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

[DinoInDisguise]

Great example: By convention, in many previous editions, 1st level characters would get maximized HP, and then roll for HP every level thereafter. The rules did not say to do this, but it was commonly done because folks understood that getting a really crappy roll for your 1st level HP led to a less fun experience in most contexts. This is not a convention in 5e, it is the actual rule of the game (and, further, you may choose to take the HD average rounded up, rather than rolling, which is also not a convention, it is actually what the rules say.)

I think this is an example of exactly what I was really getting at. Rules for any individual table are decided by consensus of that table. If 51% of tables use the same rule, that rule becomes more common than any other. If a rule hits a certain level of popularity, it becomes the norm. If we take the above and replace rule with expectation, or convention, it changes nothing.

If we remove the textual aspect from this thought exercise. And we assume a game without a published rule book, but one passed down from generation to generation. If the majority of people use a popular convention for this game, does the original rule matter? At what percentage of use does the convention become the rule? If only 5% use the original rule, is that a rule or a convention? Does it matter?

Here we have the DMG. The DMG has a phrase. That phrase is, by my guess, the overwhelmingly most popular behavior. Does it matter if it is a rule or a convention? If 51% use it, it's more popular than the alternative. At what point does it become the rule? Is it the rule when it's also the expectation? If it is the dominate expectation, let's say 80%, it seemingly becomes the starting point for discussions. At this point is it a rule or convention?

I don't see a functional difference. Do I call max HP at level one a rule because it's in the rule book or because it's the dominate way to play? If it's the latter is fudging a rule because it's the most popular? If it's the former, is fudging a rule because it's in the rule book? Is it only developer intent? And if so, using the prior example, is the original rule all that matters even numerous generations after it stops being used? If no, at what point is the original rule no longer the rule, but the convention is?

It's really hard to decipher when something is a rule and when it's a convention outside of someone just proclaiming it. So I am really curious where that line is for you. Is it usage based? Is it developer intent? What makes a rule a rule and not a convention?

 

[Micah Sweet]

You could. Would anyone care? Genuine question. "Slice of life" stories are already a hard sell in most contexts, unless someone is looking for something "cozy," which I don't think would appeal to you. "Slice of life for characters that never do anything particularly interesting, and then die due to random BS" is going to be even harder.

You have, more than once, indicated that you think this is exclusively because it's what people are taught. I strenuously disagree. People do try to tell these stories. They don't take off.


But what would you do? What would it mean?

If the answer is "probably die horribly" and "little to nothing," the vast majority of people are not interested.


As said, I made no argument whatsoever about whether characters themselves are superpowered or not, so I won't respond to this.


Guess what genre I happen to almost exclusively dislike? Roguelikes.

Guess which games within that genre I do like? The ones that are gentle, having relatively low stakes, and which make death feel rewarding and story-rich rather than dead-ending and wasteful. I tried, I really did. I really tried to like roguelikes. FTL. Rogue Legacy. This one ASCII Doom roguelike I found online. Etc. Inevitably, I always had to walk away from them because playing them was soul-crushing. I don't, can't, feel that "how far can this one get?" feel. I instead feel, "Wow. I failed. Again. I'm such a goddamn failure. Why do I always fail at everything? Why must life be such suffering?" This is not a joke. This is not hyperbole. That is precisely how that sort of thing makes me feel. That's why I don't do it anymore. I don't have fun with such games. I have the antithesis of fun. It's not the mere absence of fun that so many love to accuse my interests of producing. It is outright emotionally painful to play these games, it is a gnawing void that actively removes joy from other parts of my life.


A sub-challenge that would be irrelevant to me, because I can't feel those feelings. Making the emotional pain more memorable would be twisting the knife.

I absolutely love roguelikes! Nethack was a formative video game experience for me. More recently, I've been having fun with Darkest Dungeon.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think this is an example of exactly what I was really getting at. Rules for any individual table are decided by consensus of that table. If 51% of tables use the same rule, that rule becomes more common than any other. If a rule hits a certain level of popularity, it becomes the norm. If we take the above and replace rule with expectation, or convention, it changes nothing.

But if they are rules, then (whether or not everyone was on board for them), they must be applied consistently. That doesn't mean they trigger every second. But when they do, they should be used.

And no, things do change. Expectations are often not met. Conventions can be set aside at any time for nearly any reason. Rules, in order to be "rules", must have SOMETHING to them that actually makes them normative. If they are not, in fact, actually normative--if they are simply guidance or a gesture at something or whatever--then they are not rules.

That's what "rules" means. Without actual force, they are mere suggestions.

If we remove the textual aspect from this thought exercise. And we assume a game without a published rule book, but one passed down from generation to generation. If the majority of people use a popular convention for this game, does the original rule matter? At what percentage of use does the convention become the rule? If only 5% use the original rule, is that a rule or a convention? Does it matter?

If it has no published rulebook and 100% of the things as part of the game are purely conventions, it has no rules.

"Poker", to give you an example, has almost no rules because without greater specificity you know almost nothing about it. You don't know whether it's five cards or seven cards or more or fewer. You don't know whether there are community cards or not. You don't know the scoring, etc., etc. You don't even know if the dealer is a player or not. Without greater specificity, just about the only "rules" are that that players get dealt some number of cards, and that rarer combinations of cards have greater value, but you don't even know the specific combinations.

Here we have the DMG. The DMG has a phrase. That phrase is, by my guess, the overwhelmingly most popular behavior.

Absolutely the hell not, considering we just had a recent thread about this stuff and the majority opinion was "roll in the open."

Does it matter if it is a rule or a convention? If 51% use it, it's more popular than the alternative.

It matters, because a rule has normative force. A convention does not. "Maps are oriented with North pointing up" is a convention, vastly more popular than any alternative. Yet nothing even remotely stops a person from publishing a map with any direction, even an ordinal direction, pointing up. Some maps even can't be oriented that way, e.g. polar maps or ones that attempt to preserve area without preserving direction (the "orange peel" type maps).

Popularity is irrelevant to whether it has normative force. Plenty of laws are quite unpopular. That doesn't mean it's suddenly not a law anymore.

Just like laws, rules are rules because they have normative force. If someone actually breaks a rule, their behavior has to be corrected. If a statement can be ignored or not at leisure, it has no normative force. It isn't a rule. It's a guideline, suggestion, recommendation, or piece of advice--not a rule. This applies as much to house rules as it does to anything else; a house rule is not a house suggestion, it is in fact actually a rule that people are expected to follow.

Even DMs have rules--even in 5e, as much as it tries to position the DM as an autocrat who does whatever she wants, whenever she wants, for as long as she wants, purely because she wants to do so, for any reason or no reason at all.

At what point does it become the rule? Is it the rule when it's also the expectation? If it is the dominate expectation, let's say 80%, it seemingly becomes the starting point for discussions. At this point is it a rule or convention?

No. It's when it has actual normative force. While "expectation" (dominant or otherwise) is technically irrelevant, it is important that the rules actually be communicated to the player, which might qualify for however you define "the expectation." Something that has normative force, but which is concealed from the people upon whom that normative force applies, is not just a rule--it is coercion, or worse.

Simply put: Does it have normative force, or not? If it is in fact normative, then it is a rule. If it is not normative, if it is merely suggestive, allusive, advising, recommending, etc., then it is not a rule.

I don't see a functional difference. Do I call max HP at level one a rule because it's in the rule book or because it's the dominate way to play? If it's the latter is fudging a rule because it's the most popular? If it's the former, is fudging a rule because it's in the rule book?

Whether you choose to call it a rule does not actually affect whether it is a rule. People call things by incorrect names all the time.

Fudging is when a person (generally, the DM) lies about some result or figure, generally a die roll, claiming that that result was something other than what it actually was. I say "generally, the DM" because when players do this, it is called what it is: cheating.

Fudging cannot be a rule because, by definition, it is lying about the results. Hence, it is (by definition) breaking the rules. I'm aware that the text of 5e has a non-normative suggestion that DMs should lie about results if they think their false result is superior to the true one. I strenuously disagree with this suggestion, and find it both patronizing and insulting to the players subjected to its "advice."

Is it only developer intent? And if so, using the prior example, is the original rule all that matters even numerous generations after it stops being used? If no, at what point is the original rule no longer the rule, but the convention is?

When it has normative force. It is a very simple standard. As soon as something actually has normative force, it is a rule. It doesn't matter whether this normative force was acquired because a designer wrote it down, or because an old game fell out of fashion and a new one replaced it. Chess, as we play it today, is rather a different game from its High Medieval counterpart; what we call "chess" today was originally, yes, a convention called "Mad Queens" chess. It was, in fact, a scandalous SJW game in its heyday, because women could play chess just as well as men could, and could beat them, and (worst of all!) a woman was the most powerful piece on the board, while a man--the king, for God's sake!!!--was the second-weakest piece on the board.

It's really hard to decipher when something is a rule and when it's a convention outside of someone just proclaiming it. So I am really curious where that line is for you. Is it usage based? Is it developer intent? What makes a rule a rule and not a convention?

It really isn't. A rule has normative force. Non-rules do not have normative force.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I absolutely love roguelikes! Nethack was a formative video game experience for me. More recently, I've been having fun with Darkest Dungeon.

I'm not surprised.

Do you think roguelike rules should be enforced on all RPGs?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Are the Fantastic Beasts movies just "slice of life" stories, then?

Never seen them. Didn't comment on them for that reason. Rowling's Wizarding World has rather soured for me as I age. The worldbuilding is painfully, painfully lax, full of incredibly stupid notions (like the idea that wizards don't have bathrooms because they use magic to whisk their turds away). That Ms. Rowling is also a vocal advocate for sociopolitical positions I dislike does not help, but is not in and of itself enough of a problem.

In the specific case of Seamus and Lavender, we could write about (or roleplay through) their adventures during the summers as they encounter their own evidence of Voldemort's return and deal with his servants and associates, safe in the knowledge that S+L can't die as we already know they'll be back at school in the fall.

So...now you're okay with a context where death, not just of a pointless and depressing variety, but any death whatsoever, is off the table?

I'm deeply confused by this response, relative to everything you've said before.

Somehow this doesn't surprise me...

Oh, I can. Sometimes a "shooting star" character that burns bright then burns out can be the very best.

Not for me. Never for me. Which is kind of the problem. Most people turn to games to, y'know, enjoy them. They're a leisure-time activity. Needing to "git gud" just to get anything is going to be a hard sell for that reason. Not that I think that means we should utterly strip away all possible challenge--that way madness lies, I've seen what it does to other games and it is not good--but making it SO challenging, SO character-lethal, SO brutal, drives people away.

Also, I rarely if ever get emotionally invested in my characters to that extent; and even if-when I do I can still pivot easily into remembering the character fondly rather than playing it should its career end prematurely.

As I know I've already said to you, I do, and I cannot pivot like that. A truly permanent death, especially one that was pointless and stupid and depressing, will linger. I'm gonna grieve for that character, for quite a while. Days at minimum, typically weeks. And this isn't just for my characters! I'll grieve others' characters similarly, sometimes more than their actual players do! (The only real exception here was our poor Ranger in Hussar's Phandelver game, and that only because I barely got the chance to know the character before he kicked the bucket, as he joined after I did and then died only a few sessions later. A wight dropped him to 0 HP, which causes instant death.)

 

[Chaosmancer]

Still the dice, sorry. If the dice say they live, they live. It actually works both ways.

So no DM can override the dice, ever?

 

[Chaosmancer]

Sounds like a story to me, which I have said many, many times is IMO not a game.

Sure, but in a game the players KNOW how much effort went into their survival, so they are even more likely to buy it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm not surprised.

Do you think roguelike rules should be enforced on all RPGs?

No, but games that do have a better chance of earning my all-important favour.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

Does it have normative force, or not? If it is in fact normative, then it is a rule. If it is not normative, if it is merely suggestive, allusive, advising, recommending, etc., then it is not a rule.

I'm assuming you mean normative force as "the quality which turns a standard into a norm" as is used in law.

If that's the case, I think any sufficiently popular convention is a rule if it changes the way the game is played. Rule here means,

"one of a set of explicit or understood regulations or principles governing conduct within a particular activity or sphere."

Going from there, assuming the convention changes the way the game is played, the difference between that and a rule ceases to be meaningful after a certain popularity level. This would be because that convention's popularity is the normative force that makes it a "norm." And since it changes the "regulations or principles governing conduct" within the game, it becomes a rule by a plain reading of the definition and meets the criteria you laid out above.

Some more definitions, for clarity;

Norm: "something that is usual, typical, or standard."

Typical: "showing the characteristics expected of or popularly associated with a particular person, situation, or thing."

Standard: "used or accepted as normal or average."

With the semantics out of the way, I will ask once more. Whats the difference between a sufficiently popular convention or expectation, that alters game play, and a rule? Because under these definitions the convention becomes the rule at a level of popularity that makes it a "norm" or "standard."

If you take the standard route, it's actually 51% where the convention becomes a rule. Because at 51%, the convention is present, and a mutually exclusive rule would be supplanted, in the "average" group.

I will allow you to have the last word on this.


Edit: Just so it's clear. The outcome here is that the classification of the DMG's phrase on fudging is not relevant. It's either a norm through popularity and becomes a rule or it's not and its a convention or expectation.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Hercules had a divine parent.

Yes, and so did Mark Antony.

Not sure how the other two are different from other Greeks in a way that makes them a different order of being.

They were nobility and famous heroes capable of feats normal people were not capable of? Only Odysseus could string his bow, that was a huge plot point in his own story.