D&D General What does D&D look like without Death on the Table?

[Weiley31]

There is no PC death in Labyrinth

I forgot there is a Labyrinth rpg.

 

[Weiley31]

Player: So I failed that key critical role. My pegasus doesn't die, right?
DM: Actually your pegasus failed it's life defining exam: It is taken to the Rainbow Factory and grinded up to make the world's rainbows. So yes your pegasus died.
Player: 0_____0
DM: Brutally might I add!

 

[Reynard]

Maybe a more concrete question:

Presuming you have taken death off the table, what do you do as DM if the PCs are having a really hard time with some relatively unimportant or random fight and it looks like you are in TPK territory? Do you fudge to let them survive by the skin of their teeth? Do you have NPCs swoop in and save them? Do you have them all "knocked out" and wake up later? Do you apply some other penalty (permanent wounds, etc)?

 

[Reynard]

Like a D&D campaign. As far as understand in most 5e campaigns death happens very infrequently.

Who's campaign? In my campaigns, it is an ever-present threat (although, to be fair, killing PCs above say 5th level in 5E is hard).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Presuming you have taken death off the table, what do you do as DM if the PCs are having a really hard time with some relatively unimportant or random fight and it looks like you are in TPK territory? Do you fudge to let them survive by the skin of their teeth? Do you have NPCs swoop in and save them? Do you have them all "knocked out" and wake up later? Do you apply some other penalty (permanent wounds, etc)?

I never fudge. Ever. I find fudging ruins the game for everyone involved, and have extremely strong opinions about this subject--to the point that I'd rather not discuss it any further. Suffice it to say I never, EVER secretly pretend that rolls or statistics are different from what they actually are. I may openly change things, in the sense of giving the player an open reroll, explicitly saying, "no that's BS, you just hit," or crafting an in-story reason why a creature's statistics change specifically so that the players have a chance to figure it out and understand what's happened.

As for the other methods: It all depends. Using deus ex machina can be beneficial if you already had plans to offer powerful but somehow restrained allies (which I have done in the game I run)--the party actually spearheaded establishing an in-universe lifeline via one of those NPCs. Adjusting a fight by creatively applying the mechanics I built for it is another tool I have employed (not very often, as my players usually surprise me with novel strategies that just obliterate whatever I throw at them!) In that case, they were up against a force that had both lots of small things and one big nasty, and the combo of the two meant they couldn't use their normal strategies to get out of the problem easily. (I had very intentionally tried to make a fight they WOULD have difficulty with, because I felt I wasn't challenging them enough.) After they spiked down the big nasty thing to near-death, I decided to creatively use its life-leeching move (this is DW, so creative use of moves is encouraged) to steal life from its allies, significantly reducing the numbers advantage. Then it became a matter of "can you kill it before it runs away" rather than "can you survive." The party had fun and appreciated that they may need to take numbers disadvantages into account in the future.

I haven't used any of the other tools mentioned yet, but I certainly keep them on the table. I am also willing to let some deaths happen, but have a follow-up adventure where the living work to restore the dead to life, and the dead work to be ready for resurrection when that happens. Again, it's not death in an absolute sense I have a problem with: it is death that is both (a) unexpected AND (b) permanent that is a concern.

 

[iserith]

In my last Eberron game, I took death off the table because it was meant to be like a pulp serial and protagonists shouldn't die in those (unless you're planning on a big return sometime later). So if you died mechanically, you were just "taken out," whatever that meant in context e.g. knocked out, incapacitated, pushed out of the area, or whatever. When the scene was over, you could come back in (however it made the most sense), but suffered the penalty as if you were raised from the dead.

In any other of my games, if you die, you die regardless of whether it was at the villain's hand or a random goblin. I encourage players to have backup PCs on hand in case this occurs (and it does).

 

[Umbran]

That said: if a group decides to treat their PCs like protagonists in a longer story and effectively take the kind of unsatisfying, random death caused by bad die rolls out of the equation, what does a D&D campaign look like?

It may look like all those campaigns in which no character happened to die.

The real question is what it looks like if the players and GM lean into the fact that it is off the table, and actively make use of the conceit?

 

[Reynard]

It may look like all those campaigns in which no character happened to die.

The real question is what it looks like if the players and GM lean into the fact that it is off the table, and actively make use of the conceit?

You can't make such a tantalizing suggestion and just leave it.

Go on...

 

[Oofta]

Maybe a more concrete question:

Presuming you have taken death off the table, what do you do as DM if the PCs are having a really hard time with some relatively unimportant or random fight and it looks like you are in TPK territory? Do you fudge to let them survive by the skin of their teeth? Do you have NPCs swoop in and save them? Do you have them all "knocked out" and wake up later? Do you apply some other penalty (permanent wounds, etc)?

Well, it's been a long time since I've been in that scenario. The party running away making a strategic withdrawal? Sure. If I think something might be too difficult (or it's not something I think they should be taking on in the first place) I try to give them escape route.

There are still a few options in no particular order.

• Don't get to the TPK in the first place. Don't use optimal tactics for the bad guys. Don't focus fire or use an optimal attack. Don't use that ability that just recharged.
• Help arrives at the last moment. That doesn't mean the help are necessarily good guys, sometimes having people help with uncertain or mixed motivations can be a lot of fun. Yes, that group just rescued you, but what are they expecting in return?
• Yep, you died. But wait ... who is that guy paying off the Grim Reaper and what does he mean that he spared you but there's a cost. Variation of the rescue.
• Taken captive, time for a prison break.

While I never say never to a TPK, for whatever reason I've always been able to avoid them for a very long time. Even when it got to the point of the wizard with 2 HP left hiding under the table casting cantrips at that last bugbear. In that case I gave the wizard a cover bonus because the bugbear was over-confident and then one of the other PCs rolled a 20 on their death save.

I just think it's more fun for the players to come close to dying, to threaten them with death than to actually follow through on it. It is, however, something I discuss with the group to get a consensus.

 

[jmartkdr2]

It may look like all those campaigns in which no character happened to die.

The real question is what it looks like if the players and GM lean into the fact that it is off the table, and actively make use of the conceit?

I kinda want to run a campaign in an MMO setting - as in the pc's and npc's are aware that they're in a game that plays by DnD rules. If you're pc dies, the player (who a sort of meta-character) still has an Account and can either make a new character or pay to get the pc rezzed - although probably with level loss or some such.