DM's: How many PC's do you kill per campaign?

[el-remmen]

It's thirteen, by the way.

My point was that there was no choice for 13 on the poll, though admittedly I was being purposefully obtuse.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I was tempted to say 'all of them' since the last campaign ended with a TPK.

My last campaign had about 22 deaths spread between 5 players in a couple of years. Darned hard to avoid killing PC's in 3e

 

[BlackMoria]

It varies from campaign to campaign. Some campaigns, only a few. In some others, quite a alot.

Worst so far:

RttToEE - 39 for the campaign. Record one session total: 17 KIAs in a 12 hour session.

Mauve Castle - 28 KIAs

Labyrinth of Madness - seven 14th level to 18th level characters dead before even entering the Labyrinth. Final Tally - 27 KIAs

A Paladin in Hell - don't recall the exact count but it was in the high twenties.

 

[EvilGM]

Current campaign (6th lvl): 4 deaths so far, but they're in Rappan Athuk so that number should climb rapidly.

 

[Miles Pilitus]

If we're talking the big sleep, my group barely averages 1 per campaign.

But just die, I think out epic game that ran for almost a year and a half brings our average up to around 1 per session.

 

[3d6]

Well, in my new campaign, which has lasted 4 sessions, I've killed the elven warrior, the dwarven cleric (twice), and the human warrior, so I'm going to say "lots".

Because I tend to have such a high fatality rate, though, I "soften" returning from the dead. No level loss and no material component. I would prefer players keep playing the same character, so I try to encourage that.

 

[Delta]

I recently ran into a discussion of this from the early days of D&D. From Dragon Magazine #20, it's an article entitled "IT’S A GOOD DAY TO DIE (Death Statistics of D & D Players)" by Lyle Fitzgerald.

The purpose of this article is to determine the most common causes
of character death in D&D (something close to the hearts of all refs).
Our campaign is primarily a wildernes one (as the statistics reflect),
although huge dungeons do exist.

The 600 deaths listed include deaths of
playing characters and their advanceable hirelings, not mercenaries or
other non-playing characters. We started compiling these statistics 2 to 3
years ago. In the 4 years this campaign has been running, I’d estimate that
about a thousand player/ hireling deaths have occured. Classification of
these deaths was difficult, as often they could be listed under several
causes...

Now, THAT'S old-school!

 

[Aramax]

In the 25 real years Ive run the same campaign,this has changed drasticly,originaly I killed
2 pcs in 3 sessions,now in my mellow years Im down to about 2-3 per year,if that

 

[Gundark]

3 words....Age of Worms.... This has been the highest body count campaign I have EVER done. Normally it's around 2-3 over the stretch of the campaign. Right now the PCs are at level 15 and we're at 8 deaths.

 

[SpiderMonkey]

Let's see:

The Sign of Four Campaign (including resurrections): 10
The Oath Campaign: 25
"Out of the Frying Pan": 4

So what's that average to?

Killer GM! Killer GM!

My last lower-level game had something like 4 deaths in as many or less sessions. Oops!

I generally try to stay away from killing PCs, but as a previous poster mentioned, my reluctance has definitely ebbed with age.

As a PC, since I rarely get to play and hence play recklessly, I go through characters like kleenex. I reckon I owe a lot of dead PCs breakfast at Denny's as an apology.