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

[Micah Sweet]

People have fallen tens of thousands of feet and survived so falling out of a Rollercoaster should be a piece of cake!

...I see no problem with that logic.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Are you saying you would run a game like this without telling the players that death has special rules in your campaign?

So you are saying that, after hearing and agreeing to the rules of the table, that is when you would act to sabotage the game to prove the superiority of your own style of game?

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yes, D&D combat uses randomness. So does that to you mean permanent death via combat is unacceptable?

They literally never said that, and that goes against everything they have ever said on the subject.

Because to me these would imply otherwise. If the PCs decide to ambush a dragon that has been harassing a city, if they decided to travel trough the Caves of Madness that is famous for its deadly undead, then they're choosing the danger.

A dragon attacking the city that the PCs choose to fight is clearly not random, not unless you've decided that you are just going to YOLO and have a dragon attack a town randomly, for no reason.

The Caves of Madness point gets a bit harder to parse. Because telling the players "This area is full of deadly monsters and few who have traveled to it have returned" tells them NOTHING. Not a thing. Because that is the exact same description you could have given to the last six places they've been that they cleared out.

I literally experienced this in a game a few months back. The DM kept having the commoner townsfolk tell us not to attack this jerk of a "knight" working for our enemy, because he was a powerful knight. But... they were commoners. We were level 5 characters with our own knight. We didn't take them that seriously, and we all knew our Knight was chomping at the bit to attack him. The level of bad idea that turned out to be was revealed mid-combat, when we realized our attacks STILL hadn't bloodied him and he cast Mass Suggestion on us. We chose the fight, 100%, but we didn't choose the danger, because we didn't understand the level of the danger.

Foreshadowing the actual level of danger is difficult to do properly, because you have to either have a comparable threat to mention (Hey, there was a dragon who went there to clear it out, and THEY got their tail handed to them) or you need it to come from someone the party sees as nearly equal in power to them. Because to a 4 hp commoner GOBLINS are a deadly threat that few survive.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So you are saying that, after hearing and agreeing to the rules of the table, that is when you would act to sabotage the game to prove the superiority of your own style of game?

Huh? Not sure where you are getting that. I'm saying that making sure the combat rules can't kill your PC except under certain circumstances the player gets to choose apply is essentially a houserule (yes, I know the new book has an optional rule for it now. Not the point). Houserules should be made clear to everyone involved in session 0. If they are and the player agreed, they certainly have no right to harass the DM about it, in-game or otherwise.

 

[Micah Sweet]

They literally never said that, and that goes against everything they have ever said on the subject.



A dragon attacking the city that the PCs choose to fight is clearly not random, not unless you've decided that you are just going to YOLO and have a dragon attack a town randomly, for no reason.

The Caves of Madness point gets a bit harder to parse. Because telling the players "This area is full of deadly monsters and few who have traveled to it have returned" tells them NOTHING. Not a thing. Because that is the exact same description you could have given to the last six places they've been that they cleared out.

That's kind of the point though. Going into those places is dangerous. Being an adventurer is dangerous, and logically carries with it the risk of death, because you are going to places and interacting with people and things that logically can kill you. Deciding to do such things is IMO tacitly giving permission for your character to potentially die, so by yours as and @EzekielRaiden 's criteria it should work.

To me, the logic of going into physically dangerous places and situations potentially leading to death is the first consideration.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yes, D&D combat uses randomness. So does that to you mean permanent death via combat is unacceptable?

Nope. But I've said that seven times now and you still think this is some sort of gotcha. I'm tired of explaining over and over and over and over exactly what the problem is.

Because to me these would imply otherwise. If the PCs decide to ambush a dragon that has been harassing a city, if they decided to travel trough the Caves of Madness that is famous for its deadly undead, then they're choosing the danger.

Something that has come up in "defense" of fudging is to prevent a stupid, lame death that would ruin a player's enjoyment of the game. I hate fudging and would not ever do it for any reason (well, short of "literally saving a real person's actual life" but I think you get what I mean). Yet I also recognize that a player could, in fact, be put into a situation where a particular result which is remotely possible from the dice, even if unlikely, would be fun-ruining if it actually came to pass. Hence, my preferred solution to the rare times when such a thing actually comes to pass is to prepare, within the fiction ("diegetically", though some quibble that that is exclusively for music), measures by which the PCs can reasonably either:
Not actually die from that random and fun-killing event, instead being saved by someone (who will expect tit-for-tat or at least ask for a favor) or something (which may be consumed or lost etc.), or
Die, but in a way that isn't actually permanent death, though it may come with other permanent costs instead,
Die, but in a way that the PCs or their allies can restore or repair within a reasonable period afterward

Going to the dangerous undead caves is not enough. It is nebulous and the very idea that ANY possible danger no matter what is enough is just silly. Adventurers do dangerous things. Hearing "ooh, that cave is dangerous!" is a bog-standard adventure hook, not a "If you attempt the thing you're about to attempt, your character is at extreme risk of immediate death right then and there" moment, though usually I do not use such explicit terms myself. (My go-to is to ominously ask, "Are you sure?" Usually my players say no and reevaluate. Occasionally, they say yes anyway.)

Because every damn time this comes up someone (often but not always Lanefan) talks about doing obviously crappy, disruptive things like "I kill the King that we're talking to" or "I walk across the lava" or the like. (Killing kings out of the blue for no real reason is particularly common in this context.) The explicit intent is, in every case, to show that the DM will never ever let the character actually die no matter what stupid bovine feces the character gets up to. The asker is describing actively and intentionally exploiting the DM's policies both as a big ol' middle finger, "your game sucks" gesture, and as an attempt to demonstrate "hahahaha, I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, and there are NEVER any consequences AT ALL!!!"

So. Again.

If the death is random, as in, not because you're tangling with the Dread Ghostbeard who drove the Caves of Madness mad and he captured your soul in his ship's lantern, but because we're in the second combat of the caves and a rando skeleton happened to get back to back to back crits (a 1 in 8000 chance) the turn before you were going to be healed, and you're all level 3 and have no chance of doing anything at all about that death, then yeah, I'm going to have prepared the OPTION for ways to resurrect that character within the fiction, which can be triggered if (AND ONLY IF) the player would prefer to continue playing that character. All of those options will have some kind of cost, permanent consequence, or debt/favor/expectation attached to them. If the player would prefer to let the death stand and play a new character, then the death will stand (and you can be sure I'm going to use it for future stuff.) I absolutely will not force a player to keep playing their character if they would find that distasteful or if it would damage their fun, because the whole point is to prevent damage to the players' fun.

So. Are we done flip flopping between accusing me of deleting all possible stakes and challenge and meaning to turn the game into an eternal automatic win, or claiming that I can't possibly be changing anything whatsoever? Because it would be really really nice for folks to, y'know, actually work with the notion that maybe, possibly, perhaps, I'm actually serious when I say that it is ONLY this one, narrow, uncommon type of death that is actually a problem, and everything else is just fine. Particularly in D&D, where death has been pretty easy for PCs to revoke since at least 3e and possibly earlier.

 

[Maxperson]

So...we've now determined that if a D&D character falls out of a roller coaster it deserves to die?

Well done, chaps. Carry on...

Not to throw a wrench into the works, but pretty much every D&D campaign that I've played in has been a roller coaster of a ride.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

If the death is random, as in, not because you're tangling with the Dread Ghostbeard who drove the Caves of Madness mad and he captured your soul in his ship's lantern, but because we're in the second combat of the caves and a rando skeleton happened to get back to back to back crits (a 1 in 8000 chance) the turn before you were going to be healed, and you're all level 3 and have no chance of doing anything at all about that death, then yeah, I'm going to have prepared the OPTION for ways to resurrect that character within the fiction, which can be triggered if (AND ONLY IF) the player would prefer to continue playing that character. All of those options will have some kind of cost, permanent consequence, or debt/favor/expectation attached to them. If the player would prefer to let the death stand and play a new character, then the death will stand (and you can be sure I'm going to use it for future stuff.) I absolutely will not force a player to keep playing their character if they would find that distasteful or if it would damage their fun, because the whole point is to prevent damage to the players' fun.

So. Are we done flip flopping between accusing me of deleting all possible stakes and challenge and meaning to turn the game into an eternal automatic win, or claiming that I can't possibly be changing anything whatsoever? Because it would be really really nice for folks to, y'know, actually work with the notion that maybe, possibly, perhaps, I'm actually serious when I say that it is ONLY this one, narrow, uncommon type of death that is actually a problem, and everything else is just fine. Particularly in D&D, where death has been pretty easy for PCs to revoke since at least 3e and possibly earlier.

I have been mainly trying to decipher what you mean in practice, and I think I might be closer to understanding now. Permanent random death due fighting some basic extras or mooks is not OK, but permanent random death due fighting a big epic boss enemy is OK? Is this about right?

Also, do your players know it works like this? Do they know in which fights optional deus ex is available and in which it isn't? How do you communicate this?

 

[Maxperson]

People have fallen tens of thousands of feet and survived so falling out of a Rollercoaster should be a piece of cake!

I think my favorite story of that sort of survival was the guy whose parachute didn't open and he plummeted down, down, down, and landed in a thorn bush. I mean, who do you have to piss off to have your parachute fail to open(fluke #1), fall thousands of feet and survive(fluke #2), and then have it be a thornbush of all things that broke your fall(fluke #3).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I have been mainly trying to decipher what you mean in practice, and I think I might be closer to understanding now. Permanent random death due fighting some basic extras or mooks is not OK, but permanent random death due fighting a big epic boss enemy is OK? Is this about right?

Not necessarily "big epic," but certainly something with some meaning to it. As an example, a heroic last stand against hordes of demons so the rest of the party can escape? Awesome. That's a beautiful and well-earned death.

Also, do your players know it works like this? Do they know in which fights optional deus ex is available and in which it isn't? How do you communicate this?

I told them at the start of the game: "If you want to keep playing your character, then I will work with you to make that happen. I won't take your character away just because the dice were crappy at a dumb time. This doesn't mean your characters cannot die ever. But we can talk about it and try to figure something out." I have included the ability for my players to figure out safety measures I have woven into the story, such as the earrings they have which were made for them by their gold dragon ally, Shen. With those earrings, they know that (1) they allow the PCs to communicate, and can be used to "call" Shen to them in dire need; (2) a small part of Shen's soul is invested into them, meaning he is always present with them, but keeps a polite distance (e.g. he's not watching their every move, just has a sense of their current situation unless they communicate with him); and (3) he is grateful for their past assistance and sees them as something between close friends and adopted (adult) children, so he would not let them suffer a cruel fate if he could do something about it. If they were to investigate the magic in the earrings, they would learn that Shen could use them (consuming the magic in the red earring) to resurrect the wearer, but he would need to make new copies if that happened. They have not investigated the earrings and simply accepted them as cool gifts from a powerful friend.

I've also told my players things like that I love heroic last stands and think that that is a beautiful and noble way for a character to exit a campaign. Conversely, I think dying because a random mook got you between the ribs is dull as dirt, so unless the player says otherwise, that's not going to be the end of that character's story if that should ever happen. Further, I described to them my concept of "chiaroscuro fantasy": not "dark" fantasy, nor sear-your-retinas bright fantasy where nothing bad ever happens etc. etc., but fantasy where true goodness/light exists, and so does true evil/darkness, and the two struggle against each other, with many shades of grey thrown off by that struggle. The world has plenty of wonderful, beautiful, worthy things in it, things worth fighting to save, things worth fighting to restore or purify or redeem, but those things are under threat. Heroes brave and true are part of what makes the difference. Of course, heroes brave and true cannot solve everything. That doesn't mean they're useless trash or harmful delusions getting in the way of real change. Instead, it places them as catalysts of change, or as the tip of the spear. The tip is useless without the haft, but the haft cannot achieve its goals without the tip. Heroes and humble human(oid)s complement one another, achieving far more in concert than either could alone.

We discussed this and many more things during Session 0. I tried to be as specific and clear as I possibly could, because I understand painfully well how much of a problem it is to only learn that the world doesn't work the way you thought it did 20 sessions in, when you're already invested and leaving would mean letting your friends down and giving up something you care about.