D&D General D&D without Death. Is it possible? (+)

[DND_Reborn]

A bit of background first:

I am a pretty mellow person in general. I like spirited competition (sports, etc.) but abhor violence really. I've gotten to the point where I don't watch movies or play video games with violence just for the sake of violence and killing in general has bothered me for years to the point I often consider becoming a vegetarian but it would be extremely difficult given the people I live with.

On the drive home tonight, I was reflecting on D&D specifically. The rules of course are at 0 hit points a creature is dying, and most DMs just say it is dead, allowing (generally) only PCs to make death saves. I've posted before about alternatives for 0 hit points, how it could just mean "defeat" in most cases, whether that leads to surrender, fleeing, or whatever, just not death.

So, like always, I am curious: does anyone play D&D so that even the creatures your PCs encounter aren't actually killed, or at the very least only rarely when it is important to the story?

 

[Retreater]

Get the buy-in from your group and do what works with you. My experience is that the game gets more gruesome when played "0 hp = is surrender/unconscious/etc." Because then the characters have to tackle with killing prisoners, torturing, etc.
If you get your group to agree to it, it should work fine, but otherwise it could make the situation even worse.
If you don't like violence, consider if there's something that you'd be okay with the group killing (non-sentient beings, undead, constructs, elementals, etc.) If you don't like combat at all, you can always try a game system where it's not the focus.

 

[payn]

Low amounts of violence and death, sure. No amounts of violence and death, no.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

A bit of background first:

I am a pretty mellow person in general. I like spirited competition (sports, etc.) but abhor violence really. I've gotten to the point where I don't watch movies or play video games with violence just for the sake of violence and killing in general has bothered me for years to the point I often consider becoming a vegetarian but it would be extremely difficult given the people I live with.

On the drive home tonight, I was reflecting on D&D specifically. The rules of course are at 0 hit points a creature is dying, and most DMs just say it is dead, allowing (generally) only PCs to make death saves. I've posted before about alternatives for 0 hit points, how it could just mean "defeat" in most cases, whether that leads to surrender, fleeing, or whatever, just not death.

So, like always, I am curious: does anyone play D&D so that even the creatures your PCs encounter aren't actually killed, or at the very least only rarely when it is important to the story?

I play with a rule that every time a PC drops an enemy to 0 hp, the creature is defeated but still alive (with the tacit understanding that they wont come back to stab the players in the back) and the players has to use an Action to deal a killing blow, contrary to the usual where a player had to say that his hits are non-lethal. Same with enemies: they can take a full Action to finish off a character at 0 hp if they want, putting some weight behind the choice of giving death to a living creature.

I does bring a new feeling on death in the game. When a player specify he's going for a deathly attack, that means he really want that specific target dead. If a player just go about and kills every creatures he confronts, his party might call him on that; they are travelling with a blood-thirsty warrior. And when a PC dies, it is much more meaningful because there's usually hasnt been that many dead person on the field.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I've thought about a design for my world (as another thread suggested once) about having fiends be my primary adversaries to be defeated, at which point they would be sent back to their home plane.

Most of my players are pretty good about this sort of thing. We had one who was a murderhobo really, but I asked him to leave because I could tell his style of play simply didn't match the rest of ours. Hopefully he found a group more to his liking.

FWIW I have played for over 40 years now and done more than my share of blatant killing in the game, but for some reason as I get older I have more and more difficulty justifying it--even in a game.

I try to keep my game more about role-playing than just rolling dice, so we typically have maybe 2-3 fights per session, unless it is a dungeon crawl or infiltration, in which case the body count can get gruesome.

One thing I was thinking was a blow would only make you dying at 0 hp if it was a critical hit, otherwise you would just be unconscious. Creatures would flee or surrender in many cases. And yes, the players would have the issue about to do with them....

 

[Retreater]

I try to keep my game more about role-playing than just rolling dice, so we typically have maybe 2-3 fights per session, unless it is a dungeon crawl or infiltration, in which case the body count can get gruesome.

So here's what I've found, coming from a long history of D&D specifically.
If you want a group to stop being murder-hobos or prone to violence, you make the game very punishing in combat. When healing is hard to come by, injuries are lasting, and death or dismemberment is a fair chance of happening when you start swinging a blade, players start looking for peaceful solutions. In my Warhammer Fantasy game we've had 2-3 combats since we've started the campaign. And even then, they usually end in surrender or fleeing.
It's 100% because combat is deadly. Characters have injuries for months after fighting with some brigands.

 

[jmartkdr2]

If handwaving it doesn't work for you, (we usually just ignore the dead mooks like an 80's action movie) I think you'll need a worldbuilding reason why no one really dies.

I would suggest getting weird with it: you're all summoned spirits in a realm of testing - maybe the pc's are einherjar in Valhalla testing themselves against demons by fighting in various planes of battle, theoretically getting ready for Ragnarok but no one knows when that'll start. Go full isekai while you're at it - every npc knows they're side-characters in the real story. If there's a tpk, you lose all your gear but return to the Hall where you started. Demons you killed might come back and fight you again - and they're more likely to have professional respect than real hatred.

 

[Baron Opal II]

You always need conflict, and stakes to win or protect.

These stakes do not need to be the life of the character, but can be wealth, prestige, rights, martial or magical techniques, &c.
As mentioned above, there can be several means of stating "defeat" conditions, or making combat a sub-optimal or even foolhardy choice.

 

[CleverNickName]

Sure, anything is possible. It might not be preferable, though, depending on your group.

I find the game more satisfying when risk is involved, and the risk of my character dying is a big one. There are other risks, though: the risk of losing my abilities, the risk of losing my magical Whatever, and the risk of my hometown getting overrun by zombies are just a few. So if you're gonna remove the prospect of character death from the game, you'd need to up the ante on other types of risk for me.

 

[payn]

Adventure design is huge in this regard as well. If the PCs have options to avoid combat and/or killing it helps a lot. For example, an ambush the PCs can escape, or a dangerous path they can bypass. If obstacles are in the PCs way, give them ways to can work around them. If the enemies are the obstacle, then its likely you are going to have a murder fest incoming.