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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9386521" data-attributes="member: 6790260">As I have said many times elsewhere, I have taken--and these three words are all extremely important--random, permanent, irrevocable death off the table. If it's any one of non-random, non-permanent, or non-irrevocable, then it's presumptively fine. It's only when the death is all three that I have a problem."Random," here, means stuff like an enemy getting a lucky crit, a perfectly smart plan going haywire because the dice just HATE the players today, etc. If the player is playing sincerely (not trying to game the system...nor trying to game me), genuinely putting in their all, and the death happens because of a stupid fluke or a dumb rules interaction or the like, then we'll do something about it (usually by breaking one of the other two elements.) A player who intentionally does pointlessly foolish, self-destructive things--who ignores my usually pretty generous warnings about their foolhardy choices--has ensured that their death is not random; they've earned that death, fair and square."Permanent" means that the character is dead and staying that way. Easier to define in the negative: a non-permanent death is going to go away on its own, though it might take time to do so. This could be a "fight your way out of Hell" situation, it could be "an ally is helping you, but the help isn't immediate," it could be a mysterious force keeps your soul stuck to your dead body and now the party needs to figure out why the hell their friend, who SHOULD by all rights be dead...somehow isn't. Etc. This is where most stories where I as DM provide the "get out of death" hook, rather than working from stuff the players are bringing."Irrevocable" means that the character cannot be restored. Spells like revivify and raise dead revoke death, but aren't guaranteed to be on the table. Hence, whether a death is revocable is distinct from whether it is permanent. In simple terms, permanence is something that the PCs have no influence over;  whether it is revocable, the players do have some influence over (but, often, not total control.) To use a literary reference, Roy's death in Order of the Stick was (from a player's perspective) debatably random, permanent, but quite revocable--it just took the party a long time to get the resurrection done. This is a much more player-driven end of things, e.g. seeking out a priest who can raise or finding the ingredients to do it themselves.I find truly random AND permanent AND irrevocable death quite boring. I don't think it adds much of anything to the play experience, but I do find that it takes away a LOT of things from that experience. I know this isn't a feeling universally held, but it is mine. The fact that I don't include random AND permanent AND irrevocable death as a consequence in my games does not mean they have no stakes. It means the stakes they have are along other, usually much more personal and emotional/investment-based, axes than character death typically is.</blockquote>

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