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

[Lanefan]

I miss the option "I don't think there should be a defined rate of death per level".

I agree there shouldn't be a defined rate, but I think the poll is more asking what you'd like to see as an overall long-term average.

IME deaths tend to cluster - you'll have a string of adventures with no deaths, or maybe just one, and then you'll hit that one adventure where for whatever reason the death-revival cycle is set to fast-spin.

 

[Lanefan]

I mean, at my Dungeon World table, there is no such thing as random, permanent, irrevocable death.

(Note that these are individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for this statement. The death must be all three for it to get no-sale: it must be random, not the result of either willing intent or willful disregard of serious warnings; and it must be permanent, meaning it won't get better on its own; and it must be irrevocable, meaning the PCs have no means by which they could revive the dead character. A death that is merely random and permanent, but revocable, is still perfectly fine. Same with any other proper subset of those three conditions.)

Valid point - when does death really count as death, for these purposes and others.

For me, when looking at both this poll and my own stats, they all count the same whether random-irrevocable* or pre-planned and revived-later.

Low level play tends to feature a lot more irrevocable death as the PCs either can't afford or can't find means of revival, while higher-level play sees most dead characters get revived unless the player (in-character, when asked via Speak With Dead) declines revival. But for poll and stats purposes they all count the same, and I throw petrification in there as well.

* - I think irrevocable and permanent mean the same thing here so I've concatenated the two.

That's what D&D offers to people that even a slick, well-made MMO rarely if ever can do, the interpersonal drama, the personal story, the striving for success on goals that might be irrelevant to most people but hugely meaningful to that person. If people want a gritty sandbox challenge where death lurks in every shadow, there's a dozen wildly different video games to scratch that itch. If they want a mechanical challenge to overcome, are you smart enough or skillful enough to survive, there's a dozen more wildly different games to scratch that itch. But crafting a personal story, that matters to you and to your fellow players, that feels personally meaningful and satisfying? That's something that TTRPGs still have a pretty solid monopoly on.

Random, permanent, irrevocable death very, very much gets in the way of that. So many groups turn away from that form of consequence, because it's not only not interesting to them, it's actively antagonistic to the things that are interesting to them. (Or, what I sadly suspect is more common, they struggle and struggle and struggle against it, thinking that it's required or that they really do enjoy it etc., never quite understanding why the situation ends up unsatisfying.)

Experience tells me that the two bolded things are not mutually incompatible. Part of the satisfaction in those stories is looking back at the wars you've been through and realizing that yes, you survived them and are better and richer for it.

That said, if one's player-side approach is that the group story of the party is more important than the individual story of any one character the odds of satisfaction with said story increase immensely. One could even say that putting one's individual story first is counterproductive to group play (unless it's a one-player game, of course).

 

[Retros_x]

but I think the poll is more asking what you'd like to see as an overall long-term average

I understand that, but I am saying I am not interested in a target goal of deaths per level. The average death rate is for me an interesting statistic afterwards, but I don't have any specific number in mind that a "good" campaign should have. Players who do bad decisions and have bad lucks should probably have more deaths, completely unrelated to level and length of the game.

When players do bad decision and have bad luck, but still no deaths are happening - thats an indicator for me that my game is too easy for my taste and I need to take adjustments. If not a single death happened over 5 levels of gameplay, that is not an indicator to me. I need to examine first how they play, might happen because my players are just really good. But usually I've already realized this before I have an average value per level.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Babylon 5 is a story (an awesome story!), not a game (although there was an RPG). Stories and games are not the same and often have different goals.

Sure. But one of the things that draws people to D&D is, specifically, that it is a game which tells or produces stories, derived from the things that actually interest, excite, or motivate the specific people playing in it. That's something that only tabletop games can offer; MMOs and CRPGs cannot do that, they can only offer a spectrum of hopefully-comprehensive options, and often must make sacrifices as part of telling that narrative (e.g., the proliferation of rank- or title-based names for a character, such as "Commander Shepard", because it's not feasible to have a true name implemented for all possible IRL names.)

Which means a decent slice of the playerbase--I dunno if I'd call it a majority, but I would call it a majority of those among the new blood brought in by 5e that are more casual and only care about mechanics instrumentally--absolutely would prefer something where random, permanent, irrevocable death is not on the table. That doesn't mean characters can't die; it just means that if they do die, it's either well-executed (no pun intended) and narratively satisfying, or it's not going to stay that way (e.g. how Lorien sustained Sheridan, "for a little while"), or the other characters can do something about it (some shows might use time travel, or collapsing alternate universes/timelines, e.g. what Voyager did with Harry Kim and Naomi Wildman.)

That doesn't mean it's for everyone. Very few things are. But to rebut this with, "Well, games aren't 100% identical to stories" is fundamentally missing the point. The fact that games can be stories, and indeed can be much, much better, more personal, more fulfilling stories than any other medium on offer, is straight-up one of the biggest selling points of the hobby. "You can do whatever you want" in narrative form, rather than the form of a physics-engine, or mettle-testing process, or genre-emulation tool. (Things that, notably, computer games are often just as good, if not better, at doing.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Valid point - when does death really count as death, for these purposes and others.

Yep. Deaths are not created equal, so to speak.

* - I think irrevocable and permanent mean the same thing here so I've concatenated the two.

An irrevocable but impermanent death is, as noted above, stuff like what happened to Sheridan. There was nothing any of his friends or loved ones could do to save him. As far as they were concerned, he was dead and gone. But Lorien's intervention made the death impermanent, meaning he would come back to life, it just would take time. This was represented as, effectively, Lorien gently guiding Sheridan to a profound personal epiphany, which would permit him to face death without fear, while still wanting to live. ("You're not chasing life, you're fleeing death!"/"Do you have anything worth living for?" "Delenn!") Parsed as a D&D party, something very easy to do with much of the B5 universe, JMS loves fantasy tropes in his sci-fi, this is pretty clearly the party having to struggle and suffer without a beloved and important character while the DM cooks up something suitably dramatic for that player's triumphant return a few sessions later.

Experience tells me that the two bolded things are not mutually incompatible. Part of the satisfaction in those stories is looking back at the wars you've been through and realizing that yes, you survived them and are better and richer for it.

They may not be totally incompatible, but they are often at loggerheads. You have to want a very specific kind of story--a story that only forms after the action, not before nor during--and you have to be supremely tolerant of constant dead ends,

That said, if one's player-side approach is that the group story of the party is more important than the individual story of any one character the odds of satisfaction with said story increase immensely. One could even say that putting one's individual story first is counterproductive to group play (unless it's a one-player game, of course).

The problem is, for a lot of people, there is no group story without the individual stories. For them--for me!--this is like saying, "the group story of the building is more important than the individual story of any one brick, so we can just allow 90% of the bricks to be broken before we use them, the building will still be what matters!" That's where the key breakdown point comes. You see the party story as being, in a sense, wholly independent of the individual stories. I see the two as fully co-dependent. You cannot have the individual stories without a party story for them to play out within, but you cannot have a party story without the individuals who make up that party. The more you lose of that party, the more the story decoheres until it's an utter mess.

And, also from personal experience? I've lost a lot of players in my game. Not just characters, I've had at least 5 different players depart the game for IRL concerns that matter a lot more than a tabletop game does. No death involved--but with the player gone, the story is necessarily at a dead end too. It wasn't too bad when we had a player leave in the first year or so. It was a little tougher when someone left in the middle of the third year. Since then, we've gained and lost another four other players, and...yeah it's really actually starting to become difficult to keep folks invested in the "party story" because they don't have any reason to be. They hear about things that other people did years ago and it just washes over them. Without the personal connection, it's just a lot of events, and that personal connection takes a long time to build.

So...yeah, you're right that it is possible to make these two mix, but it requires both a specific set of characteristics that a lot of players don't have, and it requires that you only engage with a particular style of story and relationship to the world. If anyone isn't interested in that style or that kind of relationship, or if multiple players just don't respond the right kind of way to stories, then it just isn't going to work.

So it would be better to say that, while they can be compatible, there are many games, many tables, where they simply will not mix.

 

[soviet]

One of the big failures of modern D&D is that despite being focused on (at least from mid-levels onwards) effectively superheroes in a high magic setting, little attention is put into reversing death beyond the classic reincarnation and resurrection spells. There should be a bunch of game text somewhere about petitioning the gods, stealing souls from valhalla, negotiating with demons and spirits, revenants, possessing people or items, etc.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

One of the big failures of modern D&D is that despite being focused on (at least from mid-levels onwards) effectively superheroes in a high magic setting, little attention is put into reversing death beyond the classic reincarnation and resurrection spells. There should be a bunch of game text somewhere about petitioning the gods, stealing souls from valhalla, negotiating with demons and spirits, revenants, possessing people or items, etc.

Absolutely. This is my TTRPG addiction, things that create such juicy, evocative story that even a hardcore pawn-stance player starts to feel the tug.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

One of the big failures of modern D&D is that despite being focused on (at least from mid-levels onwards) effectively superheroes in a high magic setting, little attention is put into reversing death beyond the classic reincarnation and resurrection spells. There should be a bunch of game text somewhere about petitioning the gods, stealing souls from valhalla, negotiating with demons and spirits, revenants, possessing people or items, etc.

That, at least, would be somewhat more interesting than "I cast a spell." I'm still not a huge fan, but a definite improvement.

I think the whole discussion about character death is rather meaningless, unless we have common understanding of what that means. I don't really consider mechanical definition of "dead" as true character death in an environment where that is easily reversible and basically just a financial inconvenience.

 

[Oofta]

One of the big failures of modern D&D is that despite being focused on (at least from mid-levels onwards) effectively superheroes in a high magic setting, little attention is put into reversing death beyond the classic reincarnation and resurrection spells. There should be a bunch of game text somewhere about petitioning the gods, stealing souls from valhalla, negotiating with demons and spirits, revenants, possessing people or items, etc.

I made raise dead more difficult a long time ago. Whether or not the books should include that or not? I don't know, raise dead has always been too simple. It's just one of those many things that comes down to personal preference and something that is quite easy to add in.

 

[Emerikol]

<snip>

Experience tells me that the two bolded things are not mutually incompatible. Part of the satisfaction in those stories is looking back at the wars you've been through and realizing that yes, you survived them and are better and richer for it.

That said, if one's player-side approach is that the group story of the party is more important than the individual story of any one character the odds of satisfaction with said story increase immensely. One could even say that putting one's individual story first is counterproductive to group play (unless it's a one-player game, of course).

My experience too. In fact, the satisfaction is far higher because you accomplished something. You overcame real challenges and survived. I had a group that got to high level but around 12th they had a very narrow escape which is still remembered till this day.