D&D General If not death, then what?

[DND_Reborn]

Rage gives advantage on Strength-based saving throws and ability checks, Reckless Attack only works for Strength-based attacks, and Rage only increases your damage if you use Strength for your melee weapon attacks. Also, Indomitable Might and Primal Champion are better when you focus on Strength.

Sigh...

Yeah, I know. I didn't think it was necessary to include the other obvious benefits of rage. Both of which help with a non-STR-based build.

I even mentioned that you won't benefit as much from the damage bonus and that the resistance to damage becomes more important.

And I am really not worried about the tier 4 features considering how few games reach that point. Even if you do, both are still very beneficial, even to a DEX-based build.

Sure, the Barbarian class doesn't have any built-in mechanics to prevent you from using another combat style like the Monk does, but it's clearly suboptimal and against the design intentions of the class to make a DEX-based barbarian.

Sure, again the obvious.

Not that it's wrong to enjoy playing that character, just like it isn't wrong to like Strength-based Monks/Rangers or taking the suboptimal options for any other choice . . . you're just going to be noticeably worse mechanically playing in that style than if you chose to focus on the class's strengths (pun intended).

And again...

I'm honestly not sure from your tone if you're agreeing with me or just felt it necessary to outline the stuff I figured was obvious.

I can't say I agree that the damage bonus is pointless.

Good, neither did I. I didn't even imply it.

However, the more pertinent issue here is Reckless Attack, which gives advantage on all attacks made using Strength (though with the caveat of granting it to all opponents.) +2 damage and Advantage on attack rolls is the real draw of the class, and the reason why you get all that juicy damage mitigation.

Yes, not being able to benefit from reckless attack can be an issue. However, since hitting in 5E is fairly easy, especially if you are trying to max out your ability score, it isn't used as much IME. The damage mitigation is useful, regardless, of course. But as I mentioned the real down side if you are DEX-based ranged attacker, you aren't as likely in the thick of it. So, your damage mitigation is useful to you, but you aren't tanking then so isn't useful at all to others. That part of the role that barbarians often fill is thus neglected.

"You can do it" and even "you can have fun with it" are not the same as "you are making significant sacrifices to do it." Just because it can be played, or even can succeed, has no bearing on whether you're paying a steep price for meager benefit.

You really aren't making "significant sacrifices" if you are enjoying the character, though. Reckless attack will be more beneficial to a DEX-based build if you are using a non-finesse weapon since you don't have the STR mod to rely on, so the advantage helps more.

Steep price for meager benefit? You are keeping away from danger because you can attack at range. That is often a very sigificant benefit. Also, since the rage benefits that have been outlined don't benefit for thrown weapons, you are more effective both against flying creatures and you are more effective (obviously) at range before the enemies get close.

To be clear, I never said a DEX-based barbarian was going to do as well as a STR-based one, simply that it is a viable build if people want to play it.

I don't think a lot of players really understand how stingy damage bonuses are in 5e, to be honest.

Yep. It is the easiest bonus to get in the game IME. Attack bonuses and AC (especially) is a bit harder.

 

[Helldritch]

You are just the most recent person to say this, but... man I kind of hate this attitude.

This is sort of the problem I have with @DND_Reborn drilling down into @Sabathius42 's story as well. It has to be the player's fault somehow. I know Helldritch that you added bad luck to the bottom of the list, but you still started with "they were reckless" or "they had a poor plan". There is this feeling in these responses, in DnD_Reborn's drilling down in the Sabathius's claim about how they actually did die due to bad luck, that death must be the player's fault, and that if they had just planned better, prepared better, been better and more skilled at the game, then they wouldn't have died.

Or fled. Never forget that fleeing is a possibility. To live to fight another day. And why would the order of words or causalities matters? They are all equal in the end result.

But isn't that... kind of toxic? Like, does anyone watch the NFL or some other pro-sports and go "Well, Green Bay Packers, if you were better at Football you wouldn't have lost that game." And DnD isn't a professional sport. We are so far down the line of skill-based play that it isn't even funny. I've seen so many incredibly well-thought out plans that were trashed the moment the d20 hit the table. What is the point of this attitude of "Well, if they had just done X they wouldn't have died"? Like, honestly, what do you accomplish with this, except basically throwing your hands up and saying "You can't blame me for this!"

WHAT????????? What the ***** How can you bring toxicity in that?
When a character dies or a group TPK it is a game. A simple game. And guess what? I have yet to see a player disagree with the death of his/her character and putting the blame on me. Almost four decades of DMing, never have I been described as toxic.

And again, I'm not trying to point specific fingers, beyond that you two are the ones springing to mind this instant, but I've seen this in a lot of places anytime PC death comes up, and it is this constant refrain. And it baffles me. When I play? As a player who has gone down more than once? I'm not making plans I think will end in failure. I'm not making decisions I suspect are bad. Heck, most of the time, I'm not even making plans I think are risky. But I'm not omniscient. And I don't see PC death as some sort of blame game where we have to figure out whose fault it is.

Having a responsibility is not the same as being blamed. No one is blaming anyone. (at least in my games). We all have fun and we see a story emerge from play.

 

[Helldritch]

I do not understand why "random, permanent, irrevocable death doesn't happen" contradicts this. There are plenty of things the players can be certain, or at least reasonably certain, will not happen in a game. The DM, for example, won't just show up one day and say, "Rocks fall, everyone dies. Ouch! Guess that campaign's over. Anyone up for some Mouse Guard?"

My players and I didn't know whether they could solve the case of who murdered Farim el-Busiyyah, Secretary of Agriculture and Trade in the court of Mount Matahat. We didn't know if they could stop the Shadow Druid plot to infect the whole city with fungal spores that would turn people into mushroom zombies. We didn't know if they could save that poor mercenary who had been exposed to the Song of Thorns. We didn't know if they could truly defeat the Song of Thorns itself, when they geared up to try. We didn't know if the Battlemaster could find the mythical lost chapter of Struggle and Calm, General al-Hamdan's treatise on strategy and philosophy, even when they had figured out where she died. We didn't know if the party could save the Druid from his somewhat-reckless, but useful, contract signed with a devil the party has met, or if it would entrap him.

We still don't know what happened to the antiquities dealer (though we've learned it's definitely something Extremely Weird and Timey-Wimey), whom the Battlemaster wanted to question about what she could tell him about one of his people's lost artifacts. We don't know if the Bard can reclaim the Raven-Shadows from the evil that has manipulated them, seeing them through their holy civil war fought in the city's shadows. We don't know if the party can even locate, to say nothing of defeat, the black dragon trying to take over the city.

So much of the story isn't nailed down for anyone, not even me. None of that is invalidated by me saying, "I won't take your character away forever, unless you're okay with that." Not one piece.

(Also, @Charlaquin, I know you haven't posted in this thread, but the above quote is relevant to our conversation in the other thread. This is the "this way is just axiomatically superior" argument I see...pretty much always in conversations like this. Much more politely than it's usually presented, actually.)


I honestly cannot tell if you are being serious or sarcastic, but I really hope it's the latter. Otherwise that's very depressing.

For the bolded part.
Good! Me neither.
But I am not going out of my way to save it either. It is exactly because there are risks involved in my games that my players play with me.

 

[Helldritch]

Depends on the edition. In my experience with 5th edition, unless you're at really low levels or get really unlucky with the dice, the players only ever get to the stage where they might be dying if the DM placed something in the campaign that could get them to that state (a more powerful monster than they could handle, a trap, environmental conditions, etc).


Again, I know there are rules for what happens if you get to 0 hit points. What I'm saying is that the chance of getting to 0 hit points is only possible through the DM.

Sorry, do not buy that. If your player wants his/her character to jump off a cliff at 3 hp and survive 300' of descent, the DM has nothing to do with that. The dice will tell one thing, the character is dead.

And the DM chooses how/who the monsters attack, if they're doing nonlethal damage, how hard it is to parley and if the PCs succeed, and if the monsters choose to pursue the fleeing party (and quite a few monsters have higher speeds than the average PC).

On this I agree. This is why I reintroduced moral in my games. In fact it never left it. I just apply a charisma or wisdom check.

And there are ways to lose a battle other than death. The party could be captured, robbed, enslaved, or lose limbs. The DM chooses if/when the PCs die.

Don't you think I know? But sometimes, faced with some monsters, death is the result. I don't think a wyvern will do anything but eat the character it killed. In fact, once a character is down, the wyvern will fly with the body to its nest to feast.

Yeah, the DM does. The DM chooses if their rest is interrupted by a monster and if the dungeon has places where the party could take a rest. The PCs decide if they want to rest or not, but the DM decides if their rest succeeds.

No, I do not. The dice do and so are the circumstances.

I'm sorry, but, no, you do choose when the PCs die. Unless you're a really new DM, you probably know how much your PCs can take. You know which battles they can win and which ones they're likely to lose. You know which traps are deadly and which traps they can avoid easily. Are your dungeons filled to the brim with traps as deadly as the Tomb of Horrors? If so, then you chose to place them there fully aware of the possible consequences for the PCs. If your dungeons all aren't as deadly as the Tomb of Horrors . . . why not? Why aren't you filling every dungeon in your game with traps as deadly as the Tomb of Horrors? Because I think you know the answer to that question, and I think that the answer proves that the DM chooses whether or not the PCs die.

It does not prove anything but that you distrust your DM. Yes, the DM knows what to throw at PC to kill them. Sure, saying otherwise would be denying facts. But the players often underestimate their foes and often over estimate their own strength. You see, my games are usually small linked adventures each independant and each written in advance. Once engaged, an adventure is like an episode that will be followed through with a start, beginning and an end. I do not necessarily know what will be the path taken by the players' characters, nor which adventures will they undertake or in which order (they always have more than a few possibilities, after four decades, I have a lot of adventures).

And when are the dice given the opportunity to kill the players? When the DM gives them the option to.

You choose the traps. You choose the monsters. You choose the weather and other environmental factors (cliffs, bridges, lava, pits of acid, etc). You choose if a monster chooses to attack a PC that's making death saves. You choose if the monster attacks the healer before the rest of the party. You choose if the combat encounter is with 17 flumphs or 17 tarrasques. You choose if rocks fall and everyone dies. You choose the adventure you run. You choose if the monsters do lethal damage or not.

The dice don't choose any of that. You, the DM, choose the answers to all of that. And if you do choose to roll the dice and make those situations random . . . you're the one chosing to allow the option of your PCs dying. You choose when the dice are rolled, that is literally written in the DMG. If a PC dies, it is the DMs fault, because they chose all of the circumstances that led up to their death and you chose to have them die instead of fall unconscious, or be taken prisoner, or be saved at the last minute by a Deus Ex Machina.

To all the you. YES! and NO!
I choose the trap. The players decide to search for them or not.
I choose the monsters. The players decide how they will handle.
I do not choose the weather. There are still old weather table to use.
I choose the terrain. The players decide how to handle these as well.I
I choose whom the monster will attack. Animal like intelligence monster will try to retreat with the body. Intelligent foes will "finish" the character if they know the character can be brought back in the fight.
I choose if the monster is intelligent enough to attack the healer of the party. But circumstances dictates how easy or hard it might be.
I do choose the monsters. But this is in accordance to the adventure. And it is the players that decide if they engage or not. Not me.
I do not choose the adventure to run. Players and I do. We vote.
I do not choose if the monsters do lethal damage or not. The rules are exactly there for that.
And finally, Deus Ex Machina is the worst possible outcome.

The DM chooses when the PCs die. And that's not a bad thing. I'm fine with that. However, I realize this and specifically craft my campaigns under this realization. I know that the PCs dying is my fault, so I try to make them matter.

Nope, I do not choose when a PC dies or if a party dies. Circumstances and players' choice will lead to whatever fate awaits them. This is what a story that emerges organically amounts to. We are both actor and spectators in the game we play.

 

[Oofta]

Just make sure to call everyone "Bub".

Great. Now I even have a name for the silly PC.

Good thing I don't have a mini. Unless of course heroforge has Wolverine Bub claws.

 

[Helldritch]

I don’t really see anything particularly hostile about @Helldritch‘s comment there. Would it have been more polite to have said “I prefer this way of playing” rather than “I consider this way of playing superior”? Sure, but I’m not going to fault someone for a bit of clumsy phrasing, especially because… why else would you have a preference for playing in a certain way, except that you find it to be better than other ways of playing? It’s good to acknowledge that what’s best for you and your own goals isn’t necessarily best for everyone else, but I think we as RPGers sometimes get too fussy about the particular phrasing people use when expressing their preferences. I prefer to extend the benefit of the doubt when it’s reasonable to do so. I suppose we could just ask @Helldritch if they meant to imply that this way of playing is always better for everyone, or if they just meant it’s better for themselves and their group of players.

Maybe I was a bit blunt. But hostile nope. Thank you for pointing this out for me.

But to answer your last question. It is yes, it is better for us.
So far, in nearly 4 decades of DMing. I have honestly tried almost every styles of games (save a few) in D&D and even in some others. Deathless campaigns, adversarial DMing to see what it would imply (with the accord of the group, we wanted to understand what it was all about and how bad it would be when a DM would always go against the characters, not my style), high risks campaigns, no risks campaigns and so on.

So far, after a few hundreds of players, yes hundreds, the most staying and game style that kept the most players and provided the most engaging adventures has been the ones in which character death can happen. We now avoid long background stories like the plague because:
1) It does not mean that the background will matter at all.

2) It slows down play as a player will tend to ask that "his or her" background to be integrated into the story at hand even at the expend of other's backgrounds

3) It often prevents the story to organically emerge from play. The longer the background, the more the chances are that it will interfere in someway with the story at hand.

4) It is easy for the DM to "forget" what is in the background of every single character under his/her games. I run three games with 12-18 different people (one of these game is Friday night dungeon about twice a month), imagine one minute to remember all background stories? No way. Strangely, I can retell every strong moments of the story of each groups and characters...

5) To follow up on 4. Some players will get absolutely mad because the DM forgot that their character backstory included obscure references that could have meant an advantage (or not) for the story at hand!

When death can happen, it often brings tension at the table when things get rough. I can tell you that in tense fights, I have players literally standing on their chairs! Some can't stay sit at the table and must stand up and walk... Last week the monk died because I had a crit while having disadvantage (yep, double 20s). Asked her which character she would like to play and if any NPC would do the trick. Happens that there was a treasure chest and instead of lock picking it, the knight simply smashed the lock in the hopes of finding a revivify scroll in it. I told him he needed a 20 to smash and got 24. And there was indeed a revivify scroll. Cheers from everyone save the newest players (a cynical person to say the least) that tells, yeah, you just invented that. I took my printed sheet on which the adventure is written. Show him the room, the number of the room and pointed out treasure. And yes, the revivify scroll was there. Had it not been there, the monk would have stayed dead.

The next morning, my neighbour asked me what happened last night when all people were cheering... That poor 79 year old neighbour did not understand despite my best efforts.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Unless of course heroforge has Wolverine Bub claws.

Close enough...

 

[Art Waring]

I built a 5e Transhuman Etherpunk setting over the years where death isn't permanent, but death still has consequences.

When my players die, they know they have options, and its not the end of their investment in their characters. Players spend a lot of time on character creation (particularly using A5e and my setting), and I don't want to take away from that, I would like for them to have fun at the table and to have a chance to return in the same game session so that they aren't sitting out of the game for the rest of the evening.

Death or near-death can have other consequences that aren't as permanent. The player could nearly die, and lose some of their equipment. They could have had a grievous injury and require augmentation or a replacement limb.

In my games, the more times you die, the higher your chances are of experiencing trauma from your characyers death. Each time you die it gets worse, with the trauma increasing. Offer long-term solutions like mental conditioning to help cope with the stress, and it gives players more things to do during downtime.

 

[Oofta]

View attachment 255764
Close enough...

I see nothing!

 

[Helldritch]

I built a 5e Transhuman Etherpunk setting over the years where death isn't permanent, but death still has consequences.

When my players die, they know they have options, and its not the end of their investment in their characters. Players spend a lot of time on character creation (particularly using A5e and my setting), and I don't want to take away from that, I would like for them to have fun at the table and to have a chance to return in the same game session so that they aren't sitting out of the game for the rest of the evening.

Death or near-death can have other consequences that aren't as permanent. The player could nearly die, and lose some of their equipment. They could have had a grievous injury and require augmentation or a replacement limb.

In my games, the more times you die, the higher your chances are of experiencing trauma from your characyers death. Each time you die it gets worse, with the trauma increasing. Offer long-term solutions like mental conditioning to help cope with the stress, and it gives players more things to do during downtime.

And at which point does a character become so cripple that it becomes unplayable? If any?