4e: are character deaths up or down compared 3E?

[Ginnel]

Same amount of deaths in the current groups I'm playing with (hence same playing/DMing styles) absolutely zero been at least 80 sessions during the last year and no deaths, but with 8 4th edition sessions we've had 3 PC's knocked down to the floor which is more than the zero in the 3rd edition games.

In games run by other DM's I've seen more deaths probably about 10 in the same time frame.

 

[Ginnel]

2) Whether the DM can resist giving you big dramatic battle after big dramatic battle.

I'm currently struggling with 2. I have to keep reminding myself that players need action points and can't fight hard battles after they've blown their dailies.

Interesting, probably for another topic but I find that players can have big dramatic fight after dramatic fight in 4E as long as they have 5 minutes inbetween fights, encounters and at-wills still leave you with quite a few big guns, and not everyone is going to spend their action points and dailies (our DM doesn't restock action points every 2 encounters, he might skip if he thinks a fight was too easy or give one before its time if it was partiularly climatic/difficult)

The healing surges/encounter/at-will powers are there to ensure the players can go into a hard fight balanced against their level and still come out of it alive (given good tactics) I believe thats what the fights were balanced against in this edition (full hp, encounter powers and dailes and constant effect items), with dailies powers/item abilites their to make life easier on the harder encounters

 

[Festivus]

Way up.

This was my experience for the Preview adventures WoTC put out, TPK for every single time I have run one of those.

For H1 Keep on the Shadowfell it's been about the same as it was in 3.5. We had one player character death and they raised him, the others stabilized before bleeding out.

 

[Ghaerdon Fain]

Maybe the comparison needs to be made with a 3E adventure like "The Sunless Citadel" to truly appreciate the death ratio, for remember that KotS is an entry module.

Having run SC just a few months before the 4E launch, I can say that after the half way mark of both, KotS was much more arduous; 2 deaths (dungeon excavation area) and many death rolls, vs 0 deaths and one near death experience.