for example can't be considered the party's temp HP because the Mood Druid can't guarantee that she is absorbing damage that would otherwise be applied to the Sorceror for example.

The only scenarios where your base assumptions are valid, are those where each character in the entire party is taking constant low-level damage for long enough to seriously deplete all of them during a single encounter. This is a rather rare occurrence: it is more likely that someone will go down due to a bad position or bad luck/crits while some of the rest of the group are relatively healthy.

In short, 5e is probably the edition where those assumptions are the least valid.

Killing PC is not the goal of DnD. And even then they come back with an new pc.
DM should focus on mission failure/success.

Libramarian said:

I know what I want, thanks! I'm very concerned with fairness and conflicts of interest while DMing. I'm confident in my ability to run a high risk, high reward game where PCs die without the players thinking that I had an inappropriate influence on the outcome.

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My opinion does not matter in your games. The only opinions that matter are those of you and your players.

However, you will always have an undue influence in the outcome of a game when you are the DM. You make the rules, stack the deck, deal the cards and tell the players when they can play their cards. An interesting question: If this is a concern, why is it a concern? What does the answer to that question say about your group?

As for the scenario I described assuming success: To an extent, yes, and to an extent, no. We started with the premise that the foes in the adventure were not deadly threats to the PCs. Unless the Dice Gods are cranky or the PCs do something cringe-worthy, they'll survive. However, what happens if the NPC friend dies? If they have to kill townsfolk to get to the vampire? If the We're rat gets away the first time the PCs approach? This goes back to the concept of what is failure.

Libramarian said:

TL;DR: If I make it easier to kill characters, do hard-to-kill builds become OP?

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No. At least not if you adjust death saves.

Something to keep in mind with the bear barbarian and druid. Their AC is generally crappy. So while they can take extra hits, they get hit more. That 70 THP is closer to 30 THP.

Libramarian said:

[MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION] Thanks, great post. That's the kind of deep system knowledge I'm looking for here. You didn't touch on the Druid's Wildshape temp HP though; do you not think that's a concern? It looks like that makes them really hard to kill. I think I'm OK with summoning being really powerful (I like summoners). In general I am good with this changing player strategy and making different strategies a bit better or worse. I just want this pressure to be relatively equally distributed across classes, with no characters having a massive undeserved advantage just because of their class. I'm sure you know what I mean.

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The druid's wildshape temp HP is very relevant, and so is his ability to cast Polymorph. Overall I find druids have a very deep bench in terms of tactics and options for survivability. I didn't happen to mention them all because I tend to take some things for granted, e.g. cast Fog Cloud for heavy obscurement and then shapeshift into a Giant Constrictor Snake with blindsight, after having the mage cast Mage Armor on you. Now you have advantage on attacks and enemies have disadvantage to attack your pretty-decent AC, and anyone you hit is restrained even after the Fog Cloud drops; and enemies don't get opportunity attacks on you but you get opportunity attacks (at advantage) on them. It's pretty killer for something that only costs one first-level spell.