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

[Chaosmancer]

I don't think a 12th-level character can die to a 30-foot pit trap (exception: in roll-for-h.p. editions where the 12th-level character still only had 18 h.p. or fewer; but said character would never have made it to 12th level in any event).

The question of whether high-level characters could or should still be threatened by relatively minor things like this is a much bigger one, and brings in questions around power curve, long-tail bell curves, and so forth.

Of course they can. You don't encounter all traps at max hp.

All true. But even then, absent further information other than "It's dangerous", shouldn't one's approach err heavily on the side of caution until-unless one learns the degree of caution actually needed?

Much of the reason a house fire is more dangerous to you or I than to a trained firefighter is that you and I don't have either the training (a lot of which involves safety and caution) or the equipment (which largely revolves around safety) that they do. And even despite all that, every now and then we hear news reports of a firefighter badly hurt or even killed in the line of duty because something went wrong.

But a party of 3rd level adventurers DOES have the training and equipment to handle most naturally occurring threats. Again, this is the point. EVERYTHING the Adventurers do is "dangerous". Fighting bandits is dangerous, fighting goblins is dangerous, fighting diseased filled giant rats is dangerous. They start off 1st level being told "this is too dangerous for us townsfolk to do" and of course they are cautious at level 1. But by level 5 when told "this is too dangerous for us townsfolk to do" THEY PICTURE LEVEL 1 THREATS. And so, to the players, they hear that and they think "we handled something like this easily three levels ago, this shouldn't be anything to worry about."

That "absent further information" is the entire crux of what I keep trying to say. Just telling the party "this is dangerous" is meaningless. You may as well say "you will be adventuring on a Tuesday" or "This time water is wet". And yet time and time and time again, I've seen or heard about DMs flummoxed about why the party went to do something after being told it was "dangerous". Danger is relative and a meaningless term past level 3 unless you add context. You need to properly frame the threat so that the players get what you are trying to say.

Is it "This is dangerous" aka "you guys are going to have fun with this one" or is it "This is dangerous" aka "Guys, don't go this way, you will all die and you aren't ready."

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yeah, there obviously needs to be more context that some bloke just telling you something is dangerous. This is especially true for games where characters can become quite a bit powerful than normal people. Then again, I haven't found establishing such context to be particularly difficult.

I'm glad you haven't. Other people have. This sort of miscommunication is pretty common actually, which is why I brought it up only to be dragged down into arguing that I'm wrong and everyone can just tell or should just treat all events with the same level of threat preparation.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And yet if you just describe anything as strong as a goblin as "dangerous" (because they are!) then how do you tell your players that this forest is where they will fight dragons and this forest is where they will fight owlbears?



Why, I recall that same movie. And I recall the fire was pretty much a non-threat. Oh I'm sure they played it up a bit more in the film, because of smoke, but he was under no threat of dying in a house fire.

Does the party have a reason to know what the forest contains, or a way of finding out? If so, then you let them know as appropriate.

And the fire looked pretty dangerous to me, as intended.

 

[Chaosmancer]

could you elaborate on your reasons why you think this? i mean, i assume that playing most any module comes with a certain level of assumed goals and expected story beats simply because that's how a module works, it's a prewritten story outline, the supporting skeleton of events, it expects some level of buy-in to using the stuff it's going to present otherwise why are you even playing it in the first place?

however, IMO the most 'important' defining factor of what qualifies a railroad is not that the skeleton exists but that you are entirely unable to deviate from it in any way that matters, that your choices and actions have no influence, not that some things are already decided to exist but that anything the players do has no chance of affecting the outcome from a pre-scripted chain of events, if no diplomacy with the knight would ever change anything about their goals, their alligance, their methods. if they could not ally with other factions to help take him down together everyone responds with 'that's not our problem' or 'we have no aid to lend', if the players had genuinely decided 'F this', left the continent and the knight still showed up as their final battle or they had been prevented from leaving in the first place yeah those would be railroading.

but does showing calamity ganon at the begining of Breath of the Wild mean that everything you do in that game was a railroad? simply because your endgoal was set in place from the start?

is it a railroad that frodo gets flashes of sauron before he even properly accepts to be the ringbearer at the rivendell(?) council?

is it a railroad that luke encounters vader in a new hope long before he finally defeats him in return of the jedi?
(i know these media aren't TTRPGs where you have total free will but i feel the point stands)

Well... There is railroading and there is... plot motivation? I'm really not sure about the term.

Expanding on this particular context.

1) The game was politically heavy. We started with one of the character's being royalty and the others working at the castle. Then the royal character's Aunt killed most of her family and took over the kingdom, with us fleeing into the wilderness.

2) The Knight worked for the Aunt, was a murderous jerk, and (as I remembered AFTER the fight) was the head of a Knightly Order. Working with him was "impossible" for our characters. Also, he wasn't after us, he was there for the castle and its occupants

3) The castle was a stated goal from the beginning of the campaign, but also it was the location that a tribe of orcs had taken refuge in. This tribe a) Had evidence against the Aunt (she was claiming a plague had taken the royal family) b) was holding the royal character's little brother as collateral.

So.... there was no other way for this to go. Not because none of our decisions would have mattered, but because to abandon the orcs and the little brother was unthinkable and would actively hurt our goals, and because the people we were dealing with were powerful, wealthy, and wanted us dead or captured. And it could feel like a railroad, except at the beginning of the campaign, we all agreed that a political drama with one character playing royalty while the others played her retainers sounded like it could be a ton of fun, and so we bought into that initial premise. And from there, we couldn't exactly decide in-character to stop caring about the things we cared about.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Does the party have a reason to know what the forest contains, or a way of finding out? If so, then you let them know as appropriate.

And the fire looked pretty dangerous to me, as intended.

If the party is able to get information that the forest exists, and is dangerous, then why can't they get information on the nature of that danger? And actually, the less known about the threat, doesn't it seem more and more like a baseless rumor? The farmer going "Well, I don't know why it is dangerous or how it is dangerous, or anything about the danger it presents, I just know those woods are dangerous" doesn't read to me as a dire threat.. it reads to me like a superstitious or a purposefully spread rumor to keep people away. Which often means the threat isn't real or terribly dangerous.

 

[Chaosmancer]

But, but... discussion and compromise? Nevertheless, I'm glad that you finally seem to agree that is fine to not include the players that do not accept the GM's premise.

We have all made the point that we aren't spineless pushovers many, many, many, many times. I don't understand how that could be shocking to you unless you've refused to understand any of the posts made on the subject over the last few years

 

[Paul Farquhar]

And yet if you just describe anything as strong as a goblin as "dangerous" (because they are!) then how do you tell your players that this forest is where they will fight dragons and this forest is where they will fight owlbears

Hunchback: “This way, Forest of Dragons. That way, Forest of Owlbears.”

 

[Lanefan]

Sorry, mate, that's bloody dysfunctional. If you don't like how the game will be run when it is told you up front before the game begins, just don't participate.

If the proposed game otherwise sounds fine beyond one poor or foolish principle and I'm invited in, I see thast invitation as an opportunity to - on an ongoing basis - point out and highlight the flaws that I see in said principle in the hopes that others will also come to realize those same flaws.

It's more effective to work for change from the inside than from the outside.

 

[Lanefan]

Of course they can. You don't encounter all traps at max hp.

That's fair, though my hypothetical had the trap as being the first thing encountered in the adventure.

But a party of 3rd level adventurers DOES have the training and equipment to handle most naturally occurring threats. Again, this is the point. EVERYTHING the Adventurers do is "dangerous". Fighting bandits is dangerous, fighting goblins is dangerous, fighting diseased filled giant rats is dangerous. They start off 1st level being told "this is too dangerous for us townsfolk to do" and of course they are cautious at level 1. But by level 5 when told "this is too dangerous for us townsfolk to do" THEY PICTURE LEVEL 1 THREATS. And so, to the players, they hear that and they think "we handled something like this easily three levels ago, this shouldn't be anything to worry about."

What this speaks to is the steepness of the power curve between "townsfolk" and "5th-level adventurers"; a steepness that in the WotC editions (and, arguably, before that) is IMO far too great.

That "absent further information" is the entire crux of what I keep trying to say. Just telling the party "this is dangerous" is meaningless. You may as well say "you will be adventuring on a Tuesday" or "This time water is wet". And yet time and time and time again, I've seen or heard about DMs flummoxed about why the party went to do something after being told it was "dangerous". Danger is relative and a meaningless term past level 3 unless you add context. You need to properly frame the threat so that the players get what you are trying to say.

Is it "This is dangerous" aka "you guys are going to have fun with this one" or is it "This is dangerous" aka "Guys, don't go this way, you will all die and you aren't ready."

The townsfolk will know the forest is dangerous, and that those who venture in there tend not to come out. They may very well not know - or have completely wrong ideas about - what the actual danger is; it could be anything from a low-grade bandit gang concealing their presence to a big ol' Green Dragon treating the villagers as wandering snacks but from the townsfolk's perspective it all looks the same: no-one comes back out of that forest.

It's then on the PCs to - if they're interested - investigate the source(s) and nature(s) of the danger (while maybe or maybe not encountering some of it in the process) and then decide a) whether it's something they think they can handle or whether it needs higher-priced help and-or b) what precautions might make sense to help deal with the danger as now known.

The flummoxing part comes when PCs skip the whole information-gathering and investigative step and go straight to the wade-in-all-guns-blazing step, then wonder why they're getting smoked.

 

[Lanefan]

If the party is able to get information that the forest exists, and is dangerous, then why can't they get information on the nature of that danger?

IME it's usually because they don't ask for or seek out any.

And actually, the less known about the threat, doesn't it seem more and more like a baseless rumor? The farmer going "Well, I don't know why it is dangerous or how it is dangerous, or anything about the danger it presents, I just know those woods are dangerous" doesn't read to me as a dire threat.. it reads to me like a superstitious or a purposefully spread rumor to keep people away. Which often means the threat isn't real or terribly dangerous.

Indeed, it could be no more than a rumour spread to keep people away from someone's hidden home in the forest. In which case, asking for more details isn't likely to get anything concrete (which might in itself raise the PCs' suspicions); and thus maximum caution becomes the order of the day when entering the forest until-unless the PCs determine it's all a hoax.