New WotC Article - Deadly Dice

[Lwaxy]

A narrative-heavy storytelling game might appreciate failure, but character death is going to be off the table for them.

Maybe in some cases. But that's an assumption clearly not fitting all story based groups. One of our longest campaigns would definitely qualify as storytelling, but it had the most character deaths, too. There is only one of the original PCs left.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Fun and excitement is not created by character death. It is created by getting as close to death as possible and teetering on the brink - but still winning. If character death is mechanically engineered to be rare then you remove the fear of death. If character death is always a very real threat but the threat can be mitigated by appropriate caution or imaginative gameplay then the game is where it needs to be. Foolish behavior will get your PC killed. Failure to heed appropriate DM warnings will get your PC killed. Use of clever ideas (or perhaps just being able to run away fast) and not just employment of FORMULATED abilities and rote procedures should save your bacon if you're in it up to your eyeballs.

The more tightly the mechanics control what happens the more you take the excitement of gambling with your characters survival out of the game. The more you let random rolls of the dice swing combat in unanticipatable directions the less your choices as a player are going to be able to affect survival. Reaching the ideal balance somewhere between the two extremes is the ART of game design.

 

[Kraydak]

At a 1% chance of death per significant fight, 2 significant fights/game, 30 games/year, you have about a 55% survival rate over one year. 1% chance of death per significant fight... isn't really that significant a fight. You have to get to *really* tame encounters for death to not be a massive factor in any vaguely long-running campaign.

Which is why I'm aggressively in favor of (reasonably)-accessible resurrection.

 

[ExploderWizard]

At a 1% chance of death per significant fight, 2 significant fights/game, 30 games/year, you have about a 55% survival rate over one year. 1% chance of death per significant fight... isn't really that significant a fight. You have to get to *really* tame encounters for death to not be a massive factor in any vaguely long-running campaign.

Which is why I'm aggressively in favor of (reasonably)-accessible resurrection.

What is a "significant" fight? The deadliness of an encounter can be influenced by far more than just the mechanical statistics of the opposition.

Any time your PC is engaged in combat to the death is significant.

 

[Hassassin]

Uncommon. Other forms of failure and loss are more common, but the threat is always there and characters do die.

I don't like readily available resurrection, though, so when death happens it is final more often than usual in D&D.

 

[KidSnide]

Meh. That's why there was more to my post. I don't think its JUST a dislike of Save or Die. I think most people play with death being rare or super-rare. Heck, even I'm guilty of this myself, as my last few campaigns I've run have been with players who prefer rare-death and I can only cram "my type of fun" down their throats so much.

I understand that people can dislike save or die and still like the idea of character death, but I think MOST players and DMs (of those posting anywhere on the internet) prefer to have as little character death as possible.

Which is why the poll results are shocking.

I think character death is one of those things where there is a big gap between actual preference and reported preference. Folks like the feeling of danger. They like the excitement of not knowing if their characters can pull it through or not.

But the presence of excitement isn't the same thing as actual risk of failure. People like action movies. It's exciting and "dangerous" but the good guys always win. The excitement comes from the creating the illusion that the protagonists might fail, even though they were scripted to succeed. Nobody (or almost nobody) wants to play D&D with a script, but I think almost everyone wants to feel as if they might lose vastly more frequently than they actually lose. In-combat healing is a classic example of this dynamic. Because PCs typically have access to much more in-combat healing than their opponents, you can have situations where individual PCs are at (or past) the edge of going down while keeping the party very far away from the edge of defeat. That sort of dynamic gives most players a desirably heightened sense of danger.

Of course, creating the feeling of danger is very dependent on the table. What works for some people doesn't work for others, and some D&D players are analytic enough that statistical illusion doesn't work well and it's hard to create the feeling of danger without danger itself. But the point remains that in a survey situation, it's hard to tell if people are voting for an actual level of danger in their games or a perceived level of danger in their games.

-KS

 

[Kraydak]

What is a "significant" fight? The deadliness of an encounter can be influenced by far more than just the mechanical statistics of the opposition.

Any time your PC is engaged in combat to the death is significant.

A 6th level party getting jumped by 6 1st level bandits need not apply. The point is that almost *any* level of risk above 0 rapidly becomes a guarantee of PC death(s) over a moderately long (year length) campaign. In other words, options

"Character death is rare, but some encounters present a real threat of death."
and
"Characters shouldn’t die unless they do something really foolish."

still need contingency plans for unexpected PC death (Raise Dead is good enough), and option

"Characters shouldn’t die unless the story calls for it."

needs some really strong rule reinforcement to achieve.

 

[Endur]

Further furthermore, there's the issue of a lot of intelligent predators and non-intelligent creatures carrying diseases such as lycanthropy or a zombie plague. The zombie may stop attacking when your character is unconcious, but when you wake your flesh might be mostly green and you've got a craving for human flesh. Likewise under the next full moon you might find yourself hairier than usual!

While I wouldn't mind some rules on how to handle TPKO, I think no matter which way you cut it, the range of space for TPKO is very narrow and runs a high risk of leading to "worse than death" situations afterward.

So I look at diseases such as lycanthropy or zombie plague as a source for role playing. So I look at those as a good thing to include in a game, even if the recipient is having issues. I look at the diseases as being better than petrification, since you can still role play... you aren't a statute that is helpless.

I would also correct your comment on "worse than death." I believe you really mean, "worse than revolving door." I don't believe you mean "worse than final death." Unless you view of the loss of control to the diseasees as worse than just having your character slain and removed from the game.

 

[Sunseeker]

So I look at diseases such as lycanthropy or zombie plague as a source for role playing. So I look at those as a good thing to include in a game, even if the recipient is having issues. I look at the diseases as being better than petrification, since you can still role play... you aren't a statute that is helpless.

I totally agree, in fact I have been building a campaign which would at some point involve werewolves, and this topic has made me consider that a player actually contracting lycanthropy would make for a good thing to do(I was fairly neutral on the subject before as I don't like 4e's Lycanthropy). I would probably use a Pathfinder-esque template for it.

I would also correct your comment on "worse than death." I believe you really mean, "worse than revolving door." I don't believe you mean "worse than final death." Unless you view of the loss of control to the diseasees as worse than just having your character slain and removed from the game.

Well, there's several levels of "death" in D&D.
There's "death" as in your character died and you get to make a new one.
And then there's "death" as in your character died and now you're out of the game.

I think that total, permanent, loss of control is about equivalent to the latter, while temporary loss of control(confinement/capture) is about as bad as the first.

 

[Endur]

At a 1% chance of death per significant fight, 2 significant fights/game, 30 games/year, you have about a 55% survival rate over one year. 1% chance of death per significant fight... isn't really that significant a fight. You have to get to *really* tame encounters for death to not be a massive factor in any vaguely long-running campaign.

Which is why I'm aggressively in favor of (reasonably)-accessible resurrection.

A "save or die" fight might have a chance of death far higher than 1% (depending on the mechanics, could be 5-50%). The more save or die type encounters, the greater the pressure for raise dead and resurrection access.