Fanaelialae
Legend
I disagree. Increasing lethality in the game is effortless. Throw a dozen Tarrasques at a first level party. Game over, irrespective of edition.Pretty much, yes.
I do. Design it in the hardest-on-the-players/PCs manner, then provide options to ease it off if desired.
Rarely is a player ever going to be on board with making the game harder. Remember that - just as with any game or sport - it's in the players' overall interests to make things as easy as possible on themselves (and, in this case, their characters).
Thing is, there comes a point where the game - or any game or sport - can be ruined in the name of fun; that point being when it gets too easy to "win".
Consider world football, where a powerhouse like Spain plays a minnow like Andorra every now and then. Sure, the Spanish will think it's loads of fun winning 7-0 or 9-0 or whatever every time...but if the Spanish only ever played Andorra the game would soon become a farce from their perspective because it's just too easy. But from the Andorrans' side, knowing they're highly likely to lose in any case, they can at least find fun in it in other ways by trying to overcome the nigh-unbeatable challenge posed by Spain and taking victory from incremental progress as and when it happens.
And if Andorra were ever to win one of those games, how sweet it would feel.
The same principles hold true in D&D. If it's too easy to "win" - and by this I mean overcoming the various challenges posed by and in the game - then winning loses its appeal and becomes ho-hum. Ho-hum is bad, as it's a very short step from there to outright boring, and boredom with a game will kill it faster than anything else will.
Hence, the game IMO has to be set up to be challenging, and carry a real risk of "loss".
What's difficult, and what earlier editions did very poorly, was helping DMs who didn't necessarily want to constantly wreck their party. High character turnover can ruin any sense of campaign continuity.
IMO, things like level drain and item destruction weren't challenging. They were punitive. They were basically mechanics where you worked your way into the major leagues, but now you get busted back down to the minor leagues because the other team scored a few points against you (in a game that expects teams to frequently score against each other). And it isn't even necessarily that the entire team was busted down. It might just be one especially unlucky player.
Yes, most players didn't like them, for this reason. I've known plenty of players who'd rather have their character die (with no chance of resurrection) than suffer level drain. Death usually feels more fair.
I also disagree that players won't be on board for a harder game. I've played in plenty of games that were significantly harder than the baseline established by that edition. As long as the DM established this at the start of the game, it wasn't an issue. Challenging games can be a lot of fun.
Too easy can be an issue, but increasing difficulty isn't that hard, provided your players are on board. If not, that may indicate mismatched expectations, such as them seeking a more narrative style game (in which case they probably won't get bored of the lack of challenge because they aren't seeking a challenge from the game to begin with).