Like anything else, it is a matter of how far PC death is taken, and whether it is punitive in the hands of the DM, random, or avoided. Each table is going to be different. As a player, it is a good discussion to have with your DM in reference to preferences. When I first started off as a DM, I did use it as a punitive measure for the party acting stupid in my mind, or as a way to get back at the players for smart play. I then progressed to viewing it as a random thing, and as long as I was honest as a DM to let the dice determine the outcome then I was satisfied with the results. More recently I see a character death as road block in the story. As DM I have a stop in play to deel with and try to keep the character alive as much as possible. I still don't go to the lengths of a 'care bear' DM to avoid death completely.
D&D 5E Where does the punitive approach to pc death come from?
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Nebulous
Legend
Wait, what? How could a 19 level disparity in any edition of D&D, or ANY game, not be a big deal? It's fine if that worked for your game, but I don't think that was something that generally happened in most groups.
MasterTrancer
Explorer
Hmm...so, why should the group not choose to go questing to have their valiant companion, who held the hallway, resurrected?
The difference here is between what I like to call "lawful" and "chaotic" storylines. I'll quote myself from another board:
Honestly, I think the divide is between what I'm going to call "lawful" and "chaotic" storylines. In lawful storylines, the idea is for more or less the same party to progress through the adventure from start to finish, using things that happen early on to build up to the climax. The expectation is that the party might possibly lose a member or two along the way, but not for a TPK necessitating a completely new set of characters. The storylines need not be linear, but this style does support linear design. Chaotic storylines, on the other hand, are more likely to show up in sandbox settings. There may be a linear story thread, but it's not important for the same characters to experience the whole story, so having the original party replaced wholesale doesn't make much difference. Sometimes there isn't a pre-planned story thread at all, just whatever happens when the PCs affect the existing setup. I would say this latter way of creating game stories is just as popular in some circles (particularly those devoted to reducing GM prep time) as the string of appropriate-level encounters is in others.
Read more: http://happyjacks.proboards.com/thread/3752/tpks?page=2#ixzz3RvCeHIia
I've had experience of both start at the beginning and current level.
Back in the day (AD&D) there was a campaign that ran on the other table from ours, on the rare occasion that we had no DM they were happy enough to let us in on the game, but we started with 1st level characters. As they were 10-12th level we would last half an hour or so. They also had a rule about your next character being at the same level, but at minimum experience. I think I played with then three times and never had a sniff of second level.
In a 3e campaign the rule was that your next character was the same level, which lead to a race to the trap whenever someone came back with a much better optimised character for the level. One session when I wasn't at the table the DM ended up with a TPK in a bar brawl.
Neither was a particularly successful experience from my perspective.
In an ideal world I'd start people at first, and I have a group that are happy with that. It does seem less of an issue in 5e that 3e for instance. As a compromise starting them at the start of that tier would seem a more forgiving fit.
Back in the day (AD&D) there was a campaign that ran on the other table from ours, on the rare occasion that we had no DM they were happy enough to let us in on the game, but we started with 1st level characters. As they were 10-12th level we would last half an hour or so. They also had a rule about your next character being at the same level, but at minimum experience. I think I played with then three times and never had a sniff of second level.
In a 3e campaign the rule was that your next character was the same level, which lead to a race to the trap whenever someone came back with a much better optimised character for the level. One session when I wasn't at the table the DM ended up with a TPK in a bar brawl.
Neither was a particularly successful experience from my perspective.
In an ideal world I'd start people at first, and I have a group that are happy with that. It does seem less of an issue in 5e that 3e for instance. As a compromise starting them at the start of that tier would seem a more forgiving fit.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
If I may ask--what, exactly, do you mean by "start of that tier"? Because from what I recall, 5e has a huge middle and relatively small top and bottom tiers. Level 10 characters trying to carry a level 3 character is probably going to be a challenge, even in 5e! But if you're using "tiers" different than the ones I recall from the L&L articles, this might not be so bad.
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The Crimson Binome
Hero
From what I recall, the DMG broke things up into four or five tiers.
iserith
Magic Wordsmith
I think a good goal as DM is to be able to manipulate tension in the game well enough that failure that doesn't involve the stakes of PC life and death is just as exciting as failure that does. With skills like that, you have truly captured your players' buy-in and engagement.
I like a good life-or-death situation as much as the next guy, but to hear some tell the tale, without that risk there is no game. I disagree. Death is just one way to fail and some failures are worse than death.
I like a good life-or-death situation as much as the next guy, but to hear some tell the tale, without that risk there is no game. I disagree. Death is just one way to fail and some failures are worse than death.
Fanaelialae
Legend
The tiers are described on PHB pg 15.
Basically levels 1-4, 5-10, 11-16, and 17-20 are considered to be in the same tier.
EDIT:
IMO, a 5th level character adventuring with a 10th level party would likely be challenging, but feasible. Plus, he'd be leveling much faster than the rest of them (assuming he starts 5th level when they start 10th, he'll be level halfway to level 8 by the time they hit level 11).
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Such strong normative and empirical claims!
What is the evidence that "only by having taken that risk and survived are high level PCs truly appreciated." I mean, there are lots of things in life that I truly love and appreciate (I think of my family first of all) and I do my best to avoid exposing them to risks because of that. In my experience as a GM and player, what makes a character be truly appreciated and thought of fondly by a player is that the PC participated in a memorable campaign. What makes a campaign memorable can be a range of things - the story of the campaign is an important element but not the only factor - but I've never felt that degree of risk of PC death was a part of that.
In the real world, there are many memorable events, and challenges, and confrontations, where the principle stake is not the death of one of the protagonists. In fiction the same is true. The risk of death doesn't seem to me to have any special importance as a stake in an RPG. And if it is the sole thing at stake, or the only thing that matters to the participants, that suggests to me that the other possible sorts of stakes aren't really being brought into focus in play.
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