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

[overgeeked]

I will never understand an attitude where killing PCs is fun and should be an easy option. It feels like the attitude that smashing ants is fun and engaging.

Except that there’s no harm in killing a PC. It’s not alive. Ants are. We’re playing a game. The rules of that game include the possibility of PC death. Following the rules of the game to that conclusion is not equivalent to smashing ants, i.e. pointlessly killing living creatures. Playing an RPG is playing a game. If you can’t stand the thought of a PC dying, don’t play a game with that possibility or house rule it. Other people play differently than you and don’t have the same assumptions.

If you’ve never laughed at someone getting hurt or dying in a TV show, film, or book, you might not understand. The characters aren’t real. The actors don’t really get hurt, if everything goes right, nor do the stunt people. So if you laugh, you’re not laughing at a real person really being hurt, you’re laughing at a fictional character being fictionally hurt.

PCs likewise aren’t real. They’re fictional constructs designed for gaming with dice. To be used and discarded at will. They’re not unique or special or precious. You can makes hundreds in an hour. I could design a spreadsheet in an hour that could spit out thousands with the click of a button.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It may not have started that way, but if you read the very first sentence of the very first book published for DnD 5th Edition, you'll find that is what this version is. And I bet you can find similar text in early 4e and 3e books.

No doubt. Still not the way I and some others play.

 

[TwoSix]

Hmm,

1 in 20 chance per attack = 5%

3 attacks per round * 4 rounds = 12 attacks

12 * 5 = 60%

What am I missing?

0.6 is the expected "number of crits" to get over 12 attacks. 45.9% is the chance of getting at least one crit. The difference is because there are plenty of scenarios where you get 2+ crits over the 12 attacks.

 

[Charlaquin]

Of course, the problem with the 5% thing is, trying to predict how much damage the attack does, crit or otherwise.

Do I assume the giant monkey will roll the following damage with his 7d6+4?

11?

28.5?

46?

88?

Well, the average damage on a normal hit is 28.5. The average damage on a crit is 53. 5% of 53 is 2.65. So, if you assume it does about 31 damage per hit, you’ll be in the right ballpark, but you should also consider that it can do up to 88 damage, so if that’s enough to take you from your current HP to 0 with your max HP left over, you might want to think twice.

Of course, all of this is dependent on knowing the dice code for the monster’s damage, which I typically don’t unless I’m looking at the stat block. The more practical advice would be, if you’ve fought a type of monster before, think about how much damage they typically do in one hit, and assume it can do about double that much on a crit. If you haven’t fought them before, use extreme caution and try to gather as much information as you can before engaging.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

So can we sum the thread up this way?

Some people play DnD because they like the mechanical system and want to "beat" challenges in it. They need character death for the challenges to work.

Some people play DnD because they want to tell interesting stories. The mechanics of the game are used to develop that story. They do not need character death for the stories to work.

 

[tetrasodium]

0.6 is the expected "number of crits" to get over 12 attacks. 45.9% is the chance of getting at least one crit. The difference is because there are plenty of scenarios where you get 2+ crits over the 12 attacks.

All the talk about math is reminding me how the old old old dmg started out with a section on dice and math. It was a good rudimentary primer to set expectations.

As to this particular case of overestimated risk.. I don't think it's concerning that a player might over estimate risk but a player disregarding risk entirely because they don't even know how to eyeball guesstimate something is pretty bad. Having them take it another step and assume it's unimportant because the system gives a false sense of security to make them assume it is an unimportant consideration like 5es death saves & wackamole healing is very much a trap design that tsrgets victims in reasons nothing completely unrelated to with system understanding.

 

[overgeeked]

So can we sum the thread up this way?

Some people play DnD because they like the mechanical system and want to "beat" challenges in it. They need character death for the challenges to work.

Some people play DnD because they want to tell interesting stories. The mechanics of the game are used to develop that story. They do not need character death for the stories to work.

Absolutely. But, to me, the question remains: why does character death prevent story-focused players from getting story out of gaming? Can there be no story where character death is a possibility? Of course there can. There are loads of meaningful stories that involve character death. One of the most popular fantasy series of books and most popular fantasy TV series includes an awful lot of it. The thread reads an awful lot like story-focused players have a predefined end-point in mind before they start play that must be reached for the story to be satisfying. That seems antithetical to player agency and playing to find out what happens. Both of which are high on my list of priorities as a player and referee. For me, protecting a player from their bad choices is not how I want to run a game.

 

[Charlaquin]

So can we sum the thread up this way?

Some people play DnD because they like the mechanical system and want to "beat" challenges in it. They need character death for the challenges to work.

Some people play DnD because they want to tell interesting stories. The mechanics of the game are used to develop that story. They do not need character death for the stories to work.

Seems fairly reasonable, though I would add that the former group tends to also want an interesting story to emerge from their gameplay.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

And in both of your cases, the story you are talking about comes from the actions in the game. Like "Hey, remember that time your gnome got mad and bullrushed the duregar off the ledge and into the lava pit, forcing the minions to flee? That was awesome!" or "Remember that tower we took from the mimic king and built a sandwich shop?"

I have those stories in my game too, the emergent ones that only happened because of the way the action happened to shake out.

But there are other, more important, stories in my game that aren't emergent. They are a cooperative tale created by players and GMs that explore deeper things that aren't tied to the mechanics of the game. When my war torn fighter stumbles back home and collapses into the arms of his spose, finally releasing all the anguish he has been bottling up in his stoic turn as the party lead. That's not a challenge. There werent any die rollls, and it's hyper specific to that one individual character.

If that same stoic fighter died to tetanus from a rusty nail on the way home, I lose that thread of story. The family he has at home, the relationships he has with his friends, the rivalries he has built with adversaries....it's all gone.

If I have to create a new character it's like I take an eraser to a giant blackboard of story threads I've developed over time (some emergent from the mechanics of the game and others weaved into the story) and have to start over with a blank slate of New Guys story.

I fully recognize almost everyone's game develops story, but emergent story is not the same as authored story, and authored story is what you can't get from a boardgame and is what I play RPGs for.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And in both of your cases, the story you are talking about comes from the actions in the game. Like "Hey, remember that time your gnome got mad and bullrushed the duregar off the ledge and into the lava pit, forcing the minions to flee? That was awesome!" or "Remember that tower we took from the mimic king and built a sandwich shop?"

I have those stories in my game too, the emergent ones that only happened because of the way the action happened to shake out.

But there are other, more important, stories in my game that aren't emergent. They are a cooperative tale created by players and GMs that explore deeper things that aren't tied to the mechanics of the game. When my war torn fighter stumbles back home and collapses into the arms of his spose, finally releasing all the anguish he has been bottling up in his stoic turn as the party lead. That's not a challenge. There werent any die rollls, and it's hyper specific to that one individual character.

If that same stoic fighter died to tetanus from a rusty nail on the way home, I lose that thread of story. The family he has at home, the relationships he has with his friends, the rivalries he has built with adversaries....it's all gone.

If I have to create a new character it's like I take an eraser to a giant blackboard of story threads I've developed over time (some emergent from the mechanics of the game and others weaved into the story) and have to start over with a blank slate of New Guys story.

I fully recognize almost everyone's game develops story, but emergent story is not the same as authored story, and authored story is what you can't get from a boardgame and is what I play RPGs for.

I don't want authored story. Thats for books, movies, TV, and RPGs that aren't D&D.