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

[Lanefan]

I find this distinction pedantic, particularly because I know I have heard people use both terms for the other alleged definition,

And those people were, technically, doing so in error.

and others who have used one term or the other for both uses without distinction.

Ditto.

Regardless: what you call "henchmen" are effectively already-made secondary PCs, so the argument has again become circular, you are already requiring that the players have a stable of playable PCs at the ready. And if you don't have henchmen, thus removing the circularity, you are thus put into the other problem, where the only people you can draw on to replace a dead PC are meaningfully inaccessible.

If there's no way to replace a dead (or otherwise hors-de-combat) PC then it's kind of on the DM to ensure that at least one of the following is true:

--- death is off the table entirely; as is long-term capture, petrification, etc.
--- the players each bring more than one PC into the adventure-situation-place and are advised to do so
--- the party contains numerous NPC aventurers who can, in a pinch, be given over to a player to run

IME the first option, once the players learn it is the case, more or less quickly leads to increasingly-degenerate play. I encourage and allow the second at all times (in part so as to disguise those times when replacements won't be possible), and try my best to always have at least one adventuring NPC in the party as a fallback.

 

[Lanefan]

This is the first time I've ever heard anyone make such a claim. Do you have a source? I'm not saying you're wrong, OSR ain't my bag and no one should be surprised by that, so ignorance of OSR jargon wouldn't surprise me in the least. I'm just very surprised that something apparently so cut-and-dried has both (a) never been mentioned anywhere as far as I have seen, and (b) is so widely ignored/overlooked/abused that you're the very first person to ever tell me of this distinction.

The distinction between henches and hirelings is outlined in the 1e DMG.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The distinction between henches and hirelings is outlined in the 1e DMG.

But to be fair, they are also common normal words that people might just use outside their exact paleo-D&D meanings.

 

[Umbran]

You might want to ask yourselves if the argument over definitions is actually the valuable bit here.

 

[Chaosmancer]

In what way does that make them protagonists in a story? Seems to me that the PCs are just people going through the world and making choices based on what they find there. That isn't a story until someone puts it together after the fact and tells it.

Just out of curiosity, do you know what "slice-of-life" is? Like, do you understand the concept?

I don't know if it is a tag used in western media, but just a quick look on a single website shows this

5,362 manga title, not single volumes, TITLES. As in there are, on this one site alone, over five thousand stories written by professional writers that are, by your definition... not stories? Because an active manga title isn't put together after the fact. But a slice of life story is literally a story where the characters are just people going through the world and making choices.

They also have some of the most popular non-shonen titles out there.

 

[Chaosmancer]

No! I explained this to you. Under 5.0 the encounter you describe would have had difficulty modifier of 2.5 due multiple monsters, making it count way above deadly encounter whilst under 5.5 that multiplier does not exist so the encounter counts as moderate. The encounter did not change, but what difficulty it is classified as did. So had you built an encounter with similar budget under 5.0, it would have had way less monsters of weaker monsters.

I think I see the disconnect. You expect that, were I not testing the new encounter building rules, I would have strictly followed the encounter building guidelines.

I wouldn't have.

And actually, isn't that an utterly bizarre take in the face of the normal complaints about 5e's level of difficulty? I made the encounter I made specifically because it made sense for about that number of enemies to show up. But it was seven enemies vs five players. That's not an unreasonable fight. Three lesser warriors, two stronger bodyguards, and an apprentice shaman is a pretty thematic set-up for a fight, the mushroom was honestly added because it fit the location and the fight felt like it could be TOO EASY.

And despite the fact that this seemed like an utterly bog-standard encounter for me, I'm supposed to expect that DMs with experience in multiple systems struggle to challenge their PCs, when I've taken the supposedly even easier, even less challenging, even more simple version of this system, followed the rules, and came up with a challenge whose only critique so far is "if you were using different rules that would have been a deadly fight"

So the only reason I somehow came up with a challenging fight was... having one more active monster than PCs that started the fight. Seems like that should say something, considering how many people have told me that it is nearly impossible to challenge PCs in the old rules, and now PCs are even stronger.

 

[Chaosmancer]

If the player is genuinely done with the character and wants to move on, great. But if they aren't? We can do so much more with it.

EXACTLY THIS!!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I was using the classic OSR definitions of those terms.

Generally the GM makes and plays henchmen (though IME they are often run by a player in combat situations for ease of use). Thus, they are active in the adventure as allies and potentially available to be run by players who lose their PC, temporarily or otherwise. I don't see it as circular.

I can tell I was tired, I completely neglected to actually respond to the latter.

Whether the GM makes them doesn't help the argument. That just turns it into being given a pre-gen to replace your existing character, which is worse because now you aren't even getting to decide what kind of character you play.

--- death is off the table entirely; as is long-term capture, petrification, etc.
--- the players each bring more than one PC into the adventure-situation-place and are advised to do so
--- the party contains numerous NPC aventurers who can, in a pinch, be given over to a player to run

IME the first option, once the players learn it is the case, more or less quickly leads to increasingly-degenerate play. I encourage and allow the second at all times (in part so as to disguise those times when replacements won't be possible), and try my best to always have at least one adventuring NPC in the party as a fallback.

Your first point is the one that is in error. You have done what so many others have done in conversations like this: taken what I actually said, and inflated it into something grotesque and horrible, and then complained about how grotesque and horrible it is as a result.

Death is not off the table entirely just because one very specific form (random AND irrevocable AND permanent) is. If it really were genuinely true that ABSOLUTELY NOTHING the players do will ever result in death no matter what, no matter how irrational and bizarre and stupid the deus ex machina required, then yes, of course that automatically leads to degenerate play.

Consider a game where characters can die because:

1. They took on a serious threat, explicitly knowing it was a serious threat, at an important time, etc.
2. They blatantly ignored explicit warnings that they were taking openly lethal risks
3. They make a desperate last stand or take on a suicidal task so others can flee/escape/succeed
4. The party has the resources and time to resurrect the character "soon" (meaning, within a session or two)
5. The player would prefer that any death that character faces won't be reversed or undone
6. The GM is doing something with any deaths that do in fact occur
7. The player is leaving without plan to return
8. Various other possibilities

In other words, a game where the only cause of death that is guaranteed nixed is one where all of the following are true:
A. Character(s) died solely because of $#!+ luck, impossible-to-predict results, or similarly empty, "out of the blue" causes
B. The player(s) would prefer to continue exploring the stories they had been (of the character(s) and their interactions with the party etc.), rather than moving on to something else (new char, new game, whatever)
C. There is no viable mechanism by which the PC(s) might be restored to life, whether by PC action (=revocable) or not (=non-permanent), within a reasonable time frame of say a couple sessions (no more than 4, that's a month's absence for most groups)

Both in theory and IME, this does not lead to a degenerate state of play, where players exploit the GM's generosity with idiotic, suicidal behavior because they "know" the GM will save them from the reasonable consequences of their actions. Instead, it leads to cautious, shy players (aka, players like the ones I generally have) actually being willing to take any risks at all, rather than turtling up, freezing up, or just quietly following whatever the rest of the group wants to do. If a player does in fact treat this as an exploitable resource, they'd trigger valid death clause #2: "they blatantly ignored explicit warnings that they were taking openly lethal risks." Because that isn't a random death anymore. The player knew they were risking death, knew the danger, and blithely pushed past it because they were so supremely confident that they could exploit the GM's good will for their benefit.

I refuse to be used by others as a convenience, especially when I'm trying to be generous and meet them halfway or even more than halfway. Doing that is an extremely efficient means to piss me off royally, and I won't hesitate to serve up a steaming helping of "find out" for such a player.

 

[Jolly Ruby]

It's not for me as the DM to decide. It's for the player's with their actions and the dice.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Just out of curiosity, do you know what "slice-of-life" is? Like, do you understand the concept?

I don't know if it is a tag used in western media, but just a quick look on a single website shows this

View attachment 389757

5,362 manga title, not single volumes, TITLES. As in there are, on this one site alone, over five thousand stories written by professional writers that are, by your definition... not stories? Because an active manga title isn't put together after the fact. But a slice of life story is literally a story where the characters are just people going through the world and making choices.

They also have some of the most popular non-shonen titles out there.

Someone clearly put those stories together after the fact to be told. That's what I said. I'm don't see the point you're trying to make, beyond continuing to hassle me for my opinions.