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

[JediSoth]

I think that it was much earlier in this thread where it was discussed, but a dead PC doesn't always equal a player going through character creation. D&d is very much a game where death is a revolving door that runs on the party's coin purse and the social/metaphysical debts they willing to take on. Even at very low levels there is the option of just change the name on a sheet a Bob the $class becomes $Bill the $sameclass..

Those consequences of powering that revolving door are very much a net positive on fostering teamwork and player investment in the world

I've been playing D&D for over 40 years. I'm aware that Raise Dead is A Thing, thank you. And IME, revolving door death cheapens the experience and has no bearing on how invested players are in the world. It just become a cheap thing with no consequences. YMMV.

 

[tetrasodium]

I've been playing D&D for over 40 years. I'm aware that Raise Dead is A Thing, thank you. And IME, revolving door death cheapens the experience and has no bearing on how invested players are in the world. It just become a cheap thing with no consequences. YMMV.

I didn't say that the revolving door is without cost or that the cost should be painless, only they those costs have a positive influence. 5e did a lot to nullify the impact of those costs and ensure that the cost of that door never needed to be considered.

That's important because in 1829 you phrased your criticism as if dcc funnel meat grinder was the only alternative to 5e's virtually immortal PCs who are almost incapable of any meaningful failure.

 

[JediSoth]

I didn't say that the revolving door is without cost or that the cost should be painless, only they those costs have a positive influence. 5e did a lot to nullify the impact of those costs and ensure that the cost of that door never needed to be considered.

That's important because in 1829 you phrased your criticism as if dcc funnel meat grinder was the only alternative to 5e's virtually immortal PCs who are almost incapable of any meaningful failure.

I apologize that my reply was not All Encompassing. I mentioned the first thing that popped into my head. I forgot that unless one is very specific and includes all other possibilities, people will assume one is ignorant of anything one doesn't mention.

 

[Chaosmancer]

That's just it - if the players play their characters with a common-sense approach to self-preservation I shouldn't have to proactively foreshadow anything unless the situation is such that such warnings might appear.

And if they don't play with a common-sense approach to self-preservation then sooner or later that's likely going to bite them. Hard.

But what you are defining as "common-sense approach to self-preservation" is ignoring a significant number of factors.

1) Any PC, at all, would be able to live a wealthy middle-class lifestyle from level 1 and never go on a single adventure ever. Any fighter or Barbarian could be a guard or hunter, clerics can become powerful doctors, wizards and bards can sell their services. You won't be as wealthy as a king upon a golden throne built in an adamatine palace, but you can live as the middle class in any town or city you care to settle in. THEREFORE, if I truly wanted to take a "common-sense approach to self-preservation".... I'd never go on a single adventure. The entire basis of the game is built upon the foundation that, for whatever reason (and even by 3.X it really couldn't be wealth) you CHOSE to go and do incredibly dangerous things out in the world.

2) The game is not a physics engine. And this matters from the player perspective. You can think this is a problem, but any player with 30 hp can have utter confidence that being stabbed with a dagger is not going to kill them. In real life, in most fictional media, if a character was walking down the street and a thug pulled a knife on them, there is a chance that a single lucky stab could kill them. That is just not true in DnD, and it cannot be true in DnD, because otherwise combat would not function the way it is designed to function.

And these two factors affect risk assessment. Sure, IRL I would need to approach any potential situation with a great deal of caution, because if I trip and fall the wrong way, I could die. But in a DnD context, at a certain point, a kobold with a rusty spear is not a threat, and treating it like a serious threat would not only be bizarre, but would break the genre conventions.

But also, to the bolded... YES, you should have to proactively foreshadow most everything. You are literally the only connection point with the entire world, and you cannot reasonably account for everything that may or may not happen. You cannot model the world with 100% fidelity, and so you need to foreshadow so that the appropriate expectations and understanding exists between you and the players.

Can't speak to Conan but the characters in Tolkein tend to have (or, for the Hobbits, develop) a fairly high sense of self-preservation and caution; while still recognizing potentially self-sacrificial moments as and when they arise (Gandalf vs Balrog, Eowyn and Merry vs Nazgul, the Gondor army at the gates of Mordor, etc.) and standing in anyway.

And I can't stand SEAL-team play. Far too regimented for my tastes.

Really? SO Merry and Pippin leading the Ents towards Isengard was them acting with a high sense of self-preservation? Actually, HOW many times did Merry and/or Pippin end up fighting with an army? I'm counting two each at least and I'm barely a tolkien fan.

But let's roll back. What about Bilbo and the dwarves? Did Bilbo act with an abundance of self-preservation when he left his home to join the dwarves on a completely UNNECESSARY journey? And did they fully scout out every single location, speak to the locals about the threats they may face, go to town to buy additional supplies for the journey.... or did they largely just keep walking and keep an eye out for trouble?

 

[Micah Sweet]

While I know you will call this a problem with the game design, and foolishness on the part of the players, and continually dismiss it as signs of how your games are better... most people don't want to play the game in an approach of constant paranoia about every single adventure.

There is nothing wrong with a group playing like they are a SWAT team or a SEAL team, and treating every single engagement as a tactical puzzle that requires precision timing and meticulous planning... but not everyone wants the game that way. When we are recreating Conan or Tolkien, we aren't looking for that style of game.

If you keep making "most people disagree with you" baseless arguments (and they have to be baseless because we don't have that information) you should expect to keep getting pushback from your rhetorical opponents.

 

[Lanefan]

But what you are defining as "common-sense approach to self-preservation" is ignoring a significant number of factors.

1) Any PC, at all, would be able to live a wealthy middle-class lifestyle from level 1 and never go on a single adventure ever. Any fighter or Barbarian could be a guard or hunter, clerics can become powerful doctors, wizards and bards can sell their services. You won't be as wealthy as a king upon a golden throne built in an adamatine palace, but you can live as the middle class in any town or city you care to settle in. THEREFORE, if I truly wanted to take a "common-sense approach to self-preservation".... I'd never go on a single adventure. The entire basis of the game is built upon the foundation that, for whatever reason (and even by 3.X it really couldn't be wealth) you CHOSE to go and do incredibly dangerous things out in the world.

With much of this, I actually agree. That said, IME by far the biggest overall motivator for adventuring is Moar Wealth; sometimes just to have it and watch it accumulate and other times to do something useful with it. What this means is that as DM often all I have to do is dangle some loot - or the potential of some loot - in front of them and away they go. .

Corollary motivators can include a sense of responsibility (for some characters), defense of themselves or of people/places they care about, curiosity and-or research, and similar. In a very few specific cases the pursuit of fame and-or glory is a motivator, but this only usually happens if-when a player has long-term political or monarchic plans for a character (quite rare) and is trying to use its adventuring career to lay the groundwork for such.

2) The game is not a physics engine. And this matters from the player perspective. You can think this is a problem, but any player with 30 hp can have utter confidence that being stabbed with a dagger is not going to kill them. In real life, in most fictional media, if a character was walking down the street and a thug pulled a knife on them, there is a chance that a single lucky stab could kill them. That is just not true in DnD, and it cannot be true in DnD, because otherwise combat would not function the way it is designed to function.

As far as I reasonably can I try to make the bolded untrue. Yes, combat is highly abstracted and hit points even more so; these are unfortunate but necessary evils in order to make the game playable. But where I can, I have a (fantasy-)physics-based underpinning even for things like magic, fantastic creatures, and so on.

And these two factors affect risk assessment. Sure, IRL I would need to approach any potential situation with a great deal of caution, because if I trip and fall the wrong way, I could die. But in a DnD context, at a certain point, a kobold with a rusty spear is not a threat, and treating it like a serious threat would not only be bizarre, but would break the genre conventions.

First off, I'm not all that concerned about breaking these sort of genre conventions, in that I want a flatter power curve anyway such that a "low-level" creature remains a potential threat for longer while at the same time low-level PCs have a slight chance (as opposed to no chance whatsoever) of pulling off an upset victory over something way above their pay grade.

Second, if a situation would be approached with caution in reality then I'd also like it - at least to some degree - to be approached that way in the fiction, if only because that's what the characters would do.

But also, to the bolded... YES, you should have to proactively foreshadow most everything. You are literally the only connection point with the entire world, and you cannot reasonably account for everything that may or may not happen. You cannot model the world with 100% fidelity, and so you need to foreshadow so that the appropriate expectations and understanding exists between you and the players.

I can't model the world 100% true but I can always describe it better and stand ready to answer whatever questions the players might have. That said, if there's a hidden hazard and they don't take precautions I don't see it as my job to tell them about it; and even if they do take precautions there's always a chance those precautions won't be good enough due to the luck of the dice.

Really? SO Merry and Pippin leading the Ents towards Isengard was them acting with a high sense of self-preservation?

Yes it was. Once on the move, for a short time those Ents became the most powerful army in the world; the self-preserving thing for the Hobbits to do was to stay with said army and let that army protect them.

Actually, HOW many times did Merry and/or Pippin end up fighting with an army? I'm counting two each at least and I'm barely a tolkien fan.

Indeed, and that's down to those two having - and sometimes displaying - less than stellar Wisdom. They both swore alliegiances to monarchs who then called their promises in, and found themselves in the field whether they wanted to be there or not (though in Merry's case he did want to be there - high courage, low Wisdom).

But let's roll back. What about Bilbo and the dwarves? Did Bilbo act with an abundance of self-preservation when he left his home to join the dwarves on a completely UNNECESSARY journey?

I'll concede this one: Bilbo's courage outweighed his self-preservation instinct on numerous occasions.

And did they fully scout out every single location, speak to the locals about the threats they may face, go to town to buy additional supplies for the journey.... or did they largely just keep walking and keep an eye out for trouble?

After they stopped in Rivendell they were on something of a time crunch; and their lack of info-gathering about Mirkwood did cause them lots of headaches.

 

[Chaosmancer]

With much of this, I actually agree. That said, IME by far the biggest overall motivator for adventuring is Moar Wealth; sometimes just to have it and watch it accumulate and other times to do something useful with it. What this means is that as DM often all I have to do is dangle some loot - or the potential of some loot - in front of them and away they go. .

And IME wealth is the absolute last motivator for most of my players. Even when they make wealth motivated characters, they make them with the intention that that is a character flaw they need to overcome.

Corollary motivators can include a sense of responsibility (for some characters), defense of themselves or of people/places they care about, curiosity and-or research, and similar. In a very few specific cases the pursuit of fame and-or glory is a motivator, but this only usually happens if-when a player has long-term political or monarchic plans for a character (quite rare) and is trying to use its adventuring career to lay the groundwork for such.

Those Corollary motivators are the PRIMARY motivators for most of my games. Even the Fame and Glory motivation is something I've seen, never for a long-term political gain, but for "I want to be known world-wide, like Heracles or [insert other character]"

As far as I reasonably can I try to make the bolded untrue. Yes, combat is highly abstracted and hit points even more so; these are unfortunate but necessary evils in order to make the game playable. But where I can, I have a (fantasy-)physics-based underpinning even for things like magic, fantastic creatures, and so on.

That is not the design of the game. You trying to make it the design of the game does not change how the game was designed. And the abstraction of HP is key to my point.

First off, I'm not all that concerned about breaking these sort of genre conventions, in that I want a flatter power curve anyway such that a "low-level" creature remains a potential threat for longer while at the same time low-level PCs have a slight chance (as opposed to no chance whatsoever) of pulling off an upset victory over something way above their pay grade.

Second, if a situation would be approached with caution in reality then I'd also like it - at least to some degree - to be approached that way in the fiction, if only because that's what the characters would do.

Except my entire point is that IS NOT what the character would do. John Wick doesn't go into the nightclub full of mobsters with nervous trepidation because he honestly believes he is going to die. Neither does James Bond. Neither would Conan entering a den of thieves. These people are not actually scared for their lives, they do not actually believe they are going to be killed in the coming fight. And mid to high level PCs are the SAME WAY.

And while you may WANT a flatter power curve, you cannot look at the current design of the game and honestly think that a single kobold is a serious threat of death to a full hp PC past level 2. It just isn't. A dozen of them might be a threat, but that is the weight of numbers. And that makes sense, because it isn't the individual strength that matters at that point.

I can't model the world 100% true but I can always describe it better and stand ready to answer whatever questions the players might have. That said, if there's a hidden hazard and they don't take precautions I don't see it as my job to tell them about it; and even if they do take precautions there's always a chance those precautions won't be good enough due to the luck of the dice.

Your job to tell them about it? No. Your job to foreshadow it? Yes. Especially, again, if the point of telling them about something is to tell them not to go there yet, you need to accurately foreshadow the threat. And this isn't a matter of describing it better. You can't know if the shortage of wool in the western kingdom changed the merchant routes which pushed a merchant eastward, where he saw a herd of owlbears fleeing the forest to the south, which was only possible because the normal fog that rolls in from the lake didn't roll in that morning, because... you can't do that.

Just as an IRL example, thing that happens ALL the time. I recently joined a forum site, where I learned about a book series from the 70's. Then, I was watching a new youtuber who was in no way connected to that forum or the subject matter of that forum... who referenced the exact same book series. And again, this happens constantly. Because the world is massively complex and intersecting. And you can't actually model that in the game. So, it is always preferable to create coincidence on purpose so that people can learn information, instead of deciding that there is no way they could know about something.

Yes it was. Once on the move, for a short time those Ents became the most powerful army in the world; the self-preserving thing for the Hobbits to do was to stay with said army and let that army protect them.

Not stay far away from the fighting where a catapult couldn't accidentally crush them?

Indeed, and that's down to those two having - and sometimes displaying - less than stellar Wisdom. They both swore alliegiances to monarchs who then called their promises in, and found themselves in the field whether they wanted to be there or not (though in Merry's case he did want to be there - high courage, low Wisdom).

See, but calling that stupid (less than stellar wisdom) just makes my point. Those stories were not told because the characters proceeded with an abundance of caution, measuring every step they take against a potential horrible end. And that's why we like those stories. That's why we want to recreate them.

I'll concede this one: Bilbo's courage outweighed his self-preservation instinct on numerous occasions.

After they stopped in Rivendell they were on something of a time crunch; and their lack of info-gathering about Mirkwood did cause them lots of headaches.

And that was what made the adventure story. That's what made it popular and allowed Tolkien's works to proliferate. Removing that factor entirely defeats the entire thing that caused Tolkien's works to inspire DnD.

 

[tetrasodium]

I apologize that my reply was not All Encompassing. I mentioned the first thing that popped into my head. I forgot that unless one is very specific and includes all other possibilities, people will assume one is ignorant of anything one doesn't mention.

How did a thread where nobody is bragging about kill counts result in that being the first thing to pop into your head? Can you point to any posts that you consider to be highlighting kill coiyin ways that meet the badge of honor bar that popped into your head? A few people have mentioned PC deaths at their tables for obviously illustrative reasons related to points being made, but. meat grinder play has really only been raised by the posters who are pushing for no PC deaths ever unless the player chooses to bless it, but that is starkly at odds with games like paranoia and such that you mentioned.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And IME wealth is the absolute last motivator for most of my players. Even when they make wealth motivated characters, they make them with the intention that that is a character flaw they need to overcome.



Those Corollary motivators are the PRIMARY motivators for most of my games. Even the Fame and Glory motivation is something I've seen, never for a long-term political gain, but for "I want to be known world-wide, like Heracles or [insert other character]"



That is not the design of the game. You trying to make it the design of the game does not change how the game was designed. And the abstraction of HP is key to my point.



Except my entire point is that IS NOT what the character would do. John Wick doesn't go into the nightclub full of mobsters with nervous trepidation because he honestly believes he is going to die. Neither does James Bond. Neither would Conan entering a den of thieves. These people are not actually scared for their lives, they do not actually believe they are going to be killed in the coming fight. And mid to high level PCs are the SAME WAY.

And while you may WANT a flatter power curve, you cannot look at the current design of the game and honestly think that a single kobold is a serious threat of death to a full hp PC past level 2. It just isn't. A dozen of them might be a threat, but that is the weight of numbers. And that makes sense, because it isn't the individual strength that matters at that point.



Your job to tell them about it? No. Your job to foreshadow it? Yes. Especially, again, if the point of telling them about something is to tell them not to go there yet, you need to accurately foreshadow the threat. And this isn't a matter of describing it better. You can't know if the shortage of wool in the western kingdom changed the merchant routes which pushed a merchant eastward, where he saw a herd of owlbears fleeing the forest to the south, which was only possible because the normal fog that rolls in from the lake didn't roll in that morning, because... you can't do that.

Just as an IRL example, thing that happens ALL the time. I recently joined a forum site, where I learned about a book series from the 70's. Then, I was watching a new youtuber who was in no way connected to that forum or the subject matter of that forum... who referenced the exact same book series. And again, this happens constantly. Because the world is massively complex and intersecting. And you can't actually model that in the game. So, it is always preferable to create coincidence on purpose so that people can learn information, instead of deciding that there is no way they could know about something.



Not stay far away from the fighting where a catapult couldn't accidentally crush them?



See, but calling that stupid (less than stellar wisdom) just makes my point. Those stories were not told because the characters proceeded with an abundance of caution, measuring every step they take against a potential horrible end. And that's why we like those stories. That's why we want to recreate them.



And that was what made the adventure story. That's what made it popular and allowed Tolkien's works to proliferate. Removing that factor entirely defeats the entire thing that caused Tolkien's works to inspire DnD.

Again, @Lanefan does not play WotC 5e. You keep attacking his arguments as if you are both playing the same mechanical game.

 

[Lanefan]

And IME wealth is the absolute last motivator for most of my players. Even when they make wealth motivated characters, they make them with the intention that that is a character flaw they need to overcome.

Clearly, we have - and-or are - different players.

That is not the design of the game. You trying to make it the design of the game does not change how the game was designed. And the abstraction of HP is key to my point.

Like I said before, some abstractions are necessary evils.

Except my entire point is that IS NOT what the character would do. John Wick doesn't go into the nightclub full of mobsters with nervous trepidation because he honestly believes he is going to die. Neither does James Bond. Neither would Conan entering a den of thieves. These people are not actually scared for their lives, they do not actually believe they are going to be killed in the coming fight. And mid to high level PCs are the SAME WAY.

John Wick* and James Bond have plot protection to an extent I'd never want an RPG character to have.

* - I have to assume, having only seen about 15 minutes of one movie.

And while you may WANT a flatter power curve, you cannot look at the current design of the game and honestly think that a single kobold is a serious threat of death to a full hp PC past level 2. It just isn't.

I know, and to me that's a major bug rather than a feature - in part also because of the flip side: a single low-level PC isn't a serious threat of any kind to, say, a Hill Giant. What I'd like to see is the "threat range" be much broader; and while 5e is better in this regard than was 3e, there's still a long way to go.

Your job to tell them about it? No. Your job to foreshadow it? Yes.

It's the same thing.

If I foreshadow a scythe trap by narrating mysterious bloodstains on the floor near one wall, I've just flat-out told them there's a trap there; and that all they have to do is find and disarm it.

Especially, again, if the point of telling them about something is to tell them not to go there yet, you need to accurately foreshadow the threat.

Here we disagree. Whether or not I foreshadow or even outright tell them what the threat is, it's still their choice as to whether they go there and (try to) deal with it; and sometimes the threat will be known or learnable while other times it will be unknown or mysterious.

See, but calling that stupid (less than stellar wisdom) just makes my point. Those stories were not told because the characters proceeded with an abundance of caution, measuring every step they take against a potential horrible end. And that's why we like those stories. That's why we want to recreate them.

To a point, I agree, in that I often play low-Wisdom characters just so I can have them do things that might be contrary to their own self-preservation. A high-Wisdom character, if played true to its stats, wouldn't do such potentially foolhardy things.

And there's a great many stories* where a protagonist's unwise choice(s) is(are) what sets and-or keeps things in motion.

* - starting with every rom-com ever made.