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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8270162" data-attributes="member: 6790260">"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.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.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!)Perhaps the fact that one comes across as such should be a sign, then?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.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?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.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!</blockquote>

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