D&D 5E Super Deadly 5E?

[Oofta]

This particular point sticks with me as I read through the thread. It seems like your biggest issue is a 5th level Druid exclusive spell.

If that is the case (and your players aren't worried about the random nature of reincarnate bringing them back as a race that ruins all their build plans) then why not simply house-rule that Reincarnate needs to have an intact body just like Raise Dead does?

I mean, if every solution is met with "But Reincarnate" then is seems like addressing that is the way forward for you.

If the group is less than level 9 or doesn't have a druid in the party, how many level 9+ druids are there? How willing are they to help? The component costs are already 1,000 GP. Can you get it done within 10 days?

There would be a lot of barriers in a lot of campaigns. Unless there's someone in the party that can do it, IMHO if it's easy to bring someone back from the dead it's because the DM has enabled it.

 

[Chaosmancer]

If the group is less than level 9 or doesn't have a druid in the party, how many level 9+ druids are there? How willing are they to help? The component costs are already 1,000 GP. Can you get it done within 10 days?

There would be a lot of barriers in a lot of campaigns. Unless there's someone in the party that can do it, IMHO if it's easy to bring someone back from the dead it's because the DM has enabled it.

I don't disagree. I just wondered since they mentioned that one spell so many times if instead of looking at the entire system, if changing that one spell would give them an effect they wanted.

 

[Magister Ludorum]

So, when you DM do you actually do this or are you just offering it as a non-solution?

Because IME DMs will joke about it, but rarely have I seen it done. Many players I've seen react to DMs who actually do this get pretty upset.

The DM I am playing with now has done it and will do it again, I am sure. I don't mind it as a player because when my character's HP is getting low, I am responsible for understanding the threat of being killed via the auto-crits on death saves. If my character reaches 0 HP and falls unconscious at the feet of a frost giant, I know that giant could kill me in one turn--luckily, it will likely have the other PCs to contend with at the time.

In fact, several weeks ago, this was how our party was captured in a BBEG fight. We were losing, only one character still up and fighting and out-numbered 5-1. It was a looming TPK, but the DM rolled for how the BBEG wanted to handle it. Roll-high, we were captives; roll low, they killed us all. Luckily for the campaign, he rolled a 16 on the d20, and the last character was forced to surrender and we were captives, etc. had to escape/ revolt yadda yadda yadda and so on.

Intelligent monsters in my game begin using coup de grace as soon as the first character they dropped gets back up due to healing. Smart monsters target healers first so they don't have to play whack-a-mole.

 

[prabe]

@Blue I get what you're saying, and the point you (nicely) expanded on was part of what I was angling toward, I think. I personally am happier sticking to a number of encounters that make sense in a broader context than I am trying to shove six or eight into a day, but I will say that a gantlet where the party has no opportunity to rest can sap their resources in less than a session, and can make more sense than just cramming encounters into a day.

 

[DND_Reborn]

In our current game, we only had a character reincarnated once, and that was because the druid in our party had made friends with an Archdruid (random encounter, FWIW) we had encountered and helped. A simple Sending spell, and he came to use to pay us back for the assistance we lent him.

Later on, the druid in the party had reached 9th (he is now 13th) so it is always an option.

By the time the party has a 9th level cleric or druid or whatever to raise or reincarnate, 1000 gp is not an issue at any table IME and with the ability to teleport (in earlier editions) and similar magics now, and with Gentle repose the 10 days is never an issue either.

I bring up Reincarnate because as an answer to the situations others have posed where returning a dead companion to life was not supposed to be possible (or at least very hard). It isn't hard really once you get past the lower levels.

People seem to be missing the point that killing PC's isn't hard. Any DM can do it, we all know that. Re-read the OP, I acknowledged that for survivability rate, "much of it depends greatly on the DM's style"

Unless you decide to run your game at session 0 that money will be tight, magic is rare, departed souls don't come back easily, or whatever, the problem is keeping them dead. None of those options work for me because that isn't my style of game that I generally like to run. And, if players know as per the game coming back is pretty easy after those harder lower levels, "death" isn't really a threat.

In 1E, things like having to make a resurrection survival check was part of the game, losing a level was a hefty price for dying and coming back (not to mention the XP for not being in the game, unless the DM felt awarding the 1000 XP was justifiable), and so on. Of course I can house-rule something like this as well.

The point of the OP was asking what do others do that make the game and fear of hitting 0 hp and possibly dying more of a concern to the player. Many people have offered some good suggestions and house-rules they use, some of which I found appealing and good for the type of game I want to run, and others not so.

If anyone has other ideas, I'd love to hear them.

 

[prabe]

@dnd4vr I think I'd be inclined toward other failure states. If "dead" isn't a permanent failure state, then offer something else that is. Maybe dying isn't permanent, but the time it'll take to come back (even a day before the cleric can prepare resurrection) is long enough that success isn't possible. Or, whatever might kill them might consume their souls (meaning they wouldn't be available to come back). I personally would wait on that last until I was about to end the campaign (seems like whatever's doing that is probably enough of a BBEG that you can wrap things after that fight, whatever the outcome).

If nothing else, you might want to look at the sorts of consequences (whether that's game jargon or not) that the various narrative games offer, when character death is off the table. They're not really the games I prefer to play, but there may be ideas there.

 

[DND_Reborn]

@dnd4vr I think I'd be inclined toward other failure states. If "dead" isn't a permanent failure state, then offer something else that is. Maybe dying isn't permanent, but the time it'll take to come back (even a day before the cleric can prepare resurrection) is long enough that success isn't possible. Or, whatever might kill them might consume their souls (meaning they wouldn't be available to come back). I personally would wait on that last until I was about to end the campaign (seems like whatever's doing that is probably enough of a BBEG that you can wrap things after that fight, whatever the outcome).

If nothing else, you might want to look at the sorts of consequences (whether that's game jargon or not) that the various narrative games offer, when character death is off the table. They're not really the games I prefer to play, but there may be ideas there.

That's why my initial idea was to continue with imposing a level of exhaustion whenever hp reaches 0. Exhaustion is not easy to get rid of without time generally. At higher levels, it isn't as bad of course, but if a couple characters go down in a fight, the immediate effect if they come back for the same fight, they will have penalties.

I also really like the idea that the overflow damage when you go to 0 HP reduces your maximum HP until you can get in a long rest. This way you either need strong magic or rest before you can fight at full HP, which discourages players from putting their PCs into the fray then.

Finally, if I keep the death save mechanic, delaying the rolls until someone checks on the unconscious PC keeps metagaming out of it.

As far as stopping PCs from coming back, some sort of penalty/house-rule will have to be used as there is nothing in 5E that stops it as is. While the flavor-aspects don't appeal to me as much personally, returning to more mechanical ones. All-in-all, I just want something "strong" (?) enough that players will finally realize dying might just be the end.

 

[prabe]

Sounds as though you already have some thought in this, but I'll point out a couple things anyway.

That's why my initial idea was to continue with imposing a level of exhaustion whenever hp reaches 0. Exhaustion is not easy to get rid of without time generally. At higher levels, it isn't as bad of course, but if a couple characters go down in a fight, the immediate effect if they come back for the same fight, they will have penalties.

I'd be careful about this. The penalties for higher levels of exhaustion are deeply unpleasant (in the sense they tend to render characters incompetent) and have the distinct whiff of a death-spiral to them, if the characters need to keep going in spite of the exhaustion.

As far as stopping PCs from coming back, some sort of penalty/house-rule will have to be used as there is nothing in 5E that stops it as is. While the flavor-aspects don't appeal to me as much personally, returning to more mechanical ones. All-in-all, I just want something "strong" (?) enough that players will finally realize dying might just be the end.

And I'll point out that if whatever might be killing the characters (or the environment around whatever might be killing them) is eating souls, it's not just fluff keeping them from coming back. The soul needs to be free--that's in the spell description, and therefore mechanical.

 

[S'mon]

This particular point sticks with me as I read through the thread. It seems like your biggest issue is a 5th level Druid exclusive spell.

If that is the case (and your players aren't worried about the random nature of reincarnate bringing them back as a race that ruins all their build plans) then why not simply house-rule that Reincarnate needs to have an intact body just like Raise Dead does?

I mean, if every solution is met with "But Reincarnate" then is seems like addressing that is the way forward for you.

Just rule that a blood splash is not a 'body part'! And of course pre-mortem hair clippings are not body parts - they were not part of the dead body, and hair isn't a body part anyway. None of that requires changes to the RAW.

In my Red Hand of Doom campaign there was no question of reincarnating the two PCs eaten by a red dragon in a burning collapsing tower (the dragon flew off after killing them). Conversely in my high magic Runelords campaign the PCs got lucky* and were able to recover the wall-mounted heads of a PC and NPC eaten by the Kreeg ogre clan, and reincarnate them. I think that's the only time I've seen it used.

*There was a chance on d6 that the Kreegs mounted the heads on their wall.

 

[S'mon]

The point of the OP was asking what do others do that make the game and fear of hitting 0 hp and possibly dying more of a concern to the player. Many people have offered some good suggestions and house-rules they use, some of which I found appealing and good for the type of game I want to run, and others not so.

If anyone has other ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Characters who die and come back as undead can't be raised per RAW, so being killed by wraiths etc ought to be scary. Shadows can easily kill PCs via STR drain and make them non-raisable.