Frequency of death

[iserith]

In my games, pretty much never. They have backup characters at the ready and already written into the ongoing tale. So they tend to tap that character in rather than try to resurrect the dead one.

 

[Retreater]

I can't recall a time when I've had any character ever come back from the dead in any edition through PC cast resurrection magic. A handful of times I erred in encounter design or made a bad ruling and backtracked a death ("you just thought the character had died"), but mostly in my experience going back to 1989, no one has cared enough to resurrect a character.
I'd say we average a character death every 4-6 sessions, though it varies from campaign to campaign. TPKs happen about every twelve sessions or so.

 

[Hjorimir]

I've had a TPK of 6 PCs (medusa + bad saving throws) and another time where 3 PCs died (and the rest of the PCs ran for their lives). It's a big assumption in our games that you'd even be able to find a cleric capable of casting a raise dead spell. I tend to run a decently rough game, but my players expect it at this point.

 

[Harzel]

In the current campaign, one PC died, but they managed to talk a local priest into casting Raise Dead. (That they had done some large favors for the temple helped a bunch.) I think they were level 3 at the time. He got knocked down, the rest of the party ran, and he failed 3 death saves in a row. No other even close calls until today when one of the rogues (level 6) got trapped by himself in a room with a flock of stirges. Stirges aren't very tough on paper, but against 8 with no AoE capability and in the circumstances no way to get Sneak Attack, the rogue came within a round of dropping before managing to escape. The action economy can be a bitch. It was quite exciting, but no death.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

How often to players die in your campaigns and not get ressurected? It seems to me that it should be pretty rare after players go past level 5 and have spells like revivify available

In my campaign, it depends less on how available revivify is and more on how available 300 GP diamonds are.

 

[Blue]

In my last campaign the only permanent character death was a martyr move to save another.

As a side note, I can ratchet up the tension and get players regularly to afraid for their character's lives and having some go unconcious, but I find the system really prevents it turning into a death in 90% of the cases unless it's getting pushed close to a TPK. Without additional damage for death saves, 3 turns after dropping is usually more than enough to either end the combat, or have someone get to them with a heal spell or healing potion to stabilize. Area of effect attacks are the big divergance from that, with handing out extra failed death saves.

 

[the Jester]

I advertise my game as being high-lethality, but it has been quite a while, actually.

Hmmm.

 

[DeathbyDoughnut]

Playing in D&D 5e I've had three characters die over 5th level: A 9th level Ancients Paladin was killed in a cutscene, a 12th level Shadow Sorcerer was killed by overwhelming odds trying to escape jail, and a 14th level Monk was killed off screen between sessions.

 

[S'mon]

I tend to go quite a few sessions between perma deaths, maybe 15-20? A common cause is being killed and turned into an undead. Being eaten by ghouls or cannibal berserkers can also do it. Several perma deaths in Stonehell over about 80 sessions.

My new Primeval Thule game has no raise dead so any deaths permanent.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

Since I started 5e, and over the stretch of a half-dozen DMs, I've never seen a character death in any of the various campaigns I've been in.

In previous editions, we had lots and lots. And lots.

I'm not sure what changed. I guess, once you reach a high enough level, you're clear of insta-death from mass-damage and you, therefore, don't die from a sword wound but instead, die from failed death saves and you can usually get to a person before those death saves rack up.