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

[EzekielRaiden]

That's kind of the point though. Going into those places is dangerous. Being an adventurer is dangerous, and logically carries with it the risk of death, because you are going to places and interacting with people and things that logically can kill you. Deciding to do such things is IMO tacitly giving permission for your character to potentially die, so by yours as and @EzekielRaiden 's criteria it should work.

To me, the logic of going into physically dangerous places and situations potentially leading to death is the first consideration.

Tell me.

Would adventurers go to a place that was absolutely, perfectly safe without the slightest shred of danger or risk, specifically to adventure there?

No?

Then the mere presence of some kind of danger clearly is not enough. Hence why I have, at every turn, emphasized that this is warnings of imminent lethality, where the player is knowingly doing something that could immediately, and perhaps instantly, kill their PC.

 

[Oofta]

I think my favorite story of that sort of survival was the guy whose parachute didn't open and he plummeted down, down, down, and landed in a thorn bush. I mean, who do you have to piss off to have your parachute fail to open(fluke #1), fall thousands of feet and survive(fluke #2), and then have it be a thornbush of all things that broke your fall(fluke #3).

My favorite was Nicholas Alkemade. In WW II the bomber he was in was hit by enemy fire and caught on fire. He was alone in his turret in the back of the plane, surrounded by fire to the point that his rubber oxygen mask was starting to melt. His parachute? Also on fire. So he jumped out of the plane, fell 18,000 feet and survived the fall with a sprained knee. He survived and was then taken to a prison camp where, among other things, he had to walk hundreds of miles across Germany in blizzards and temperatures as low as -8 F (-22 C).

So he survived fire, falling 18,000 feet and brutal conditions in a Nazi prison camp. Airman Who Fell 18,000 Feet Without A Parachute & Lived - Largest U.S. Army Veteran Directory + Service History Archive | Find People You Served With | Army.TogetherWeServed.com

 

[Micah Sweet]

Tell me.

Would adventurers go to a place that was absolutely, perfectly safe without the slightest shred of danger or risk, specifically to adventure there?

No?

Then the mere presence of some kind of danger clearly is not enough. Hence why I have, at every turn, emphasized that this is warnings of imminent lethality, where the player is knowingly doing something that could immediately, and perhaps instantly, kill their PC.

A perfectly valid choice to make. I get it. Your personal preference in this area is understood. I assume mine is as well.

 

[pemerton]

I literally experienced this in a game a few months back. The DM kept having the commoner townsfolk tell us not to attack this jerk of a "knight" working for our enemy, because he was a powerful knight. But... they were commoners. We were level 5 characters with our own knight. We didn't take them that seriously, and we all knew our Knight was chomping at the bit to attack him. The level of bad idea that turned out to be was revealed mid-combat, when we realized our attacks STILL hadn't bloodied him and he cast Mass Suggestion on us. We chose the fight, 100%, but we didn't choose the danger, because we didn't understand the level of the danger.

It's not all that relevant to the thread topic, but when I read this sort of description of play, it just sounds like rail-roading GM story-time. I mean, what are the players supposed to be bringing to this table?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

A perfectly valid choice to make. I get it. Your personal preference in this area is understood. I assume mine is as well.

Certainly. My approach is not universally superir, and I'd never claim so. What has made me bristle is folks telling me my approach is universally horrible, as in, it is impossible to ever have any stakes or meaning.

The only strong-ish claim I've ever made on this is that I believe folks dismiss non-mechanical consequences almost completely, treating them as irrelevancies, whereas (agian, I believe) many games would actually benefit a lot from making non-mechanical consequnces matter. I think the long shadow of old D&D traditions--not quite "old school" per se--is the cause here. Obviously, the distinct harshness of old-school play did not last beyond mid-2e at the latest. The mere existence of the OSR shows that. But it is true that traditions often linger long after their original purpose is lost. E.g. fireball isn't an unusually powerful 3rd level spell because having a suped-up 3rd level spell is productive; it's that way because it's traditional, and 5.0 was built to feature as many "traditional" elements as possible (even if the "tradition" only started in 3e...).

Likewise, I'm of the belief that an emphasis on hard-edged, permanent mechanical consequences (particularly death, but also things like dismemberment, permanent drain e.g. levels or more pointedly ability scores, and related things) is one of those things where folks came to expect it as The Consequence(s) Bar None, and thus never even bother trying for other kinds of consequences. I don't just think this in a vacuum, though. The trickle (or sometimes flood) of DM complaints about "murderhobos" etc. is good evidence. IME, players learn quickly from their DMs...even if the DM doesn't realize they're teaching. Like that one thread a few years back, where a DM-group misunderstanding meant both sides were annoyed: the DM thought their players were being bizarrely muderhobo-esque, killing ANYTHING that talked to them seriously, while the players thought the DM was being a jerk pushing them through a grueling meatgrinder....because the DM thought maps and minis were just useful tools in general, while the players thought they meant "IT'S FIGHT TIME NOW, GET READY!!!"

I find too many DMs unintentionally teach their players that only mechanical consequences actually matter, and non-mech ones never matter. Thus, their players stop caring. They constantly kill and steal and backstab and whatever else, despite this being extremely frustrating and un-fun for the DM, because they know the DM treats non-mechanical consequences as mere fluff, rather than as serious concerns that matter. In nearly every case where I've (proverbially, digitally) sat down and really gotten into the nitty-gritty of it, this murderhoboism either was in response to that DM's failure to make non-mechanical consequences matter, or the group had had a previous DM who ran things that way and now this DM is struggling with the IRL consequences thereof.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It's not all that relevant to the thread topic, but when I read this sort of description of play, it just sounds like rail-roading GM story-time. I mean, what are the players supposed to be bringing to this table?

While I am very sympathetic to these concerns, by that same token, I don't think a pattern like this is "railroading GM story-time" in absolutely all cases. As an example, the PCs in my group considered a powerful businessman an enemy of theirs before they'd even hit level 2. It would have been foolishness in the extreme to try to kill that businessman for a lot of reasons. That would be attempted murder, even if they could prove that he had hired people to kill them first (which he had done, to be clear). Given he's one of the most powerful merchants in the city, he hires expensive and merciless guards who would be perfectly happy to kill someone that tried to kill their employer, and no one would bat an eye about that. Even if they succeeded, they'd become pariahs in their own home city. Etc.

So...even if there had been people complaining to the PCs that this particular merchant was being horrible to them (which he has been, to some people, albeit only at a significant distance removed--shell businesses, plausible deniability, etc.), those people would also have explicitly cautioned the PCs not to try to kill him or even attack him. Not because I have a pre-plotted story where the players aren't allowed to attack him, but because those townsfolk aren't stupid, they know this merchant, Jafar el-Aly, is powerful and dangerous and likely to hurt or kill someone who crosses him. The PCs didn't really need this warning, they investigated him themselves and learned that to him they were just temporarily in the way, so they earmarked that as "this guy's a jerk, be sure to mess up his plans in the future" and moved on with their adventuring lives rather than risking it all to get revenge or to seek justice for those wronged by him.

 

[CreamCloud0]

It's not all that relevant to the thread topic, but when I read this sort of description of play, it just sounds like rail-roading GM story-time. I mean, what are the players supposed to be bringing to this table?

the capability to restrain themselves from fighting the end-of-campaign enemy they've just been told repeatedly is too strong for them and not to fight? that knight is a milestone to be worked towards, it's something to drive and motivate them to make themselves stronger until the day they do face them on equal terms.

 

[Lanefan]

Going to the dangerous undead caves is not enough. It is nebulous and the very idea that ANY possible danger no matter what is enough is just silly. Adventurers do dangerous things. Hearing "ooh, that cave is dangerous!" is a bog-standard adventure hook, not a "If you attempt the thing you're about to attempt, your character is at extreme risk of immediate death right then and there" moment,

That's just it, though: I (and I suspect many others) do equate those things, such that hearing repeatedly in-game "Those caves are bloody dangerous!" does warn me-as-character that venturing into said caves could very easily result in my quick demise. If I-as-character choose to go in there anyway then I-as-player have no right to complain when the pit trap 30 feet inside the cave entrance happens to kill my character dead.

though usually I do not use such explicit terms myself. (My go-to is to ominously ask, "Are you sure?" Usually my players say no and reevaluate. Occasionally, they say yes anyway.)

I too use the "Are you sure?" line now and then. Classic.

 

[Lanefan]

I find too many DMs unintentionally teach their players that only mechanical consequences actually matter, and non-mech ones never matter. Thus, their players stop caring. They constantly kill and steal and backstab and whatever else, despite this being extremely frustrating and un-fun for the DM,

I've got over 40 years of personal experience as a DM whispering in my ear that the three bolded things are not connected (and in the case of the third, not true).

I've had instances where the players cared far more about (and got loads more enjoyment from) killing and backstabbing etc. than from whatever adventure they happened to be in at the time; and if killing and backstabbing is what they want to do then I'll DM it just as happily as I'll DM them doing conventional adventuring stuff.

It's like a hockey game - sometimes the players want to show off their skills and other times they just want to fight. As a fan, both are equally entertaining; and my take is that if they want to fight, let 'em.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Certainly. My approach is not universally superir, and I'd never claim so. What has made me bristle is folks telling me my approach is universally horrible, as in, it is impossible to ever have any stakes or meaning.

The only strong-ish claim I've ever made on this is that I believe folks dismiss non-mechanical consequences almost completely, treating them as irrelevancies, whereas (agian, I believe) many games would actually benefit a lot from making non-mechanical consequnces matter. I think the long shadow of old D&D traditions--not quite "old school" per se--is the cause here. Obviously, the distinct harshness of old-school play did not last beyond mid-2e at the latest. The mere existence of the OSR shows that. But it is true that traditions often linger long after their original purpose is lost. E.g. fireball isn't an unusually powerful 3rd level spell because having a suped-up 3rd level spell is productive; it's that way because it's traditional, and 5.0 was built to feature as many "traditional" elements as possible (even if the "tradition" only started in 3e...).

Likewise, I'm of the belief that an emphasis on hard-edged, permanent mechanical consequences (particularly death, but also things like dismemberment, permanent drain e.g. levels or more pointedly ability scores, and related things) is one of those things where folks came to expect it as The Consequence(s) Bar None, and thus never even bother trying for other kinds of consequences. I don't just think this in a vacuum, though. The trickle (or sometimes flood) of DM complaints about "murderhobos" etc. is good evidence. IME, players learn quickly from their DMs...even if the DM doesn't realize they're teaching. Like that one thread a few years back, where a DM-group misunderstanding meant both sides were annoyed: the DM thought their players were being bizarrely muderhobo-esque, killing ANYTHING that talked to them seriously, while the players thought the DM was being a jerk pushing them through a grueling meatgrinder....because the DM thought maps and minis were just useful tools in general, while the players thought they meant "IT'S FIGHT TIME NOW, GET READY!!!"

I find too many DMs unintentionally teach their players that only mechanical consequences actually matter, and non-mech ones never matter. Thus, their players stop caring. They constantly kill and steal and backstab and whatever else, despite this being extremely frustrating and un-fun for the DM, because they know the DM treats non-mechanical consequences as mere fluff, rather than as serious concerns that matter. In nearly every case where I've (proverbially, digitally) sat down and really gotten into the nitty-gritty of it, this murderhoboism either was in response to that DM's failure to make non-mechanical consequences matter, or the group had had a previous DM who ran things that way and now this DM is struggling with the IRL consequences thereof.

I get that. For the record, just because I don't prefer someone's playstyle doesn't mean that it's popularity or lack thereof has any bearing on its value. I never thought your style was wrong or invalid, just not what I want.