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

[tetrasodium]

I think this might be the first time I've seen anyone non-sarcastically say that Drizzt and Elminster were positive features of the Realms. In the 5e games I DM, I've had good success with entities that think of adventurers as something like investments, because there are all sort of non-aggression pacts binding the most-potent things in my primary setting world; those most-potent entities have a tendency to treat low-level PCs as useful people and high-level PCs as effectively equals, I haven't had to use them to enforce any sort of compliance, ever.


It's possible my experiences are atypical (I hear that all the time) but I don't think I've never seen PCs behave as you describe, in any D&D-like TRPG I've played or run, ever, going back go the mid-1980s. If you exclude attempts to intimidate people the PCs thought were bad, you can broaden that to just about all the TRPGs I've been involved in, even when we weren't playing extraordinarily heroic PCs.

Oh don't get me wrong drizzt & eleminster are horrible for being too big of a name with too much lore. That extreme gestalt maybe deific ranked power level is sometimes needed for death to be plausible enough to remain a credible threat when facing a higher level PC if the plausibility is to overcome "I know that I'll be safe because the gm isn't going to derail the session with a super long fight". That requires the existence of possible threats capable of swatting the PCs like a bug if those individuals are forced to get involved.

The last time I can recall invoking this kind of threat was in an upper class bar in sharn that was known for being an enforced safe neutral ground for folks to talk knowing that the other side of the table wouldn't dare start a fight here.

Spoiler

The players were invited to a meeting there by someone important from one of the dragonmarked houses & one of the players decided "oh I'm level 11, screw this gnome garak, I don't care if he's rumored to be former Trust, I'm going to show up in full weapons armor and pack. Like to see him stop me, [those bouncers outside didn't even try after I said no & drew my great sword]". Needless to say, the fancy well described staff that was drawn from behind the bar sent everyone but the PCs running and left one PC unconscious just being seen, the other party members took their unconscious friend while dragging away the individual they definitely didn't know & definitely weren't friends with whom they swore to knock sense into on their way out the door.

That was only possible because the players had zero doubt that anyone stepped up to that fight could wind up immediately dead or worse with plenty of time left in the session for those choosing to tempt fate so they could create new PCs

 

[prabe]

Oh don't get me wrong drizzt & eleminster are horrible for being too big of a name with too much lore. That extreme gestalt maybe deific ranked power level is sometimes needed for death to be plausible enough to remain a credible threat when facing a higher level PC if the plausibility is to overcome "I know that I'll be safe because the gm isn't going to derail the session with a super long fight". That requires the existence of possible threats capable of swatting the PCs like a bug if those individuals are forced to get involved.

The last time I can recall invoking this kind of threat was in an upper class bar in sharn that was known for being an enforced safe neutral ground for folks to talk knowing that the other side of the table wouldn't dare start a fight here. That was only possible because the players had zero doubt that anyone stepped up to that fight could wind up immediately dead or worse with plenty of time left in the session for those choosing to tempt fate so they could create new PCs

I don't have deities in my setting, for reasons. I drop PCs all the time, all the way through Tier Four, and I've killed at least one PC at high levels (she got better ...) without invoking that sort of thing to keep the PCs "in line." There were jokes throughout the one campaign about the PCs killing at least one major NPC, but those were entirely jokes; had the PCs tried to follow through on them seriously, I'd have dropped into the fight, which would have taken as long as it would have taken, and whatever the outcome would have been, would have been. (It probably would not have gone well for the PCs.)

 

[pemerton]

If folks still kept multiple PCs active in a campaign, this would be less of an issue.

I think there'd still be some amount of "sit tight" unless the players were all running multiple PCs in the same adventure. Just more "sit tight until we get your other character here" instead of "sit tight until we get your character back alive."

Aside, of course, from that sort of troupe play not really being the experience most people want from TRPGs these days. It's arguably harder to identify closely with three or five characters than it is with one.

Adding a couple of further thoughts to @prabe's observations:

If we're going to use multiple PCs as a "solution" to the problem of character death meaning (i) that the player has to "sit tight" and (ii) that the player's new character has to be integrated in some fashion, then why not just allow the player to keep playing the same character? Perhaps there is an answer to this question, but I think it needs to be spelled out.

One possible answer to the question is that "it is more realistic" in so far as it allows for death to be the occasional result of dangerous activity, while still giving the player a character who is readily available in the shared fiction. But this happens at the expense of a different dimension of realism - namely, the game doubles down on the absurdity of all these people who have no lives, motivations, trajectories etc of their own, but who seem to exist as nothing but members of an "adventuring" hive mind. I mean, this is already an unrealistic feature of typical party play, and adding multiple PCs just amplifies this absurd feature.

 

[Lanefan]

I think this might be the first time I've seen anyone non-sarcastically say that Drizzt and Elminster were positive features of the Realms. In the 5e games I DM, I've had good success with entities that think of adventurers as something like investments, because there are all sort of non-aggression pacts binding the most-potent things in my primary setting world; those most-potent entities have a tendency to treat low-level PCs as useful people and high-level PCs as effectively equals, I haven't had to use them to enforce any sort of compliance, ever.

Similar here, with the add-on that while some powerful entities see adventurers as good investments others might (and do) see adventurers as expendable operatives to send into dangerous places and situations they'd rather not risk themselves.

That said, there's alwas a bigger fish out there somewhere, no matter how powerful the PCs themselves may get.

It's possible my experiences are atypical (I hear that all the time) but I don't think I've never seen PCs behave as you describe, in any D&D-like TRPG I've played or run, ever, going back go the mid-1980s. If you exclude attempts to intimidate people the PCs thought were bad, you can broaden that to just about all the TRPGs I've been involved in, even when we weren't playing extraordinarily heroic PCs.

Nearest I've seen (and similar things have happened a few times over the years) is when someone in the party was refused entry to a village pub along the lines of "we don't serve their kind here" the party mage walked 20 paces away, turned around, and laid a fireball into the place.

What a mess. And yeah, there were a few alignment audits after that one.

 

[Lanefan]

If we're going to use multiple PCs as a "solution" to the problem of character death meaning (i) that the player has to "sit tight" and (ii) that the player's new character has to be integrated in some fashion, then why not just allow the player to keep playing the same character? Perhaps there is an answer to this question, but I think it needs to be spelled out.

One possible answer to the question is that "it is more realistic" in so far as it allows for death to be the occasional result of dangerous activity, while still giving the player a character who is readily available in the shared fiction. But this happens at the expense of a different dimension of realism - namely, the game doubles down on the absurdity of all these people who have no lives, motivations, trajectories etc of their own, but who seem to exist as nothing but members of an "adventuring" hive mind. I mean, this is already an unrealistic feature of typical party play, and adding multiple PCs just amplifies this absurd feature.

One related aspect that hasn't yet been brought up (I don't think) is that there's a subset of players out there who actively like turning over their characters now and then*; who enjoy the ongoing campaign-setting-backplot-etc. but get bored playing the same character (and-or with watching other people play the same characters) for any great length of time. They want the change that a new character brings to the group dynamic and the party's tactics etc., when or before the existing group gets stale.

I'm one of those players.

* - doesn't always have to be death-caused; cycling characters in and out of parties works just as well. Pleasant side effect: cycling characters in and out also tends to slow down the overall level-advance rate, meaning the campaign can last longer before getting beyond what the system can handle.

 

[TwoSix]

One related aspect that hasn't yet been brought up (I don't think) is that there's a subset of players out there who actively like turning over their characters now and then*; who enjoy the ongoing campaign-setting-backplot-etc. but get bored playing the same character (and-or with watching other people play the same characters) for any great length of time. They want the change that a new character brings to the group dynamic and the party's tactics etc., when or before the existing group gets stale.

I'm one of those players.

* - doesn't always have to be death-caused; cycling characters in and out of parties works just as well. Pleasant side effect: cycling characters in and out also tends to slow down the overall level-advance rate, meaning the campaign can last longer before getting beyond what the system can handle.

I'm definitely this style of player; that's why I'm generally pro-PC death AND a fan of shorter, focused campaigns.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It's possible my experiences are atypical (I hear that all the time) but I don't think I've never seen PCs behave as you describe, in any D&D-like TRPG I've played or run, ever, going back go the mid-1980s. If you exclude attempts to intimidate people the PCs thought were bad, you can broaden that to just about all the TRPGs I've been involved in, even when we weren't playing extraordinarily heroic PCs.

Yeah, same. It doesn't sound like typical PC behaviour to me.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Perhaps? But it is a lot of monsters though. I'd genuinely like to hear from "no death" people how they feel about this. Like how does it work in practice?

Still far behind, but I have a dissatisfying answer.

It depends.

It truly depends on the exact situation. I remember in one game I ran, a player's dwarven fighter dropped in a fight against some bandits (difficult terrain combined with fire and ranged attacks), in the middle of a massive grass fire. They failed their saves, and they were going to die. It was like session two and that felt bad to me. One of the other players had taken the Dark Omen background, and said that their background was that they were the unwilling herald of a great demon of fire, whom they have been rejecting since birth as they fight against their destiny. So... I had the demon lord reach out to the Dwarf and offer a deal, serve them and help convince their herald to unleash them upon the world, and they would live.

I wouldn't have gone with this route if I didn't have a player with that backstory and if the player hadn't dropped and died in the middle of a massive fire, but "dying in a fire next to the herald of a demon of fire who is frustrating that demon by ignoring their calls" was a perfect situation.

In another instance it might be a paladin who commits a great act of good, and therefore celestials intervene. Or perhaps I have a fey pact in the party and the fey step in. Or maybe we do a session where they are ghosts. Or maybe the game ends in a TPK. It just depends on what threads I have to weave with.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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.

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

Yeah, there is a style and tone difference that must be accounted for and that many people stumble into.

If you tell the PCs "this is the swamp of evil, where men go to die!" then they hear "Ah cool, that's the next plot hook". Because the Players are not playing commoners. Even back in 1e days, that was a clear sign of loot and the location of the next dungeon and therefore exactly where they need to go.

I do like having some very powerful guards or mercenary force though, so I CAN use this device slightly differently. If the party hears tell that the newest recruit of the Golden Legion is a lightning mage who defeated her opponent by blowing up an entire hill with a single spell, then they later hear "The Lands of Luz are a deadly place, even the Golden Legion avoids it" then the level 5 characters are going to go "Oh CRAP! That is terrifying actually!"

 

[Chaosmancer]

The semantics is what you want to focus on? Nomenclature aside, it would have had a multiplier under the old rules but didn't under the new ones, thus the encounter that would have counted way above deadly previously being mere moderate... and then proving to be tougher than expected.

The nomenclature matters a bit, because you are presenting this as though there is no guidelines in the new book. The new book states that there is an issue "if you include more than two monsters per character" and states that if you do, you should include weak monsters that can be defeated quickly.. which I did actually. It may not seem like it, what with the lowest hp being 25, but the Berserker Barbarian with cleave was capable of dealing 25 in a single blow, and following it up with a second attack.

But, putting this aside.... isn't the problem people keep bringing up that they can't challenged their parties? That there is no challenge to DnD 5th edition?

Three gnolls, two flesh gnawer gnolls, a druid and a mushroom. against a completely fresh party of 5 who won initiative and scouted the fight beforehand. If this is too tough and too deadly... then how is it that 5e is also not hard enough?