D&D 5E How do you kill a 10th level character?

[Grazzt]

Flanking isn't 'basic'. At least not to everyone. It wasn't introduced to D&D until 3rd Edition (2000), and it got along just fine without it. At least not as a core rule, it may have been one of the options in 2nd, but I never played with it. The vast majority of RPGs I have played don't use it, and I would hardly call their design 'lazy'. Or maybe I misunderstood your comment.

Flank attacks were in 1e....page 70 of the DMG.

 

[Anthony Terry]

Why not?



The very first responses provided by-the-book answers. Some, in the form of the death save rules, which specify that critical hits count as double failures and, since you can automatically crit someone who is adjacent to you and unconscious, it is trivially simple--by the book--to kill an unconscious character before it can be healed.



I don't think you and I have been reading the same thread. Once answers had been provided to the OP, an essentially ethical question (should a DM try to kill characters while they're helpless) arose from them that was then debated. The Jester's entirely justifiable objections to the tone of one person's posts were because there is a huge difference between saying, "I disagree with you," and "You're wrong. Please stop saying it. You're hurting the hobby." The first can be said respectfully (whether intentional or not). The second can only be said disrespectfully (for what it's worth, though, the apology that arose from that side-conversation was, indeed, respectful).



Houserules are part of the game--have been for decades. But never mind the nature of the rules, for the moment. Let's talk about the nature of a discussion. Sometimes, if someone has something to say that they think is related to the topic at hand, they will want to share it. Even if it doesn't directly answer an initial question. Especially if that question has already been answered. The discussion then takes a new course, but is enriched by the extra input. So, yeah, people are going to speak to be heard. Or is that against the rules?



Nope. The rules of D&D (and 5e, specifically) are EXPLICITLY guidelines. This means that every single DM who changes, ignores, or introduces a rule is doing it right. And so are the ones who don't.



Not sure if you're talking about shadows or wraiths, here, but, in either case they can travel through walls/ceilings/floors (in the case of the shadow, through cracks) and come back for surprise strikes later. So that hasn't really changed. Actually, with the fluidity and flexibility of 5e movement, it might even be better.

At no point in my entire post do i tell people there not playing D&D or at any point insuiate anywhere that people are playing the game wrong by changing it and to finish it off you can read my post 100 times over at no point do i say that the rule books discourage you to so, so why you felt a need to point out to me the reverse i dont know.

What i said is that at the point where you start using house rules and changing the book, in most cases for the better, you are no longer playing 5th edition D&D your playing your equivelent, so at that point discussing it is by no means answering his question or helpfully discussing the lethaility of 5th edition.

To explain this in plain english for you, The suggestions all of you are making could be applied to every single edition, and if this was done 5th imo would remain the least lethal and would discourage charecter death the most. So when answering the topic of this thread by suggesting things that are not souly inherint to 5th edition your just being unhelpful and discussing a different topic all togther..

There are infact some brilliant suggestions in this thread amongst the pompus crap similar to what im quoting, that very helpfully discuss the topic of how to maintain different levels of lethality through role play or slight rule edits BUT they do not discuss the lethality of 5th edition REGARDLESS OF ONE ING GENERIC LINE PUT IN A BOOK TO AVOID ARGUMENTS ON A INTERNET FORUM

Edit note - added a reply to comment regarding helpfull replys upthread

The only system based answers i found where

1. disinitigration
2. petrification
3. gnolls extra attack
4. Aoe Attacks
5. Monsters Inteligance being played correctly

Only helpful suggestions put forward before my post that actually sit inside the genre of discussing basic lethality of the game system 5 helpful posts in 13 pages, seems there could well of been a unhelpful tangent on the discussion in my point of view.

On topic i think the 5th summarises the issue really. 5th btb has been made less lethal, character death is on purpose harder to occur but it leaves you room to even with the less experienced players to be more aggressive with simple thinks like, bandit archers delaying their attacks for wizzard spells, not charging the held doorway one by one, ensuring flanking, focusing the cleric first, gnolls using their extra attacks etc etc (taken from further suggestions above) but again these are things that can be done in any edition. I guess the point im making is 5th is quite obviously lower lethality BTB and all the these kinds of suggestions on how to increase its lethaility belong more in a "Lethaility in role playing - How do you achieve it"

 

[Anthony Terry]

Yeah, well, I don't think I can agree with "their only ability of note and the whole point of the monster" to NOT include killing you with Strength drain and turning you into a shadow at zero hit points. Which, I would argue, is the defining feature of a shadow, not its being able to move through walls.

Unless someone locked you in a sealed room with no way out, how would without their ability to live inside cracks in the floor, walls etc do a group of shadows reach a 10th level party to begin draining? Their base movement isnt even that great, their only remaining nieche seems to be a corridor annoyance when they have another corridor near by to end their go in. A shadow that ends it go near a 10th level charecter is a dead shadow. Id also suggest that even in a low magic campagain your characters will have pretty decent even touch AC by the level in question, making that a rather irrelevant feature of the attack.

I just dont see why it was removed, A shadow is not a solid object, it can still move through all these things, so what kind of sillyness is it to remove what made them so bloody scary? You couldnt ever spot them.. their in the walls.. str mobs with suprise round ;_; that is lethal!

 

[Dausuul]

Ex. 2. Hobgoblins, I would say, would give the extra stab to the downed foe because they are intelligent and savy enough in battle to know that if they don't, that foe might get up again...especially if there's a cleric running around the battlefield.

While I mostly agree with your post, I would add a caveat to this: Whether hobgoblins give the extra stab or not should depend on how common battlefield clerics are in your world. Remember that the hobgoblins do not know they are fighting Player Characters(tm). They are accustomed to fighting NPCs or other monsters. Ask yourself: When the PCs face a group of NPC warriors, how often do the NPCs have a healer along?

If the answer is "often," then it should be standard practice to give that extra stab and the hobgoblins will do it. Even if they haven't seen any of the PCs casting healing spells, they assume there's a high likelihood at least one of them can.

If the answer is "seldom," then the hobgoblins should not normally give the extra stab. That's an attack that could have been used against an active threat; there's a significant opportunity cost. If the hobgoblins see magical healing going on, the leader will yell "CLERIC!" and everyone will go after the healer. If they can't get to the healer for some reason, only then will they start delivering coups de grace.

If the answer is "never" or "almost never," then the hobgoblins won't ever give the extra stab, and they won't target the cleric specially. Battlefield healing is so rare that they don't have a standard response to it.

(Another way to approach this is to observe the tactics favored by the PCs. In your campaign, do experienced PCs take time in combat to give the extra stab to fallen NPCs? Or do they not bother? If they don't bother, the hobgoblins won't either.)

 

[steeldragons]

I'd like to see how you play the drow!

Well, it's not much, but my poor neglected [shameless plug] "Steeldragons' Tales of Orea" Story Hour, right here on ENworld, there is a scene or two involving the ShiDaeiri ("Those of the Blood of the Darkness/Shadow", the drow of Orea). It's them on the surface world, so they're certainly not at their typical/full-drowiness best.

I can't give you the page numbers or anything (they're deep into the story someplace, definitely not a major driving force as far as I've gotten so far).

So, just start at the beginning and [hopefully] enjoy.

 

[Dausuul]

A shadow that ends it go near a 10th level charecter is a dead shadow. Id also suggest that even in a low magic campagain your characters will have pretty decent even touch AC by the level in question, making that a rather irrelevant feature of the attack.

I'd suggest that you're dead wrong. I repeat: Our 13th-level party had to deal with an enemy caster summoning shadows, and they were nasty. ACs don't scale much with level in 5E--even at high levels, it's unusual to see an AC over 20. Low-end monsters can still hit you.

(And "touch AC?" Have you even played 5E? Touch AC hasn't been a thing for two editions now.)

 

[Mondas711]

I have heard many arguments in this post asserting that we need to change the threshold of negative hps to make the negative hp threshold a more viable way to kill a character of mid-level. I think what people are missing here is that I don't think the system as written really meant for that option to matter at higher levels because when characters reach that level other options become available to the DM. The party can face things that petrify them, strength drain them, trap their souls, etc. So while this method of killing a player closes, several more come open to take its place. This option then becomes a rule mainly used for environmental deaths such as falling off a cliff or drowning in an ocean. The death saving throw and other special attacks will come into play more often during mid-level games. If you play your monsters well you can kill PCs even following the rules to the letter. You can set traps to soften hps, run encounters together to tax PC resources, and sometimes find a monster that exploits a group's weaknesses without even realizing it. The thing to remember is that no matter how well the party is mowing through monsters it only takes one encounter to go your way and those character sheets hit the trash bin.

I agree with everyone that it is perfectly acceptable to hit a downed PC but, if you are going to do that, be consistent with it or some PCs might think you are being vicious. The example has been used of the starving ghoul munching on an unconsciuos PC. It is perfectly fine for him to munch on the PC but it wouldn't make sense if he takes a few bites until the PC dies outright then turns around without provocation to help his buddies attack the rest of the party. Keep thinking about what the monster is thinking, not how to most effectively kill the whole party. Unless, that is what the monster is thinking.

 

[Blue]

Regardless of the explanation, if you have a player who would seriously object, don't do it.

I feel this is rather one-sided. I know I have discussions with players when starting a new campaign, setting up the social contract, and lethality is a big part of that. I know that a "well, you can't die even if you're stupid" would have no interest to me as a player.

I am in one game where after more than a year of play the DM badly misjudged the challenge of an epic campaign-arc-final-battle fight and while we accomplished our objective and freed them imprisoned angel, we all died. He then handwaved us being all raised by direct divine intervention, fully healed/rested and leveled up, in order to finish against the already hurt foes. I understand that he didn't want to end the campaign and he did a good job working it in story-wise, but that stole any sense of accomplishment from this major plot point that we had been building to for months.

Different groups have different feels about death and lethality, and it can be a charged topic. Just saying to stay away from it isn't a universal answer any more than extreme lethality is universal.

 

[Schmoe]

As the OP, I'll chime in and say that this has certainly been an interesting discussion. On my read through the rules I got a strong sense that something just wasn't right with lethality of the rules as I was used to seeing them from previous editions (3e and earlier, I skipped 4e). This thread has both confirmed that I'm not alone in seeing a dramatic shift away from instant death, and also pointed out some factors I hadn't considered that ensure there is still some lethality in the basic rules. After that, I'm not sure there's much more to say on the subject. I think it's pretty clear that 5e has dramatically toned down some parts of earlier editions that led to PC death. Whether it's a good or bad thing is a matter of opinion.

There have been a couple of interesting derails, but honestly, I've come to expect that on a discussion board. Once the initial subject has been discussed, if there's not much more to say, the discussion usually turns to something else that come up while talking about the original topic. No harm, no foul. If I still had further questions from my original topic, I would be sure to keep that part of the discussion going. Since I don't and I haven't, I don't feel at all disappointed that the thread turned in other directions.

Hopefully that helps clarify a few things.

 

[DaveDash]

A BBEG running around with a Talisman of Ultimate Evil (DC20 Dex save or die) is probably going to spell a very bad day for the party Cleric.