Death, Dying and Entitlements.

[Blue]

This is what I mean by 4e not being very good at giving you a kind of game with a lot of consequential dying. Even in a high lethality game that bans resurrection, the worst case scenario is usually that you roll up a new character at the same level, and chug along almost as if nothing happened, mechanically speaking. There might be some big story consequences, but, mechanically, all that happened when the Cleric died was that Healing Word got replaced with Majestic Word (or whatever).

Why do you assume that a replacement character will come in at the same level? I don't think that's RAW. (Though now that I think about it, treasure parcels break down a bit with a mixed level party.)

One "high lethality" game I really enjoyed was back in AD&D 1st ed. If you died, you rolled up a new level 1 character. With the XP system back then you'd advance quickly because you needed so much less to level compared to higher level characters (XP needed basically doubled every level), but managing to keep your character alive was a big deal. I remember after a year of play having one of the only two original characters in the group of 7-8 as a magic-user (wizard? mage?) and hitting 5th level for big money spells like fireball. Glorious day.

Now, that's not the style that I run, but I've been in games over the years where new PCs had fairly hefty penalty that becomes less important over time. Leveling-based penalties had coming one one level down, coming in at min XP for current level, or other scenario that just put you a bit behind the 8-ball compared to other PCs. Of course, these also started in editions where you would lose a level for resurrection, so it was still a level playing field.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Why do you assume that a replacement character will come in at the same level? I don't think that's RAW. (Though now that I think about it, treasure parcels break down a bit with a mixed level party.)

Yeah...I don't have my books here, but even if it's not RAW, that's the way every 3e or 4e group I've been a part of plays, in practice. While that's only anecdotal evidence, I haven't heard about many groups doing the "start from level 1" thing, just because of how many wrenches it introduces into the design of adventures, challenges, monsters, encounters, and the like.

One "high lethality" game I really enjoyed was back in AD&D 1st ed. If you died, you rolled up a new level 1 character. With the XP system back then you'd advance quickly because you needed so much less to level compared to higher level characters (XP needed basically doubled every level), but managing to keep your character alive was a big deal. I remember after a year of play having one of the only two original characters in the group of 7-8 as a magic-user (wizard? mage?) and hitting 5th level for big money spells like fireball. Glorious day.

Yeah, this matches my understanding of 1e as a "high lethality" game. In 4e, from my XP, hitting 5th level is just something that happens after playing for about half a year. It's not exactly earned; it's inevitable.

Which can be a real problem for those who want to lean more on the game side of RPG, where there's a level of skill, luck, and challenge in achieving a "high score" (a high level).

I'd be interesting to see a kind of game that brings that back to the fore now, where extra levels aren't expected, they are awarded, so that getting to 5th level is an accomplishment....

 

[malraux]

Yeah...I don't have my books here, but even if it's not RAW, that's the way every 3e or 4e group I've been a part of plays, in practice. While that's only anecdotal evidence, I haven't heard about many groups doing the "start from level 1" thing, just because of how many wrenches it introduces into the design of adventures, challenges, monsters, encounters, and the like.

In 3e, all my groups went with a rule that if you brought in a new character, he had the same xp total as your previous character would have had. Given the number of ways to lose XP in 3e, it meant that each character in a party could have a different xp total. It was one of the rules that subtly began to turn me off 3e.

Given in my 4e games, we don't even use XP anymore, I'm not sure how I'd run differing levels in a party.

 

[Barastrondo]

I'd be interesting to see a kind of game that brings that back to the fore now, where extra levels aren't expected, they are awarded, so that getting to 5th level is an accomplishment....

I suspect that's one of those things that now video games simply do better. In an RPG, you always have more things to try: but since the GM is always subjective to some extent, that "accomplishment" is always going to be harder to get in one group than it is in another. The computer, on the other hand, is pretty objective. You get to level 100 in Diablo on Hardcore mode, it's pretty easy to tell you've done a lot of work (in the form of play). There is no option to start at 5th level, or 10th, or whatever. There are still ways to cheat, of course, but if you want to earn it fair and square you always know that the computer doesn't care whether you succeed or not. It impartially gives the encounters it's programmed to hand out, runs the numbers, shows you the results, and then posts your score to the leaderboards where you can compare your rating with everyone else.

Don't get me wrong, RPGs can still be a source of that sense of achievement. But I suspect that everything that RPGs do better than computer games is based on their subjective nature, the ability to adapt to living people and their ideas. For one group, 5th level is a hard-earned accomplishment because their GM's really tough; for another, it's where you start a game because that power level suits the image people have in mind. For me personally that's all feature, no bug.

 

[wedgeski]

We've played 65-ish sessions of 4E since it was released and in that time I've killed 2 PC's, one at the very start, and one quite recently in the belly of a giant crocodile. Death Saves are reasonably rare; I might bring a PC to zero hit points or less once every 5 or 6 sessions.

Partially this is because if you play by the encounter guidelines it's so *very* difficult to kill a PC in 4E, and partially this is because I do have a line I draw between a reasonable death and an unreasonable one. That line, I guess, is different for every DM.

Death should always be a threat in D&D, I agree. But I don't think it should be the defining threat. The defining threat should be failure: failure to save the kidnapped princess, failure to retrieve the McGuffin and stop the end of the world; failure failure failure. Failure should have major consequences for the PC's, and you can bet the players will feel it too.

 

[S'mon]

Partially this is because if you play by the encounter guidelines it's so *very* difficult to kill a PC in 4E...

This has not been my experience. It would take far more than sticking to the encounter budget for me to avoid killing PCs. I'd have to stick to EL+0 encounters, and even then there'd be situations like when the party dangled one PC at the end of a 50' rope down a gargoyle-infested 150' cliff... the result of the lone hanging PC being attacked by the gargoyles would have been fatal for him no matter what. It would have taken exceedingly kind DMing to keep the PC alive, rewriting the published encounter along the lines of:

"You see sleeping gargoyles on the cliffs... Looks like they're starting to wake up... You better climb back up the rope quickly!"

I suspect no-fatality DMs must do that kind of thing a lot, adapting the game-reality in order to not kill PCs.

Or when PCs rush into the end-boss fight either without stopping to rest after the penultimate fight, or with PCs starting on 0 healing surges, it would take some DMing kindness to ensure survival, albeit that the frequent PC fatalities I see are partly due to the end-boss fight being the toughest one of the adventure.

 

[wedgeski]

I suspect no-fatality DMs must do that kind of thing a lot, adapting the game-reality in order to not kill PCs.

I suspect you're right, but us "low fatality" DM's wouldn't simply panic because it looked like a PC was going to buy it in two rounds. We'd turn the situation to our advantage: hold back on the gargoyles for a turn or two, maybe, and suddenly you have a life or death struggle on a sheer cliff face with flying opponents and a PC in real danger as he climbs/is hauled back up.

As for strolling into big fights with no Healing Surges and similar stupidity, well, there's little you can do there except exchange death for capture.

The recent PC death I had was basically the result of two pieces of stupidity: first, the dwarf saw red and rushed a compound of giants; second, the warlock decided to hang back, on his own, and shoot from cover of the marshy vegetation around a huge, murky pool. In a Feywild swamp. Needless to say the giant crocodile that made its home there ate well that night. (In fact that was very nearly a TPK, such was the lack of forethought on display.)

 

[S'mon]

As for strolling into big fights with no Healing Surges and similar stupidity, well, there's little you can do there except exchange death for capture.

I was a player in the group which thought it'd be a great idea to clear out all the 'optional encounters' in the dungeon before facing the BBEG - 'in case they ambush us from behind'. This meant we went into the final battle with our Defender on 0 healing surges. The DM had created a somewhat overpowered boss fight even for a more savvy group. He kept us alive only by heavily nerfing the enemy in what should have been a massacre, and it was all a bit unsatisfying.

 

[Kerranin]

I suspect you're right, but us "low fatality" DM's wouldn't simply panic because it looked like a PC was going to buy it in two rounds. We'd turn the situation to our advantage: hold back on the gargoyles for a turn or two, maybe, and suddenly you have a life or death struggle on a sheer cliff face with flying opponents and a PC in real danger as he climbs/is hauled back up.

As for strolling into big fights with no Healing Surges and similar stupidity, well, there's little you can do there except exchange death for capture.

The recent PC death I had was basically the result of two pieces of stupidity: first, the dwarf saw red and rushed a compound of giants; second, the warlock decided to hang back, on his own, and shoot from cover of the marshy vegetation around a huge, murky pool. In a Feywild swamp. Needless to say the giant crocodile that made its home there ate well that night. (In fact that was very nearly a TPK, such was the lack of forethought on display.)

From a player's POV, if I do something stupid and my character gets killed, I don't blame the DM, I should have planned better...

In the campaign where a player was killed by the gargoyles, the thing that Simon forgot to mention was that he'd told us at the start of that campaign that it would be a sandbox. There would be encounters which were well beyond our level, and we needed to be ready and willing to run away if needed. (which we have done a few times now)

As long as there is an opportunity to see the problem coming, or to escape once you realize the issue, then I have no problem with those sorts of encounters.

 

[Barastrondo]

I suspect no-fatality DMs must do that kind of thing a lot, adapting the game-reality in order to not kill PCs.

Can't speak for other low-fatality types, but I do write my own adventures. That way it's easier to account for things like "the only defender is a companion character" or "not a lot of AOE powers in this group, probably a bad idea to overuse swarms".

Or when PCs rush into the end-boss fight either without stopping to rest after the penultimate fight, or with PCs starting on 0 healing surges, it would take some DMing kindness to ensure survival, albeit that the frequent PC fatalities I see are partly due to the end-boss fight being the toughest one of the adventure.

That's true. I admit that I don't see that; my players are reasonably prudent, and linear dungeons aren't a huge portion of the game. But us low-lethality types, many of us don't extend plot protection to cover being thoroughly rash. If the players have misinterpreted a threat level, it's a cause for minor concern -- because it's on the DM to accurately convey risk -- but if someone climbs up on a safety rail and then jumps off, you don't have to save them from that.