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

[Micah Sweet]

Oh, no, I'm definitely not the only person who has had this problem, neither on this forum nor in general.

I'd also note, you're conflating two different things: DMs mandating that everyone start at level 1, and players being happy and excited to start at level 1.

With this glorious age of "DM Empowerment!", it is quite common for DMs to do whatever-the-hell-they-feel-like, players be damned. After all, the Empowered DM doesn't put up with such player entitlement. The Empowered DM doesn't need to do such things. They tell the players to jump, and by golly, the only thing those players better say is "How high?"

The bitter sarcasm is strong here. Plenty of folks would look at 5.5 and see design as moving away from "DM empowerment", to use the most visible example.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

A year to get to 4th level is slightly fast by our standards. That said, that you-as-player find it boring and frustrating tells me you're in it - at least to some extent - specifically for the levelling and power-ups rather than for the enjoyment of in-the-moment play regardless of character level.

Don't make assumptions about me and my tastes.

For the record, I like both things, thank you very much. I want both of them in my experience. Moment-to-moment can be wonderful, but in isolation it can wear thin over time. Satisfying long-term story arcs are my real jam, that's truly what I love most, but even that loses some of its spice without a feeling of progression. Long-term story doesn't exist without the moments that make it up and the big changes that result from it; moment-to-moment dissolves like foam without a bigger structure in which those moments can cohere; progression and advancement has no weight, no value, if there isn't a context and a greater meaning behind them. I look for all three (though, again, the long-term story arcs with their delicious payoff are the part I love best).

I hold the position that levelling up should be no more than a pleasant side effect of play that would have otherwise happened anyway.

Whereas I hold that it is part and parcel of the experience, no less nor more than several other important things.

As for slow advancement directly causing (near)-TPKs, the only reason those things should be directly connected is if the DM is running a WotC-era module or AP "stock" (i.e. exactly as written) and failing to realize the module expects on-the-fly advancement at a specificed rate.

Oh, no, it had everything to do with these DMs throwing whatever-they-felt-like at us. Hussar's Phandelver game was the first 5e game I had ever played that actually used a WotC-written adventure. To the best of my knowledge, every 5e DM I've had before this has been doing a home-grown campaign.

One DM split the party but kept throwing full-party-size threats at us. Another, his first group had punched above their weight in a couple combats, so he was convinced that all 5e characters regardless of level were nearly unkillable, and thus threw stuff at us that repeatedly overwhelmed us until it eventually produced a (near-)TPK. The third just liked big, bombastic fights, I guess, but the net result was a TPK before 3rd level.

Hussar's game was the first 5e game I've ever played where I actually managed to see level 5. Most of them fizzled out because players dropped out, so the campaign didn't last (this is pretty common with play-by-post games, though, so it's not really a knock against 5e in specific.) Of those that didn't fizzle out, the three above were the big flare-outs. And, before anyone gets all up in my grill about "strangers" and such? Two of the three campaign-ending meatgrinders above were run by people I consider friends. Both of whom I cautioned about starting at first level. Both of whom politely, but firmly, dismissed any feedback I offered on the subject. (Though I elected to stop giving such feedback after the second time a DM responded with barely-veiled hostility, of the "no, I'm not doing that, and you will not ask me about it again" variety.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The bitter sarcasm is strong here. Plenty of folks would look at 5.5 and see design as moving away from "DM empowerment", to use the most visible example.

Every direction is south when you're standing at the north pole (or vice-versa).

 

[Micah Sweet]

To bolster your statement somewhat. I prefer to start at level 3. I have had many players express shock over that, and seek to confirm, because... shouldn't we start at level 1 which is the first level instead of "skipping" to higher levels.

I had a game recently started where we put that right on the advertisement that it was starting at level 3... and still had to tell every single player who joined that it was starting at level 3 because they just assumed we would start at the first level.

I feel like if you are advertising running a 5e game at all you need to specify any deviations from BOG-standard AotC D&D front and center, no matter how small and minor you think they are. Folks IME seem quite skiddish regarding a potential bait and switch.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You assume there's anyone actually doing that. As @Chaosmancer said, many players simply think 1st level is just the place you always start. And many DMs have no interest in changing their minds about 1st level being the place you start, so it creates a self-perpetuating cycle.

People do lots of things not because it makes them happy, but because it's just "what one does." That doesn't mean they hate it either! It just means that you cannot say, "Ah, yes, people do X, therefore people like X."

That kind of thinking leads to all sorts of really, really wrong conclusions.

Women must not want pockets, since they keep buying clothes that don't have pockets! I guess women like not having pockets! (Spoiler alert: Every woman I've ever spoken to about this issue hates the fact that real, functional pockets are so hard to find in women's clothing. Yet for some reason, this hasn't changed, across my entire life. Why? Aren't there companies out there who could make so much money if they would just make women's clothes with actual pockets? And yet....)

The pockets thing is real. My wife complains about it all the time. I hunt for dresses with pockets when I shop for her.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Well, certainly not best from your point of view (and thus not for the entire group). It could certainly be best from their point of view, up to and including everyone else at the table except you. Did the other players weight in on any of these situations?

No. Most of them were new to TTRPGs, or at least to 5e. They did not yet have an opinion.

Their opinion grew in a rather negative direction once the campaign folded when all, or all but one, of the characters died.

In the less-good cases, as noted in my previous post, the DM basically gave me a veiled threat, a "no, we will not discuss this, and if you try to bring it up again, I will eject you from this campaign" kind of thing. Not explicitly said, of course. But the finality of the "no" in multiple cases was strong enough that I decided to cut my losses rather than deal with a DM who did that sort of thing. And, of course, I began keeping my feedback to myself, if DMs were going to respond with such hostility to even something as simple as, "Would you consider starting at higher than 1st level?"

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The pockets thing is real. My wife complains about it all the time. I hunt for dresses with pockets when I shop for her.

Yes. That was my point. It is a real, actual thing, that real people deal with--and it has been a real, actual thing that real people deal with at the very least since I was in grade school. That's 20-30 years of continuous problems.

Yet if so many women complain about it, why don't clothes manufacturers change to meet demand? Clearly the women who dislike this must be in the minority, if they keep buying clothes that don't have pockets! Or...the alternative answer...just because it happens doesn't mean people like it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Every direction is south when you're standing at the north pole (or vice-versa).

That seems a pretty extreme stance to me, but I don't live your experience.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No. Most of them were new to TTRPGs, or at least to 5e. They did not yet have an opinion.

Their opinion grew in a rather negative direction once the campaign folded when all, or all but one, of the characters died.

In the less-good cases, as noted in my previous post, the DM basically gave me a veiled threat, a "no, we will not discuss this, and if you try to bring it up again, I will eject you from this campaign" kind of thing. Not explicitly said, of course. But the finality of the "no" in multiple cases was strong enough that I decided to cut my losses rather than deal with a DM who did that sort of thing. And, of course, I began keeping my feedback to myself, if DMs were going to respond with such hostility to even something as simple as, "Would you consider starting at higher than 1st level?"

Well, if a DM feels that strongly about I feel it's obvious that forcing the issue, even if it worked, wouldn't result in a fun game. IMO no game run by an unhappy GM is going to work out well.

 

[dave2008]

I never said supplement.

I want them to be in the DMG or PHB.

My misunderstanding - sorry about that!

To include a "0 level" in the DMG would be about a third of what I'm asking for. The other two thirds would be to:

(1) Make the rules for that "0 level" robust enough that they can cover a spread of different possibilities, all the way from "you have nothing but raw ability scores, no racial stats, no class, no proficiency, nothing" to "you're almost a 1st-level character." This provides a spectrum of options. It would be especially nice if they came with tools to help with the squishiness that such characters might face, so that an experienced DM could use the same rules for introducing brand-new players without automatically putting those players in a meatgrinder as a consequence.
and
(2) Include "incremental advance" rules in the style of 13A. If you're unfamiliar with the system, you basically can pick up just one tiny piece of a higher character level: maybe a feat, maybe a ki point, maybe a spell slot, etc. You can't take flat attack or defense bonuses, but otherwise, the world is your oyster. Such rules make it extremely easy to spread out character advancement nearly as long as you might want, since you can now get (say) 1/10th of a level every few sessions, so you're still getting a feeling of clear progress even while the actual changes only come very, very slowly.

13A included the latter rules in its single core book. While I'm aware that it isn't trivial to design rules, I can't imagine the above things taking more than 10 pages in total (and even that sounds terribly profligate). Yet including them would be incredibly useful to a wide variety of players--old hands and neophytes alike.

Still easier and achieves the same, or arguably better, result to simply say: start at level 3.