D&D 5E Do you think 5e is deadly enough and do you finish off downed characters?

[jgsugden]

For those seeking a more deadly game, consider exploding dice. Whenever a die rolls max damage, reroll it and add one less than maximum result from that die to the damage total. It creates a lot more random death, and even smaller weapons are somewhat threatening.

 

[Imaro]

This is an incredibly strange post. Was there a forum glitch?

Yeah not sure what happened there but tried to clean it up after the fact.

Anyway, by that definition there is no such thing as random PC death. I'm not going to engage with a useless definition of a word.

Not true... If it's left up to chance... say rolling death saves, rolling enough damage to kill outright, failing a save that results in death, etc. that's random. The outcome is not known beforehand it's random (depending on what is rolled) whether you will die or not. If you know action X will create outcome Y and you choose to take action X... how is it in any way random.

Random PC death is when the PC dies without any narrative leadup or payoff, as a result of dice rolls rather than because the PC bought into the development. The coup de grace can occur because the PC radomly got dropped. There are rare cases where that can be turned into a moment of significance, such as with Mollymauk's death in campaign 2 of Critical Role. When there isn't a satisfying or fun opportunity of that kind, I don't use it.

Wait what? You're creating some narrow and specific definition of random which seems to really be arguing for a significant death as opposed to non-random death, since you switch to that verbiage midway through this explanation. I'm not comenting on whether a death is significant only whether it is controlled or random.

If you have some comment or question about that that isn't nitpicking wording, I'm happy to have that discussion. I won't engage any further than I have with any sort of nitpicking.

I'm not nitpicking, you're claiming a death is random when a DM is making a conscious choice to take an action that will result in a downed PC dying. That is not random, it's purposeful.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

It's very much random. Non-random would be a death with narrative lead-up and/or payoff. If it's just done because there is an opportunity and you want a deadly game, it's random.

When I do seek deadly combat, I simply use deadlier enemies.

Not sure this is what you mean at all, but if a PC’s death is not random in the moment, then it is…. planned? That actually sounds much, much worse, IMO.

If we’re playing a campaign where death is on the table, then some combo of dice rolls in any deadly encounter could lead to it. Especially for those who roll in front of the screen. Randomness is a part of the game (unless you follow the philosophy of “Ignoring the Dice” espoused in the Role of Dice section of the DMG). Ideally, there is a story flowing through the entire campaign - that can change as a result of the choices made by the PCs and subsequent rolls - that provides context for the campaign being deadly (or at least having the potential to have deadly encounters at times).

I suppose saying that one does not want death to be random could be considered casting a vote against playing a campaign where there is little to no story and is just a meat grinder.

 

[Moorcrys]

Depends on the monster.

Animals try to drag off downed PCs to their lair. Or ankhegs, purple worms, etc.

Raiding humanoids or bandits may try to carry off downed PCs as forced labor or for ransom.

Undead, like ghouls, whose unnatural hunger supercedes tactical considerations, may stop fighting to begin to devour helpless living flesh, etc. Undead in general don't play by logical rules - they're typically overwhelmingly motivated by some 'vice' or hunger.

 

[Plaguescarred]

First and foremost, i don't think the goal of D&D is to be deadly, but challenging and death is not the only way to challenge your player characters.

5e is as deadly as the DM set it to be since he or she is in control of every encounter's challenge level.

Unless the DM runs published adventures, in which case then it depend, some may not be difficult enought, depending on how optimized the party is and how well the challenge are handled or run.


PS I don't attack dying character unless the monster is especially raveneous or cunning that it can't help but feast on it or prefer prevent it from getting back up rather than focus fire on the ones still posing a threat etc

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Not sure this is what you mean at all, but if a PC’s death is not random in the moment, then it is…. planned? That actually sounds much, much worse, IMO.

If we’re playing a campaign where death is on the table, then some combo of dice rolls in any deadly encounter could lead to it. Especially for those who roll in front of the screen. Randomness is a part of the game (unless you follow the philosophy of “Ignoring the Dice” espoused in the Role of Dice section of the DMG). Ideally, there is a story flowing through the entire campaign - that can change as a result of the choices made by the PCs and subsequent rolls - that provides context for the campaign being deadly (or at least having the potential to have deadly encounters at times).

I suppose saying that one does not want death to be random could be considered casting a vote against playing a campaign where there is little to no story and is just a meat grinder.

Right, we don’t play meat grinders, but also I don’t enjoy PC deaths that don’t have PC buy in to the story of that death.

A last stand, a sacrifice to save the team, a pivotal moment where it could go either way and be narratively satisfying, etc

 

[DEFCON 1]

Unfortunately, I think the game of D&D 5E is built to have what feels like this disparity between combat deadliness and requiring the need to attack downed characters. Because the amount of work it takes to challenge a party to suffer the effects of combat versus the ease at which it takes to kill someone after they start feeling the effects is just too great.

What I mean by this is that a party at full health after like level 3 has just so much hit points, healing, and abilities available to them-- plus the fact that they suffer absolutely no degradation of those abilities UNTIL they reach 0 HP... means that any combat they get into will usually require lots of rounds of combat and lots of monsters and lots of effort by the DM to get the party to the point where the combat ultimately feels like it was a "challenge" to them. But once that "challenge" has been reached-- usually by one or more PCs reaching 0 HP-- going off and KILLING that PC is super-easy (if the DM chooses to do it.) I think it ends up not feeling right on all account when it happens. That gap between feeling the effects of combat to then dying from that combat is just too small.

I think this is why low-level combat feels much deadlier (and might I say more "challenging") to players? Because at level 1... a monster might only need ONE hit to knock a PC to 0 HP and "feel the effects" of combat... but then it requires TWO MORE hits to actually kill them (via the 3 death save mechanics.) Killing the PC is actually harder than making them feel the effects of the combat. But counter that to adventuring parties with hundreds of HP and dozens of potential healing spells apiece-- the amount of grind it takes a DM to actually get one of them to 0 HP can be long, painful, and repetitive. And I know for my personally... I've occasionally gotten so annoyed at just how much it took to make the combat "challenging" (because like it or not, so long as a PC has their full suite of abilities and are suffering no ill-effects-- which in 5E means everyone who still has at least 1 hit point)... I've swatted downed PCs just out of spite. I ain't proud of it... and usually this is an issue of my own making based on the numbers of players I've allowed into the group and the rewards I've given them up to that point... but I've done it in the moment.

And it feels bad. The easy of that punishment doesn't fit the difficulty of the crime.

So I know for me... the way to fix this situation is to change the balance on this. In my opinion PCs should "feel the effects" of combat on a much more equal level to getting from feeling the effects to being killed. Which means either having PCs suffer combat effects while they lose hit points before hitting 0 (the Bloodied condition giving combat penalties for example)... or widening the amount of work it takes to kill someone after they've hit 0 HP. Or even both.

My personally? This is precisely why I've gone the "replace 3 death saves with the Exhaustion chart" route. Because getting someone to 0 HP then requires 6 "failures" to die, rather than 3. Thus I can hit unconscious characters and not feel bad about it, because its still going to require two or three total hits of that sort to kill them that way. But at the same token, PCs are going to suffer the effects of going to 0 and gaining Exhaustion levels in future combats even if they didn't die (because of the penalties exhaustion puts upon them.) What this means is that Death is no longer the punishment for combat... it's all the issues that come with Exhaustion that will "challenge" them in the future.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I think attacking downed player characters is a good thing to do if the rest of the party are making themselves unreachable leaving one Pc to tank. The dire troll the party were attacking on Wednesday attacked a downed Pc because one of the other PCs hid in a narrow space and the other flew into the air with magic. No person left behind.

That’s it. If you have someone bearing down on you, I don’t see “making sure” about someone at your feet.

that said some “dropped” individuals would be wounded and crawling for a weapon. But in the confines of the game I would think finishing people off would be natural unless being hard pressed.

 

[Imaro]

My personally? This is precisely why I've gone the "replace 3 death saves with the Exhaustion chart" route. Because getting someone to 0 HP then requires 6 "failures" to die, rather than 3. Thus I can hit unconscious characters and not feel bad about it, because its still going to require two or three total hits of that sort to kill them that way. But at the same token, PCs are going to suffer the effects of going to 0 and gaining Exhaustion levels in future combats even if they didn't die (because of the penalties exhaustion puts upon them.) What this means is that Death is no longer the punishment for combat... it's all the issues that come with Exhaustion that will "challenge" them in the future.

This sounds cool. I may adopt this for my current Ravenloft campaign. I've been thinking of a way to have lasting "wounds" and this is a pretty elegant way to model that without creating new/extra rules. I'm curious do you do anything different with how exhaustion is recovered or do you keep it by the book.?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure, but then I imagine players will occasionally spend their action attacking 0HP named creatures.

That's an excellent point. If NPCs got death saves, you can just about guarantee PCs would perform finishing actions, whether it makes narrative sense or not. Why can't NPCs do the same?