Death in 4e

[Jan van Leyden]

I've seen one character death in five sessions, with about ten close calls.

The actual death was due to

1. Unlucky streak of the player
2. Not spending a healing surge in time
3. Player acting in 3.x-mode, mis-interpreting the 'save' as 'try to stabilize'.
4. The party's warlord charging ahead alone into the building where the enemies had set up an ambush and going down in two rounds

My players are regularly flabbergasted that their opponents have 'how many?' hit points. A kobold with 32 HP is another story than one with 2 HP. I think they still have to learn to gang up on a single opponent; even one striker is not enough to quickly deal with an enemy.

Maybe combat is more lethal under a semi-conscious fudging DM like me. In 3.X I'd often let the monsters miss regardless of the die rolls, in order not to make low-level play too random (from the player's point of view). In 4e I expect any character to be able to suck up two, maybe three hits without being too close to dead. My 'alarm system' simply doesn't work anymore. I may have to fine-tune it.

 

[Lanefan]

I find this quite interesting.

Without having played it, the impression I get from reading 4e is that if it's going to kill anyone, it'll get everyone...that the norm would be either no deaths or a TPK. What I'm reading here implies that individual deaths still happen with some regularity.

Glad to see it.

Lanefan

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I think one of the problems with "deadliness" is that you need a baseline to compare to.

Think about a typical EL = PL fight in 3E. How deadly is that? A 5th level party fighting a single Orc Barbarian 5? Or one Drow Ranger 3 and one Drow Fighter 3? How deadly is that fight? What about a 15th level party against a 15th level Sorcerer? Or against a 15th level Paladin/Black Guard? How about a Level 7 Party against a Level 7 Troll?
Are these fights deadly?
I think they are only deadly if the monster wins initiative _and_ has a save or die like effect (or rolls a critical). It is swingy, but "on average", it is not really deadly.

But if you go into the areas of EL = PL +3 and higher, things change. I have run and played in many of these encounters, and they are very brutal, and if you're not vary, well-buffed and using smart tactics, character death is hard to avoid - but it is certainly avoidable. It's not as if every of these encounters ended deadly.


The notable difference in 4E is that equal level challenge now contain more monsters, but if you'd pretend characters had only 4-6 healing surges (about as much as you can trigger in a fight) and all their encounter powers were limited by day, you'll notice that the party will expend most, if not all of these resources. Which is very similar to 3E equal EL = PL +4 challenges.
But since the aforementioned powers only are a limited per encounter, not per day, you can run through more of them. And more important, you even have some extra resources (actual dailies) that you can spend if things go wrong.

In an 4E equal level challenge, you are no more likely to die then in an 3E equal level challenge. In both cases, you usually have some extra resource that you can spend if things go unusually wrong.

In higher level challenges, you eventually need those extra resources to survive at all. And at this point, the encounters get deadly for individuals or the entire party. The combats are not as swingy as in 3E (since a single critical or a save or die spell cannnot ruin your day), but at the end of the encounter, hit points and healing surges will be low, and sometimes, if things went wrong, the tactics were not good enough, people will die. If you're lucky, it's just one character. Sometimes, you'll have a TPK at your hands.
And then, there are some cases were only one character is still standing, the rest are all making their death saves, and his final attack kills the last enemie(s). The TPK is averted, but the party will not claim for a moment that they "kicked ass" or that this encounter didn't feel deadly... (I've had this experience when I ran Irontooth. )

 

[wedgeski]

Simply put, I have found it easier to kill PC's in 4E than in 3.5E or its predecessors, but this may simply still be an artifact of the newness of the system. Certainly, the more we play, the more dangerous the PC's seem to become. I haven't really threatened them at all in the last couple of sessions.

The thing about death in 4E is that it's a like slow train: you can see it coming, which gives you plenty of time to get out of the way.

 

[Noir le Lotus]

In my group (nearly 20 gamers), we have seen 3 deaths since the launch of 4th edition : 2 because of a stupid tactic, and 1 from a whacky DM who put a too tough encounter.

In 3rd edition, we had 1-2 deaths per week end, our record is 27 deaths in a week end.

 

[Monkey Boy]

Raven Crowking has come up with the startling (to me) suggestion that 4e has been designed so that characters won't die.

Hmm. Could have fooled a lot of characters who've met Irontooth.

I'll agree that 4e is designed so that characters tend not to die arbitrary, random deaths - "Ooh, a crit! Look ma! No head!" - whether from poison, spell or one bad roll.

However, the more I play the game, the more I realise that characters, especially those in the defender role, are just as likely to die heroically defending their companions in combat, stupidly running into a horde of orcs, or other deaths of that ilk.

Now, this might just be my "old-school" DMing at work. However, I don't think my DMing would really be that different from the designers of D&D. Character death will happen in 4e. There are consequences to your actions. And the system is designed that way.

Or have I misinterpreted the design and the intent of the designers?

Cheers!

I would not be surprised if the design intent was to make it a lot harder to die.

Design choices such as the loss of save or die, less devastating crits, inflated low level hit points, multiple healing surges, lower monster damage. Everything points to the greater survivability of PC's.

I think survivable PC's are great. You invest in a character, write their background, have all these plot hooks hanging off them and then they die. It sucks to DM as there go your players investment in the campaign and possibly ruins your game as the character may have been a vital part. It sucks for the player as they need to create a new character. Taking them away from the action for 1/2 hour then they need to wait maybe another hour before the DM can slot their replacement character into the line up. TPK's wreck campaigns.

I think 4e has the balance between threat level about right. Survivability = WIN!

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Well, I've had no deaths in my campaign so far (the next session is the first in the actual keep, however). I'm anticipating that with better tactics from the goblins we might start to see the mortality rate start to go up a little.

I tend to be quite an 'easy' DM and not run encounters to their absolute maximum in terms of trying to kill the PC's, it must be said. I tend not to focus fire, but I might start using better tactics now the players have got their heads round the system.

 

[Monkey Boy]

I am a little worried by people talking about player deaths and TPK's as if they were badges of honour. It sucks to loose a character. TPK's suck. 15 character deaths in 2 months of playing is terrible. I weep for your game and your players.

As a DM you may think its a blast but kill enough players enough times and folk are just going to start getting sick of playing. Eventually I'm just going to ask myself what is the point of coming up with an interesting character and just bring a Bob the fighter mk2 to the table.

Killing characters is not a badge of honour. Having your edition win the 'Deadliest edition.' is a booby prize.

 

[Obryn]

As a DM you may think its a blast but kill enough players enough times and folk are just going to start getting sick of playing. Eventually I'm just going to ask myself what is the point of coming up with an interesting character and just bring a Bob the fighter mk2 to the table.

I'd say this would vary considerably from group to group, wouldn't you?

Some folks (not me) enjoy this kind of adversarial play. It's certainly not badwrongfun to do so.

-O

 

[Ourph]

How much are the two damage sponges though helping the other guys stay alive? You might find that if the other two were more tactically minded, the other four would be harder pressed perhaps?

I very much doubt it. 4e rewards good teamwork. In addition to doing smart strategic things like actually talking to NPCs to gather information, scouting an area before rushing in and starting to kill things and forming a plan of action before kicking in a door, the four "good" players also do an excellent job of meshing their tactics as a team.

One of the less skilled players almost always plays a Paladin who rushes in at the front of the party, pays no attention to his tactical positioning, uses his Div. Challenge sub-optimally, tends to use his Lay on Hands ability in a desperate attempt to save himself very early in an encounter and generally gets in the way of some of the tactics that the other team members are trying to employ. He's not a bad guy and he doesn't intentionally screw things up, IMO he has an attention problem that makes it difficult for him to keep track of what the other players are doing and how he can best mesh his actions to contribute to the overall plan.

If anything, that player is making the team less effective. The fact that he usually goes unconscious within the first few rounds of a fight means he's only contributing half what he might if he kept himself alive a little longer. It also means he is draining the "healing pool" by requiring healing to stay alive where a better player wouldn't. Far from helping, being a "damage soak" is using up team resources, because he's soaking damage that otherwise might not have been dealt. Plus, he's doing a poor job in his role as Defender because he rarely puts himself in a position to soak damage in a way that actually prevents squishies from getting hit. Fortunately, one of the "good" players is playing a Fighter, so they have some buffer.