D&D General How Often Should a PC Die in D&D 5e?

How Often Should PC Death Happen in a D&D 5e Campaign?

  • I prefer a game where a character death happens about once every 12-14 levels

    Votes: 0 0.0%

D&D has rules. People call them rules and understand them to be rules. And part of the rules is that GM can override the rules. Doesn't change that the rules are rules.
It absolutely does. People call things stuff all the time. That doesn't make it true or correct.

The GM can also fudge. And that is not breaking the rules.
According to you.

Oh, and you're definitely wrong about conventions and laws too. A lot of UK for example is run by conventions, not laws. Doesn't really matter. King Charles still cannot actually unilaterally sack the prime minister and appoint a a new one, even though it is just a convention that the king doesn't do that sort of a thing.
Actually, he can! Like that's literally a thing the UK monarch can actually do!

It's just that if he ever did so, Parliament would almost certainly near-immediately strip the royal family of anything resembling influence or authority that it still might have. The power remains without being officially stripped away because there is a gentleperson's agreement that it will almost never, but not quite absolutely never, actually be used.

There is no normative force here, nothing binding that prevents it. There is, however, a consequence for choosing to break the convention against doing that thing. But, to give an actual, concrete example: conventionally, anything that Parliament passes as law will be given "royal assent". In essentially all cases, this is a mere formality, a convention preserved because of the arcane way that English law crystallized out of the previous pure-autocrat system that had previously existed. (Hence where we get ridiculous, but legally essential, concepts like "the Crown-in-Parliament"--because technically speaking, it is still the Crown that has the right to legislate, it's just that "the Crown" is not actually the person of the monarch, but the legal framework surrounding how laws are created.)

Thing is...nothing actually forces the monarch to give royal assent. At any time, for any reason or no reason at all, the monarch could deny royal assent, which, completely legally, prevents that law from coming into effect. It is, effectively, an absolute veto power. No part of English law prevents this and while it would be a flagrant violation of custom, no actual penalty or punishment arises from that act. Parliament likes that this exists, because it can be used as a last-ditch emergency escape clause if a situation has gone pear-shaped and a consequence-free do-over is desired. This happens extremely rarely, but it has, in fact, happened; the last time royal assent was denied in England (rather, the Kingdom of Great Britain) was in 1708, with the Scottish Militia Bill, which Queen Anne denied royal assent...because the Cabinet asked her to, as the sudden revelation that France was supporting Jacobite rebels with a potential French invasion fleet opened the possibility that a Scottish militia would be disloyal to the Queen and instead support her half-brother, the only son of James II & VII.

Note, however, that I said "in England". Denial of royal assent was used frequently in the British colonies of North America by George III. There were zero consequences of this, because the English populace didn't care that a bunch of yokel colonists were getting their random-whatever laws vetoed, and it was completely legal for George III to do this--any realm under the British crown (what we would now call "the Commonwealth") is potentially subject to denial of royal assent.

So....yeah. I'm quite well aware that the English """constitution""" is nothing of the sort, held together with chewing gum and baling wire, but your example is both factually and historically inaccurate. There is, in fact, a rule. By convention, that rule is almost never invoked anymore, but there's literally nothing actually stopping it. There would almost surely be negative consequences for the monarch if he or she did invoke it without a fantastically good reason, but "your actions have consequences" is not a rule, it's just a fact of life.

I would not be at all surprised if, for example, a Prime Minister that was found to have done something deeply offensive but not technically illegal--and thus almost totally insulated from actual consequences, as "impeachment" means something different in English law compared to almost anywhere else in the world--might be sacked by Charles III or a successor at the request of Parliament. That wouldn't violate convention, because it would be done at the request of democratically-elected officials rather than the monarch simply doing what he likes because he feels like it. And it would be using a real, official, extant law...just one that is essentially never used.
 
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D&D has rules. People call them rules and understand them to be rules. And part of the rules is that GM can override the rules. Doesn't change that the rules are rules. The GM can also fudge. And that is not breaking the rules.

Oh, and you're definitely wrong about conventions and laws too. A lot of UK for example is run by conventions, not laws. Doesn't really matter. King Charles still cannot actually unilaterally sack the prime minister and appoint a a new one, even though it is just a convention that the king doesn't do that sort of a thing.
Isn't that what common law is?
 

D&D has rules. People call them rules and understand them to be rules. And part of the rules is that GM can override the rules. Doesn't change that the rules are rules. The GM can also fudge. And that is not breaking the rules.
It isn't called the Player's Rulebook or Dungeon Master's Rulebook. They are handbooks and guides. Those names were intentionally chosen.
 

I'm sorry, but this comes across as incredibly condescending

I apologize. I meant nothing by it. I just wanted you to know I wasn't going to continue with the exchange but I didnt want to duck out of the thread as a whole. If you have suggestions for better ways to word it, I'd love to hear it.

It was a cool discussion and I enjoyed it even if we drew different conclusions. So thanks for sharing your point of view so articulately. It has been a pleasure every time I've engaged with you and I hope we can do it again. :)
 

It absolutely does. People call things stuff all the time. That doesn't make it true or correct.
If majority of people use word differently than you then it is highly likely that it is you who is incorrect.

According to you.
According the words printed in the D&D books.

Actually, he can! Like that's literally a thing the UK monarch can actually do!
It literally isn't. "Literally" meaning here "in actuality."

Rules, laws, conventions. In practice it is the same. A group, a society etc agrees that thing are done in certain way. So they are. And if not, there will probably be some consequences.

My advice to you is to stop being so dogmatically lawful, thinking everything in such black and white terms. It hampers your understanding of the reality, which is not like that, but rather messy, nuanced and full of spectrums.
 
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Governing conduct.

Something that can be completely ignored is not governing conduct.
The speed limit is 30 on a given bit of open road. Most people drive 40 there as that's what seems (and is) safe, yet could still get a ticket if some cop decides to pad the quota.

30 is the rule. 40 is the popular norm. The rule isn't what governs conduct here, the norm is - perhaps influenced by the rule but not bound by it - because most people do the safe thing which is to drive at a speed which matches the flow of traffic, which equates to "normative force" here.
 

According the words printed in the D&D books.

Yep, some folks might not like it, but fudging dice rolls is in both the 2014 and 2024 DMG and is certainly not "breaking the rules":

Rolling behind a screen lets you fudge the results if you want to. - 2014 DMG, p235
Hiding your die rolls keeps them mysterious and allows you to alter results if you want to. - 2024 DMG, p17
 

Some people do that. My wife does that. Very few other players I've ever gamed with are anywhere near as invested in their PC as the two of you seem to be. TV writers don't always write as much about a series regular as you did.

If you can't get six pages out of a series regular on a TV show, you are either dealing with a minor side character in a short series, or you aren't trying.

And, sure, I admit, I write a lot. I'm a writer. It is what I do. But in terms of thinking about the character? Not even thinking about their backstory, but just imaging the character doing things? EVERY player within a few sessions has spent hours upon hours doing that. And many of them get some level of attachment beyond "meh, I can take it or leave it."
 

OK, now I'm lost.

The way I see it, there was something more than good enough about the Gygax-based game in the early 80s (i.e. pre-Dragonlance) to get people to play it; and lots did even though it was, as written, brutal on its characters and tough to learn as a player (or DM). What that tells me, now and forever, is that a rough brutal lethal-in-fiction game can be popular; because we've already seen it happen.

Dragonlance and the Hickman revolution - plot armour, big epic stories, etc. - came along in the mid 80s and, lo and behold, that's right around when the game's popularity started to fade. Now obviously it's not a 100% cause-effect connection, there were other aspects involved as well, but I don't think it's all coincidence either.

So are we just ignoring Arneson and how he ran Blackmoor? Which was pretty different from how Gygax ran his table and from everything I heard was far more concerned about story and character than punishing players for listening at doors too much.
 


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