D&D General How Often Should a PC Die in D&D 5e?

[TiQuinn]

This isn't some sort of gotcha contest or competition... if you prefer zero then it seems you want a non-lethal game and wouldn't have issues with 5e not being lethal enough. The question then is whether you feel (for your preference and experience playing 5e) that the game skews to high in lethality?

When a manufacturing company has a sign saying X days since last accident, do you think their preferred number of accidents is greater than zero?

I mean, this certainly feels like a gotcha competition, not gonna lie.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Yes! Character focused game thrives on character drama, and death of one character heightens it. Similarly need to introduce one new character probably isn't an insurmountable challenge.

The need to airdrop a New Guy and is still going to blunt and drama that comes from the death.

Not to mention monkey-wrenching anything that character was formerly involved with.

Which is why I don't see the value added by death in stories or game unless it was very carefully planned and executed.

 

[mamba]

Possibly, but when you are discussing how to make a game play a particular way, I don't really think "the norm" matters much.

not sure, isn’t this whole discussion about a norm? I mean, everyone can create a TPK if they set their mind to it

 

[mamba]

I don’t plan Pc deaths seems like a valid option in a poll asking how often you plan pc deaths.

no one is planning PC deaths, they are creating more or less challenging encounters

 

[Vaalingrade]

I said more likely, not impossible. I think folks like being a little more hardy and not just dying to dumb luck. If a player wants to march their PC face first into every buzzsaw, the PC is gonna die.

Having played the Abomination Vaults, Paizo's own definition of 'face first into every buzz saw' means 'opens a door after rolling high on a perception check while the enemy nat 20'd its stealth'.

 

[prabe]

Which is why I don't see the value added by death in stories or game unless it was very carefully planned and executed.

Eh. I don't think deaths need to be explicitly planned, though I'll accept planned for (in the sense of accounted for ahead of time) but I agree they need to be handled/executed well by/at the table.

(This is at most a marginal disagreement, not really an argument.)

 

[Vaalingrade]

Eh. I don't think deaths need to be explicitly planned, though I'll accept planned for (in the sense of accounted for ahead of time) but I agree they need to be handled/executed well by/at the table.

(This is at most a marginal disagreement, not really an argument.)

The planned part is more about stories.

Thanks to misreading Steven King, you would not believe how many writers just sprinkle in a little death without rhyme or reason and have no gameplan for how other characters react or how the story would be affected.

 

[mamba]

I felt it would be rude to point out that the poll is bad.

so you did it indirectly?

 

[prabe]

The planned part is more about stories.

Thanks to misreading Steven King, you would not believe how many writers just sprinkle in a little death without rhyme or reason and have no gameplan for how other characters react or how the story would be affected.

"Misreading" him? You mean his strong implications in On Writing that he strongly prefers free-writing to working from an outline, and that he didn't intend for the kid to die in Cujo? I think the problems you're pointing at are less a matter of not planning and more a matter of not being honest about the effects of the deaths they include. I think you can free-write a death in a story and not have it lie there like crap on the road, and I think you can have a death emerge in a TRPG's narrative and handle it well; in neither case does the death or its aftereffects need to be planned.

 

[TwoSix]

It seems like a common response is "I don't want PCs to die, but I require the rules to allow the possibility for stakes/verisimilitude."

The question in the OP is really "Don't you need a PC to die sometimes to demonstrate that the stakes exist? Or are you happy with the odds of PC death being low enough that it will never (or hardly ever) happen in play?"