D&D 5E How often do characters die in your campaigns?

[Minigiant]

DIe? Never
Commit self destruct or are mega-murdered? Once an equinox or solstice.

 

[zarionofarabel]

I generally don't have many characters die in the course of a campaign. I don't run combat focused games in the first place, and I recruit smart players so if they do have to fight, they stack the odds in their favor.

However, I tend to run games where the players are heroes fighting against overwhelming darkness, and I also absolutely hate having campaigns die from lack of interest. Thus I voted "Campaigns have a few individual deaths and almost always TPK" because a heroic sacrifice is a fantastic way to end a campaign!

 

[Older Beholder]

Most characters usually only die the one time.

 

[Burnside]

The number of individual deaths really depends on the length of the campaign, but I went for “a few” over “a lot”. TPKs are pretty rare for me - I have had one, with a group of brand new players in the LMoP goblin cave.

That is also the only TPK I’ve ever had - and it happened at the end of my very first session running 5e.

 

[CleverNickName]

I voted for the second option, but it's a bit of a misnomer. It happens, very rarely, but not in every campaign.

But back when we played 3rd Edition? Hoo boy. Characters were dropping like flies.

 

[aco175]

Things come close, but generally PCs do not die, or at least stay dead. There have been times where PCs have died permanently, but not since 3e days.

 

[Hawk Diesel]

So it took a long time (ran a campaign for years with no player deaths). But once I had that first PC death, they kinda spiraled into a semi-regular thing. Mind you, I'm not out to kill the PCs. But I've gotten more comfortable with setting up challenges and allowing the players to feel the consequences of their choices, as well as maintaining the direction dictated by the almighty Dice Gods.

 

[Charlaquin]

That is also the only TPK I’ve ever had - and it happened at the end of my very first session running 5e.

It’s a potentiallu really brutal little dungeon, especially if the players don’t try to negotiate with the goblins. My players wiped the floor with the goblins in the ambush so they were feeling pretty confident and tried to take the ones in the cave head on and they just got buried by sheer action economy. But, I didn’t want their first D&D experience to end that way, so instead of having them all killed I decided the goblins would sell them to Neznar and we went straight into Out of the Abyss. Sadly, that adventure path is kind of terrible, so I kinda fast tracked them out of the Underdark and from there to Wave Ecco Cave so we would finish that campaign and move onto something else. Fortunately they all had fun and were excited to start a new one with a bit more experience under their belt.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Might have already been address, but is this "dead" and probably brought back, or "stay dead"?

We've never had a PC die and "stay dead". Somehow, someway, the PC is always brought back... sometimes it is just dumb luck, but it happens.

 

[Ogre Mage]

In 5E I have found character death to be rare. In the large majority of campaigns it never happens. But there have been a few.

That is contrast from the old days. In 3.X character death was somewhat more common. In 2E it was considerably more common. In 1E characters might as well have been kleenex. Of course, my 1E days in the late 1980s were with fellow middle school students, which might have had something to do with it.