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

[MGibster]

If you remove death from the table D&D looks a lot like 5th edition.

 

[Oofta]

If you remove death from the table D&D looks a lot like 5th edition.

IMHO only if you're talking completely random, pointless death because of a single bad roll of the dice. Killer DM vs player is a thing of the past for most people, I don't think that's a bad thing

Then again, I've never allowed raise dead to be as simple as casting a spell, and resurrection is pretty much unheard of. Where perma-death is uncommon in most campaigns at higher levels, rate of fatalities is something I've discussed with players in pretty much every edition from 2E on. If your PC dies in my campaign odds are they're really dead no matter what level they are.

If you want to kill off PCs just turn it up to 11, focus fire and double tap.

 

[Reynard]

The metric for "good" is not well defined, so I choose not to try to speculate on the relative quality of anyone's home game vs a work that was on the New York Times Bestseller list and that spawned a movie that grossed a half-billion dollars.

I mean, if that's the metric, Michael Bay is owed a truckload of Oscars.

 

[Oofta]

I mean, if that's the metric, Michael Bay is owed a truckload of Oscars.

Last time I checked, the reason corporations make movie is to make money so their definition of good is probably different from yours. For that matter, I find many award winning movies boring as heck. Not that I'm a fan of Michael Bay (even I have some standards) but sometimes I enjoy really stupid movies now and then.

I guess my point is that nobody is forcing people to go to movies. Parasite was the most recent winner for oscar for best movie but it's gross wouldn't have even put it in the top 20 last year. People vote with their feet and money to purchase tickets.

But this isn't particularly relevant to the topic at hand so have a good one.

 

[zarionofarabel]

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).

How can killing a PC be hard? Killing a PC should be super easy, just have two dozen Red Dragons, thirty Stone Giants, and seven hundred Ogres show up all at the same time. That should do the trick!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

D&D needs to have a risk of failure.

That risk of failure absolutely does not need to be death.

Yes! This. Exactly this. Char death is a form of failure...I just find it a very boring form of failure. Loss, grief, rage, greed, ambition, devotion...these are motives that define much more interesting failure conditions.

So, for me: high death rates → low character investment; low death rates → high character investment.
<snip>
So, for me: high death rates → emphasis on avoiding death; low death rates → emphasis on role-playing

Well said, and succinctly summarized. Completely agree.

How can killing a PC be hard? Killing a PC should be super easy, just have two dozen Red Dragons, thirty Stone Giants, and seven hundred Ogres show up all at the same time. That should do the trick!

I believe what was meant is that, even with the extremely loosey-goosey "balance" of 5e, most players would identify this as bovine excrement and call it out in not so many words. The game provides a very approximate idea of an "earned" death, and at higher levels this is not necessarily easily reached without landing in the bovine excrement zone.

 

[zarionofarabel]

I believe what was meant is that, even with the extremely loosey-goosey "balance" of 5e, most players would identify this as bovine excrement and call it out in not so many words. The game provides a very approximate idea of an "earned" death, and at higher levels this is not necessarily easily reached without landing in the bovine excrement zone.

Sounds like I would not enjoy 5e.

 

[prabe]

I believe what was meant is that, even with the extremely loosey-goosey "balance" of 5e, most players would identify this as bovine excrement and call it out in not so many words. The game provides a very approximate idea of an "earned" death, and at higher levels this is not necessarily easily reached without landing in the bovine excrement zone.

You can kill PCs in 5E, even at high-ish levels, but once you get past the low-level fragility you need to work awfully hard--and it's easier to have a TPK than to just kill one or maybe two. Which isn't meant as argument so much as clarification.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Sounds like I would not enjoy 5e.

Hard to say. So much of it depends on what the DM fancies. 5e openly makes literally any discussion of its rules require an explicit "but your DM might do otherwise"/"the rules are a suggestion" disclaimer.

 

[Reynard]

.

I believe what was meant is that, even with the extremely loosey-goosey "balance" of 5e, most players would identify this as bovine excrement and call it out in not so many words. The game provides a very approximate idea of an "earned" death, and at higher levels this is not necessarily easily reached without landing in the bovine excrement zone.

This, yes. If you are "playing fair" in regards to encounter design and enemy tactics, 5e is not very deadly at all. The CR system is really elastic and imprecise and PCs are robust. That isn't necessarily bad, especially in context of this discussion, but it can be frustrating if you are aiming for a more desperate tone.