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

[Maxperson]

When did we get encounter guidelines? Because I don't remember them any in OD&D or 1E. There might have been some in 2E, based on XP. The closest we got was the random encounter tables, but random encounters led to us fleeing as often as fighting.

We didn't, which was my point. We DO get them in 3e-5e, though. Which is a major difference. 1e told you to send dragons, trolls, giants, etc. at 1st level PCs if you rolled those on random charts. 2e I also don't remember if it was any better, but a lot of it was the same, so I kinda doubt it.

 

[R_J_K75]

IME, 5E mechanics don't support character death as much as previous editions up to 3.x. With that said I think 5E should be a little harder on players, not necessarily so characters die, but so they are challenged more. Character death should happen as it does, how the dice fall. It shouldn't be planned or intended by the DM, the plot should never dictate it; but it should always be the goal of the players to keep them alive.

 

[TiQuinn]

It was a surprise for me to find out many years later that he didn't play that way. As kids there wasn't really much way for us to know that he didn't run his games that way and we played encounters like the book told us to.

It would have been nice for the books to let us know that we shouldn't randomly throw trolls and gelatinous cubes up against 1st level groups, but the books didn't.

Oh I know, it’s just at a certain point every table I ever played with threw out or changed some wide percentage of the rules, so you had games that were deadly and others that were decidedly less so.

 

[Maxperson]

Oh I know, it’s just at a certain point every table I ever played with threw out or changed some wide percentage of the rules, so you had games that were deadly and others that were decidedly less so.

Yeah. We had a ton of house rules as well, just not with encounters for some unfathomable reason. Okay, so maybe it was because we were in junior high and high school, so we just died and made new characters a lot.

 

[prabe]

The major difference is that 5e tells you what encounters are balanced against 1st level groups and suggests encounters that can be handled. 1e told you to send trolls and dragons at 1st level PCs with 1 hit point. Further, 5e gives you max hit points, abilities usable every round instead of 1 ability used once in a day, better armor at 1st level on average, and more. PC survivability is vastly greater in 5e, 4e and even 3e.

I'm pretty sure I didn't say there weren't differences between the games, and it seems at least difficult (if not impossible) to dispute that some of those differences as one moves from older to newer games are about making the characters more durable, especially at lower levels. That doesn't mean the game isn't as deadly as the DM chooses to make it (and a DM who understands the game better will plausibly be making more in the way of choices, here).

 

[TiQuinn]

Yeah. We had a ton of house rules as well, just not with encounters for some unfathomable reason. Okay, so maybe it was because we were in junior high and high school, so we just died and made new characters a lot.

I’ve been thinking if I ever run Tomb of Horrors, I would totally run it strict to 1e/2e rules to accentuate the funhouse trap/deadliness of the module. There is something to be said for certain adventures where the deadliness is the juice. I just would never run that as part of a normal campaign.

 

[Maxperson]

I’ve been thinking if I ever run Tomb of Horrors, I would totally run it strict to 1e/2e rules to accentuate the funhouse trap/deadliness of the module. There is something to be said for certain adventures where the deadliness is the juice. I just would never run that as part of a normal campaign.

I ran my group through that a few years ago. You know the trap that transports all inorganic matter to the end treasure room? Well the first PC to walk into that was the Warforged.

 

[Autumnal]

I’ve been thinking if I ever run Tomb of Horrors, I would totally run it strict to 1e/2e rules to accentuate the funhouse trap/deadliness of the module. There is something to be said for certain adventures where the deadliness is the juice. I just would never run that as part of a normal campaign.

Makes sense. Every generalization should have room for special cases.

 

[Chaltab]

Are we telling a story or playing a game? That's actually a pretty big question now that I think about it.

Yes. The answer is yes.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes. The answer is yes.

Not really. To me the story is incidental, determined after the game is played.