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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blue" data-source="post: 8123290" data-attributes="member: 20564">I want fear of death to be felt with some regularity. But in 5e there's a really wide buffer between fear of death and actual death, especially if you mentally adjust death to "not just getting up at the end of combat like if knocked out".I have, as a player, told the DM that combats were too easy and to step them up.  He has - two sessions ago five level 10 characters (high rolled ability scores, low-to-moderate magic items) went unprepared against a CR 21 foe (Arasta from Theros) and defeated it.  We were at full going into the encounter - but only because there was an earlier encounter we could have taken but the characters aren't bloodthirsty and bribed our way past even though we could have taken them.  It was terrifying, and a ton of fun.  I wouldn't want to do that every time, but I do want to be challenged.(Side note, the next combat was with liek two dozen low CR creatures. We felt like heroes as we curbstomped them. Just as important for contrast. I give our DM lots of props for that.)As a DM, I roll in front of the players and don't pull punches.  Heck, I have a 4 person game that last session went against the worse foe in the entire adventure right after the rogue (their best damage dealer) missed a trap and was paralyzed for 10 minutes.  I didn't expect them to be able to take it, and train my players that there are times to retreat.  They didn't, and managed to survive.  But I gave the uninvolved player the sheet and she did all the rolls for the encounter and taking a fiendish delight in hurting her fellow party members - I couldn't fudge rolls or HPs or AC if I wanted to.In another game I run, I've told the players it's somewhat sandbox and not level specific.  They want to wander into something, that's on them.  Their paladin has convinced them to go after one of the biggest threats in the room - I threw some side quests in there so they had the option of going after them and leveling up, but they will soon be in deadly territory if they choose to push things towards violence - or don't work hard to make sure it doesn't slide that way.  In this game (point buy, few combat magic items), most combats are hard or deadly and I run many of them per day, even using a slower rest variant during exploration parts to make it work out sensibly for the narrative.All of this, in the past 6 years of running I've had no character deaths in combat. I had one character death as a martyr saving another when one player wanted to retire their character.5e has a large buffer between fear of death and actual death once you're past the first few levels.  I advocate pushing for the first with some regularity.</blockquote>

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