Death, Dying and Entitlements.

[ForeverSlayer]

There is a thread over on the Wizard's website about death and I wanted to start a thread here talking about some of the responses. Well apparently there are a few people that believe death should be something that rarely happens to a character because the player spent so much time in creating and playing that character.

Now I don't agree with this and neither do the rules of the game. Death is just another rule of the game and while it sucks to die I don't see where a player should be entitled to some sort of exemption from the death rule. Some player's describe that it almost has to be a mutual agreement between the DM and the player. Does this sound like too much entitlement on the player's part?

This is not how we play. We play by the RAW and that is, death happens and it's just a part of the game. We let the roll of the dice decide the fate of our characters like the game was designed to do.

What are your opinions on the matter?

 

[malraux]

There is a thread over on the Wizard's website about death and I wanted to start a thread here talking about some of the responses. Well apparently there are a few people that believe death should be something that rarely happens to a character because the player spent so much time in creating and playing that character.

Now I don't agree with this and neither do the rules of the game. Death is just another rule of the game and while it sucks to die I don't see where a player should be entitled to some sort of exemption from the death rule. Some player's describe that it almost has to be a mutual agreement between the DM and the player. Does this sound like too much entitlement on the player's part?

This is not how we play. We play by the RAW and that is, death happens and it's just a part of the game. We let the roll of the dice decide the fate of our characters like the game was designed to do.

What are your opinions on the matter?

In earlier version of DnD, I thought there was some point to the idea that death should be very rare and only available for doing something very dumb. Because of the level loss, dying sucked, a lot. It made bringing in a new character almost always better mechanically than resing a dead one. That was bad IMO.

For 4e, dying isn't all that bad. It costs a bit of coin, and you have a penalty for a few encounters. The revolving door of death is perhaps a bit less "realistic" but makes for a better gaming experience. Dying will always feel like failing, I don't see a big need to add compounded mechanical disadvantages to it as well.

 

[mneme]

Frankly, it depends on your game--and the particular mode of game you're playing/running.

Some games and styles are better suited to a competitive "within the situation, the GM will try to kill the PCs" approach". Some are suited to a "character's shouldn't be (permanently) killed except at dramatic points, because it cheapens the story" approach. Some are suited to a "all or most deaths should be permanent; easy raises cheapen death" approach. You want an approach that fits the game you're using.

That said, in 4e in particular, I'm pretty happy not fudging, and tend to run with dice on the table. I'll tend to go a bit easy on novice and clearly clueless players, but only with my tactics; if a bad guy managed to crit and reduce them from bloodied to dead -- or the party didn't bother trying to try to save them before they failed 3 death checks, I'd let things lie. I think one can shape things perfectly reasonably, most of the time, just by choosing actions for the monsters that both suit their personalities and still avoid actions that are very likely to result in a PC death (when a TPK isn't in the offing, anyway).

 

[Stumblewyk]

Back in 2e, I wasn't one to kill my player's PCs. I felt like I owed it to them to provide them a good time, and that included not killing the PC they worked on and invested so much time in playing. The closest I got to a PC kill was the death of a Dwarven Beastmaster's giant lizard mount. (Though, I did "force" a paladin into retirement when he met with the unfortunate aging effect of a 2e ghost, and went from being a fit and trim 25 year old, to a nearing-retirement 65 year old in the drop of a hat.) I didn't want to be responsible for killing a beloved character.

Then I upgraded to 3.5e, and with using a new system, I made a few mistakes. 2 PCs died in one encounter. I realized...it wasn't the soul-crushing experience I was afraid it would be. I wore it as a badge of honor. I killed 2 PCs. The party still survived the encounter, but barely. By the time that campaign came to a close, 2 more PCs would die, and I wouldn't care. (I did feel bad that one player ended up losing 2 PCs in the same campaign, but hey, "thems the breaks", as they say.)

With 4e, I just don't care. The dice fall. If you die, you die. I've killed 2 PCs in about 30 sessions of 4e. (If you don't count my complete TPK in our second session of 4e that I turned into a "you got captured, now escape!" scenario...) Sure, it's not insanely lethal, but the players know if the dice tell me you're dead, you're dead. And you know what? No one cares. (Except the guy who lost his 3rd PC under me a few sessions back - I'm not picking on you Bryan, I SWEAR.) They know I won't pull punches, and my players respect me for it.

In fact, I just killed another PC in a zombie survival D20 Modern game last weekend. I didn't bat an eye or flinch a bit. The chainsaw-wielding, modern day she-warrior bit the dust after being swarmed by zeds. It's to be expected. Though...it's regrettable that the player in question was a relative newbie, she learned a hard lesson - there is no such thing as plot protection.

PC death is not something to be feared or avoided. It's part of the game. I've been part of 2 TPKs as a player, and after the initial shock wears off, I pick up my dice, dust them off, and roll up a new PC.

 

[Barastrondo]

Doesn't smack to me of entitlement at all. It's a play style. They vary. There are advantages as well as disadvantages to approaching the game as if your character is not easily replaceable, and depending on the person, they may greatly outweigh the disadvantages. Not everybody gets emotional buy-in for a game via the same triggers.

Personally, at least as far as D&D is concerned, I prefer death to be rarer and harder to reverse. If coming back from the dead involves an Orphean quest or a struggle against valkyries instead of just a sack of coins and a nearby temple, then that sort of thing loses its impact if it happens all the time, and it means more to lose a character when it happens. 4e works out pretty well for me in that regard. It takes some effort to kill a PC if the rest of the group is on their toes, and getting rid of the raise dead ritual as written and replacing it with Adventures is easy-peasy.

 

[aurance]

Random character death is bad for everyone in our campaigns. My players need some time to get really vested in a character. I as the DM enjoy a story continuity with characters.

I really can't see the point in it. What's to stop a player from creating almost exactly the same class and race and feats as the previous character? So he's got the same thing mechanically, but now he has no attachment to these stats.

Anyway there are a host of other penalties that can inject risk into adventuring, which are in my opinion much more elegant and engaging than random death.

 

[Riastlin]

Mneme has it right on. Its a "Diff'rent Strokes for Diff'rent Folks" sort of thing.

For me personally, as a DM, I'm somewhere in the middle I think. I definitely want the players to believe that there's a very real possibility that their characters could die. I also think that the possibility of death makes success all the sweeter. After all, if every PC will no doubt make it to 30th level, then reaching 30th level doesn't really mean anything other than you've "been playing for a while".

At the same time though, I do like to bring a lot of story into my campaigns and I love to tie the campaign into the backgrounds of the PCs whenever possible. If PCs are dying regularly though, this becomes rather difficult. So what I've done is usually try to make the encounters fair, while also always providing an out if the dice should really go south. That being said though if the party stands and fights, and the dice continue to betray them, I will absolutely let them die.

When I first started DM'ing I was much more prone to fudge results so as to save PCs from death and what I ultimately started to notice was that the players didn't worry nearly as much about tactics. Although it was never spoken aloud, there seemed to be a sense of invulnerability. Once I started to let a couple of characters die though, things changed. The players became more careful and realized that sometimes they just need to bail on a fight for their own good. In my opinion, its made the fights much more fun, there's more tension in the tough battles because everyone knows its quite possible for a PC to die and when the party ultimately prevails in that tough fight, there's a greater sense of accomplishment.

It should also be noted though that although I'm perfectly willing to let PCs die if that's how the dice fall, PC deaths are still relatively rare in my campaigns, but the PCs have come close many times. Now, about the only time I'll fudge things is if I end up making an encounter that turns out to be a lot harder than I anticipated, in which case I'm more inclined to fudge things because I screwed up in designing the encounter in the first place.

 

[Zaran]

I frankly do my best to make sure my players do not die especially to bad die rolls. If someone were to die it would derail the game with one player not participating and the rest dealing with encounters designed for a full group.

If a player is just being dumb... yeah I don't mind if they get themselves killed but I have yet to see someone do that. Guess I'm lucky to have the players I do.

 

[Fridayknight]

Death does not need to be a hindrance to either roleplaying or stats, nor does death need to happen at all if your players choose to avoid it via stats (revenant). I have not actually killed any characters in the campaign I run, though we have been close enough for me to intentionally play down enemy damage and defenses - this in itself shows an unwillingness to cause random or gm's fault character death.

 

[OnlineDM]

I've been DMing for about a year, and I've killed three PCs in that time. Two of them were in organized play games at my local store - one was in my first Living Forgotten Realms game, and the other was last night, in my first D&D Encounters game. The third was a home game where I ran an LFR module for a pair of first-time players and one experienced player. Interestingly, the PC last night was a Revenant (yes, they can be killed!).

The public-play LFR death was due to a combination of bad tactics (a squishy striker rushing into a room full of bad guys on his own) and bad luck (two big hits from guard drakes). The Encounters death was just a brutal encounter (two other PCS were dropped unconscious by the end of the battle). Both deaths came when low-level characters were dropped to their negative bloodied value. The death in the home game was largely due to a new player not understanding that his character was fragile (a controller getting himself into the middle of melee) - he ended up failing three death saves.

In an ongoing campaign, I'd hate for just pure bad luck to kill a PC, but if they make some bad decisions and compound that with bad luck, they very well might die.