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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Waterbizkit" data-source="post: 7014383" data-attributes="member: 6802604">I never pull punches when it comes to character deaths. If a band of adventurers wants to put their lives on the line for gold, glory or simply the greater good I'm all for it, but it does mean their lives are actually at risk. I don't go out of my way to make things harder on my players and their characters, but I don't make it any easier.If it's a characters fate to be stabbed to death in an alley by some nameless mugger because they tried to intervene when said mugger was rolling a drunk, so be it. Not everyone gets to die the heroes death fighting against the big bad villain, some of them get killed by nameless mook #216 in a random encounter and that's how their story ends... assuming no resurrection is possible for whatever reason. Some people may see this sort of thing a "game first, story second" kind of outlook, but I don't. Having lofty goals and good intentions isn't enough to save you from an inglorious demise in my games and to me that's still telling the story, just maybe not the one we were all expecting.As I said though, I don't make bringing a character back to life any more difficult than usual, not in most of my games, so once characters make it through the first handful of levels things become significantly easier if they don't want to their characters to stay dead. If there's any one thing I might do to be a little rough on the players it's this: if it makes sense at the time, enemies will attack downed PCs. This means an automatic critical which means two automatically failed death saves, which can be pretty brutal under most circumstances. But it needs to make sense to me at the time, if the enemy is better served moving on to deal with the remaining active PCs that's what happens.Anyway, characters die in my games when they put their lives at risk, no punches pulled. That's the long and short of it.</blockquote>

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