How much risk do parties enjoy?

[Sigurd]

I'm curious as to how much actual risk people really like in their games. (I think) Most people talk a lot about risk but they have a relatively low casualty rate inside of their party.

Do parties face a broad tapestry of death but none the less walk a pretty secure path?

How often do party members die in your adventures?

Does everything usually stop for a character death so that he\she can be resurrected? Essentially if one of you gets killed does the party get a do-over?

 

[pogre]

I think my players prefer more low risk encounters. The vast majority of things I throw at them are designed to show off their superiority. Challenging encounters do occur, but I have a couple players who actually seem to dislike them.

 

[Vrecknidj]

In the campaign I DM, death is rather frequent, and ways to get brought back are rather common. The same is true of one campaign I play in. In another campaign I play in, death is almost always permanent and irreversible, and it almost never happens to PCs.

Dave

 

[el-remmen]

As anyone who has read my "Out of the Frying Pan" story hour (see sig) can attest to, there is a buttload of risk in my games.

And I don't mean only PC death (there were 5 pc deaths in that game; out of 103 sessions), but loss of equipment, loss of reputation, permanent loss of limb from crits, death of cohorts and allies, etc. . .

That is actually a low casualty rate as "The Oath" campaign (which I ran with 2E rules) had somewhere in the neighborhood of 28 PC deaths (including the TPK that ended the campaing after 3+ years)

Also, Raise Dead and the like is uncommon in my games (in the two afore-mentioned campaigns there were only 4 returns to life total) - so no, things do not stop for them.

EDIT: Oh, and since I have waiting lists of people wanting to join my games, I can make the assumption that my players like it that way.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

If the dice demand death they get what they want.

 

[Treebore]

It depends on several main factors as to how often PC's die.

Factor 1: How well I design/handle the encounters. Some times I under estimate the powers of the monsters/BBEG, or under estimate my players abilities/resources at dealing with challenges.

Factor 2: How well the players play. Meaning choice of tactics, spell use, magic item use, etc...

Factor 3: The dice just don't want to roll high numbers for the players, but is happy to roll high for the DM, and even throw in a few nat 20's.

 

[Raloc]

Before I started my campaign I warned the players that it would be difficult in the extreme, and so to be prepared to act intelligently against similarly intelligent opponents. There have been a few times when the party was just about dead or near-TPK (though one of the wizards (necromancer really) almost never dies, since he tends to relegate himself to the back of any fight, preferring to send in his familiar replacement and cast spells) and they managed to turn it around, just. Other encounters have seemed too easy to me, but may have been challenging to the players (I put them up against an ogre-mage, and it surprised them and nearly killed the necro, but the players dispatched it shortly thereafter (though that was partially because I ignored its regen completely), so I figured it was slightly too little a challenge, but they seemed pretty happy/excited about that session). The PCs all have unusual stats (extraordinarily high) so I tend to throw slightly harder than their CR encounters at them. No one has died yet, but when they do, resurrection magics will be readily available, but not necessarily an *easy* time for the deceased.

I have no problem with fudging things in the players' favor when certain factors serve to throw the wrench at them, though. Sometimes I'll plan too hard an encounter, or ORPG will roll a string of below average rolls for the PCs and mostly crits for my NPCs etc. I tend to fudge in favor of the PCs pretty heavily in these cases, since the players have a lot of investment in these characters specifically. That said, if they meet an even encounter and nothing strange goes down and they die anyway, it will either be resurrection quest or new PC rolling time(probably the former, given the difficulty of introducing a new PC to this particular group*).

* - The group of PCs is almost entirely evil in this game, or borderline evil. They've made a huge amount of enemies, so tend to distrust other characters in general. The current group is cohesive enough due to long adventuring time between the characters (about a year in game, and it's been about two years out of game) that I'd rather not introduce a new one if one of them died.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

My Midwood player characters are all second or third level and there's a total of 14 characters in that mix. One has died and been raised (and is essentially an indentured servant of a local bishop as a result). Most of the others have been below zero hit points at some point, but no one else has died.

I call that risk, since in several cases, they almost resulted in a TPK. At the end of the Dragonfiend Pact module that the fugitive group went through, one fewer hit point done against the BBEG would have meant the party's bard would have gone down. And since -- with a wand of cure light wounds -- he was that foursome's only healer, it would have been "good night, Gracie" for all of them.

And now, of course, four level 3 fugitives are being chased by a bulette.

 

[Gundark]

I voted the stupid/unlucky category. However since we have been playing in the AoW the death toll has risen dramatically.

 

[T. Foster]

I voted #3 (stupid/unlucky) but I have a fairly low threshhold for tolerable stupidity and think players should feel that they survived because they're smart, not that they didn't die because they didn't do anything really stupid. There should be a serious risk of character death in almost every session, but it should be avoidable through smart/clever play. Players shouldn't assume their characters are going to die, and there shouldn't be an assumed "death rate" (1 character will likely die every 4 sessions, or whatever), it should be based solely on player performance and decision-making -- smart/wise players will never (or at least very rarely, and probably not permanently) lose a character; dumb/rash players will lose character after character until they either figure it out or get bored and go on to another game.