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

[KYRON45]

Missing the point by a wide margin.

People are trying to re-define the word "story". The oldest form of communication known to man. The point caught fire and burned to ash many many posts ago.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I also don't recall anyone saying music doesn't exist unless it's recorded.

Maybe you should read the relevant posts then

 

[Chaosmancer]

People are trying to re-define the word "story". The oldest form of communication known to man. The point caught fire and burned to ash many many posts ago.

Fair enough. It just irritates me, as a writer, to see the word being misused like this.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Maybe you should read the relevant posts then

I did. You are drawing conclusions from @Lanefan 's posts that I don't believe are accurate.

 

[hoffrg86]

There is alot of discussion around whether 5e needs to be harder, more challenging and more deadly, so it got me to wondering just how deadly do people want their campaigns to be... I'm also curious on whether someone being a player or a DM affects the answer so feel free to let me know which you are. Finally I'd be interested in hearing why you feel your selection is the sweet spot and whether you feel it can be achieved with 5e and if not what edition or even other game you think hits your sweet spot better.

A weird question to me, I don't expect anyone to die nor keep a tally by session/week/campaign, but poor choices and maybe poor dice rolls can end up with pc deaths.

I roll in the open, or in the case of my pbp for the pc's to see - my physical dice and/or randomizer "dice roller" are usually cursed and I can't hit for squat.

So with that said, my 5e kill count is 0 over 10 years, quite a few knocked unconscious though. I've(i was a pc) only seen two permanent pc deaths, and that was Rime of the frost maiden [non-AL], I've never seen a player death in Adventure League(AL/8 years).

The most harrowing 5e game I played was Baldur's gate - Avernous, in the final battle DM opened up with one or two meteor swarms(9th wiz spell), knocked out half our pc's(we 17/18th level). It was seat-of-the-pants and a narrow win with pulling a certain someone to our side - one guy lost his character to loosing his soul, that was about it. The CR was way over our average 4 person CR 17/18 party.

They live, they die - I let the dice fall where they may.

I tried 5e on hardcore mode(drive-thru 3rd party supplement), first level of Undermountain (5e) and still pretty easy for the 4 PCs - we let it go after they hit the second floor. I got rid of short rest, healing by HD. capped stats to 18, slowed down healing hp rate. Only allowed PHB, and a few races. It was more fun to scale it back, but 5e doesn't do gritty well, it does do high fantasy legolas a'la lotr movie well though - if that's what you like. Only way a character died in the lotr movie was being severly outnumbers lol /rip Boromir

 

[Oofta]

A weird question to me, I don't expect anyone to die nor keep a tally by session/week/campaign, but poor choices and maybe poor dice rolls can end up with pc deaths.

I roll in the open, or in the case of my pbp for the pc's to see - my physical dice and/or randomizer "dice roller" are usually cursed and I can't hit for squat.

So with that said, my 5e kill count is 0 over 10 years, quite a few knocked unconscious though. I've(i was a pc) only seen two permanent pc deaths, and that was Rime of the frost maiden [non-AL], I've never seen a player death in Adventure League(AL/8 years).

The most harrowing 5e game I played was Baldur's gate - Avernous, in the final battle DM opened up with one or two meteor swarms(9th wiz spell), knocked out half our pc's(we 17/18th level). It was seat-of-the-pants and a narrow win with pulling a certain someone to our side - one guy lost his character to loosing his soul, that was about it. The CR was way over our average 4 person CR 17/18 party.

They live, they die - I let the dice fall where they may.

I tried 5e on hardcore mode(drive-thru 3rd party supplement), first level of Undermountain (5e) and still pretty easy for the 4 PCs - we let it go after they hit the second floor. I got rid of short rest, healing by HD. capped stats to 18, slowed down healing hp rate. Only allowed PHB, and a few races. It was more fun to scale it back, but 5e doesn't do gritty well, it does do high fantasy legolas a'la lotr movie well though - if that's what you like. Only way a character died in the lotr movie was being severly outnumbers lol /rip Boromir

I've seen much the same, death is rare but close calls are relatively common. I roll in the open for attacks, hide the rolls for death saves so people don't know how long they have to heal an unconscious PC. I just ran a game over the weekend where I had one PC at 0 and another 2 at single digits using 2024 rules.

But I don't know that I've ever played D&D as particularly "gritty", whatever that means. Every once in a while I've had one of my PCs die, every once in a while a PC dies in games I run (and coming back from the dead is not easy in my campaign world). The edition we've been playing doesn't really seem to make much of a difference.

 

[ElminstersApprentice]

I don't like alive-0-death, but I also don't like three-saves-and-you're out. I borrowed injuries from a Mork Borg supplement for bad things happening at less than zero hit points. If you drop several under, you can usually recover, but sometimes it's not recoverable. It's not a negotiation, but it adds a bit of grey area before lights out forever.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I did. You are drawing conclusions from @Lanefan 's posts that I don't believe are accurate.

So, you saw where he was referring to Ezekiel Raiden about how Improvisational Jazz only exists in the moment it is being created, in the purest philosophical form of what that music is supposed to be, it only exists at that point. And his response was "The experience, yes. The act of creation, yes. The end-result music for anyone else to hear, no (again, unless someone happened to record it)."

So, the experience exists in the moment. The act of creation exists in the moment. However, the end-result of the music for anyone to hear (like an audience at the performance) DOES NOT EXIST unless it can be recorded and played back at a later date.

The music does not exist unless it is recorded.

What part of that is not accurate to what was literally stated?

 

[Micah Sweet]

So, you saw where he was referring to Ezekiel Raiden about how Improvisational Jazz only exists in the moment it is being created, in the purest philosophical form of what that music is supposed to be, it only exists at that point. And his response was "The experience, yes. The act of creation, yes. The end-result music for anyone else to hear, no (again, unless someone happened to record it)."

So, the experience exists in the moment. The act of creation exists in the moment. However, the end-result of the music for anyone to hear (like an audience at the performance) DOES NOT EXIST unless it can be recorded and played back at a later date.

The music does not exist unless it is recorded.

What part of that is not accurate to what was literally stated?

The music existed in the moment of creation, but after that it only exists in the memories of those who created and/or experienced it. There's no absolute unless, just if you weren't there when it was performed.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

1e DMG page 102

"As the DM you are game moderator, judge, jury, and supreme deity. You are also actively engaged in actual role playing throughout the course of the campaign, from game to game, as you must take the persona of each and every henchman and/or hireling involved. (See also Monsters, here-after.) To play such roles to the hilt, it is certainly helpful to the DM if he or she has player characters of his or her own in some other campaign."

Of course it also says on page 103

"Some few players will actually play their henchmen as individual characters, not merely as convenient extensions of their main player character. In these rare cases, your involvement with these henchmen will be minimal."

So basically the DM plays them as people unless the player does. Another of the many Gygax contradictions in the DMG.