How much PC die in your campaign in average ?

[Kalendraf]

My main group plays almost weekly for about 3 to 4 hours per session. They started at 1st level and are currently 9th level. It's taken approximately a year to get where they are. So far, there has been 1 death in the party. Lots of them have been knocked down and unconscious, and a few times characters were barely saved in the nick of time at -9 hit points. Great drama there.

My weekend group, which only plays monthly has been running since late 1999 and has yet to have a single PC death. They tend to play pretty cautiously which explains this somewhat.

Now before you start thinking I'm a wimp DM, I should point out that the previous weekly campaign I ran had several deaths, with about 5 or 6 individual characters dying between levels 1 to 10, and eventually it ended with a TPK. Up until the end, it was averaging about 1 death per 8 sessions or so. There were a number of contributing factors to these deaths, including bad play and bad luck.

 

[Arnwyn]

Our group averages one death every 6 sessions or so (each session averaging 6-7 hours).

The deaths are usually the same couple of people...

 

[Stockdale]

In my Parent-Kid game, we suffer at least one death per session with only two of the eight players having characters that naturally achieved third level (the current party level). I don't fudge the dice and do open rolling - and deaths are generally combat related, but caused through PC stupidity. Despite the high number of PC deaths, the kids keep coming back with new characters in hand. (I hope that's a credit to me, but it might be pop and snacks). I have learned that new players - especially pre-teen and early teens - don't have a good concept of when to run away and therefore character deaths are more frequent than with the experienced players. I attribute this in part to the I'm-invicible-attitude carried by younger people. Looking back on my early days playing (back in the late 1970s), PC death is a frequent thing until the players learn to handle different situations.