Favourite Mortality Rate by Edition

[Lanefan]

About 20 years ago, one of my players came up with a saying that he nailed to the players' side of my DM screen; it has resonated through our games (in which he is still a player) to this day:

Dungeons without mortality are dungeons without life.

And this during a campaign where characters were dropping like flies!

Provided it is due either to rank stupidity or bad luck, in my experience players really tend not to mind their characters dying; and those who do mind to the point of getting upset over it probably aren't players you want back anyway.

Lanefan

 

[justanobody]

Yeah, character death should be a plot point? Talk about being railroaded!

You make an interesting point that may be of use to other threads around here revolving around character deaths.

 

[jdrakeh]

Yeah, character death should be a plot point? Talk about being railroaded!

A "plot point" isn't necessarily planned in advance, rather, it's merely an event that is meaningful in the context of a given plot. Random deaths are rarely meaningful. I think that the "plot point" poster intended to convey that PC deaths should be meaningful.

 

[Orius]

Mortality depends on the DM, how he runs the game, the players, and how well they run their characters. It has nothing to do with the edition itself.

So no vote.

I bumped off more PCs in 3e than in 2e, had my only TPK in 3e, and there are those who say (inaccurately) that 3e was easier and so on. Then again, it may be that either I was more experienced as a DM in 3e, or perhaps the players themselves were less experienced.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Mortality has been higher in 3e than in AD&D or BECMI (though really only BEC, if that makes much difference here anyway), IME. Including the only TPK I've been in.

So, no vote from me.

 

[Treebore]

A "plot point" isn't necessarily planned in advance, rather, it's merely an event that is meaningful in the context of a given plot. Random deaths are rarely meaningful. I think that the "plot point" poster intended to convey that PC deaths should be meaningful.

Then if its not planned why do you still distinguish it from being a random event? If its planned it is a railroad situation.

Besides, random death does have a point. I think its a very good point. Death SUCKS!

 

[Jhaelen]

Dungeons without mortality are dungeons without life.

Maybe that's why I don't particularly care about dungeons?

Anyway, I think death should be meaningful. I don't particularly like arbitrary or accidental death in my games. It still happens regularly in my games since I don't pull any punches but I don't like to penalize the players for it more than necessary.

New characters in 3E start at the mid-point of their previous level just as if they'd been raised.

New characters in 4E start at their previous level but have a penalty for several encounters just as if they'd been raised.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Re the options given--my reaction is, "huh?" and it sounds like I'm not the only one.

I find the subsequent discussion interesting.

From my point of view, the simpler the game, the faster it is to generate a new character and get straight back into playing. And therefore the simpler the game, the less painful it is to lose a character.

So if you lose a basic D&D/Labyrinth Lord character, you've lost an archetype. One dwarf is much like another, so if your dwarf dies, you're looking at five minutes to reroll and you're straight back into the game. A TPW might take the whole group ten minutes to reroll.

But if you're playing 3.5 with a lot of third party enhancements, then character creation and optimisation is so complex that it's virtually a separate subgame. People spend whole sessions on character-rolling. So if your toon dies, you've lost many hours of work and you understandably get cross.

In other words, the PITA factor of dying in later editions tends to be greater, so pplayers naturally take death more seriously.

Also, there's the speed of play to take into account. If you're playing Basic D&D or Labyrinth Lord, and you lose a character every thirty battles or so, then death will be quite frequent and a lot of sessions will include someone rerolling. But if you're playing 4e, how long does it take to play through thirty battles?

The mortality rates might even be similar, adjusted for playing speed.

 

[jdrakeh]

Then if its not planned why do you still distinguish it from being a random event? If its planned it is a railroad situation.

I misspoke. What I meant to indicate was that a PC death should be heroic or meaningful in D&D, as that is what D&D is about. In making a death heroic or meaningful, it becomes a plot point (no planning necessary).

For example, dying in the midst of combat or even being poisoned by a lethal trap in the pursuit of wild treasures due to a bad die roll (or series of bad die rolls) is pretty heroic. Dying because you tripped over a tree root on a day hike and broke your neck is not.

That said, there are plenty of DMs who go out of their way to avoid letting PCs die heroically and, instead, try to kill them in the tripping over tree roots manner (i.e., they turn unimportant, mundane, situations into opportunities for character death). For example. . .

A friend recently related to me a story where a DM killed an entire party of adventurers because they didn't build a campfire correctly (i.e., in-character, they said "We build a campfire" rather than walking the DM through the BSA-approved campfire building process step by step).

Apparently, the DM decided that not disclosing the process for campfire building turned the task into a life or death situation on which the future of the entire camapign should hang. After a high/low luck roll, he declared that the entire party froze to death in the forest clearing overnight. All of them.

Naturally, this ended the campaign. It also ended the group because the players signed up for heroic adventure, not "Rudimentary Campfire Building, The Role Playing Game"

And you're right, death like that does suck. Likewise, so do DMs who dabble in it

 

[Starglim]

So far in 4e, we've had two deaths over 3 character levels (both pretty random, one raised) before a TPK, a first for the group, which, to be fair, was the final encounter and thus reasonably plot-relevant. Individual deaths, at least, are looking closely similar to our 2e and 3e campaigns as far as I can recall. Though I voted 3e, I can't say I agree with the premise of the poll.