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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Slapzilla" data-source="post: 3747563" data-attributes="member: 52781">It is vital to the survival of low level encounters that the DM refrains from doing hp damage.  What would be a bigger pain, getting killed by an orc commoner with a spear, or failing a save vs sleep and waking up nekkid, tied to a river rock in the middle of nowhere with the pixies laughing at you?  One scenario provides a problem to overcome and the other requires you to get a whole new character.  How many times do you go to the well before you lose interest.  A Dex drain poison on a 1-3 level Rogue, Ranger or Monk knocks them out for a bit without killing them.  A Con drain is dangerous to anyone.  Can't haul that purdy armor you just bought around too good with your Str drained, can you?  Blind the Ranger in the middle of the haunted woods--in a magic world it ain't permenant and the other PCs will help him/her!  Curse the Rogue with noisy flatulence--now there's a problem to solve!  Take them prisoner and break the sorcerer's finger--cast now, punk!  Sell them to the Drow/Dark Inqusitors/Gladiators--just give them a chance to get out of it.  I ain't saying to not threaten character death, but threaten it specifically, and if they take up the challenge specifically, so be it.  Never kill them with a random roll.  Let the dice do the talking when they decide to defend the broken gate against the horror that lurks for just long enough for the innocents to escape.  That is the action that drives interest in the game.  Players don't get (nearly as) mad when their characters die that way.The simple way to make low-level encounters more survivable relies on the DM to be creative.  If you can't do that, don't DM.  Just my very strongly held opinion.</blockquote>

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