D&D (2024) Do players really want balance?

[pemerton]

Yes, hence my question about uncertainty earlier. And you said you chose the uncertainty. Thus the game Conan doesn't need to have guaranteed a win. Though my D&D party has won overwhelming majority of their fights as well, and like I said earlier, I give them way harder fights than the books suggests, so pretty consistently winning seems trivially doable with D&D rules.

The way D&D tends to handle uncertainty in combat is win or die. That's not the sort of uncertainty that works for a Conan-esque experience.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Going back some way in the thread, regarding other loss conditions that are mechanical besides dead characters I would suggest some DM ingenuity, possibly with table/player input if thats your jam.

So a while back one character lost to a wizard who had shapechanged into a Marilith. Long story short the character was inflicted with a Nightmare condition which had the possibility of nullifying any resource gain from Long Rests.

Another is the Hideous Scarring from the Lingering Injury table in the 5e DMG. Pc gains Adv on Intimidation DisAdV on Persuasion. I let the PC decide the where and how of the scarring.

Sky is the limit with creativity in creating Loss Conditions with mechanical effects. I used some of the templates from DW on how PCs can recover from these conditions.

With regards to perma death, it's usually rare for the main campaign characters (but not off the table).
We've also used death to explore duplicates due to differing timelines, explore the City of the Dead in the Fugue Plane + Wall of Faithless as well as a Cloning storyline. Haven't done Reincarnation yet.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The way D&D tends to handle uncertainty in combat is win or die. That's not the sort of uncertainty that works for a Conan-esque experience.

First, in the stories it often seems that Conan is in mortal peril, yet he doesn't die, because he is the sole main character and the author decided that he doesn't. But if we accept the uncertainty, this doesn't need to be the case in a game; mortal peril might be genuine.

Second, I don't think your point about win or die is quite true. As long as the enemies have motivation to keep the defeated PCs alive, they quite easily can. Non-lethal hit rules are super generous (more generous than I like, in fact) and stabilising a dying character is trivial. And even if left unattended, a dying character is more likely to live than die. So "beaten and captured" is a perfectly viable outcome in D&D 5e.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Going back some way in the thread, regarding other loss conditions that are mechanical besides dead characters I would suggest some DM ingenuity, possibly with table/player input if thats your jam.

So a while back one character lost to a wizard who had shapechanged into a Marilith. Long story short the character was inflicted with a Nightmare condition which had the possibility of nullifying any resource gain from Long Rests.

Another is the Hideous Scarring from the Lingering Injury table in the 5e DMG. Pc gains Adv on Intimidation DisAdV on Persuasion. I let the PC decide the where and how of the scarring.

Sky is the limit with creativity in creating Loss Conditions with mechanical effects. I used some of the templates from DW on how PCs can recover from these conditions.

I've used perma death but it's usually rare for the main campaign characters (but not off the table).
We've also used death to explore duplicates due to timeline fudging, explore the City of the Dead in the Fugue Plane + Wall of Faithless and Cloning storylines. Haven't done Reincaration yet.

True! I just think the options DMG currently offers aren't very good. For example I like the concept of lingering injuries, but not the execution. And of course once regeneration spell becomes available, all of those will be easily curable. But this is indeed a direction I would like to see developed more. I doubt the new DMG will have anything like this, but one can hope!

 

[Oofta]

Over a decade later.

Most of the key underlying design decisions intended to change the playstyle were made during the run-up to 3e, courtesy of the very flawed survey they did and Ryan Dancey's report thereon.

That was in 1999. The real explosion in sales came during the mid-2010s, two editions later; then a reinforcing shot came during lockdown times.

The timing would suggest any correlation is at best accidental.

I can only assume these bits are in reply to someone who has me blocked, as they make no sense in reply to what you quoted me on.

The 5E version of D&D is significantly different from 3E or 4E and it saw double digit growth immediately after it's release and then just kept going. There's no reason to believe this level of sustained growth was pure luck. Neither D&D 3 nor 4 saw this kind of growth. Heck, no version since before 2E saw this kind of growth.

It may not be the game you personally want, no game can work for everyone. But it's doing something right or I don't see any way we could have such sustained growth.

 

[TwoSix]

True! I just think the options DMG currently offers aren't very good. For example I like the concept of lingering injuries, but not the execution. And of course once regeneration spell becomes available, all of those will be easily curable. But this is indeed a direction I would like to see developed more. I doubt the new DMG will have anything like this, but one can hope!

Loss conditions are tricky because players, in general, don't like to lose (obviously) and really don't like their characters regressing in some way. There's a reason that loss conditions that are permanent penalties, like stat drain, or just straight setbacks, like level loss, have mostly been removed from modern games (outside of the OSR).

The loss conditions that are generally more acceptable are the ones that change the player's play experience (which is what character death does, by making you roll a new character), or provide some sort of narrative complication that isn't strictly a penalty. As an example, drawing the Flames card from the Deck of Many Things is what I would consider a "good" loss condition, while the Void is absolutely a "bad" one.

 

[Micah Sweet]

What is remotely verisimilitudinous about people being repeatedly raised from the dead? It's pretty silly in my view.

It is logically consistent with the setting. Whether or not it's silly is a different question.

 

[Thomas Shey]

What is remotely verisimilitudinous about people being repeatedly raised from the dead? It's pretty silly in my view.

I'm assuming because its an acknowledged setting conceit.

 

[TwoSix]

It is logically consistent with the setting. Whether or not it's silly is a different question.

I'd say any setting in which raise dead or resurrection are present need to think through the implications; a lot of generic D&D settings don't really engage with the topic deeply enough. There's a fair amount of "This setting is low-magic, and clerics who can actually cast raise dead are super-rare and hardly ever do it! Oh, your PC is dead....why, there's a 9th level cleric in this hidden shrine right over there!"

You can see this tension in BG3, where scrolls of resurrection are actually really common and the god of death hangs around your camp to rez everyone in the party for chump change, but as soon as any NPC dies they're dead for good and can't be brought back. Basically, "combat death" and "narrative death" are two different things happening at two different game layers, which is something TTRPGs can have trouble handling.

There certainly can be settings where raise dead is both common and worked into the fiction; Steven Brust is pretty famous for that.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I'm assuming because its an acknowledged setting conceit.

Though often one that is ignored most of the time. Usually rest of the world seems to operate like death was permanent, the revolving door mostly exists only for the PCs. Which I find weird. Not that I'd like a setting where this was actually taken into account either. I just remove such spells.

Edit: Seems that while I was typing @TwoSix elaborated on the matter in more depth.