Level Up (A5E) Removing Pointless Death (+)

[Retreater]

Do you really run a serious risk at your table of killing all your characters in regular play? That's rough. My PCs are rarely in serious danger of getting killed (although one did die a couple days ago).

Yeah, I do. I've had players complain about how lethal my games are for over a decade.
So I'm trying to find some positive changes I can do to stop this from being such a regular occurrence.
It's a real headache for me too, and a major point of stress when running games.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah, I do. I've had players complain about how lethal my games are for over a decade.
So I'm trying to find some positive changes I can do to stop this from being such a regular occurrence.
It's a real headache for me too, and a major point of stress when running games.

Fair enough. Why do you think that is? Are you running challenges beyond the level guidelines? Are your players not making good tactical choices? Are they getting into situations they can't get out of?

 

[Selganor]

Have you tried compiling (or recording) one of those combats in detail (down to every roll) to do a deep dive into if it was just dumb luck/unluck, tactical errors (or "too effective" tactics) or whatever other factor?

We sometimes have the opposite effect in our games when after (and usually in the middle of the fight) we notice that we should have all died multiple times (and a quick check of CR/encounter points confirms it) but with crazy tactics on our side and lots of bad luck of our gm we somehow pull through...

 

[Retreater]

Fair enough. Why do you think that is? Are you running challenges beyond the level guidelines? Are your players not making good tactical choices? Are they getting into situations they can't get out of?

"Maybe" the challenges are beyond the level guidelines.
I have a few issues:
1) Running adventure modules "by the book" - which sometimes end up being too dangerous.
2) Creating my own encounters by the rules - sometimes they end up being too difficult OR
3) After having so many easy ones, I push it more difficult until it jumps from being "way too easy" to "oops, I killed the entire party."
It's very difficult to find what I think is an acceptable amount of challenge that can be dangerous, fun, cinematic, etc.

 

[Selganor]

Speaking of guidelines... How many combat (and other resource draining) encounters do you usually have per long rest?

D14 assumes 6-8 medium/hard encounters per long rest with 2 short rests per long rest.
D24 doesn't mention short rests (they removed them from many features) but the xp/character per encounter seem to assume 6/4/3 encounters/day for easy/medium/hard encounters, so about half of D14

In A5E you got (2*Tier ; Min1) encounter points/day with easy/hard/deadly encounters costing 0.5/2/4 encounter points.but A5E has a different formula to determine easy/hard/deadly than D14/D24

If the party doesn't know when they can rest (or even have time for a short rest) they have to be way more stingy with resources and probably won't use their full potential.

But if they know that after this encounter there wouldn't be another difficult problem they could just nova and things look completely different.

Difficulties in published adventures can also be completely different depending on your group... The more enemies (no matter how weak they are) the harder they are for groups that don't have attacks that affect more than one target.
Adventures also often assume that they could throw lots of weak undead at a group because their cleric can just turn them.

Some of my experiences regarding encounters:

• Even if you don't/won't "fudge" rolls you can still adjust some things in the middle of combat. Some enemies might decide to surrender or run away (or look for reinforcements?) which can drastically change things one way or another
• "Cheat" with the health of enemies: Your players don't know the real hp of enemies, so if you notice that things go bad and after a mighty attack the boss still has a handfull of hp left and will probably tpk the group in the next turn maybe just grant the players the "win". (Things can also go both ways if there was an "easy" win against a dangerous opponent who always missed maybe grant them one last round even if they should be dead already)

 

[FrogReaver]

One struggle I've had as a GM is the pressure of building thrilling, challenging encounters that aren't too over-tuned that they risk TPKs at every turn. Invariably, it happens, and my campaign comes to a screeching halt. This isn't just "the occasional TPK" or "they made bad decisions." This is literally every campaign I've run since around the year 2000. Even my first Level Up campaign stumbled before the characters could reach 3rd level.

I don't fudge dice rolls and I roll in the open so it's hard to keep characters alive in standard d20 games without having every enemy take prisoners; making suboptimal tactical decisions to favor the players; running easy and boring fights.

Running and playing games like Daggerheart and Fabula Ultima - which put the decision of character death in the hands of the players - has removed a load of stress from me. I'd like to add something similar to my next Level Up campaign.

Blaze of Glory
Drop to 0 HP, immediately have an epic final stand (work with the GM on details). Die at the end of the action.

Permanent Injury
Drop to 0 HP. You'll automatically stabilize and survive the battle. Pick one of your 6 ability scores. You'll have permanent disadvantage on skill checks with that ability. You'll be required to retire the character after obtaining injuries in every ability score.

Call on Fate
Roll a d20. 1-9, you die. 10+, you regain HP as if you spent all your Hit Dice.

How do these look?

IMO. Not good. Just give me death over that permanent injury. Call on fate will make the game be less deadly but unpredictably so. Also might watch out for how things like lucky interact with it (I’m not super familiar with a5e specifically, so might be a non-issue).

The first one is cool but does nothing to solve the character dying too much issue.

 

[FrogReaver]

Most battles should be easily winnable (no deaths) even with some bad luck and suboptimal tactics.

Most players like encounters where they feel powerful. Not everything has to push them to their limits. They also like overcoming the really tough encounters, but the nature of the beast is that the closer the tough encounter pushes them to their limits the more unlucky die rolls and suboptimal tactics for PCs or great tactics for NPCs are going to lead to pc death.

Keep in mind you have a distinct advantage over your players in that you know exactly what abilities they have. They never know what they are going to walk into and it can take them a few rounds to really figure it out.

I think it’s worth reviewing all battles to see if bad/good die rolls or tactics overly affected the outcome. Like if the players missed or a key spell missed or vice versa, or had done X simple thing instead of Y would the encounter have seemed much more difficult or easy? I think too often people don’t account for such things before they adjust encounter difficulty overall and then players are in over their heads.

 

[Anonymous3]

@Retreater Would mind sharing the most recent TPK (in as few words as possible)? I'm interested in the action economy side of things which I don't has been discussed yet. In my limited experience, action economy is the biggest threat to the party's survival. It is why a terrifying single bbeg can be overwhelmed by a lower level party and why a platoon of goblin commando's can annihilate the same party.

My general rule of thumb is that if my monsters have twice the number of actions my players have then we are heading toward scary territory.

 

[Retreater]

@Anonymous3 Party comes across room of 4 men who are actually wererats. Rogue gets drop on Initiative and walks into room and attempts to sneak attack - hoping to kill "just a regular dude." She fails. Is dropped on next round. The paladin who had just stepped into room is flanked and sneak attacked to death in one round. Final wererat moves past dead paladin and engages cleric, who attempts to run and is dropped.
This leaves back rank wizard to be utterly surrounded and killed the following round.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

Party comes across room of 4 men who are actually wererats. Rogue gets drop on Initiative and walks into room and attempts to sneak attack - hoping to kill "just a regular dude." She fails. Is dropped on next round. The paladin who had just stepped into room is flanked and sneak attacked to death in one round. Final wererat moves past dead paladin and engages cleric, who attempts to run and is dropped.
This leaves back rank wizard to be utterly surrounded and killed the following round.

wererats are only cr2! what level was the party???