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

[Krachek]

Once in a while my DM use backward death save to estimate if a monster is still alive, because the context need it.
at the end of a fight I would simply toss a coin to see if a specific monster may still be alive.
but I think the DmG give hint about this already.

 

[DND_Reborn]

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.

Our house-rules make combat already pretty deadly already, just because we prefer combat to be more realistic and injuries linger.

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.

Oh, it isn't that I don't want things to die, more just I don't want every combat to resolve into killing most things.

I find the game more satisfying when risk is involved, and the risk of my character dying is a big one.

Yeah, it is a big one and I don't want to take it off the table. @vincegetorix has some good idea, as do others, and for the most part the more I think about it I like the idea of "dying" only on a critical hit, otherwise 0 hp will be defeat (surrender, flee, etc.).

 

[Lanefan]

Oh, it isn't that I don't want things to die, more just I don't want every combat to resolve into killing most things.

And that's fair enough.

Thing is, without greatly rejigging how D&D runs its hit point system you're somewhat swimming against the tide on this one.

What you'd need is:
--- a much "wider" area between fully functional and dead, for PCs and living monsters* alike, such that it becomes way more possible to knock something out without killing it
--- rules to handle unconsciousness: how it happens, when it happens, the odds of it happening, that sort of thing
--- rules to handle revival from unconsciousness: what types of cures work, how effective they are, etc.
--- resting rules for after someone's been knocked out

The low-hanging design space for adding in that "wider area" is negative hit points. You could, say have it that a creature taken to or below 0 h.p. risks going unconscious (and automatically goes unconscious if taken below a lower threshold - say, -20) but doesn't die unless a) the hit that sent it below 0 was a critical or b) it reaches [negative its full h.p. total] or c) it was coup-de-graced regardless of its hit point status.

Characters at or below 0 h.p. but still conscious are at disadvantage to everything and advantage cannot be gained.

Cures received if at or below 0 h.p. are at half effect. If after a cure the recipient is above -20 it automatically wakes up; if still at or below -20 it remains unconscious. An untended unconscious creature at or below -20 will die after [some random amount of time - d6 hours?]; an untended unconscious creature above -20 can roll [need some mechanics here] to wake up, stay asleep, or eventually die.

* - non-living monsters e.g. undead and constructs would stay at all-or-nothing - they're either functional or they're not, no middle ground. Were it me I'd also put oozes and jellies into this category as well.

Yeah, it is a big one and I don't want to take it off the table. @vincegetorix has some good idea, as do others, and for the most part the more I think about it I like the idea of "dying" only on a critical hit, otherwise 0 hp will be defeat (surrender, flee, etc.).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I almost always let my players decide whether the target dies or is merely wounded/incapacitated, and whenever there are exceptions I do my best to flag them well in advance (though this does not always succeed). In the Dungeon World game I run, some attacks or actions are marked "messy," a tag usually for weapons (but sometimes applied to them via class effects) which is described as, "It does damage in a particularly destructive way, ripping people and things apart." It's hard to not cause vicious wounds with a "messy" attack, and entirely possible to kill without meaning to--but if the messy tag is on there, I'm gonna try to warn the player before the result is irrevocable (ideally, before they even roll to attempt something).

My players are generally...not quite "pacifist," but they prefer not to kill unless it seems necessary that they do so (though they are less averse to lethality if the targets are clearly non-sapient animals rather than near- or actually-sapient beings.) Taking prisoners is better than slaughter as they see it, and I reward (or at least recognize) their mercy by having a world that doesn't ruthlessly exploit that mercy. (I find that most groups that are "all murderhobo all the time" are that way because the DM doesn't realize that they've been passively punishing non-murderhobo behavior and passively rewarding murderhobo behavior; players will adapt around DM policy, and if DM policy is that every display of mercy is treated as a display of weakness, players will eventually learn not to display weakness!)

So...I'd say that low-death games are probably doable. I don't think it's possible to have a 100% perfect "nobody ever dies" game without risking a feel like Silver Age Superman comics. That is, without feeling a bit heavy-handed and (for lack of a better word) "cartoonish," with expected negative consequences being repeatedly handwaved. But games where death is rare, and usually avoidable? That's pretty reasonable.

 

[Umbran]

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 normally wouldn't use D&D that way, because I'm usually a "use the right tool for the job" kind of guy - D&D wasn't designed for this, and other games were, so I tend to use other games for when I want death to be extremely rare.

Mind you, I don't think it'd be terribly hard to run D&D in such a manner.

 

[Laurefindel]

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?

Oh yeah, the “deadliness” or “grittiness” of my games vary from campaign to campaign. Actually, the more abstract your definition of hp is, the easiest it becomes to validate that 0hp = defeated.

In an aforementioned 80s action movie game style, defeated probably means killed and lost in the background. In a Bud Spencer and Terrance Hill type of game, defeated means you pickup your cowboy hat and dart out of there while massaging your jaw. In a kung-fu panda kind of game, defeated means being somehow incapacitated, beaten and humbled (or humiliated). In a game a of thrones type of game, defeated means killed, or gutted and left to die. But the rules themselves don’t have to change.

Until I decide to play a game where combat has more profound physical and mental consequences, we enjoy D&D combat as sport. We want to play the combat through and through without aborting if halfway through because realistically, that’s what should happen. At 0 hp, that’s when the owlbear has enough and the PCs successfully made their show of strength. When the brigands say “screw it”, drop their weapons and dart out. When the guard is knockout and unable to sound the alarm. When the goblins panic and flee in a disorganized rout. When the orc chieftain collapses, looking at the PC in disbelief, his hands on his wounds… It works well in a narrative where PCs can spend all their hit dice to go from dying to full health in a one-hour break.

fights to the death are frequent enough in our games to bring tension when it’s needed, and some opponents (mainly undead and fiends) systematically fight until they - or their opponents - physically can no longer continue. But otherwise, the PCs are usually in control of deciding whether they deliver a killing blow or not. When the players are given the choice of being murderers or not, the total body count tends to diminish, even if some of the vanquished opponents could technically come back to haunt them in the long run.

 

[Mort]

My group are a bloodthirsty bunch so certainly not a thing right now.

That said, I don't see why death couldn't be A LOT more rare or even non-existent. Just have the stakes be such that death of ,monsters/npcs is not something the party strives for. Heck, it could even be a campaign thing. The party learns that the big bad is collecting souls - all souls. Every death causes the villain to get that much closer to his goal.

The party has to stop the villain before a certain soul collection milestone - and the certainly can't risk contributing to it themselves! And really have to prevent it elsewhere as much as possible too.

Well it's a brainstorm

 

[DND_Reborn]

Just have the stakes be such that death of ,monsters/npcs is not something the party strives for. Heck, it could even be a campaign thing. The party learns that the big bad is collecting souls - all souls. Every death causes the villain to get that much closer to his goal.

The party has to stop the villain before a certain soul collection milestone - and the certainly can't risk contributing to it themselves! And really have to prevent it elsewhere as much as possible too.

Actually this is a good idea that works with the campaign setting I am starting to develop. It is such a logical link, I can't believe I didn't see it already LOL!

Gracias! Sometimes the most obvious things get overlooked...

 

[AverageMojito]

Tales from the Loop is a game where the PCs can't "die" from the conflicts: they get knocked out, laughed out or whatever fits the scene. That doesn't mean they can simply jump in front of a moving train, it just states what's the game is all about: solving mysteries ignored by those busy adults, not fighting to death with swords and sorcery.

Leaving aside the worldbuilding reasons other posts suggested and using Tales from the Loop as a guide, to run D&D without death as a possible result of every combat is to simply shift its focus towards other risks. @CleverNickName stated this already. Your enemies won't kill you just because, but every battle they win puts them one step ahead of you towards their goal, for example. Looks like a common trope in TV series and movies, and there's no reason it wouldn't work with D&D. Instead of outright killing Batman in The Dark Knight Rises (the sane thing to do, looking through the villain's eyes), Bane and Miranda send him to a prison thousands of miles away because [insert villain speech].

 

[MGibster]

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?

Not me. But it's certainly possible and if that's what you and your group like I encourage you to give it a shot. I've pretty much only played one campaign where death was off the table and it wasn't D&D. It worked out just fine. Just talk to your players and explain that this is a game where death is rare. Kind of like the A-Team. Sure, we're swinging and shooting lethal weapons at each other, but, at the end of the day, we all just have a bunch of bumps and bruises and go on with our lives.