Dragon 368 - Death Matters (But Never Happens)

[Bodhiwolff]

In our campaign, we've managed to avoid deaths at every session -- but just barely. Each session has had at least one battle, if not two, where a couple of people have been down to rolling death saves, and have got to the point where they're counting down to the final dirtnap. The entire party has had to go into emergency mode to fix things.

Which is just the right level of drama and tension for storytelling, as far as I'm concerned. Just enough danger that a screwup can make it scary, but enough that some concerted teamwork and sacrifice can get you out of it.

I haven't encountered anything at all like what the OP is concerned about.

More to the point, it almost feels as if the OP is reminiscing about the "good old days" when a player death is the reward for a GM's job well done, or some sort of nonsense. A good GM knows they're keeping the players on their toes, and keeping the story nicely tense, when the occasional player still dies, sorta thing. I guess that's one way to go, if people like.

Me, I'd rather kill that concept than needlessly kill a player.

 

[Henry]

I'm not seeing it in my experience. In the playtest of the "Against the Slavelords" 4e one-shot I ran, a halfling rogue was killed and eaten by 5 scaled-down Ghouls in the FIRST FULL ROUND OF THE FIRST COMBAT of the game. He ran ahead of the party into a room, party was surprised by hiding ghouls, ghouls charged and bit, then in the next round the poor halfling was killed before taking a single action.

In the actual Gameday one-shot of this I ran, the party lost their fighter due to a scaled-down level 6 basilisk in the FIRST COMBAT.

In my regular campaign, I've had one death (which didn't count because it was a party betrayal), and two near-deaths, which came one roll away from ending poorly. One player, playing a Warforged, escaped death because he was a warforged. If he had have been flesh and blood, he'd have been dead early into the combat, because he failed every single dying save and had to take 10. The dice just plain failed him for like 7 rounds in a row!

For our group, it's as lethal as ever, and in some ways more so, because I don't feel guilty about throwing significant challenges their way.

 

[Stalker0]

Yep, two of my PCs died against the White Dragon, and in KOTS, the Paladin died from massive damage vs Irontooth who hit him twice for seriously high damage when the Pally was at 8 HP... took him straight to negative bloodied.

I think this is an important factor to consider. For most monsters, if you use the DMG clause that "monsters don't attack unconscious pcs until everyone is out", then the negative bloodied rule won't come up, there you have the 3 strikes and your out rule.

But for elites and solos that have multiple attacks, a DM can rack up a large amount of damage before the player gets knocked down, and then the player suddenly go, "oh man I'm dead".

Now what I'm interested to see is how this plays out at high levels. High level monsters don't seem to get a lot more damage, and high level character just get a larger and larger death's window, so I fear the death's window won't ever come up. But the death rules have worked very well for my group so far, so we will wait and see.

 

[Belphanior]

In the six or so session of my bi-weekly sunday game, one PC has already died due to an (un)lucky crit that took him from "just bloodied" straight into "negative bloodied and beyond".

Also, three times so far a PC failed a death save twice and were fortunately prevented from having to make a third one, due to heroic intervention, extraordinary teamwork, and a healthy dose of luck. Action Points, dailies, consumable potions, clever tactics, and a lot of prayer were what saved them in the nick of time.

Death is very much an element in my games. When Ahwe Yahzhe speaks of "immortal characters" I really have to scratch my head - is he really talking about the same game?

 

[mattdm]

From there, it's a simple matter to allow a stabilized character to spend 4 healing surges and be at 100% health. No problem. And if somehow a character managed to burn through their endless supply of surges for the day, they can hunker down until the 12-hour ticker expires for an extended rest.

I think the above is the core of the problem. My players haven't felt like healing surges are an infinite resource at all. You need to do something to make them equally precious to your players. If you feel like you're not able to do it with encounter design or by encouraging an extended adventuring day, then one or more of your suggestions may be worth talking over with your group. (Having the extended rest not heal all hit points is my favorite of those.)

 

[Griogre]

This is a huge factor, and we've been doing it wrong all this time.

I bet there'd have been another death or two imc by now if I'd been using this rule correctly. But que sera sera. I'm still actually quite pleased with the dying rules- you have a chance to save your pal when he's down, but you better get on it!

Yeah, I've have a few PCs barely survive because of this. And in the TPK's I've had this is how they start dying off. The remaining "up characters" can't get to the down characters or can't heal them and then they start dying.

The other thing to remember is surges are pretty limited in any encounter. Everyone gets a second wind and then you have another few from the leaders and unless the PC is a dwarf he is going to reluctant to use a second wind and lose a round.

Seriously, look into your monster tactics and make up. Also if you are running a party bigger than 5 make sure you adjust your encounters. If you have a six man party and are running a module and the encounter level is X make sure you increase the encounter budget by the experience a monster of X level would give - though alot of times you can just look at the monsters already in the encounter and just add another one or four minons.

One of the things I find interesting about monsters in 4E is because of roles, in many encounters you actually have "monster partys" in a sense. Make sure you take advantage of a humanoids racial abilty. If your character's don't hate Kobold's "shiftyness" after a few encounters, with them something is wrong.

Also make sure you look at the encounter level mix in the DMG 104. If anything that seems understated. In KotS the first major boss encounter was even higher then party level +3.

 

[Nail]

Our party - too - fears death....and we have two leaders!

 

[MrMyth]

Now what I'm interested to see is how this plays out at high levels. High level monsters don't seem to get a lot more damage, and high level character just get a larger and larger death's window, so I fear the death's window won't ever come up. But the death rules have worked very well for my group so far, so we will wait and see.

There are some hard hitting high level monsters, especially in the solo arena - an Ancient White Dragon hitting with two claws and a bite is looking at 9d12+21 damage. If that bite crits, thats an average of 107 damage from that flurry of attacks. At level 24, a non-defender probably has around 140 hp, meaning if they are just over a healing surge in current hp, those attacks would take them straight to dead.

Now, not a likely occurence, but I still think - especially with solo monsters - the potential is there. Really durable defenders probably less so - a level 30 fighter designed for hp could have over 250 hp, and isn't likely to get dropped to dead in most circumstances. But for the rest, I can definitely see it happening.

The one thing that high-level fights will have more of, I suspect, is area effects large enough to constantly catching dying PCs in an entirely incidental fashion. Or, even worse, damage auras - the white dragon above also does another 30 damage to nearby PCs at the start of their turn, which suddenly makes it even easier for an unconscious PC to hit the dead zone.

But... hard to say for sure, until more high level play has been seen.

 

[Dragonblade]

I find the whole premise of this thread hilarious. And I don't mean that as a slam of the original poster.

I just DMed last night. Party of 4 level 1 PCs. 82 point buy, 1 for 1 for stats (no starting stat below 8). A barbarian, wizard, cleric, and swordmage. My players are smart tactically. They make good decisions and min/max like crazy.

Case in point. The barbarian is a minotaur using a large dire flail (minotaur's can use oversized weapons) meaning his base [W] damage is 2d8. His CON and STR are both 20. He is sick. The other PCs are similarly optimized.

I ran the FRCG intro adventure, the Barrow of the Ogre King out of the book. No modification at all. However, I played the monsters as brutally efficient as I could given the party's power. Let's just say that despite the powergaming on the part of the player's, I had to secretly fudge die rolls to prevent TWO TPKs in two different encounters. And the Swordmage STILL ended up dying in the last fight of the night.

If your players are walking through your adventures, its because you aren't leveraging the monsters natural synergies for maximum nastiness. Case in point; the Gobline Hexer has an ability called Vexing Cloud. This power is SICK! Its area is huge, Burst 3 within 10, and the Hexer can sustain it from round to round.

All enemies (i.e. the PCs) take a -2 to hit. ALSO, it grants concealment to all the Hexer's allies. That's an additional -2 to hit. That's essentially a +4 AC boost to ALL the Hexer's allies within the cloud. Plus the Skullcleaver Goblins the PCs also fought, do 2d10 +5 damage when bloodied. That's an average of 15 points of damage to a 1st level PC not likely to have much more than 30 hitpoints. 1,2, DEAD.

Also, one of the combats had hobgoblin soldiers. Well, when they line up they get a +2 to AC. With the Hexer's vexing cloud in play, that's effectively a +6 to their AC. Those hobgoblins went from AC 20 to AC 26.

Frankly, I'm surprised the party survived at all even with my fudging. Its a testament to their smart play and tactics that they lived. Now, granted the adventure assumes 5 PCs so it probably would have been a little easier with 5 PCs, but I doubt by much. Especially if those 5 PCs were made by the book and without my generous ability score rules.

 

[Jhaelen]

Granted, I've got pretty smart players who have absorbed the new rules possibly better than their DM, and who fight very well as a team.

Well, that's clearly an important part about your 'problem'.
If my players are playing smart and fighting well as a team (both of which rarely happens) then they're not really in danger of dying except due to extremely unlucky circumstances.
I consider that a good thing. Shouldn't the players be rewarded for playing clever?
My favorite sessions aren't the ones where a pc died it's the sessions where a pc (or several pcs) _almost_ died. The most gratifying battles are the ones that were close calls but were won by the pcs without anyone having to be raised from the dead. YMMV.

Finally, when the encounter is over, just take as much time as you need to stabilize any remaining "dying" characters. From there, it's a simple matter to allow a stabilized character to spend 4 healing surges and be at 100% health. No problem. And if somehow a character managed to burn through their endless supply of surges for the day, they can hunker down until the 12-hour ticker expires for an extended rest. Then they get all their hit points back AND their surges, not to mention their dailies.

Here's the next problem: no time pressure.
If the pcs can take their time in every adventure it's unlikely they'll ever be seriously threatened by standard encounters. If your game is turning out to fall back into the old 15 minute adventuring day you'd have to engage in an arms-race you can only lose.
Then again, if you're using the DMG's recommended encounter templates for 'hard' encounters from time to time I cannot imagine them to not be challenging.

Even in a monster-infested labyrinth (H2) where checks bring up a random encounter or two when the party does try to wait out the clock, this is rarely an issue, because that character, nearly dead just minutes or hours ago, is still in the fight with at least 1/2 hit points against mooks.

That surprises me a bit. At least the first two dungeons in H2 can quickly turn into death-traps if the party retreats and rests, giving the enemies time to regroup. Since their main goal should be to free the prisoners, I can think of several excellent ways to put the pcs under pressure...

Thanks to immortal characters, the drama is drained out of my game. Combat is fun, but never scary.

Well, if the drama in your game solely relies on the 'fear of death' then you may indeed have a problem.
How do your players think about the issue of death, btw? Do they enjoy the game or would they prefer a harder challenge?