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

[CreamCloud0]

Which is fair enough.

That said, do PCs have access to such one-shotting abilities to use on their foes? Can they, for example, knock off the BBEG with a lucky crit? If yes, then the foes should have that same access when it makes sense. If no, we're cool.

as i understand it, no, however as i also understand it monster/player HP/damage ratio is balanced asymetrically.

 

[Older Beholder]

Slight tangent, but I once played a couple of sessions where we knew our characters* were going to die.
It was a lot of fun.

*they were basic pre-gens

 

[Autumnal]

Slight tangent, but I once played a couple of sessions where we knew our characters* were going to die.
It was a lot of fun.

*they were basic pre-gens

I wrote a section about doing that in the Fate Horror Toolkit. I agree that when people choose it, it can be great.

 

[Older Beholder]

I wrote a section about doing that in the Fate Horror Toolkit. I agree that when people choose it, it can be great.

We were doing a flashback before facing the campaign big bad, that told the story of how it came to be. We played as miners that unearthed an ancient evil.

 

[tetrasodium]

I don't think I've done much 5e play wherein the PCs were nobodies, it's not a trope I find useful or enjoyable as DM or as player. This might be a difference in our core preferences.

Oh they don't stay nobody's . Starting out as nobody's allows the party to become well known somebodies directly through the course of play. Being well known somebodies though doesn't mean that there aren't individuals far beyond them or that the sombodies in question are not qualified∆ to even visit a place where they can see the pond where the biggest fish∆ swim. Hhaving individuals who are dramatically more powerful than the party is good. The existence of such individuals ensures that powerful PCs don't do things like bully every NPC with the force of a pocket icbm while expecting that the GM's world can't push back with consequences now that they are high level .

∆two of those videos are from overlord. It's a great anime & better light novel series about how a fairly typical d&d-ish world reacts to the sudden appearance of a group who are orders of magnitude beyond what they thought was the highest end of the power curve's extreme high end.

And while I know vaguely what wuxia is, I gotta admit I'm less clued-in about xianxia or (in this context) cultivation--which I could probably do something about, but it's my point is I'm not deeply familiar with the art forms/genres so the chances are really good that I'm not aiming play at the tropes associated with them. (Which isn't snarking on those tropes, or people who want to embrace them in TRPG play.)

All three are basically the same thing & close to interchangable. Wuxia is the Japanese word, xianxia Chinese word, and cultivation is more the western there are some minor differences, but the individual author's story choices tends to have a bigger impact.

 

[Chaltab]

There was a point in my game Sunday that I had two PCs down and it was the lich's turn. He whiffed four attacks in a row against the monk at +9 vs 20 AC. Two rolls were natural 1s.

I'm not going easy on my party.... they just have remarkable flipping luck when it counts.

 

[Lanefan]

Inspired by something @EzekielRaiden posted upthread:

SAFE ISN'T COOL (to the tune of Into the Black, Neil Young)

Hey hey, my my
Bob the Third will never die
There's more to his background than meets the eye
Hey hey, my my

Out in the field the future is black
Too brave to flee from the kill attack
But once you're gone, you can't come back
When you're out in the field, the future is black

The Fighter's gone but he's not forgotten
This is the story of Bobby Cotton
It's better to burn out, 'cause safe isn't cool
And now he's gone but he's not forgotten

Hey hey, my my
Bob the Fourth will never die
There's more to his background than meets the eye...

 

[Maxperson]

With respect, there is so much that is unrealistic about the fantasy genre that just invoking "realism" does not strike me as a coherent argument. This one item is picked out to stand alone among so much other realism that has been tossed aside, "realism" just doesn't communicate enough to edify others why death remains.

Especially when the game allows coming back from the dead, which is pretty arguably less realistic than having absurd luck to not die in the first place.

So, I'm going to push back on this. "Realism" is at best so oversimplified as to not communicate what is important about it.

You still seem to be treating realism as an all or nothing thing and it's a spectrum. Many spectrums, really. When we use the realism argument, we are not tossing aside any other realism and picking it to stand alone. This is just the topic now.

The game is full of realism. Swords are made of metal, have edges and do slashing damage. There are trees. Humans are shaped like humans and breathe air. Realism is everywhere and we all have levels of it that we prefer that vary depending on what aspect of the game we are looking at.

I will agree that it's hard to communicate what exactly realism means to us as individuals. There no concrete number that we can assign so that others can understand what we as individuals are comfortable with. All we can really say is that X thing in the game is not realistic enough, realistic enough, or too realistic for our tastes. The inability to communicate what realism means to us as, though, doesn't mean that it isn't the reason or the primary reason we have. It's a tough situation. It's the primary reason, but it doesn't communicate enough. I'm not sure what the solution is.

Now I'm going to push back a bit on coming back from the dead being less realistic than absurd luck. In a fantasy setting if something is called out as being an exception to our reality, it becomes a reality of that setting. A sort of fantasy realism if you will. Magic is the single largest example of that. A wizard casting fireball in D&D has fantasy realism, so it doesn't conflict with actual realism. We've accepted magic as "reality" for the sake of the game.

Coming back from the dead would be highly unrealistic if the dead just woke up 4 days later for no reason other than it's a rule. Casting Raise Dead, though, is perfectly realistic as part of the fantasy realism we accept for the game. It will be more "realistic" than a bunch of coincidences happening throughout the multiverse allowing you to send messages from other planes, worlds, isolated islands, etc.

 

[dave2008]

Well, I'm pretty sure it is not in the new DMG anymore.

The 2014 rules are still in the game and work with 2024 games. Most of the optional/alternate rules were indeed removed from the 2024 DMG, but I am hopeful they will be available in a future UA style book of DM expansion (like Xanthar's and Tasha's)

 

[prabe]

Oh they don't stay nobody's . Starting out as nobody's allows the party to become well known somebodies directly through the course of play. Being well known somebodies though doesn't mean that there aren't individuals far beyond them or that the sombodies in question are not qualified∆ to even visit a place where they can see the pond where the biggest fish∆ swim. Hhaving individuals who are dramatically more powerful than the party is good. The existence of such individuals ensures that powerful PCs don't do things like bully every NPC with the force of a pocket icbm while expecting that the GM's world can't push back with consequences now that they are high level .

In the 5e campaigns I've DMed, how the PCs have been and are treated is mostly a direct result of their behavior--in most cases, there's a certain amount of rushing in where those with wiser heads would fear to tread--and in the most recent one they were established locals with pasts and connections and suchlike; I haven't ever felt a need to make the players feel their characters were nobodies, or even really out of their depth, and I've never had the PCs in any of those campaigns attempt to run so roughshod over the setting and its inhabitants as you describe, even when they've been doing stuff well into Tier Four; I think (it's hard to know exactly how they're understanding things) they grasp that there are things in the world that they really really don't want to mess with, but I've never even had to imply the existence of that particular carrot.

All three are basically the same thing & close to interchangable. Wuxia is the Japanese word, xianxia Chinese word, and cultivation is more the western there are some minor differences, but the individual author's story choices tends to have a bigger impact.

Not fisking, I hope but thanks for this (and the video links I snipped).