D&D 5E D&D 5e death and consequences?

[KarinsDad]

In an open sandbox featuring strategic level control in the hands of the players, the DM isn't really creating specific encounters. The players choose their options, which may or may not lead to combat encounters. The players get to do the majority of determining the nature of combat engagement. With this capability comes the majority of the responsibility of what happens to the party.

Surprises are an exception, but a careful group can take steps to minimize their exposure to ambushes. There is much less weight on the DM in such a campaign which is why I prefer them.

When players have more control over the events that can lead to PC deaths then there is more acceptance of the harsher consequences arising from those deaths.

There is no difference between the two types of encounters.

Bottom line: they are both encounters. With the same creatures and scenario, which can happen, they both have the exact same amount of risk.

The rules do not change, just because the DM has a different path to an encounter or that he is creating the encounter on the fly instead of ahead of time. Your point here is illusory. You are convincing yourself that there is a real difference when the difference is moot.

A surprise round is just as risky with the same PCs with the same capabilities and the same NPCs. And in 5E, surprise can be very deadly, especially at low levels. Even at high level, a tough encounter can be very risky with surprise.

Now if you are hand hold your players because of your DMing style, then sure, you can give them more of a chance to survive. For example, instead of flying in and using a breathe weapon during a surprise round, the dragon talks to the PCs first. But shy of specific DM decision making, encounters are encounters. If the PCs decide to get into a fight, the DM should not punish them because of a PC death.

At least from my POV, I enjoy combat encounters. No doubt about it, one does not have to get into combat every single time, but doing so should not be punished with houserules.

 

[SilverfireSage]

I straight out banned Revivify, Raised Dead and Resurrection for our campaign.
Once when a paladin died, I had the paladin's patron deity come back and asks fellow PCs and family if they would partake in the ritual to bring back her chosen champion, but that the cost would be high.

Anyone partaking in the ritual would lose a permanent hit point, the ones with the highest ability score in each category would permanently lose a point in that specific category, the years of the deceased needed to get repaid (divided equally amongst all those who partook), loss of the most powerful magical item and the PCs were branded on their chests until a quest was done.
Essentially they had to satisfy Hierarchs from the Spheres of Time, Energy, Matter, Thought and Entropy as negotiated by the paladin's patron deity. Steep price, to bring one's own back. So yeah, definitely consequences. Six sessions later the party suffered a TPK. True story.

As a DM, I can totally understand banning these. Banning them definitely makes the game feel more dangerous and exciting, and I can stand by that. But that wasn't just a steep price to bring their friend back, that was needlessly unfair. In 5E, losing the highest ability score is permanently crippling (a high level character going from a 20 to a 19 with no way to bring it back could make a hundred different things worse) and doling out the years of the deceased could outright kill some characters that have shorter lifespans (Halflings for instance).

My thoughts on the matter are this: They purposely made those spells as they are because letting the characters play more often outweighed the minor loss of a feeling of danger. I know from personal experience that having severe penalties for dying simply makes the characters frustrated, especially when it's the dice that caused the death, not the players. Imagine if you were playing a game like Skyrim or Dragon Age and you died part of the way through, but instead of simply restarting you quickly, the game forced you to wait several days before you could play again. And when you did, your whole party was less powerful, and therefore couldn't stand up to the monsters ahead. That sort of punishment is disingenuous to the players, who simply want to have fun.

 

[ExploderWizard]

There is no difference between the two types of encounters.

There are differences. The differences lie in the who, what, where, and when of the encounter and how many of these factors the PCs can control or influence.

Bottom line: they are both encounters. With the same creatures and scenario, which can happen, they both have the exact same amount of risk.

When the PCs have control over more of these factors the scenario IS changed.

The rules do not change, just because the DM has a different path to an encounter or that he is creating the encounter on the fly instead of ahead of time. Your point here is illusory. You are convincing yourself that there is a real difference when the difference is moot.

The resolution mechanics (rules) do not change. The circumstances of the engagement CAN change dramatically, providing a telling advantage or disadvantage to one side or the other. For example, a monster may have a bonus of +6 to attack and do XdX+Y amount of damage. So long as the dice roll results are fairly implemented, facing that monster will be at a given level of danger for a particular group of PCs.

In a straight up white room simulation, we can calculate the survival odds of a party based on their stats and the monster stats to determine if the encounter is overly deadly. Lets say we run the simulated combat ten times and the party has at best a 30% chance to win the fight.

In actual play, the party does a good job scouting, recognizes the threat, a formulates a plan to deal with it. They could prepare a nasty trap, lead the monster into it and kill it with relative ease. They may locate another monster and lead it to the problem monster, start a fight then mop up the winner. The circumstances of their approach are everything in this case. A probable TPK is turned into a solid victory based on encounter circumstances being under the players' control.

A surprise round is just as risky with the same PCs with the same capabilities and the same NPCs. And in 5E, surprise can be very deadly, especially at low levels. Even at high level, a tough encounter can be very risky with surprise.

Absolutely. Getting jumped can have terrible consequences thus using the old DM fiat and ignoring player preparations just because you think it would be cool to surprise them is equal to railroading the PCs and the DM has to assume more responsibility for PC death when pulling such shenanigans.

Now if you are hand hold your players because of your DMing style, then sure, you can give them more of a chance to survive. For example, instead of flying in and using a breathe weapon during a surprise round, the dragon talks to the PCs first. But shy of specific DM decision making, encounters are encounters. If the PCs decide to get into a fight, the DM should not punish them because of a PC death.

At least from my POV, I enjoy combat encounters. No doubt about it, one does not have to get into combat every single time, but doing so should not be punished with houserules.

Allowing the players more control over encounter circumstances is the opposite of hand holding. Hand holding is what the DM has to more of when he/she makes all of the encounter circumstance decisions.

 

[Derren]

Have you ever wondered why D&D is one of the only few non-humor RPGs out there which even has a hardcoded and easy way to revive dead characters?
Why is this even necessary?

 

[SilverfireSage]

Have you ever wondered why D&D is one of the only few non-humor RPGs out there which even has a hardcoded and easy way to revive dead characters?
Why is this even necessary?

Pretty much every popular RPG has a way to do this. Probably because people enjoy their characters and would rather continue to play the one they already have rather than roll up a new one they have no attachment to.

 

[Derren]

Pretty much every popular RPG has a way to do this. Probably because people enjoy their characters and would rather continue to play the one they already have rather than roll up a new one they have no attachment to.

Would you please name a few non D&D spinoff rpgs that do that? Because no other system I am aware off, be it World of Darkness, Shadowrun, Traveller or the Warhammer 40k rpgs have that.

 

[SilverfireSage]

Would you please name a few non D&D spinoff rpgs that do that? Because no other system I am aware off, be it World of Darkness, Shadowrun, Traveller or the Warhammer 40k rpgs have that.

Hmm.. you may be right about that. I was mostly thinking of Pathfinder and 13th Age. Good catch.

 

[Paraxis]

Would you please name a few non D&D spinoff rpgs that do that? Because no other system I am aware off, be it World of Darkness, Shadowrun, Traveller or the Warhammer 40k rpgs have that.

Earthdawn, Savage Worlds Fantasy, in Shadowrun there are clones and super platinum doc wagon contracts that revivify you multiple times a year, Paranoia, transhumanism Sci-Fi rpgs basicly just have disposable bodies.

The trope of coming back to life is popular in modern supernatural stories also, Buff, Harry Potter, Supernatural, and Dresden Files.

In comic books it is very common for the superheroes to die and come back again.

Here is the TV Tropes page link http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BackFromTheDead

I admit D&D is the major rpg where death is trivialized, but it exists in other games and plenty of other stories.

 

[aramis erak]

You raise an interesting question; are the rules primarily written for organized play, or should the organized playing be based on the ordinary rules?

that's two, only tangentially related questions...
1) are the rules based upon organized play or at-home play
2) should the rules be based upon organized play or at-home play

I think in both cases, the answer is "Organized play".

See, at home play is always going to be all over them map, due to house-rules, bull-headedness, willful misinterpretations, accidental misinterpretations, and 3rd party supplements.

Organized play, however, has no provision for house-rules, nor for 3rd party supplements. Therefore, it needs to be played closer to the rules simply to preserve the experience. And that is easiest if the rules are written to directly support organized play.

 

[Derren]

Earthdawn, Savage Worlds Fantasy, in Shadowrun there are clones and super platinum doc wagon contracts that revivify you multiple times a year, Paranoia, transhumanism Sci-Fi rpgs basicly just have disposable bodies.

The trope of coming back to life is popular in modern supernatural stories also, Buff, Harry Potter, Supernatural, and Dresden Files.

In comic books it is very common for the superheroes to die and come back again.

Here is the TV Tropes page link http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BackFromTheDead

I admit D&D is the major rpg where death is trivialized, but it exists in other games and plenty of other stories.

There is no return from the dead in Shadowrun. Even a platinum contract can't save you in Corp territory or when blown up by a Panther or worse.
And I do not have played the Harry Potter rpg, but isn't according to the lore bringing back the death one of the things magic can't do except with an artifact which doesn't give you really desireable results anyway?
I count Paranoia to the above mentioned humor rpgs

The list of Rpgs which allow a dead character to return is quite small and from what is left the ones which make it as easy as in D&D is another small fraction (mostly only the transhumanist rpgs were this is a core part of the setting)

So why does D&D need such lax "return from the death" rules or needs them at all?