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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MrBrown" data-source="post: 1475534" data-attributes="member: 18231">HiThere's a couple of things you can do to get rid of the need for fudging and introduce PC death into the game. First thing is to get a hang of the rules of the system you're using, so that you can gauge the difficulty of enemies well. Not much you can do here but DM more and learn what works. However, one thing you could do is start from a higher level, maybe 3-5. D&D tends to be very random at low levels and starting a bit higher can offset that.The thing with PC death I think should be strived for is having the players realize their PCs can die, without actually killing any of them. Sort of giving the players "a fear of death" in regards to their characters. When your players are aware of this, they will play more carefully, and won't regard PC death as 'unfair' when it happens, because they were partially prepared for it and aware the PC was in danger. Naturally, sometimes a player might decide it's more in-character to do something, although it might kill the PC.To achieve this (without meta-gaming and/or fudging), make the players aware of the danger they're facing, or even make it seem stronger than it is. Rumors in towns, events your PCs see, objects they find or even short confrontations before the "real one", anything can give the players some kind of an image of what they're facing.For example, you mentioned that in your last game the party faced a group Dire Rats, and that the party had a Ranger. To give the players a feel of how strong the Dire Rats are, you might have them face a single Dire Rat so that the players can get a feel of how strong they are in combat, before actually being in danger. After the encounter, you might have the Ranger make a Wilderness Lore roll and tip him off that there are lots of Dire Rats in the area. If the player later on in the 'real' encounter against the Dire Rats start taking too much damage, they'll think that they underestimated the enemy rather than that the DM used an enemy too strong.This is all assuming, of course, that the player have choices and different ways of going about this quest, and individual encounters in it. Try to avoid railroading.Also, StalkingBlue's advice on playing Dire Rats as animals is great.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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