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

[Lanefan]

Per level? How about per session?

[grognard] These days, 'per level' and 'per session' are about the same thing. It used to take us months to gain just a single level. [/grognard]

[grognard] In my day, we showed up for the session with four characters per player and a dozen hirelings, and sometimes had to roll up more before the end of the session! [/grognard]

You've played DCCRPG, then.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Which points us right back toward the idea of players simply declaring success without adversity, which I seem to recall you've already said is not the point. It's pretty binary: you either can always get what you want or you cannot.

but you can choose not to get what you don't want without always getting what you want.

Absent the idea of tie or stalemates, games have winners and losers.

Who wins or loses Minecraft, or the telephone game or many other social collaboration games?

Not all games have winners or losers and in fact a very common refrain is that you can't 'win' D&D. There can always be more quests, new things to do. So if you can't win, what's even the point of losing?

If losers also get to claim these same rewards, however, the incentive to succeed (a.k.a. win) goes away and any threats or adversity quickly and obviously become fake. A threat is not a threat unless the threatener (in this case, the DM as bound by the game rules) is ready willing and able to follow up on that threat.

What if you're just playing to have fun and don't need an incentive to succeed or a disincentive to fail?

What if you don't want or need threats at all?

My group seems to do just fine with multiple DMs who don't use threats and don't follow through on threats they don't make.

 

[Chaltab]

[grognard] These days, 'per level' and 'per session' are about the same thing. It used to take us months to gain just a single level. [/grognard]

Bro is that for real? My Spelljammer game started in 2018 and it just hit level 12.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I'm still back on page 45. Not likely to catch up today as I'm splitting my attention between a few different focuses. There really seems to be nothing new to add to the conversation. People deride what they see as an easy game because they can't as easily kill characters for not playing the way they want them to.

Because, yes, that is pretty much what the argument boils down to. Every time you say "well, they should only die if they make mistakes" you are saying that they should die if they don't make the decision you think is optimal in the moment.

But, one thing I do have to add to this conversation that I usually don't, is a recent play-by-post battle involving a full party. And I think this is a rather interesting example to bring forth.

Enemies:
x3 Gnolls with 25 hp and 15 AC each.
A Druid with some Harengon bunny hops CR 2, 30hp, 16 AC
x2 GnollFlesh Gnawers with 30 hp and 15 AC
A modified Chamberlain of Zuggtmoy to represent a massive Awakened Shrieker. 50 hp and 13 AC

By my calculation, this was about 1,150 xp which for 5 PCs at level 3 puts it just slightly above a moderate difficulty encounter.

PCs:
Fathomless Warlock - 24 hp
Dance Bard - 24 hp
Berserker Barbarian - 35 hp
Psi-Warrior - 37 hp
Life Cleric - 27 hp

Now, I don't have the patience atm to go through and get everyone's precise hp and exactly who cast what, but here is a general sense of that battle.

Both the Fighter and the Barbarian got close to going down, the Bard and Warlock were injured. The Cleric spent most of their 1st level spell slots, the Warlock used half their spells and abilities, the Dance bard used a handful of spells and most if not all of their bardic inspirations.

So... this was a single fight, in a single room of a dungeon. And not a hard fight, per the rules. Yet, the party got wrung pretty dry. So how does this make sense with the claims of the game being too easy?

Guarantee, someone is going to claim that it was all bad tactics on the party's part. But if poor tactics got them pretty well bloodied... and that's too easy... then the implication is that if you don't play with Navy Seal level coordination and planning, with absolutely no mistakes, then someone should die in battle. Which seems like a silly claim to make.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Rude.

Let me clarify:
firstly, i used to think the same as you, but it simply isn't so simple.
I'm not gonna scream at you ir anything if you just wanna roll and be done with it, use a reaction table or split it 50%/50%. any of these has pros and cons, i tried with all of them.
however:
a) lack of social skills is a non-problem: skills can and should be improved, if you foster a positive and fun environment even a rpg table can become a space to hone such skills (ever heard of theatre practice?). basket isn't gating out those wo can't control the ball, just those who are not willing to practice.
b) characters have numbers, players have skills. PC are numbers on paper/a screen, nothing more, they aren't alive, you make them so. Npcs too are numbers, you make them alive by having players reflect on them as if they were, social levers are an aid for just that. Resort to numbers alone and you'll find many players treating npcs as objects in a game (and you can't fault them for that).
c) such approach must be avoided if a player isn't actually capable of recognizing social levers (e.g. they are on the spectrum).

got it?

I wasn't the one you replied to, but I would like to address each of these points.

A: That's not realistic for a lot of players. Even in an actively "positive and fun environment" is not always the place for that to happen. As an example, one of my players has intense social anxiety. It's basically impossible for him to interrupt other people while they're speaking, for example, even when they're people he knows really well. He is getting better, but it is an incredibly slow process. If I forced him to always give 110% for social effort, he would simply abandon the game.

B: Why are you treating it as "resorting to numbers alone"? It is perfectly reasonable to leverage all sorts of things from one's character's rules. As an example, I would expect any Ranger to know a thing or two about hunting, even if they don't actually have Nature proficiency.

C: It is entirely possible--likely, even!--for a player to play someone they aren't like at all IRL. A bon vivant playboy when they're actually a shy and reclusive homebody. Or perhaps a player who didn't do well in school wants to play a Wizard. Nothing wrong with that. I don't see why these players should be continuously punished for the mere desire to play outside of their wheelhouse by constantly demanding of them Broadway-level acting, Green Beret-level situational awareness, Renaissance man-level creativity, etc., etc. There's a VAST excluded middle here between "absolutely everything MUST come from the player's skill and NOTHING ELSE EVER!!!!@!!!!!!!!!@!!@!@!@111!!@!1!" and "LITERALLY only and always EXCLUSIVELY looking at the character sheet and making bald, empty declarations with NO roleplay or thought or strategy."

Finally: Why is it that social things, it's so goddamn awful for players to mention numbers, but with attacks and spells, well by gosh by golly, ANY use of those things is perfectly fine!

 

[prabe]

IMO someone who leaves a game just because their character dies is a) taking it all way too seriously and b) is probably doing the whole group a favour by departing.

That's a helluva presumption on your part. He happened to own the game store we were playing in, and his life was full enough that he needed to do some pruning. Apparently his character's dying was an opportunity for him to prune playing in that campaign, and there were no hard feelings.

 

[Vaalingrade]

A player who leaves the game when their character dies might have just been taught not to take the risk of playing in that group. Isn't part of the exercise involuntary operant conditioning to teach players lessons?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Which is fair, but brings up an obvious question: how else are the players to learn how to play more defensively?

Through:

1. The DM being forthright with the players about what they want and what they intend to include in the game, assuming that's the experience the DM wishes to pursue. "Always remember that retreat is not a fault, it's a smart move." Of course, the DM must also then actually reward the things they want to see, not exclusively punish the things they don't, because the latter very easily leads to perverse incentives. (Frex, if you only punish "unwise" choices, but don't actually give commensurate rewards to wise ones, you're much more likely to train players who are so hyper-cautious, they see absolutely any risk whatsoever as unacceptable, and thus have a far worse time of things.)
2. Especially for totally brand-new players? Learning by having a model to follow. Perhaps have a powerful but temporary ally NPC, who the newbies can petition for advice, and who can make a (diegetic) case for avoiding danger or retreating from an unwinnable fight.
3. Slowly ramping up the threat threshold, rather than INSTANTLY slamming face-first into deadly difficulty at mach 7. Start off with a winnable fight or two, then field a fight that looks much more dangerous than it really is (perhaps a horde of weak, slow enemies that look terrifying) so the players have a "oh naughty word, we HAVE to run" response. Alternatively, open with a "fight" in name only--no actual combat occurs, but the PCs need to escape because they know they're in too much danger, e.g. a prison escape where staying to tangle with the guards almost surely means being recaptured.
4. Emphasizing

And you know what? That's a fair question. Good food for thought at this end.

I mean, I certainly think that there's something to it, but it's not determinative. After all, Dungeon World, a "story now" game, evolved out of the way its creators remembered playing old-school D&D. So even people who really loved that experience can still be invested in a narrative/emotional way rather than an achievement/mechanical way. It's a general trend, but all general trends have exceptions. As a general trend, early-edition D&D strongly encourages a pawn-stance, roleplay-lite, mercenary, pecuniary, mechanically-selfish approach to play. As a looser but still present general trend, newer-school D&D encourages an actor- or director-stance, roleplay-heavy, collaborative, emotive, mechanically-interactive approach to play. Because of those significant differences, they aim for different play-experiences and offer different incentives.

I definitely think that your belief that the majority of players are rarely or never moved by emotional impact is directly effected by your preference for the most classic of old-school approaches to play.

See my response to Vaalingrade just upthread re the difference between in-story failure and game-mechanical failure, as I could type the same thing here.

Alright. Let's talk about it.

All the other significant failure states have been excised from the game, where "significant failure state" means something that renders a character a) long-term or permanently unplayable (e.g. feebleminded, severely aged, permanently petrified) or b) severely compromised in its mechanics (e.g. level-drained, permanently stat-drained, lost an arm or leg).

Well then, your problem is that you have defined away anything that could potentially change your mind, and thus your argument is circular: "nothing else besides X matters because nothing else is a significant failure state, and I have defined a significant failure state such that it excludes everything but X."

Why should we accept this definition of a "significant failure state" and not some other, more inclusive definition? Why is yours, the one that prioritizes purely game-mechanical expression to the exclusion of all else, the one and only valid choice? Obviously, the simple answer is that it isn't the one and only valid choice.

There's two types of failure states: in-story and game-mechanical. To me, the only ones that matter are the game-mechanical failure states, as in-story failures merely turn the story in a different direction while otherwise leaving the character mechanically unaffected and fully playable. There's no actual penalty for failure there.

Whereas for me, game-mechanical failure states are only useful as tools because they lead to in-story failure states. It is the in-story failure states that are where the real penalties lie, because once a story is told, you can't tell it different. You can tell a new story that follows after it, using that as its raw material, but (barring time travel shenanigans) you can't go back and rewrite the story the party has already known. I appreciate game-mechanical consequences insofar as they help enable in-story consequences. I have relatively little use for them otherwise.

The penalty for failure is having the world (or your character) change in a way that upsets you, that disappoints you, that makes you feel regret or anger or loss or dread. Maybe whatever happened is fixable, maybe it isn't and you'll just have to learn to live with it. I find that significantly more daunting--and rewarding!--than the momentary pang of losing your game-piece and then sighing and rolling up a new one. As was referenced before, Frodo taking a Nazgul knife wound, and thus having a permanent nagging mark for the rest of his life. It would have been significantly less interesting to simply have Frodo die at Weathertop and get replaced by Freauxdo, the Halfling Trader who happened to be in Rivendell to sell pipeweed to Bilbo--and the malingering effects of both the wound and the Ring wouldn't have nearly as much impact if the Ring-Bearer changed seven times along the way because the previous one died. For precisely the same reasons, even though TTRPGs and novels are different things, it often is the case (not always, but often!) that it is significantly less interesting to just kill off characters left and right for random BS than it is to have characters suffer because of their past failures, misjudgments, traumas etc., etc.

There's no mechanical cost or penalty for in-story failure, which means the only "heft" is carries is emotional; which while noteworthy for some players (of whom you would certainly seem to be one) is IMO and IME not that big a deal for most.

Whereas IMO and IME it is by far the most important thing for the majority of modern players, and having a game driven by these factors is very specifically one of the most important design differences between old-school and "new"-school D&D. The fact that that older style has almost entirely fallen by the wayside, even with the OSR's massive resurgence, pretty clearly tells me that totally abjuring any emotional "heft" as unreliable and mostly ineffective is simply, totally false.

Consider, for example, that most White Wolf games specifically work to make such emotional heft the core focus of play--and that this was one of the biggest criticisms of what we now call old-school D&D vs those newer, competing games.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Am I the only one who has had the hellish experience of trying to rehabilitate players who are absolutely terrified to do things they think would be fun because they've had characters killed for not being 'careful' enough for the DM's liking?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Because life has penalties, and sometimes bad things with lasting, rules-relevant (from the game perspective) effects happen that you can't decide not to have happen. And I want a game that is more like life in that way. You clearly don't, and there's of course nothing wrong with that, but this is a preference difference that is simy not going to be bridged IMO. like you just said, above, we KNOW. We all know where we stand.

Except that I do want lasting, rules-relevant (from the game perspective) effects that happen and you can't decide not to have happen.

I just don't want the one specific thing of "random, permanent, irrevocable death." I'm VERY okay with all sorts of other things, things that can have permanent impact, even mechanically. Generally, I prefer those to be the result of a PC having to make a terrible choice (e.g. sacrificing a limb, which would prevent them from using a shield or 2H weapon, OR not sacrificing the arm, and thus having a creeping corruption inside them that will slowly try to take over their whole body) rather than being just a one-and-done "because your number wasn't big enough, now you've lost an arm."

Your stance is the absolutist one here. You require absolute sim. I don't. I like sim; I think it's very useful and emphatically shouldn't be abandoned for light and transient reasons. I just think "this consequence is both more boring and actively draining on the ability to continue participating and enjoying that participation" is an exceptionally good reason to not do things. And my preferred solutions for these problems are, always, diegetic ones. That doesn't always mean I know everything in advance; maybe the player surging to life after they SHOULD have died is an unsettling mystery that the party must now investigate (read: giving me, the DM, time and breathing room to consider the causes). But I try to have stuff prepared well in advance, stuff that the party could know about if they dug into it, but which they may or may not actually DO so.

As an example in my current game, the party has all accepted earrings crafted by Tenryu Shen, a gold dragon. I have explicitly told them that this means there is a very small piece of Shen's soul with them wherever they go. What they do not realize is that Shen can sacrifice these little pieces of himself, which would diminish him permanently, in order to prevent their deaths should it prove necessary. Nobody has asked, nobody has really looked too deeply into the earrings or how they function, they've been quite content to just benefit from the other useful functions the earrings have. This is one route amongst several that I have prepared in advance, just in case a character dies, so that if the player would prefer to continue using that character, there is a diegetic means by which they could continue doing so. Several other characters have individual things I could use as well (such as the party Bard's mysterious connections to his devilish ancestor, or the party Battlemaster's connection to spirits and Death which could see him return to the living....albeit permanently marked by the experience.)

As noted, all of these things exist in advance; further, all of them have limitations on their use, and can't be simply invoked at leisure. All of them come with permanent costs if they have to be invoked. And, perhaps most importantly, there have in fact been times where even these defenses wouldn't have worked, because the party was doing something very dangerous and even these measures wouldn't have helped. (Such deaths would not be random, and thus would be 100% okay, because they happened in a suitably threatening, and thus suitably heroic, context.) Of course, I'm also pretty good at communicating to my players when something is Extremely Dangerous, so that coupled with their naturally ultra-cautious attitude means they generally do a LOT of preparation before they try to face anything like that.