IMO. It’s more about the players than the DM. Players get to choose what they care about and no DM is going to be able to make them care about something they don’t. Generally speaking character death is one thing most players care about most the time and it’s a threat present in most every encounter and so it makes a good default consequence.
"Default," perhaps, but to my eyes "default" and "boring" aren't far apart on this one. I completely agree that the DM cannot
make anyone care about anything. But assuming the player isn't playing purely out of some obligation binding them there--assuming they actually enjoy playing in the game--
something in it is going to matter to them. Usually, a lot of things. NPCs, locations, organizations, objects, whatever things they think are enjoyable and wish for them to continue to "exist" (as much as anything in our fictional worlds can exist.) It's not hard to threaten those things, and they make for more
interesting stakes than PC death.
Sometimes players care about other things than PC death - but even when they do - the immediate context of ‘this encounter’ may preclude that thing being targeted. And even when it is targeted there’s nothing saying the player will value that thing more than the life of their PC - making threatening their PCs life still a ‘better’ option.
Again, I disagree, not because I'm saying they don't value the life of the PC more, but because they may value the life of the PC so much that the threat of losing it
destroys their ability to enjoy the game. Like, this is a bit like saying that ACTUAL PLAYER death is a "better" consequence than losing a bunch of money in poker, because
of course a person values their actual flesh-and-blood life more than they value a pile of fiat currency! The logic just doesn't hold; you're
correct that putting someone's literal actual IRL life on the line is a higher
tension situation, but it does not follow that that makes it a
better situation for creating player enjoyment.
IMO, That’s still threat of death. It’s just in a more RPG friendly package. If the PCs say screw this quest - what then?
Then the PCs have made an enemy of the deity in question--or, alternatively, a geas triggers which prevents them from acting with total impunity. If "has made an enemy of a deity capable of resurrecting the dead" is not enough to trigger DM thinky-thoughts about how to make the PCs' lives suck, I don't know what to tell you.
(There's also just....I mean, the players have agreed to a social contract with the DM. The players agree to participate, and to do so in a way in keeping with the spirit of the game; the DM agrees to narrate and adjudicate, and to do so in a way that offers potential for entertainment. If the players are suddenly saying, "Nope, we're not going to abide by the spirit of the game," you have a much,
MUCH bigger problem than finding appropriate loss-consequences!)
Oh these things can be kitbashed in alright, and easily; but only over howls of protest from the player base and at great risk of coming across as a rat-bastard DM.
Perhaps the fact that one comes across as such should be a sign, then?
Far easier for all had these other long-term bad consequences been left in as default RAW with options presented to take them out if desired for one's own table. That way, the DM who runs it RAW is just running the game, while the DM who exercises the removal option(s) comes across as a nice guy - or a softie, one or the other.
Easier
for you as a DM who wants them, yes. Easier for the large number of DMs who
don't want them and
don't like having to filter out all the places where the save-or-dies happen? Not at all. That it's easier for YOU isn't exactly much consolation.
How exciting is a battle if you know you can't lose?
Already touched on by someone else, but: How is a battle where you can't
die totally identical to a battle where you can't
lose?
How many 5e DMs do you know who have even tried, never mind succeeded, to put either permanent level drain or item desctruction via AoE damage into their games? Or 4e DMs, for that matter?
I'll hazard a guess that the answer is zero and will be happy to be proven wrong.
Oh, I've seen some things you'd find real surprising. First-time 4e DMs deciding healing surges are a bad idea, so they're just gone--you just get healed some static amount any time something would call for one. Adding in XP or level loss is chump change for such people, and I've avoided those games like the plague as a result.
Fine, but you can't have it both ways. Either you've got to have some other permanent nasty mechanical consequences in the game (you know, the sort that players really aren't gonna like and will actively try to avoid having happen to their characters) or you're left with death being the only one.
The complaint made upthread was that death is the only one being focused on. The obvious reason for this is that it's the only one left.
Unless you just...don't have permanent, nasty, mechanical consequences?
That's literally what I do. I literally don't have permanent
and nasty
and mechanical consequences. I have permanent consequences (e.g. if the party had ultra-failed in their fight against the Song of Thorns, it would have escaped into their world and been permanently unkillable once it got there), nasty consequences (e.g. both the aforementioned one and, for a different example, the time the party Druid made a deal with a devil--potentially risking his very soul--on terms he didn't negotiate!), and occasionally mechanical consequences (loss of HP/XP, loss of features, loss of items, consumed resources). But never things that are all three at once.
Why is it
required that there be something that is simultaneously permanent, nasty, AND mechanical as a consequence?
If your players actually respect the spirit of the game and are still on board for the game you're offering, I see no reason why such a thing HAS to exist. And if your players either
don't respect the spirit of the game, or
aren't actually on board for the game you're offering, the problem is significantly bigger than whether or not there is a permanent, nasty, mechanical consequence that can affect their characters!
For other players I think the risk of death can be almost artbitrarily low, as long as it's not entirely absent. Generally I find players complain a lot if they see the GM fudging to keep their PCs alive, but don't complain about easy-but-fair victories. So when running for a mixed-preference group it's good to default to lower threat whenever in doubt.
