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

[KYRON45]

See that's the thing.... There's all this talk of real possibility of death... but what does that actually mean? A more lethal game...but what does that actually mean? I get the impression many want the illusion of these things as opposed to the reality... but don't want to state it outright.

It can't be quantified.
The system, the play styles, is the DM hungry and in a bad mood, are the players eager to make new characters, the weather, were out of Mt.Dew....all of these things can have an affect on the "lethality" of the game no matter how you choose to define lethality.
The reality of these things is that its a game and there are (to paraphrase The Lazy DM) dials and levers that you can manipulate to make the game happen any way you want to.
At your table its your game and you play it how you want.

 

[dave2008]

sure, but my question about the norm was not about personal preference, it was about group composition, specifically your vs the ‘average’


it is relevant for the experience you are having though, the one caster makes it less superheroic and ‘let’s solve everything through spells’ than if you had three casters

I don't think superheroic = spells. So we are going to disagree on that.

 

[Deset Gled]

It can't be quantified.

You've said this a couple times now. We understand your opinion. However, at certain point, this is just denying the existence of statistics. It may not be possible to quantify the probability of a death for an individual character. But we, as a group, with the experience of thousands (millions?) of games, can still talk about the rough likelihood of death as witnessed over a decade of play, and our opinions about what an ideal game might be in terms of those odds.

 

[KYRON45]

You've said this a lot. We understand your opinion. However, at certain point, this is just denying the existence of statistics. It may not be possible to quantify the probability of a death for an individual character. But we, as a group, with the experience of thousands (millions?) of games, can still talk about the rough likelihood of death as witnessed over a decade of play, and our opinions about what an ideal game might be in terms of those odds.

Statistics requires a lot of data. Do we have that data?
Without data its conjecture.
So...what is the right answer?

 

[Deset Gled]

Statistics requires a lot of data. Do we have that data?
Without data its conjecture.
So...what is the right answer?

Why is conjecture bad? Why would you expect there to be a "right" answer? Do questions like this add anything to the conversation?

 

[Umbran]

Its not asking what "schedule" you prefer but instead at what frequency of PC death does it reach your particular desire of lethality?

I don't have a "desire of lethality". I don't go, "Hey, wait, nobody's died in 3 gaming sessions, so this game sucks!" or anything like that.

Lethality is, for me, a proxy measure for perceived danger. It isn't a great proxy, though. The best tabletop games I have played in have had very high perceived danger, but no actual character deaths.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's harder for me to find the challenge point where death is a risk that could happen a time or two during the campaign. Other editions were much more challenging at the default level.

This is agree with. The default for D&D 5e and 5.5 (so far as I can tell without seeing the MM) is too soft for my tastes once you get to level 3 or so. This is a separate but related issue to the massive pile of superpowers PCs tend to quickly accumulate.

 

[Micah Sweet]

There's a couple factors at play.

In a game with few PCs (2-3), any PC death is more likely to damage narrative continuity than a game with many PCs (6-8). So I'd like to see less deaths in the smaller game.

If the game is more OSR or sandbox style, I'm much more open to frequent PC death. In a game driven by PC's agendas, I'm less of a fan.

For 5e, as a DM I tend to start at higher level so permanent death is less of a risk.

I run OSR and sandbox style, so I see no reason to make a point as a DM to protect the PCs from death. They go where they want to go and make their own choices. And there are always options available to try to come back (though they may be difficult, expensive, unreliable, or all three).

The real focus of play are the players and the DM, not any given PC.

 

[Lanefan]

Question re this poll (which may have already been answered, I haven't read the whole thread yet): are you referring to number of deaths per character or number of deaths in total per x-levels?

Edit to add: also, are you referring only to permanent non-revived deaths or are you including deaths where the character is revived later?

My vote assumes inclusion of later-revived deaths.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah. Though defeat doesn't necessarily mean death. In 5e it is pretty easy to knock people down without them dying, so characters being beaten unconscious and captured would be a resounding defeat, even if none of them died.

But it also require the combat in question be under circumstances where capture is what the opponents want. I don't want every potentially deadly fight to work that way.