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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Unwise" data-source="post: 5559269" data-attributes="member: 98008">Without deaths, players will eventually stop taking threatening situations seriously and instead only look towards the treasure involved. As an example, you have a bunch of low level adventurers come across a dragon sleeping on its treasure horde. If you have kept the risk vs reward paradigm in your games to this point, the adventurers will likely decide it is not worth the risk. If the theif does try to sneak in and steal something, it will be exciting as they might die at any moment. If you have failed to maintain risk vs reward, then the players feel entitled to that treasure that the dragon is sleeping on. They will attack it and force you into a situation where you have to once again bend to their will and give them the treasure, or kill them (which history shows you won't do, so you can't just blame them for being silly). Without the occassional death, when a PC does die, it can feel that the GM had a vendetta of some sort. For instance, if you use a Deus Ex Machina often enough, it becomes expected. When a PC does eventually die, they wonder why an angel did not sweep down and save them, like it did for Bob and Tina's characters last adventure. This being said, I actually do sometimes give a PC 'plot armor' and I am quite obvious about it. Adventures that require a particular PC tend to come about due to good roleplaying on their part, or at least making an interesting character background. Plot armor can be a reward for good co-operative story telling as well as a handy thing to help the GM continue the campaign as intended. There are other ways of adding risk v reward than death of course. In a recent game, the PCs failed miserably at trying to save an NPC from a big bad guy. They were beaten down, with only one left standing. The bad guy then callously executed the NPC in front of them. At this point, they know they had lost and had been 'punished' for their failure. I decided that seeing their friend murdered enraged them so much that they all spent a healing surge due to the inspiration. The guy who was still up and the dwarf who was a relative of the NPC were both so overcome with rage that they got an action point. This led to a cinematic resurgence where they came back from certain death and slaughtered the bad guys. This resulted in a much better game than a TPK, the players still felt empowered, yet they know that they had lost the day, even if they did avenge their fallen comrade.</blockquote>

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