3E Mortality Rate

[rounser]

With 3.5 just around the corner, thought it'd be interesting to compare notes on how often PCs have been dying from campaign to campaign under 3E.

Obviously, this has everything to do with play style of the players and the DM - the players may not rest enough, might press on blindly too much, or might never retreat, and the DM might not have a very good grasp of appropriate challenges, might stiff the party on magic items, or might not drop hints when the party are unknowingly way out of their depth.

However, some of it has to do with the rules for designing challenges, and might raise questions such as:
- How do you deal with it when the challenges seem to alternate between complete walkovers and TPKs, as they can at high level?
- Is it realistic to expect PCs to survive for a campaign, or even a few sessions? Could some sort of paper and pencil "save game" be implemented for key encounters for continuity reasons?
- Do the game's expectations of how often raising and resting will occur match the expectations of your group? Doesn't every party have a "go-go-go!" player who urges pressing on even when hit points are low and most spells spent, and how often do they prevail over those suggesting a more conservative play style?

 

[ForceUser]

I play in a Greyhawk campaign that I'd consider "nearly Living Greyhawk" regarding use of the core rules. We don't hyper-inflate stats or hit points (28-point buy, max hit points at 1st level and "as the die lies" every level thereafter). We have a large party (7 players) as well as three powerful cohorts, and that tends to make it difficult for the DM to balance encounters - typically, he has to send threats against us that any one of which would pulp a solitary PC. Recent battles have included:

-Ambushed by a pair of huge green dragons.

-Head to head with a high level enemy adventuring group including a 13th-level drow priestess, a drow bladesinger, a 16th-level Scarlet Brotherhood monk, a powerful fiend, and pair of really tough cohorts.

-An assault on a 16th-level demonologist with the appropriate retinue of fiendish servants.

In this campaign we've had three character deaths over the course of a year and a half of play time, as well as dozens of close calls. Several of the close calls, we felt, could have gone either way.

If you're running core rules D&D with no sissy house rules such as max hit dice or 46-point buy characters, expect some character deaths. Hey, that's why clerics can raise dead. It's part of the challenge of the game; sometimes, your character just dies. As a PC, your job is to do your best to stay alive and accomplish your goals.

 

[The Blue Elf]

I play in a Greyhawk campaign that I'd consider "nearly Living Greyhawk" regarding use of the core rules. We don't hyper-inflate stats or hit points (28-point buy, max hit points at 1st level and "as the die lies" every level thereafter). We have a large party (7 players) as well as three powerful cohorts, and that tends to make it difficult for the DM to balance encounters - typically, he has to send threats against us that any one of which would pulp a solitary PC. Recent battles have included:

-Ambushed by a pair of huge green dragons.

-Head to head with a high level enemy adventuring group including a 13th-level drow priestess, a drow bladesinger, a 16th-level Scarlet Brotherhood monk, a powerful fiend, and pair of really tough cohorts.

-An assault on a 16th-level demonologist with the appropriate retinue of fiendish servants.

In this campaign we've had three character deaths over the course of a year and a half of play time, as well as dozens of close calls. Several of the close calls, we felt, could have gone either way.

If you're running core rules D&D with no sissy house rules such as max hit dice or 46-point buy characters, expect some character deaths. Hey, that's why clerics can raise dead. It's part of the challenge of the game; sometimes, your character just dies. As a PC, your job is to do your best to stay alive and accomplish your goals.

The only adventure that was consider a distaster that had the highest Death rates in D&D history was the longest Running adventure that our DM ever made was called, "Merchants of the Wood" that became the most murderist adventure that I ever heard. Kill mostly over 50 PC's from what I heard they had Dragons in the party who were Disguised as humanoids, and the leader who is a Ranger who would kill anyone that won't follow his orders which was odd ball adventure that started in the woods and ended with some Dragon starting a battle with the elves of Selen.

 

[Celtavian]

Re

Our death rate can be high. D&D 3e is very lethal. I remember a pile of strange things happening:

Orc getting greataxe crit on 3rd level priest.

Held dwarf getting Coup de Gras by Xorn.

One party member hacked another party members head off with a crit while under the effects of a Confusion spell.

Party member disintegrated.

One party member died in the belly of a T-rex after his shortsword was destroyed by the breath weapon due to an unlucky save. It was his only small piercing or slashing weapon. He blew his concentration check for lay on hands inside the belly. I would think he was meant to die.

Slay Living trap on chest.


Why go on? We died alot in the RttToEE module.

Due to the lethality of D&D 3e, I have incorporated a liberal Hero point system. We use it to stave off rare missed saves, critical hits and other events beyond the DM's control that can cause PC death. It has helped create a more heroic atmosphere by allowing the characters to spend them when they need them (Usually during heroic battles), while still allowing for a high level of tension due to the player's having only a limited number of hero points.

 

[Yeoman]

My groups mortality rate is pretty high, here's a sample from our last 2 weeks of gaming...

Party Deaths (Our party in this campaign numbers 6 people, of 4th level, with no raise dead allowed.)

Fatal Encounter #1 (The dice were really against us in this one.)
1 Drow Clr 3, 4 Drow Ftr 1,
4 deaths total.
2 people died from being held and then CDGd.
1 died from random critical hit.
The last guy died buying the remaining two people enough time to retreat.
Ouch.

Fatal Encounter #2
1 Drow Clr 3, 3 Drow Ftr 1
1 death total.
1 person dies from being held and then CDGd. (Ironically it was the first guy to die in the last encounter.

Fatal Encounter #3
1 Girallon (Random Encounter)
2 deaths, 1 severe mauling.
This thing caught us by surprise, and tore through the rogue that was on point, and then proceeded to kill the monk in rapid claw/claw/claw/claw/rend/bite fashion. Not pretty. My character got mauled down to 2 hp, before we finally put that thing down.

 

[jasper]

celtavian except for the 3E wording for some of the kills I could have swore you were a player in my 1st edition campaign.

 

[Devilkiller]

Yeoman's post has reminded me that Hold Person and CDG is way too easy. I'm really glad they're changing Hold Person in 3.5. One DM I play with doesn't have most monsters use CDG so long as the players don't use it, and we've only had 2 PC deaths in about 10 months. He also doesn't use the regular rules for bleeding to death. Throw those and CDG in and I'd expect the PC death toll by now would be about a dozen.

The other D&D game I'm in is almost too new to count, but while nobody has died yet we came very close to a TPK (7 characters) when everybody but me and the fighter/cleric was paralyzed by ghouls(or were they ghasts?). I think this was mostly a case of bad saving throws though.

 

[Yeoman]

Yeoman's post has reminded me that Hold Person and CDG is way too easy. I'm really glad they're changing Hold Person in 3.5. One DM I play with doesn't have most monsters use CDG so long as the players don't use it, and we've only had 2 PC deaths in about 10 months. He also doesn't use the regular rules for bleeding to death. Throw those and CDG in and I'd expect the PC death toll by now would be about a dozen.

The other D&D game I'm in is almost too new to count, but while nobody has died yet we came very close to a TPK (7 characters) when everybody but me and the fighter/cleric was paralyzed by ghouls(or were they ghasts?). I think this was mostly a case of bad saving throws though.

Yeah, we're really happy, hold person is being changed, and we're adopting 3.5 asap. As for ghouls....well let's just say they accounted for our campaign's first TPK.

 

[Celtavian]

Re

Hold CDG happens ever so often. Personally, I think it will happen more often than it did before because all hold spells will be good for is a coordinated hold and CDG.

Before you would rely on hold spells to eliminate a combatant for the duration of a combat while you took out other attackers. Now, knowing that the hold will break people will not waste it on trying to immobilize an attacker so that you can take down the other enemies.

The change to hold spells was really unnecessary. I don't know who was calling for it. I certainly wasn't, and I know alot of my players weren't either. We usually just had clerics on both sides memorize Remove Paralysis considering that a hold spell only works on one target.

The change was a bad idea that will cut down on the usefulness of hold spells for immobilization and capture. If you notice on the above example, we only had one instance where a hold was used for a Coup De Gras. It just wasn't a huge factor in our campaigns.

 

[Mark Chance]

Current 3E campaign, starting at 1st-level with all characters now 6th-8th level, we've seen a few fatalities:

1 barbarian. Player never came back to game. Character remains dead.

1 ranger. Slain by ettin. Player brought in replacement character. Ranger remains dead.

1 bard. Slain by demons. Player moved to KY shortly after character's demise. Character remains dead.

1 wizard. Slain by orc barbarian. Player moved to MI shortly after character's demise. Character remains dead.

1 cleric. Slain by shadows that ambushed party. Cleric subsequently raised by NPC ally of party's paladin.

Party size ranges from 6-9 characters throughout campaign.