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

[Swarmkeeper]

From our "Campaign-Guidelines" channel in our campaign Discord:

• DMs will run the game as a living world: some areas and situations will be more dangerous than others and will be telegraphed accordingly
• DMs are fans of the PCs but we will run enemies true – keeping in mind that enemies often have motivations other than “fight to the death” – and, that said, death is a real possible outcome for PCs
• Retreat is usually an option – if the party wishes to retreat from a situation, we’ll shift from combat rules to chase rules and the enemy will react according to their nature and motivations

That said, after 27 sessions, all PCs have arrived at 8th level and there have been zero deaths. And there is no specified or targeted "death count" per the OP. As an insurance policy the parties (there are two DMs running two story lines in different parts of the world) have invested in obtaining diamonds and making sure Revivify is prepared.

Being a Wildemount campaign, we have also adopted an additional rule around death (#2 below).

If a character should die, the player can decide what happens next to the PC:
1. If suitable magic is available, be revived/raised/resurrected/reincarnated
2. Come back as a "Hollow One", which is not a race/species but rather a supernatural gift which grants special abilities (including making it harder to die since on a Death Saving Throw of 16+, the PC gains a hit point) - interestingly Hollow Ones, having no soul, can only be brought back to life by Revivify or, I suppose, a Wish.
3. Die permanently and roll up a new character at the same level as the dead one

 

[Lanefan]

Any form of PVP violence is an instant, complete fun-killer for me. Doesn't matter who's involved, doesn't matter why it occurs. It's going to completely and totally ruin my experience of that session without fail, and if it's severe enough, it may damage my experience of the entire campaign irrevocably.

While fair enough, that you so strongly prefer the characters (in-character) to always play nice with each other puts a restriction on the other players at the table as to how they can play their characters and-or what types (or alignments) of characters they can play. I don't like it when a DM does this and even less like it when another player does it.

This sounds very much like players of Paladins in 1e days: "I'm playing a Paladin, which means all you others have to play Lawful Good characters, or close. No Evils, no Chaotics".

Result: the Paladin types often got driven out of the party fairly early on, as the usual default alignment round here is Chaotic Good.

Whether it is "more realistic" or not depends rather heavily on the exact setup and buy-in from the players. As an example, Zeitgeist has the PCs start out as official deputies of the Royal Homeland Constabulary of Risur. Under those conditions, PVP would be quite unrealistic.

To begin with, yes. But will those PCs remain deputies all the way through the campaign? Will there be turnover in party membership such that non-deputies might join? Are one or more of the PCs spies for the enemy planted within the Constabulary as moles? Are one or more of the PCs "on the take" and-or corrupt?

Stay tuned, folks, for the answers to these and many more questions on our next episode of As the Constabulary Turns.

 

[Lanefan]

I didn't think I need to say that fun was subjective. Of course that part was personal and not something you had to feel about CvC(not PvP).

This is a brilliant distinction, @Maxperson , and one that needs to be made.

PvP - Player v Player - is a table problem; the players are using their characters as proxies to settle out-of-game issues.
CvC - Character v Character - is not a table problem; the characters are doing what they would do in the fiction and the players are compartmentalizing their own emotions from those of their characters.

PvP can sometimes be entertaining but more often is a headache. CvC is nearly always entertaining.

As for realistic, every party always having the same goals and action isn't very realistic as @pemerton noted. I also in my post noted that sometimes groups would have unity of goal and action and gave a similar party composition to the one you just talked about. Ithilien Rangers sent to bring back an escaped prisoner.

Even a commando-like group which works like a machine when it has to might have internal dissension that blows up into barracks-room fights or malicious prank-playing.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Whether it is "more realistic" or not depends rather heavily on the exact setup and buy-in from the players. As an example, Zeitgeist has the PCs start out as official deputies of the Royal Homeland Constabulary of Risur. Under those conditions, PVP would be quite unrealistic.

Yeah, it is incredibly bizarre to think of the idea that disparate people coming together to work for a common goal is "unrealistic" when... gestures to human civilization It is sort of our thing. Like... that's what human's do.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Same here, even as DM. I prefer NOT to invest countless hours into a game where one player wins at another's expense due to some bad die rolls or not being sufficiently backstabbing. PvP is fine for a two-hour long sports game or board game or video game; or maybe even a quick and light-hearted one shot. But not in a multi-session cooperative story-building game, thank you very much.

There are very narrow circumstances where I can be okay with PvP. Edit: I guess we call it CvC now? Two characters fighting. I'd never be okay with two players fighting.

1) It has to be the correct group. I need to know the people involved well enough to trust everyone is going to handle everything in the best possible way

2) It cannot be because of disparate goals. "I want to rescue this person, I want to kill this person?" No. That is just going to lead to bad things happening. It has to be rooted in personalities and philosophies.

2a) It has to, to a degree, be an overreaction on one side or the other, ideally both. "You killed my Father! Prepare to Die!" is going to lead to long-term resentment. "I disagree with your actions, but punching you in the face, then kicking you in the stomach was probably an overreaction" can get resolved in a classic shonen "men speak with their fists" type of mentality. Where BOTH parties can admit they were at least partially in the wrong, and the fight is a catalyst for building stronger bonds in the future.

 

[Zardnaar]

Derp nvm.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

As I try to encourage character development and storytelling, death just puts it to a halt. However, they’ve reached the level where resurrection is now am option, so the only way they won’t come back is if the player doesn’t want him or her to.

Question: If you chose to start a campaign at level 1, where even revivify is out of reach for anywhere between "several" and "many" sessions (3rd level spell, so 5th level character), would you put in some effort to have a prepared solution in case a character were to die under these circumstances, due to no fault of their own? ("I ran headlong into suicidal danger because I believed the DM would save me" would absolutely be their own fault.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

While fair enough, that you so strongly prefer the characters (in-character) to always play nice with each other puts a restriction on the other players at the table as to how they can play their characters and-or what types (or alignments) of characters they can play. I don't like it when a DM does this and even less like it when another player does it.

Not at all. People can play whatever characters they like. They just need to not resort to physical violence to solve conflicts that arise.

No PC party I've ever been in has had an issue that rose to the level of outright physical violence between them. Arguments, sure! Arguments are fine. Hurt feelings? Great! That's excellent future story potential, whether a nursed grudge or someone finally relenting and apologizing or whatever else. Party split? Well, so long as it's temporary, that's good too--after all, how many serialized narratives have at least one "person alone" arc to show how much that person needs their companions and vice versa?

It's just physical violence. Hell, I'd even be happy with "a fight ALMOST broke out between Alice and Betty, but Claire kept them apart until cooler heads prevailed."

This sounds very much like players of Paladins in 1e days: "I'm playing a Paladin, which means all you others have to play Lawful Good characters, or close. No Evils, no Chaotics".

Absolutely not. I have frequently been the only Lawful character in a party. I have never once demanded anyone else play any alignment. I am a firm believer in the "set a good example" approach to alignment stuff. Being a bossy jerk just makes people hate you. Show them the benefits of your ways, and you won't have to tell them anything. And it works, pretty consistently actually. Turns out being a genuinely kind, upstanding, merciful person who visibly struggles with doing the right thing, but consistently pushes toward it anyway, is a pretty good way to make friends and influence people.

You don't win hearts and minds by being a tyrannical arse. You win them by putting your own arse on the line, time after time after time after time, even for people who have been ungrateful, mean-spirited, or hurtful. And when you let that light inside show, it really can change others for the better.

In most cases, I actually really like having at least one Chaotic Good teammate. They have skills, life-experience, and methods of thinking that I, and thus my characters, will often lack or overlook. You'd be surprised how much you can do by just showing trust in another.

Result: the Paladin types often got driven out of the party fairly early on, as the usual default alignment round here is Chaotic Good.

Oh, I'm quite well aware that Chaotic Good is the most common alignment, and that Neutral Good is the second, because it's for people who aren't entirely comfortable expressing their disdain for formal systems as a societal structure. Usually, Chaotic and/or Chaotic-leaning Neutral characters are the majority in any party I play in. On the rare occasions this isn't true, it's because there's another LG (almost all of my characters are LG, it's just what I'm comfortable playing) and one LN because someone felt like playing a rigorously by-the-book Wizard or the like.

To begin with, yes. But will those PCs remain deputies all the way through the campaign?

My understanding of the adventure path is that they are intended to, yes.

Will there be turnover in party membership such that non-deputies might join?

They would become deputies as part of joining. Being a member of the Royal Constabulary is an important element of the adventure path.

Are one or more of the PCs spies for the enemy planted within the Constabulary as moles?

This would be...unlikely. I'm not saying it can't happen, but you'd be pretty seriously deviating from the campaign premise by doing so, as I understand it. (I've tried very very hard to not get any spoilers for Zeitgeist, as I would like to play it someday and would prefer to experience it fresh.) What little I know about the later stages of the adventure path would make "you're a spy for a rival nation" a pretty serious problem, narratively, of the "painted into a corner" variety where there are no really good directions to go from there.

Are one or more of the PCs "on the take" and-or corrupt?

That's a thing the adventure path has some rules for. "On the take" in the strictest sense no, but corruption is perfectly possible. (Mostly, it's about retaining seized magic items, rather than handing them over to the Constabulary for analysis and, perhaps, provisioning to someone--whether you or another constable.)

Stay tuned, folks, for the answers to these and many more questions on our next episode of As the Constabulary Turns.

I find it very strange that you are advocating for this here, where in previous situations I was under the impression that you were a strong believer in "DM Vision" and that things the DM established should not be contradicted by mere player-wanted-to-do-a-thing stuff.

 

[pemerton]

It sounds like it's about creating a fun play experience for the participants in the present, with little concern, generally, with a perspective before or after the game. But like I said our definitions of what constitutes a story are different. I know a lot of people here want and enjoy exactly that experience.

"Story now" RPGing is not about the story - by which is meant fairly standard elements of an engaging story, like premise/theme, rising action and conflict, crisis and resolution, etc.

As @soviet posted, "story now" RPGing is about the now - that is, the particular manner in which those elements of story are created. They are created by the participants, acting together in accordance with the rules of the game. One mark of good rules for "story now" RPGing is that they make it relatively effortless for the participants, in playing the game, to create a fiction that manifests those familiar elements of a story as it is created.

The two most obvious contrasts with "story now" RPGing, in the mainstream of RPGing, are (1) those RPG experiences which don't especially aspire to create a story with those sorts of elements at all - such as classic D&D; and (2) those RPG experiences which display those elements, but because they are conceived of by the GM (or module author) in advance and are then imposed on, or fed into, the play in virtue of the way the GM controls the unfolding of the fiction - DL is the paradigm for this, but there have been endless further examples in the ensuing 40 years, and among D&D players this seems to be the most common understanding of what it means to have "story" as a component of RPGing.

 

[pemerton]

Perhaps, but if so roleplaying games should probably stop using the term over and over again in their text with varying meanings.

Fun fact: The Apocalypse World rulebook doesn't use the word "story" at all. In a few places it enjoins the GM to "NOT pre-plan a storyline" (the quote is from p 108), and in the acknowledgements it mentions that "The entire game design follows from “Narrativism: Story Now” by Ron Edwards. (I'm referencing the original edition here; I don't know about the second ed.)

The Burning Wheel Gold Hubs and Spokes (which anyone can download for free if they wish to read it: DriveThruRPG) does use the word story. I don't think the use is ambiguous. Here are some examples (from pp 10-11,13-14, 24, 32, 59, 72):

One of you takes on the role of the game master. The GM is responsible for challenging the players. He also plays the roles of all of those characters not taken on by other players; he guides the pacing of the events of the story; and he arbitrates rules calls and interpretations so that play progresses smoothly.

Everyone else plays a protagonist in the story. Even if the players decide to take on the roles of destitute wastrels, no matter how unsavory their exploits, they are the focus of the story. The GM presents the players with problems based on the players’ priorities. The players use their characters’ abilities to overcome these obstacles. To do this, dice are rolled and the results are interpreted using the rules presented in this book. . . .

Burning Wheel is very much a game. While players undertake the roles of their characters and embellish their actions with performance and description, rolling the dice determines success or failure and, hence, where the story goes. . . .

Testing abilities is a good thing! Not only do tests drive the story by providing tangible results for our actions, they allow the character a chance to improve his abilities and attain greater heights. . . .

Dice rolls called for by the GM and players are the heart of play. These are tests. They determine the results of conflicts and help drive the story. . . .

When a player sets out a task for his character and states his intent, it is the GM’s job to inform him of the consequences of failure before the dice are rolled. . . . Failure is not the end of the line, but it is complication that pushes the story in another direction. . . .

Character traits . . . help capture our imaginations and immerse us in the story. . . .

Unless there is something at stake in the story you have created, don’t bother with the dice. Keep moving, keep describing, keep roleplaying. But as soon as a character wants something that he doesn’t have, needs to know something he doesn’t know, covets something that someone else has, roll the dice.

Flip that around and it reveals a fundamental rule in Burning Wheel game play: When there is conflict, roll the dice. There is no social agreement for the resolution of conflict in this game. Roll the dice and let the obstacle system guide the outcome. Success or failure doesn’t really matter. So long as the intent of the task is clearly stated, the story is going somewhere.​

The use of "story" here to mean (something like) sequence of fictional events that manifests premise/theme, rising action, crisis, etc doesn't cause any problems, in my view. It helps make clear how the game is intended by its designer to work.