D&D 5E [+] Questions for zero character death players and DMs…

[DND_Reborn]

There was a 90's anime (based on an actual tabletop RPG), Record of Lodoss Wars where, at the end of a major arc, one character died, and another was possessed by an ancient lich (basically). An episode or two later, a pair of mercenaries just happen to show up to join the heroes!

That is my favorite anime, FWIW.

I've only watched the 13-episode mini-series, not the full anime series.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This is a [+] thread.

I’m honestly curious about this style of play. It’s utterly alien to me but I’m naturally curious and want to understand.

Firstly: just want to say, thank you for making a [+] thread on this. It's very easy for people to come in and basically straight-up just dismiss this style completely, and follow that with rather disparaging comments.

So in a no death game…

What is the point of tracking hit points and death saves? I’m curious about how this is supposed to work, mechanically.

As a disclaimer, I don't actually play 5e, so "death saves" proper aren't a thing, but I figure Dungeon World is close enough on this front--there is the Last Breath move, which functions something like having a single "death save" rather than multiple. I also don't technically run a truly "no death" game, but again I think the spirit is close enough, as I have done some things to try to avoid particular deaths and, as stated in the other thread, no player character death in my game is absolutely permanent unless the player wishes it to be so. That's the "not random" part of my policy regarding PC death: such things are not random, not permanent, and/or not irrevocable. Or, in positive terms, a death we agree upon (non-random), a death that is quickly or naturally reversed (non-permanent), or a death that adventure can undo (non-irrevocable), is acceptable to me, and thus could happen at my table. No such death has occurred, but that doesn't mean it couldn't occur.

Tracking HP and "death saves"(/equivalents) is still relevant because:

• Even if you don't die, being at 0 HP can prevent you from participating in combat, which can allow bad consequences that cannot be easily undone, if they can be undone at all
• Someone in the party is, in part, specialized in healing, so being able to allow that character to shine by saving someone's butt is nice
• There is still tension present because, as I said, death is not totally off the table, it's just never going to be the end of a character's story unless the player wishes it to be--and because often combats have stakes other than death (corruption, competition, damage to important infrastructure or items, revealing the party's presence, etc.)
• My players just want to. Doesn't need to be more complicated, IMO!

A lot of referees don’t bother tracking things like weight carried, food and water, ammo, etc in the name of eliminating pointless bookkeeping. They don’t care about those aspects of play so don’t make players track those things. Essentially, you’re never going to run out of food and water, so don’t keep track. You have unlimited ammo, so don’t bother. Etc.

Dungeon World keeps such things pretty light, so there's not too much bookkeeping involved. Food is in units of rations--which can matter, so we keep numbers, but we usually check what they are. Ammo is very simple, you have 3 or 4 or whatever, and you only expend it when making a Volley roll and getting a partial success (or, I guess, a failed roll.)

So I’m curious if hit points and death saves are also ignored for similar reasons. Since nothing happens if you fail three death saves, do they stay in the game? Are they tracked? Do you make the roll? If your character can’t die, why bother rolling?

Well, again, "nothing happens if you fail" isn't really what's entailed by "no-death" gaming. Instead, other consequences occur, usually ones that depend on contextual information. For some examples from my game, trying to keep them really short since this is likely to run long:

• Failing to complete the initiation ritual into a cult (which the character is trying to reform); this would make reform efforts much more difficult, and cause the faction willing to consider reform to lose members to the faction that adamantly opposes any reform. One PC (the tiefling Bard) is very committed to this task, so such a failure would hurt a lot.
• Allowing an important (to the Battlemaster PC and historians), lost book to be destroyed by malign forces who killed its author, several generations back. TL;DR version is, Battlemaster is a well-read tactician who went looking for an apocryphal fourth volume of a treatise on tactics, strategy, and philosophy, called Struggle and Calm, by Temple-Knight General Khalifa al-Hamdan. Failing to defeat the shadows haunting the valley where the book had been hidden away could have led to the book being found or destroyed by the bad guys.
• Becoming corrupted by a spirit of savagery, decay, and entropy, allowing that spirit to break free into the mortal world and causing incredible devastation, while empowering that spirit to be even more dangerous than it already was. (This was the fight against the Song of Thorns, for anyone who remembers prior mentions I've made of it.)
• Failing to prevent a terrorist sect of Druids from unleashing a zombie-fungus plague onto the city, potentially killing a large number of largely innocent people.
• Allowing a friend who went to investigate suspicious activity to die because you didn't make it to where they were in time to save them.

Etc. Point being, none of these would have resulted in death per se if the players lost the combat (which could be the consequence of everyone dropping to 0 HP), but they would have resulted in varying degrees of (Very) Bad Things happening, to people or places the characters care about.

What about hit points? If the end result of hitting zero hit points is ultimately nothing, why track them? If you do track hit points, what happens at zero? Are characters unconscious until someone revives them at zero hit points? Are they out of the combat until it’s over? How does it work?

Depends on the context of the situation--or, rather, it would in theory since this hasn't come up in practice in my game yet. But more or less, death is a possibility but a death that is permanent, irrevocable, and out of the blue won't be a possibility. So, some of the time a "dead" character could be just so incapacitated that even magical healing can't rouse them. Other times, if appropriate, they might fall off the arena (safely, though probably not painlessly), be captured by the enemy, get teleported somewhere else, or any of a variety of other "incapacitated and can't come back" states.

Or they might die! But they won't stay dead, one way or another.

Are monsters also immune to death or are their hit points still tracked and they’re as gleefully slaughtered as in every other style of play?

I always give my players authority over whether the damage they deal is lethal, non-lethal, or ambiguous, unless the situation is grossly incompatible with one or the other, or they fail rolls or otherwise have something Go Wrong, potentially breaking their intent. (I try to keep that sort of thing very infrequent. I am usually annoyed as a player when DMs pull that sort of thing, so I avoid doing it to my players when I DM.) Usually, the players spare humanoid enemies unless they're evil cultist fanatics or corrupted by a dangerous spirit or the like, and even then they feel bad about it. The PCs usually kill non-sapient monsters, but sometimes spare them if they can afford to do so (because monsters may come back to haunt them in ways humanoid enemies are less likely to, at least as I run them.)

Finally, what benefit is gained by having no character death?

My players are much more willing to take risks and do heroic, exciting, dangerous things, because they have the confidence that doing those things will not take away their ability to continue playing. Further, since (as I said) I have not absolutely removed death, just random+permanent+irrevocable death, I sort of get to have my cake and eat it too, having death as a possibility but never as a lame ending to a story. Moreover, by keeping death relatively low and emphasizing high-flying action and derring-do, I can maintain an overall light and positive tone to the game despite featuring some really quite dangerous/nasty/scary antagonists. This means that my campaign can have actual changes in tone, that it has a "dynamic range" broader than both "Saturday morning cartoons" where it's 100% brightness all the time forever, and yet also "Grimdark misery" where it's 100% darkness and awfulness all the time forever. I refer to this approach as "chiaroscuro" rather than "bright" or "dark" per se--the bright elements and the dark elements interplay, shadow and light dappled together, allowing for interesting variation and a finer control over the exact ratio of the two things.

 

[James Gasik]

That is my favorite anime, FWIW.

I've only watched the 13-episode mini-series, not the full anime series.

Best way to watch. Chronicles of the Heroic Knight (not to mention spinoffs like Legend of Crystania) are weird. Louie the Rune Soldier is more like Slayers than Lodoss, despite taking place in the same world.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Best way to watch. Chronicles of the Heroic Knight (not to mention spinoffs like Legend of Crystania) are weird. Louie the Rune Soldier is more like Slayers than Lodoss, despite taking place in the same world.

I had all the rest, but gave it to one of my players who really loves anime. I like some, but not much, so kept the Chronicles instead of the rest.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Best way to watch. Chronicles of the Heroic Knight (not to mention spinoffs like Legend of Crystania) are weird. Louie the Rune Soldier is more like Slayers than Lodoss, despite taking place in the same world.

Slayers and Rune Soldier are my go to Fantasy anime.

Then we get to Scrapped Princess and we . get. Weird.

 

[Charlaquin]

To build this out a bit - yes, the loss of all the potential stories that could have been told is impactful. Moreover, the loss of all the investment put into the character and their psychological and emotional lives can be impactful.

But "impactful" does not communicate the value of the impact.

Consider, if you will, your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe (or confection of your choice). Adding a quarter cup of garlic powder to it would certainly be impactful to the resulting flavor. Does that mean you should do it? Is that an impact that you want, or would enjoy?

Impact should be chosen, not assumed to be positive to the experience.

Sure, but my point is, it’s not accurate to say it has no place in character story driven campaigns. It might not have a place in all character story driven campaigns, but that doesn’t mean it has no place in any such campaigns.

 

[Charlaquin]

I've been tempted to (but haven't) do a world like in the Vlad Taltos novels.

Getting killed is usually no big deal - resurrection is easily doable (and common among people with means). But there is ONE specific way to permadeath - and anyone who's serious knows it and will use it if necessary.

I quite like the setup in Dungeon Meshi. If you die in the dungeon, your soul stays in the dungeon, which (usually) makes it accessible for resurrection, assuming someone in your party can cast such a spell, or they can get your body back to the surface and pay for someone to. But that’s a feature specific to the dungeon; if you die anywhere else, your soul moves on like normal so you can’t be resurrected.

Some people actually go into the dungeon looking for TPK’d parties to resurrect and then extort - “pay us for the resurrection or we’ll kill you again” kind of a thing.

 

[Umbran]

Sure, but my point is, it’s not accurate to say it has no place in character story driven campaigns.

I understand that. I was moving on to other, related points.

 

[Charlaquin]

I understand that. I was moving on to other, related points.

I think the point that unpredictable character death doesn’t have a place in some campaigns has been pretty well made.

 

[DarkCrisis]

While not "No Death" my current group does: 0 KOed and bleeding. -10 is dead. If you are magically healed you return to 1 HP (only) and cant be healed more or do anything but walk until you have some sleep. IE a fatigued/wounded state

This still takes the PC out of the fight/dungeon crawl without killing them (if they don't go below -10) and typically the party will go back to safety and rest until the wounded character is able to be fully healed and thus can return to the adventure at full power.