D&D 5E Instant Death. Am I the only one who experienced this or what?

[Asisreo]

Every so often, there are questions about the deadliness of D&D and how to improve it. From short adventuring days to yo-yo healing to instant-win control spells.

When I see these questions, especially coming out of a recent game that I DM, I feel like I'm somehow playing a different game. So, I want to know if there's any way that perhaps this forum is making the game artificially easier than the designers intended.

Do you check instant-death damage? If your player is a level 1 rogue and gets hit with 18 damage, do you tell the rogue they instantly died with no saves after?

When the level 5 unconscious barbarian takes 50 damage due to an autocrit increasing the average damage of a CR 5 creature like a triceratops and they roll quite high on damage, do you tell them revivify or roll a new character?


I feel instant death contributes alot to not only preventing yo-yo healing but also incentivizing in-combat healing of significance more than just Healing Word and the general reminder that their characters could die without any prevention could be reason enough to have them make more careful decisions.

 

[Weiley31]

Isn't Instant Death a variant rule?

 

[commandercrud]

Instant death is not a variant rule. I've always used it and it has happened a handful of times. Dozens of time within a couple HP of it happening.

 

[Mannahnin]

We're just talking about damage which would take the character to negative = their max HP (if negative HP existed in 5E), right?

Of course. I haven't had it come up much, though.

 

[iserith]

Almost all deaths in my games have been from instant deaths. This is about 10% of the characters across all campaigns. I guess you could say I'm decimating them.

The remaining deaths tend to be hitting a PC while they are dying then the PC failing their final death save.

 

[Charlaquin]

I’ve had it happen a fair few times, but mostly with 1st level characters, and never with characters higher than 3rd.

I do think a lot of DMs make the game easier than intended and then complain it’s too easy. But mostly because they don’t push for attrition-based challenge. They try to do the one super deadly encounter per day thing, and the way 5e is designed just makes such encounters pretty easy to survive.

 

[Asisreo]

We're just talking about damage which would take the character to negative = their max HP (if negative HP existed in 5E), right?

Of course. I haven't had it come up much, though.

There is no such thing as negative HP in D&D, correct.

Its essentially whenever the damage = current HP + max HP.

I'm a bit curious, do you often play with medium encounters? Prefer using average damage? Never play with low HP PC's?

I'm trying to imagine a playstyle where this doesn't show up at least once in a typical 1-10 campaign.

 

[commandercrud]

I’ve had it happen a fair few times, but mostly with 1st level characters, and never with characters higher than 3rd.

I do think a lot of DMs make the game easier than intended and then complain it’s too easy. But mostly because they don’t push for attrition-based challenge. They try to do the one super deadly encounter per day thing, and the way 5e is designed just makes such encounters pretty easy to survive.

I agree. Not tracking encumbrance, food, arrows, etc. all lead to overcompensating for the game being too easy by using stronger monsters than necessary which tends to lead to TPKs, followed by complaints that the CR system doesn't work and the game is too swingy.

 

[jayoungr]

Happened once in a game where I was a player. I think we were level 4 or 5. The sorcerer got blasted with blue dragon breath. Some of the tankier characters in our party could have taken the hit, but it was an instakill for that character.

 

[Oofta]

Happened to my PC. Wasn't really a surprise because I was attempting to play an elf.