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

[Vaalingrade]

In any case, bringing along some henchman goes a long way toward filling in that play gap when your PC bites it.

I don't think having to play a character you don't want to play is better than being sidelined.

No D&D being better than bad D&D and all. cool if you are okay with just playing whoever, but I see no appeal in playing a random henchman if that's not the character I intended to play.

 

[tetrasodium]

Well, you know any argument predicated on popularity (or lack thereof) isn't going to get much traction with me. Not sure why people have to bring in faceless masses to support their arguments and can't just speak for themselves.

In any case, bringing along some henchman goes a long way toward filling in that play gap when your PC bites it.

Going to jump in on this because the party having henchmen along has the great benefit of a new PC being able to seamlessly transition into the party without "oh wait bob, you weren't with the party when $thing happened so [lets do this long round about thing getting everyone up to speed on what everyone already remembers instead of something new & cool]" regardless of why a new PC is coming in.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well, at least for me, it's really difficult to invest into multiple characters as much as I wish to invest in a character. As in, I would really, really struggle with that. Having a stable of characters would push me hard toward a pure pawn-stance game, and I don't really get much enjoyment out of that perspective on play.

It would be like asking an actor to play a main character in not just one show, but half a dozen shows, simultaneously. Some really good actors are probably quite capable of that. Most, however, would quail at the schedule requirements and might run into issues with performing so many entirely different people consistently, especially with long gaps between different performances.

Having a stable of PCs is a valid and even wise approach for old-school styles of play. It isn't really compatible with the styles of play that interest me. If D&D purports to serve all those styles--as it clearly does, what with cooperating with Critical Role and other highly-narrative, long-form D&D podcast series--then it cannot be designed predicated on the idea that each player definitely will have a stable of PCs so that any single one dying is "easy come, easy go."

I do think that, perhaps as a more advanced optional rule, (maybe something in an early major supplement? Or a freely-available conversion-guide type thing?) it would be good to have rules for how to very quickly draft up a reasonably effective PC for various classes. That would help support players who prefer the "character stable" approach, without mandating that people use that approach.

I agree, and support your choice of that playstyle. I just also think that the game didn't need to be predicated on your playstyle any more than mine, or (more to my preference) that separate games or at least heavy rules modules were produced supporting different playstyles.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The point of my "argument predicated on popularity" was merely that you seemed to be complaining that people don't play the way you want them to.

And the "when" in your last sentence seems to imply a playstyle I'd likely find deeply unsatisfying in play. Why would (or should) I try to run for a playstyle I wouldn't want to play?

Why would I?

And "when" is admittedly hyperbolic. There's no guarantee either way. Kinda my point.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't think having to play a character you don't want to play is better than being sidelined.

No D&D being better than bad D&D and all. cool if you are okay with just playing whoever, but I see no appeal in playing a random henchman if that's not the character I intended to play.

Disagree, especially if playing the hench is temporary until your primary can be raised. Do you assume that a downed PC can always be revived in the field with no time gap?

 

[Vaalingrade]

I agree, and support your choice of that playstyle. I just also think that the game didn't need to be predicated on your playstyle any more than mine, or (more to my preference) that separate games or at least heavy rules modules were produced supporting different playstyles.

As much as I dog on them for not following through with modularity (It wasn't a promise! they never said that! Pay no attention to all the times they said that!) and as much as they managed to make a ruleset that make neither of us happy, I doubt anyone can make a ruleset that makes both of use happy.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Disagree, especially if playing the hench is temporary until your primary can be raised. Do you assume that a downed PC can always be revived in the field with no time gap?

Yeah, because that's what we do.

The only downtime is when someone actively chooses to swap out a new character.

 

[prabe]

Most of my games have players leveling at far slower rates than average, but I've never had a player claim they felt trapped or expressed similar feelings about those low levels of play. It's a play style that absolutely is not likely to find appeal in players who are really into 5e's Super Hero to Super Hero Plus power curve, but the fragility of low level PC's is important in that style of low level play because so much of the play amounts to some form of worldbuilding through PCs establishing ties to the world & establishing themselves as reliable trustworthy problem solvers. That tends to happen through the PCs treating trivial★ problems in the world as serious issues that can & should be handled before they require the attention of higher level & more established adventurers who need to be heading off & dealing with more serious problems that those up & coming fresh faced but inexperienced adventurers could only die to. IME it's far more common for a PC to die because a new book came out & Bob wants to play $NewThing than it is for a low level PC to die in a game that might take multiple sessions per level.

★To better established & higher leveled parties of adventurers

I've found that I can establish that the low-level PCs are fragile quickly, and the players I'm DMing for tend to hold tightly to that for a long time. The fact I can manage effective challenges through Tier Four might help, here.

As for "worldbuilding through PCs," I've been able to do that just by asking the players for things in the setting their PCs were connected to. In my most-recent campaign, that involved explicitly asking each player for 2 people, a group, a place, and an event in the starting city their character was connected to--and then using (at least some) of those over the 25-ish sessions it took the PCs to get around to chasing the starting situation out of the starting city (which starting city they were all long-term residents of and well familiar with).

As for "trivial problems," I ... dunno how many of those any of the PCs in the 5e campaigns I've run have encountered. I'm pretty sure all the situations they've encountered, they've treated with gravity appropriate to their seriousness. But I've also been running campaigns very much mostly where the PCs' interests, desires and (ahem) themes have been relevant in play, the PCs haven't been playing through some story I have in a book or my notes.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I agree, and support your choice of that playstyle. I just also think that the game didn't need to be predicated on your playstyle any more than mine, or (more to my preference) that separate games or at least heavy rules modules were produced supporting different playstyles.

Certainly. That's part of why I advocate for rules that are useless to me (like "Novice level" rules), but which I know would be incredibly useful or even essential to people who have very different tastes.

Personally, I think it's quite possible to have a single game that really does meet many different styles well, genuinely giving different groups what they want. There are a few things that I think need to be baked in from the start, mostly in a "one-way function" sense. E.g., it is easy to start from an asymmetrically-balanced system and produce unbalanced results, just ignore all guidelines; it is hard to the point of nearly impossible to take a heavily unbalanced system and finagle balanced results out of it; fundamentally, that's just entropy, it's easy to disrupt a finely-tuned mechanism, it is difficult to assemble a finely-tuned mechanism from random parts. But by and large, I think most of what people want is either just naturally compatible, or workable with up-front, opt-in rules that tell you why you'd want them and what goals they're meant to accomplish.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah, because that's what we do.

The only downtime is when someone actively chooses to swap out a new character.

So what happens in your game when a PC runs out of hit points? Practically, at the table?