How many PC deaths do you see per session?

[Evilhalfling]

lets see averarge is .19 % or 1 per 5 sessions, Higher than I would like.

Assimar Cleric killed by Ogre Zombies after a series of turn attempts rolled bellow 4

Elvish Tripmaster (fighter w/chain) Ghast ambush, with CdG

Party ignored warnings and were attacked by 3 wizards each 3 lvls higher than party. One PC captured and released.

2 dead in counter attack against the same wizards - one corpse lost through a broken bag of holding, the other raised.

2 assisting NPC Druids one in each of the wizard battles - A PC is bringing in
another druid - If he dies the drudic order will lack any high level members - and will die back/out in this part of the world.

 

[Epametheus]

In my group's longest running 3E campaign (went on for about 2 years), every character in the party except for the wizard and the bard's cohort (a paladin) had died at least once. Our worst spot was when we had 8 deaths over the course of 2 sessions; hooray for True Res.

Of the two current campaigns I'm involved in right now, that have gone on for about the same amount of time -- one campaign has had no deaths at all; the party has gone from 1st to 9th level in this time. The other campaign has gone from L8 to L15 or so, and has had 100% PC turnover. A character will often just happen to die right when that player has a new character concept to try out.

 

[Mort]

My last campaign ran 4 years at about 40 sessions a year. There were 5 deaths through the entire campaign which means 1 death per 32 sessions (though the deaths were actually a bit more grouped than that, with one near TPK and only one other death).
My players are pretty canny (they know when to run and when to not even approach) and rarely put themselves in a situation they can't handle.

 

[Imerak]

You guys make me jealous. :\ My group's average is 1/session at least (there are two TPKs on record, one of which was revoked because I greatly overestimated the player's abilities). When I DM, I try to have the monsters use effective tactics, which probably increases the mortality rate a lot. However, as the players get to higher levels and there are more interesting challenges for them that won't slaughter them, the death rate is going down.

As for parlay, some of my group are pretty serious hack and slashers, so that's often not an option. (Though another player is a Mindbender, which puts them at odds a lot...)

 

[JediSoth]

We have frequent near-death experiences, but we haven't had an actual character death in at least 12-15 game sessions. We have two games currently running, a low-level FR campaign and a loosely-connected series of Star Wars D20 adventures. The FR campaign, as far as I can tell, is all original material and seems to be fairly well-balanced for our party. The Star Wars D20 adventures were all pre-published and seemed to be likewise balanced, though, I think we did get over our heads a few times and managed to get lucky.

When I run games, I use one of those XP calculators to determine if encounters are suitably challenging. I've found that it works really well for the type of players in my group. The one time I've had a near-TPK was a miscalculation on MY part when breaking a Staff of Power. I calculated the damage correctly, I just was counting on the wizard being able to burn more of its charges before having to break it. But, they started kicking his butt big time and I sort of panicked. Oh well, one of my players thought it was an awesome climax to the campaign and the rest just complained about it, even after I apologized for screwing up.

Now they're begging me to run them through "The World's Largest Dungeon" as soon as our FR campaign wraps up. I reckon we'll soon see how often they die in there.

JediSoth

 

[shilsen]

Last campaign, which was the deadliest I've ever run, had 8 PC deaths in 18 sessions. Plus 5 NPC deaths. And 3 or four familiars or animal companions. Includes 1 TPK and another which would have been one except for a one-use magical item that prevented the dead PCs' souls from leaving their bodies and brought them back when activated (in the wrong bodies, but that's another story).

 

[Greylock]

Twelve sessions, 4 chars attending on average, two deaths total. Damned rope bridge encounter...

Every session has had some very close calls though. This party is becoming adept at retreating. We've absolutely slaughtered some foes, but in general, the party is lacking depth on combat strength. Thank the Mark, this is not WWII, just a role-play. Otherwise we'd be looking at 1 PC death a game ;p.

 

[Iron Sheep]

The games I play in tend to average about 1 death per campaign, but we've been playing with luck points for a while now, which removes some of the unlucky player deaths.

Of course there was the high-level one-off game I ran where what turned out to be underpowered Savage Species monster characters were taught a lesson by a dracolich. Not pretty. The players won out in the end, but only because they summoned a Balor and had a staff of life (3.0 version). I think from 4 characters there were 6 or so deaths in one fight.

Corran

 

[BigFreekinGoblinoid]

I'm having trouble deciding on voting between 1 death every two sessions, or 1 death every other session. My brain might explode soon...

My real answer is "other" : much less than 1 every four sessions

 

[maddman75]

I don't kill PCs anymore. It lost its charm. Too much time playing with people who wanted old fashioned grind-em-under-yer-boots hardassness. You have tense battles that way, but shallow characters. Why build up a lot of relationships and things the character truly *cares* about when they get knocked down like flies.

So I don't kill them anymore. Its possible, but a PC getting killed would likely mean that something has gone deeply, deeply wrong and a TPK is on the way. I'm planning to work up some Hero Points so we have something more concrete than me making sure I don't do enough damage to drop them below -10.