D&D General character death?

[pumasleeve]

been thinking... this might be a bit of a shock coming from and old school player like me, but im wondering if the way the modern dnd game is played, where its so character or story driven -if it would be better do away with character death. or let the player decide what happens. like, if you feel your character met a good death, go with it, otherwise, pretty much any monster could have a reason to capture fallen characters, which gives them a chance to escape later. even mindless undead and non intelligent creatures may save their "food" for later, and drag them back to their lair, for example. It just seems a little strange to have a game where you basically are trying to maintain the illusion of danger, or risk killing the game when characters die. I also dont think players will be any less motivated to win any battles if they knew there isnt any "real danger" of dying, people pretty much want to be successful in any circumstance. I guess im just not too happy with just starting off a campaign with a TPK on a medium difficulty encounter, lol. im interested to hear what people think, would you want to play in a game like that or would it take away from your enjoyment?

 

[Larnievc]

It would take away from my enjoyment. Having no risk of an out of my control death for my guy would ruin the fun of death defying feats. If I want to die heroically I can do that on my own.

 

[J.Quondam]

I've had changes of heart one way or the other over the years, too, but in the end it seems to me that how ever you want to handle death is valid. IMO, it just really comes down to the particular genre or atmosphere of the campaign. There are definitely modes of play where PC death is more or less appropriate, depending. I've run/played campaigns that turns the PC death knob to one extreme or the other, and they're all okay.
The main thing is to talk it over with the group. As long as everyone is on board, there shouldn't be a problem.

 

[pumasleeve]

It would take away from my enjoyment. Having no risk of an out of my control death for my guy would ruin the fun of death defying feats. If I want to die heroically I can do that on my own.

I can definitely see that side of it, for sure

 

[O-Castitatis-Lilium]

A lot of people that go into this game know that there is a significant chance of their character dying, that's part of the risk of playing this game. Most people accept this and, while they get invested in their character, don't get too attached. Besides, there isn't anything stopping a person from playing that character in another campaign; it is a game after all. When my dad was DM for our family, we use to have it where you could always get a resurrection at a church for a price; so long as your party was willing to drag your body around in order to get it. If the church wasn't of your belief, it was full price, if it was, it was half price, and if it was a church you had done work for, it was a quarter of the price. I implement that into my games now and it seems to work. It still has the dangers of death, but there is room to talk about what the group wants to do and the person that died wants to do. Do they want to bring the body along? Do they want to leave him? Does the player want to try out a new class or race? Does the player want the party to drag him around? Does the player want to be revived? it gives people more options and I feel it gives them time to accept the fact that they are dead; it's not so final if that makes sense.

In fairness, 5E has done away with that option completely because it really doesn't have a cost for reagents anymore thanks to the components pouch. So I did have to do some searching and found someone with an equation that they had managed to come up with, (I am no good at math, like at all so I am grateful to the people that can math that type of thing out) and implemented that into my games. my players enjoy it and it makes things like dying just a bit easier. I think if you take it completely out of the game it just doesn't feel the same, it makes it boring and more...video gamey...if that makes sense. It's almost like it adds a lives system to it for me and while I do enjoy my video games, I play DnD for the story, character, and the outlet it gives me to use my brain that video games just doesn't give me in the same way.

 

[Oofta]

I always discuss level of lethality with the players. Although death is never completely off the table, I tend to run a very low lethality game while also letting people know thy can always swap out characters if they want. I think having a group with PCs that have a history together and a shared story is more interesting than death waiting around every corner. I want the character to be more than a set of numbers and abilities to people if a PC does die it should matter.

But there are a lot of things you can do to lower lethality, I don't hit people when they're down, enemies will sometimes knock them unconscious and so on. On the other hand, once someone dies getting them back is not automatic because of the way the setting works. If you can revivify, great. If not, the clock is ticking on getting them back and even then it's not guaranteed to work.

 

[jayoungr]

"Player decides" is how I handle it. Seems like that's the best way to make everyone happy.

If you like the excitement of knowing you can lose your character at any time, you get to have that.

If you don't want to lose a character until you feel like you're done with them, you get to have that too. In that case, a character can still die but won't be permadead without the player's buy-in.

I feel like some GMs are afraid that if they don't have permadeath, players will abuse that knowledge by doing dumb stuff that should kill their characters in any realistic scenario. And with certain groups of players, that would absolutely happen. If I got one of those players, I'd probably want to have a chat with them outside of game time.

 

[the Jester]

It's a matter of playstyle and taste, but I definitely would not be interested in playing or running a version of D&D where death was off the table.

 

[Oofta]

A lot of people that go into this game know that there is a significant chance of their character dying, that's part of the risk of playing this game. Most people accept this and, while they get invested in their character, don't get too attached. Besides, there isn't anything stopping a person from playing that character in another campaign; it is a game after all. When my dad was DM for our family, we use to have it where you could always get a resurrection at a church for a price; so long as your party was willing to drag your body around in order to get it. If the church wasn't of your belief, it was full price, if it was, it was half price, and if it was a church you had done work for, it was a quarter of the price. I implement that into my games now and it seems to work. It still has the dangers of death, but there is room to talk about what the group wants to do and the person that died wants to do. Do they want to bring the body along? Do they want to leave him? Does the player want to try out a new class or race? Does the player want the party to drag him around? Does the player want to be revived? it gives people more options and I feel it gives them time to accept the fact that they are dead; it's not so final if that makes sense.

In fairness, 5E has done away with that option completely because it really doesn't have a cost for reagents anymore thanks to the components pouch. So I did have to do some searching and found someone with an equation that they had managed to come up with, (I am no good at math, like at all so I am grateful to the people that can math that type of thing out) and implemented that into my games. my players enjoy it and it makes things like dying just a bit easier. I think if you take it completely out of the game it just doesn't feel the same, it makes it boring and more...video gamey...if that makes sense. It's almost like it adds a lives system to it for me and while I do enjoy my video games, I play DnD for the story, character, and the outlet it gives me to use my brain that video games just doesn't give me in the same way.

Just an FYI - if a spell has a component cost, it can't normally be replaced by a component pouch. Revivify requires "a diamond worth at least 300 gp, which the spell consumes". Raise dead it's a 300 GP diamond, Resurrection it's a 1,000 GP diamond.

 

[O-Castitatis-Lilium]

Just an FYI - if a spell has a component cost, it can't normally be replaced by a component pouch. Revivify requires "a diamond worth at least 300 gp, which the spell consumes". Raise dead it's a 300 GP diamond, Resurrection it's a 1,000 GP diamond.

Yeah that's true, but if a character or caster doesn't have that, and if I were playing it where churches don't do resurrection, then a player is effectively dead unless the party wants to Gentle Repose them and waste that slot until the group can get a diamond lol.