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

[Vaalingrade]

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

Someone heals them?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Someone heals them?

Immediately? Under any and all circumstances? What if the healer runs out of hit points?

 

[prabe]

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

They drop. If someone heals them, they get back up again. If they die from failing death saves, the table needs to work out what happens next: When it happened in a Tier Four campaign (not the one that there now) someone else in the party attuned to the rod of resurrection the dead ranger/cleric was carrying and rezzed the cleric. If no one in the party had been able to do that, we'd probably have speedplayed through getting the PCs to someone who could do the rezzing, and I'd have worked out what the consequences would have been.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Immediately? Under any and all circumstances? What if the healer runs out of hit points?

Maybe not immediately but by the end of combat.

We don't use 5e's anemic healing and don't pidgeonhole it into cleric or bard. 3/4 characters in most parties have some kind of healing, enough to bring someone back up. and because the healing is actually worth casting before someone goes down, people go down less.

So there's that.

Also, I don't try to do attrition and random encounters. Combats only happen if they matter, if they're a set piece or if the players seek one out, so there's not intent to wear them down to make characters go down either.

Finally, I have enemies fight actually intelligently, not possessed with the intent to kill a PC. They attack active threats instead of double-tapping, animals drop prey to flee rather than waste energy and increase the chances they get chased down and die instead of dragging prey off or standing there getting hit to chew and swallow.

 

[prabe]

Also, I don't try to do attrition and random encounters. Combats only happen if they matter, if they're a set piece or if the players seek one out, so there's not intent to wear them down to make characters go down either.

I at least can mostly agree with this--I think random encounters can be worthwhile, but I don't set those at a difficulty likely to kill the PCs, and I don't use them to wear the PCs down. I have, a couple of times, set up gantlets for the PCs to run, which were set to wear them down--but they weren't random.

That at least doesn't seem likely to be wildly distasteful to you.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I at least can mostly agree with this--I think random encounters can be worthwhile, but I don't set those at a difficulty likely to kill the PCs, and I don't use them to wear the PCs down. I have, a couple of times, set up gantlets for the PCs to run, which were set to wear them down--but they weren't random.

That at least doesn't seem likely to be wildly distasteful to you.

I don't have a problem with in-world gauntlets where there is someone in the world trying to run the PCs down.

My issue is with... well the 6-8 encounters per day that is invariably just be 4-7 trash fights that just exist to either make sure you don't have your good abilities for the fights that matter, or make you not get to use your fun stuff for fear of running into a fight that matters later.

I also just kind of find random encounters to be a waste of time unless the party is going out spoiling for a fight for reasons. Especially when they're tacked on a filler on travel and the already nothing to aggressively boring exploration 'pillar' (stump with a calculator and a torn ranger character sheet on it).

Sometimes I'll have things pop up that look random, but do have a purpose, and if the players are like 'we're going hunting', I'll pull something random for them to throw down with, but I'm not rolling every hour to see if five giants sneak up on them or a single wolf decides it's got the stones to rock up on clanking death.

 

[prabe]

I don't have a problem with in-world gauntlets where there is someone in the world trying to run the PCs down.

My issue is with... well the 6-8 encounters per day that is invariably just be 4-7 trash fights that just exist to either make sure you don't have your good abilities for the fights that matter, or make you not get to use your fun stuff for fear of running into a fight that matters later.

I also just kind of find random encounters to be a waste of time unless the party is going out spoiling for a fight for reasons. Especially when they're tacked on a filler on travel and the already nothing to aggressively boring exploration 'pillar' (stump with a calculator and a torn ranger character sheet on it).

Sometimes I'll have things pop up that look random, but do have a purpose, and if the players are like 'we're going hunting', I'll pull something random for them to throw down with, but I'm not rolling every hour to see if five giants sneak up on them or a single wolf decides it's got the stones to rock up on clanking death.

Sometimes the random things that come up lead the PCs to interesting things, or otherwise result in interesting play/choices, so they happen in my games, but I'm not looking for some number of combats in any random day, and I'm not rolling every hour or anything, either: I roll for when the next potentially interesting thing is going to happen, then I roll (on my own tables) for what that is.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Sometimes the random things that come up lead the PCs to interesting things, or otherwise result in interesting play/choices, so they happen in my games, but I'm not looking for some number of combats in any random day, and I'm not rolling every hour or anything, either: I roll for when the next potentially interesting thing is going to happen, then I roll (on my own tables) for what that is.

I've got no problem with that. I'm just plain not a fan of random though and wouldn't even use tables I created.

I suppose the player-side effect is the same because I'm very improvisational and while the skeleton of the villains' plot might be planned out pending PC interaction, the organs are... mutable. When the party became fixated on local candies (long story), a candy-themed business cabal sprang into being, threatening mom-and-pop local candy stores up and down the coast and -gasp- they were in a business arrangement with the main villain the WHOLE TIME.

 

[CreamCloud0]

IMO the game should make coming back to life harder, or at least provide solid suggestions on how to do so.

it would be nice if the game provided alternate default levels for certain spells designed to emphasise certain playfeels.

 

[tetrasodium]

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.

There's a few bits in that quoted post that are baseline disagreements significant enough to undermine other bits to the degree that they aren't really talking about the same thing. Going to touch on those without everything getting lost in a long pointless back & forth fisking.

"Trivial" doesn't mean trivial to these PCs and that it will remain trivial forever. Take the kill rats in the tavern basement trope as an example.. it could be incredibly trivial to almost everyone in the tavern, except for the PCs, but it's level appropriate for this band of PCs being hired (and the example isn't finished). Maybe the PCs deal with the rats and they find some potentially concerning stuff they don't quite understand (because they are some flavor of new & inexperienced nobodies).... They could tell the quest giver and wipe their hands of the whole thing sure... but these n00bs want to be somebody important known for getting things done! Maybe they have an idea of what they could do to understand or unravel the found thing but they are newbies who can't afford it... Luckily someone else is willing to front them on the tools/equipment/training/services needed if the party is willing to go do this other level appropriate thing that they just can't be bothered to do themselves. Low and behold the PCs take care of the basement rats, deal with why there are displaced winter wolf cubs eyeing local livestock find the leaking stash of contraband used in evil rituals that made the rat problem a problem and OMG it's all related to that band of mercenaries secretly holed up in that broken down abandoned keep out in the forest. Toss in an adventure or three for the PCs to pass out their basic starting gear with fewer gaps or slight upgrades and you can really have quite a few low level adventures per level while doing a bunch of world building. None of that world building relies on mining PC back stories for contrived hooks everyone will forget in a few weeks & the PCs established ties along with a reputation fitting of a proven second and third level party of adventurers without even breaking up & mining the Red Brand hideout adventure to create multiple adventures.