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

[CreamCloud0]

Anyway, how do people feel about this optional rule from the new DMG?

Defeated, Not Dead

If you and your players agree to avoid character death in your game, you might consider an alternative: a character who would otherwise die is instead "defeated." The following rules apply to a defeated character.

Comatose. The character has 1 Hit Point and the Unconscious condition. The character can regain Hit Points as normal, but the character remains Unconscious until they are targeted by a Greater Restoration spell or experience a sudden awakening (see below).

Sudden Awakening. After finishing a Long Rest, the character makes a DC 20 Constitution saving throw. On a successful save, the Unconscious condition ends on the character. On a failed save, the condition persists.

Maybe it was discussed before... It has been a long thread...

I think it would work fine in some situations, but there seems to be no advice how to deal with situations where the defeated character would logically surely die. Like a while ago in my game the PCs faced a hungry giant tyrant bird (basically a tyrannosaurus) that grappled one character and was munching him. The other characters managed to kill the bird and save they dying chew toy, but if they could have not, and would have had to flee, it would seem extremely contrived for that character to survive regardless of whether the normal rules for death saves were in place or not.

Intelligent foes might capture defeated characters alive (and would do so under the normal rules as well, as stabilising is trivial,) but many foes in D&D are various sort of ravenous beasts and monsters that would logically just kill and possibly eat the downed characters if given an opportunity to do so.

personally i like it, my only changes would to also be able to awaken them with an apropriate medicine check/healers kit use(CON mod times per long rest maybe?) and having the sudden awakening automatically happen after a long rest rather than needing to roll for it.

but yes, your characters are never in danger of being outright killed but it's still very possible for them to be defeated and defeat means setbacks.

plus if the players don't want death on the table then i feel like they'll be receptive to some minor sprinking of contrived coincidence to achieve that end, they might've been being munched on by a tyrant bird but the party can come back to find their unconcious body chewed up and spat out but ultimately alive, beasts will fight the intruders but leave once the party has been downed and the threat seemingly taken care of, and so on and so forth.

tangentially, how do you do nested quote-in-quotes.

 

[Lanefan]

tangentially, how do you do nested quote-in-quotes.

By using quote and slash-quote tags, I would guess, plus some cut-and-paste. As in:

I never said this.

I didn't say this either.

 

[CreamCloud0]

By using quote and slash-quote tags, I would guess, plus some cut-and-paste. As in:

thanks

i've never knew those tags existed, i just used the direct message quote or from the header.

let's hope i can actually remember them

 

[Chaosmancer]

Assuming telling a story was the main point of play, can you give an example of one where as you say, the story's downfall is overuse of character death?

I was referring to other media, such as novels and shows, since my larger point was about the use of Character Death as a story telling device. I want to make that clear, because you are now asking me to give an example from a different medium.

But, actually, I do have a current actual game I am running where we have something similar. Not exact, because I tend not to kill PCs in my games if it can be avoided, but it presents the point rather well.

I started an Eberron game by gathering a group of players and giving them a mission from a Dragon-marked house. All of the PCs signed a magical non-disclosure agreement to keep their mission a secret. The mission was to collect blood samples from various monsters. A simple premise that would have us moving across the country and fighting rare monsters.

I lost one player to a sudden schedule change, so their character was written out of the story. I lost another player who simply stopped responding. We then lost another player to a car accident, she was alive, but in need of physical therapy and no longer felt up to the game. By this point, we had not even reached our first destination, and I was down to two players. And yes, I am aware, I am not talking about character death here explicitly, but let us look at the situation I found myself in. The only way to add characters to the group... would be to add people who already work for the Dragonmarked house. Who somehow, for some reason, without anyone letting the House know, suddenly showed up to replace the missing PCs. Who would also have to be given some of the highly-trained griffons which I was using to allow them to more easily travel (And was originally thinking might get stolen to add another layer to the plot). And, I need to do this, because either they had to have signed the contract in the backstory before the character was introduced, or suddenly they are on a mission that they can tell no one about, who they cannot reveal the details to, and who has no investment in the plot because they don't work for the group that hired the original PCs to undergo the entire plot of the adventure.

It isn't a perfect 1 to 1 to the issues faced in novels or TV series like I was originally talking about, but it should be pretty clear how the initial mission, the driving force behind the game, can be easily lost when you are constantly replacing people with individuals with no connection to the plot. And if they DO have a connection to the plot, you need to contrive reasons for them to be there, when previously... they weren't. Less Quantum Ogre and more Quantum Agent of the Crown.

 

[Chaosmancer]

If its so trivial why remove it completely?

Because its affects on the story are bad, undesirable, and unhelpful.

And can't you have more than one source of tension in a game?

Sure, but replacing a character is far less tense than the character dealing with consequences.

That's like saying your character finds taking HP damage trivial. Why not just remove damage?

At what point are you no longer playing a game and just adjudicating story time?

It isn't my argument. You are the one making the argument that death is trivial to overcome. You are also someone who is upset that we are removing death as a common option. And in your flood of questions, you have ignored mine.

Why are you upset, if it is so trivial to overcome death? If people aren't actually staying dead, then why does it matter if it was Raise Dead cast by the local super bishop or if it was the ghost of their Father's Wrath demanding they cannot die until their vengeance is carried out?

Anywho, I'm not saying you're wrong. Play D&D or any RPG however you like. Use dice, don't use dice. Everyone is in god mode or has 1 HP. Whatever works for your table, it's your table. All I (and others) is tell you if thats a game (or story tell) they would want to play in. Knowing I will always win in D&D would take the fun out of it FOR ME. You do you.

I have been doing me. For a long time. And every time I do me and tell people about it, I get cascaded with people telling me that I have removed all challenge. That if they were at my table, they would strip their character naked and DARE me to kill them, calling my bluff and ruining my game to prove themselves the better player!

So it seems really weird that when I ask "why are you so upset" you refuse to answer, state that everyone can play their own way, and then repeatedly try to uno reverse me on your own argument that your presented. It is like being in a hit-and-run and the person hitting you pulling over to help you to your feet and diss the person who hit you. What are you even doing?

 

[Chaosmancer]

That complaint was regarding 5.0. Like I've been telling you, they changed things significantly for 5.5, so apparently WotC felt so too. It remains to be seen whether they struck the right balance.

So since I used all 2014 monster statblocks, are you of the opinion that the 2024 character options have gotten weaker? Because it was 2024 characters (with a single non-2024 subclass) against 2014 monsters. So it would be really weird if the monsters are suddenly far tougher than before...

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And yet the analogy in another way fits perfectly.

The 1976-1977 Tampa Bay team, as a team, lost 26 games in a row. During most of that time the locker room probably had a revolving door on it as players came in, didn't get it done, and were replaced with other players who management hoped would do better.

This maps almost perfectly to an adventuring party who go out into the field and (somehow!) fail to complete 26 missions or adventures in a row; and who during that run of futility are turning over their membership for a series of reasons (character deaths, character retirements, useless or disruptive characters getting punted from the party, etc.) in hopes of finding a more successful combination. The only difference is that there's no "upper management" or team owner making those lineup decisions; instead the characters in the party at any given time (analagous to the players on the football field) are doing their own hiring and - in some cases - firing.

The consequence in football of not succeeding is that players, coaches, and management end up unemployed; which is a fairly big deal no matter how you look at it.

Again, it doesn't.

Because even if they move to another team, they still get to play football.

Also! I just looked up the team. They actually kept the head coach even after that second awful season, and said head coach took a LOT of flak for making things worse...but still wasn't removed. So even with your own attempts to make the analogy fit, it fails. Plenty of the people involved in making those decisions were making them for reasons that had nothing to do with fixing the problem (as in, the head coach wanted yes-men players, not experienced and skillful players), and plenty of the players "let go" were picked up by other teams.

So....yeah. The analogy still fails. Even after losing 26 consecutive games, there were players who were not let go from the team, the team didn't fold, the head coach and his preferred subordinates stayed, most if not all of the people let go got a new gig somewhere else, etc., etc. It really just isn't analogous to the sudden, unavoidable, pure-luck-of-the-draw death that I'm talking about.

Hence, the analogy simply does not convey what the person posting it wanted to convey. Even losing twenty-six consecutive games didn't result in the equivalent of a TPK. It just didn't, and no amount of massaging that can change it. Losing a football game is the equivalent of losing a combat in D&D--but this team did it twenty-six times in a row and didn't do ANYTHING like a TPK.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

No version of D&D I've ever played permits such things outside of pretty clear cheese scenarios, where you've cobbled together stuff from seven different rules supplements via at least three dodgy rules interpretations. Even in those cases, if it can be done at all, it's a one-off. As DM, unless something is explicitly a one-shot effect, I generally would not give the a-okay on that.

On the other hand, I will always let the dice fall where they may (I always roll in public*), and if it just so happens that the BBEG rolled a nat 1 on initiative, every PC went first, and just got really, really lucky? That's not a one-shot, that's a five-shot (or whatever) that happened to be just barely enough damage. And, on the gripping hand, this is a thing you can do to BBEGs too--indeed, it's easier to do with BBEGs, because they often have a bigger-scope villain above them, like an evil god, or their secret leader, or whatever, who can be the source of this death-defying effect. That then produces the new adventure/story direction, "How do we take away this power, or learn to benefit from it ourselves?"

And, again, just because I am saying that random, permanent, irrevocable death isn't on the table, doesn't mean that some kind of death is now off the table. It isn't. Even with a random death! There will just be some way to reverse it, or it will get better on its own (perhaps after a suitably juicy moment of revelation or character development). So even if a random orc does in fact get lucky and kill you in Podunk Nowhere on Some Random Tuesday, that doesn't mean the character is automatically just...saved, no reason, no explanation. They may still get iced! Or they may not, if I have something else prepared to address that in a way that warrants not actually having the character die.

So, I guess the answer is "I try to avoid having things that could be total one-shot deaths for most NPCs" (excluding mooks/minions/etc., of course), and I am in fact okay with this potentially applying to enemies as well. As a sort of very very soft example, my players are (among many other things) trying to track down a black dragon who is running a mafia-style gang in their city, aiming to eventually take the whole thing over as its dragon "hoard." The party had captured an underling, and his total confidence under interrogation meant they realized he knew he was going to get rescued. Instead of stopping the prison break, they used magic, alchemy, wine, and some other things to help trigger the break exactly when they wanted it to happen, in a way that would allow them to track the criminal they'd caught. Unfortunately, it turns out that the alchemist they worked with...reports to higher-ups within the gang. So they got their subversion subverted.

The gang boss they were hoping to capture was only there as a projection, not as his actual person, so they weren't able to capture him. This is a case where, because of the PCs' actions, they genuinely completely flubbed the critical goal of their effort. They still got somewhere, because the gang had to lose that hideout and make it look like it was still mostly active, meaning they lost a lot of product (=mostly drugs and stolen goods), numerous guards, and a couple low-level functionaries to make the place look active. But the PCs failed at their top-level goal, because it made sense that this alchemist (that I know works for the gang, even though the party hasn't figured it out yet) would warn his superiors. And, naturally, they would then make sure that the one truly valuable target was out of harm's way, but in a way that would keep suspicion at zero until the ruse was finally revealed.

*This does mean I have to handle certain rolls, such as Perception (or the DW equivalent, the ridiculously-named Discern Realities), slightly differently compared to how other DMs would. Because the players can see the result, they know not to fully trust what they hear if you lie to them, so you have to use different tracks. DW's system allows me a clean out. I haven't settled on a specific method or set of methods yet for more D&D-like things. If it isn't a total, abject failure, I'll probably give what I would call a "threatening" answer--the PC knows something is bad/wrong/whatever, but doesn't know what/where/etc.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Thing is, as far as I know the mechanics for a) causing and b) adjudicating PC limb loss don't exist any more (I'd be happy to learn I'm wrong on this!).

Sure.

Since when were you (both general you and very specifically you you) so limited?

I know for an absolute fact you have previously made arguments very specifically on the basis "who cares what the official rules are?"

Ditto item loss or destruction.

See above, but also, just...items can be taken away. That's a thing that can happen. It can happen for all sorts of reasons. Even if I did grant your "I as DM can only ever do what the explicit, official rules permit me to do, and absolutely nothing else!" argument, this is something the rules already permit.

Apart from that though? Item saving throws are still a thing. Damage to items is still a thing. So even if I granted that argument, which I absolutely do not, the rules themselves really do support it!

Ditto level loss.

Sure, mostly because level loss is a death spiral, which is especially not fun for most players. Falling into a pit and being unable to ever dig yourself out, no matter how hard you work, because every thing that goes wrong digs the pit deeper, makes the pit's walls smoother, etc., etc., is just...it's not fun. Better to just end it quickly and be done with it rather than deal with that nonsense.

And that's not even touching on how it makes everyone else's lives harder too. Including the GM!

Ditto permanent stat loss, though I believe temporary stat draining is still around. And so on, until all that remains as a rules-relevant loss condition is character death unless you kitbash the system to add these other things back in.

Nah. There are still plenty of permanent, mechanical consequences that aren't among those things.

Being marked with a geas, for example. Or some other sort of powerful magical compulsion, such that a spell more powerful than remove curse is required to clear it. Greater restoration only comes online at 9th (character) level, that gives you plenty of space to play.

A mindflayer tadpole, in the style of BG3, where the tadpoles don't immediately trigger ceremorphosis, but instead remain in suspension, turning tadpole'd people into mind-controlled servants. Other options (vampirism and lycanthropy come to mind) may exist as well.

If humor is acceptable, a Freaky Friday situation where people exchange character sheets for a time. (Not too long, mind, because this can get tedious quickly, but a one- or two-session thing could be quite funny.) Other "jokey" consequences could be, for example, losing one prepared spell spot to a "useless" spell (which could also be seen as a challenge, "find a use for this 'useless' spell!"), having to use a cursed joke weapon (like an evil clown's cursed juggling clubs), or being forced into certain behaviors (e.g. "you must always move at least 5 feet left at the start of every turn, though you can move back again afterward")--a mild consequence, unless you have to wade through hordes of enemies with nasty opportunity attacks!

A "beneficial" spell (so remove curse doesn't help) that causes you to flip whether you breathe water or air. Great for a single aquatic adventure. Terrible once you've actually finished that adventure and want to go back to dry land. Other "beneficial" spells that have serious downsides could also apply.

Getting help from a powerful but mercurial force (e.g. fey nobility), who demand a price for each favor given. So maybe a character might lose their color vision, or proficiency with a type of armor/weapon, or take a penalty to a given type of saving throw, etc., with the sacrifices becoming more painful each time.

I could probably come up with more. The vast majority of these are hardly any effort to implement, and I don't even think they'd be that hard if you switched back to 3e, where the math was absolutely at its most fiddly.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I had a PC die in early 1984. In the same campaign he was revived in late 1988, only to quickly die again; he was revived a second time in early 1989 and is still going - after a fashion - today.

Needless to say, in early 1984 I rolled up a replacement; and that replacement was Lanefan.

I mean, that's fair, but realistically, with the way people play characters today, if it takes almost five years for the character to be revived, that actually means the character never gets revived, because the campaign ends long before that. Campaigns that hit a third year are rare. We cannot design a game expecting that most groups hit that point. Because most don't.

There's some middle ground here. Oftentimes, if someone's PC is hors de combat for any great length of time and revival or replacement isn't an immediate option I'll get that player to roll for a party NPC or even hand that NPC over to the player to play outright for a while. Other times, a player might want to stick around and just enjoy the entertainment of seeing what happens to the rest of the gang. Or, the player might start banging out a new chaacter right away even if it turns out not to be needed in the long run.

It ain't quite as all-or-nothing as you posit above.

Except that it is, if you don't start from three assumptions that are just flat not true about most games today. I already mentioned one, but I'll do both here:
1. Most campaigns run for several (3+) years, and have mostly cohesive participation across that time.
2. Most campaigns have players running several different PCs, which they rotate through regularly.
3. Creating new characters is very simple, takes very little time, and requires no special investment from the player.

The vast, vast majority of players are not interested in the second. They want to play one character at a time. Hence, if you're "handed an NPC" to play, that's effectively being told "okay, this is your character now, have fun!" And a lot of players just...aren't interested in doing that. Pregens are not well-liked, for good reason. They tell you what you WILL play, rather than allowing you to decide for yourself what you wish to play.

The first, sadly, just...isn't true of most groups. Even groups run entirely with friends. I am quite well aware that my DW game is a rarity for having had a relatively stable group for so long....and even then, none of the people who started this game are still in it today, except me, the GM. I would love it if most campaigns could be expected to run multiple years. That'd be an awesome world to live in. The sad fact is that we don't, and designing a rule system dependent on such things isn't going to magically change that fact.

The third hasn't been true of any edition of D&D created by Wizards of the Coast, and I would personally argue it wasn't even all that true at least by late-2e and probably a bit earlier. Blame it on Dragonlance, blame it on Tolkien fanboys pulling D&D away from the influences of Howard and Leiber, whatever--but the simple fact is that even creating a late-2e character could be quite the ordeal, and the general expectation of player investment into said character at creation, not exclusively after many campaigns, was already much higher.