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

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

Many, many, many players do not react that way. Far too many to make it a general policy.

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.

I don't use instant-death lethal traps like that, so not a concern.

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

It's shockingly effective! I don't have to deploy it often, but any time I do it's an immediate "...some reflection is in order."

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).

Okay. I don't have 40 years of personal experience. But I do have seven-ish, plus many more talking with others and trying to help them diagnose their issues, and have seen it far too many times to count. I have never seen a situation where this player behavior arose with absolutely no connection to the DM teaching them to engage in it.

And, furthermore? People wouldn't complain about it all the time if DMs-in-general were perfectly happy with murderhoboism in their campaigns. The fact that it is probably the single most common complaint of actual, practicing DMs should be a pretty big clue that your position on the matter is, at the very least, nowhere near universal.

As an aside, for folks who claim that my argumentation style implies universality or superiority, what on earth should I be interpreting this as?

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.

Whereas I--and plenty of other DMs--just don't find that experience enjoyable or worthwhile. Aren't you one of the folks claiming that the DM is supposed to have fun too?

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.

And for me, it's exactly the opposite. That's why it's a joke in my family (and I'm sure for many others) that, when players get into fisticuffs in any other sport, we say, "We came for a <sportsball game/match/etc.>, but a hockey match broke out!" The fact that hockey players stop engaging in the sport I'm actually there to watch, and start beating the everloving feces out of each other, is an annoying distraction from the actual purpose of the event, not an excellent alternative entertainment.

As a fan, both are not equally entertaining and my take is if they want to fight, they shouldn't be hitting the ice.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Huh? Not sure where you are getting that. I'm saying that making sure the combat rules can't kill your PC except under certain circumstances the player gets to choose apply is essentially a houserule (yes, I know the new book has an optional rule for it now. Not the point). Houserules should be made clear to everyone involved in session 0. If they are and the player agreed, they certainly have no right to harass the DM about it, in-game or otherwise.

And yet, the most common response, and one seen in this very thread from Lanefan, is that in such a game harrassing and disrespecting the DM would be exactly how they would behave, and therefore death is NEEDED because otherwise the players won't take the challenges seriously.

So, if everyone agreed to the rules.... how does the game fall apart? How do we have these terrible outcomes of players not taking the game seriously?

 

[tetrasodium]

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.

Ive seen that kind of player behavior with the knight example quite a bit in 5e. It's not railroading and I think think that the root cause traces back to how 5e got the poll question so wrong on so many levels. When players feel like it's practically impossible for their to die and they know that the monsters available are laughably inept they are encouraged to ignore any efforts to telegraph risk and try to faceroll through it ASAP with an expectation of nearly plot armored odds in their favor.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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.

A 5th level party goes into a graveyard to deal with six zombies. Six zombies is DEATH for the common people, it may be a significant challenge for 1st level characters, especially if there are only three or so PCs. Is this a dangerous situation for that 5th level party?

The party gets there, traces the zombies back to a crypt, go inside to stop the source of the zombies... and the lich that was creating them hits them with a Psychic Scream, TPKing the entire party. Was that dangerous?

Yes, anywhere an adventurer goes is "dangerous" but there is a vast "entire length of the game" gulf between a handful of zombies and a powerful lich with 9th level spells. Both situations are dangerous, but if you are planning an area to be ACTUALLY beyond the party's ability to deal with you need to figure out a way to foreshadow that beyond "all adventuring is dangerous" because, actually, it isn't all the same level of dangerous. So the idea that you don't need to foreshadow the level of danger seems bizarre to me, because that treats an encounter with an owlbear as the same level of threat as a council of Ancient Chromatic Dragons. Some things are more dangerous than others.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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?

Nah, he was pulling from a Module and he gave us literally every single warning and chance to back out. It was 100% us. I'm not sure what the point of the NPC in the module was at that stage, maybe just to set up the threat to come back later (because he did reappear later after we had restored a castle and found some magical artifacts to boost our power).

We had also come off a streak of decisive victories, so he might have been feeling we weren't being challenged enough, which could by why he picked that particular module at that time. That game actually died because some players are moving out of state, and we are all pretty devastated about it. It was a great game.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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.

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

Sure, a level 1 character with low con might die to a 30 ft pit trap. A 12th level character SHOULDN'T die to a 30 ft pit trap.

Again, as I pointed out to Micah, treating everything as the same level of danger just leads to confusion. A house fire is dangerous. But a house fire, while a serious threat to me, is only a mild threat to fire fighter, and is a trivial threat Spider-Man. So if I'm telling Spider-man, "there is a dangerous house fire" he's as likely to scoff at me as anything else, because I'm not wrong that it is dangerous, but it isn't dangerous TO HIM. And if suddenly he ends up inside and dealing with a sentient radioactive soul fire that can warp space.... well I didn't lie, it is dangerous, but it certainly isn't what was foreshadowed.

 

[Micah Sweet]

A 5th level party goes into a graveyard to deal with six zombies. Six zombies is DEATH for the common people, it may be a significant challenge for 1st level characters, especially if there are only three or so PCs. Is this a dangerous situation for that 5th level party?

The party gets there, traces the zombies back to a crypt, go inside to stop the source of the zombies... and the lich that was creating them hits them with a Psychic Scream, TPKing the entire party. Was that dangerous?

Yes, anywhere an adventurer goes is "dangerous" but there is a vast "entire length of the game" gulf between a handful of zombies and a powerful lich with 9th level spells. Both situations are dangerous, but if you are planning an area to be ACTUALLY beyond the party's ability to deal with you need to figure out a way to foreshadow that beyond "all adventuring is dangerous" because, actually, it isn't all the same level of dangerous. So the idea that you don't need to foreshadow the level of danger seems bizarre to me, because that treats an encounter with an owlbear as the same level of threat as a council of Ancient Chromatic Dragons. Some things are more dangerous than others.

I trust anyone I play with is going to recognize that an owlbear and a council of ancient chromatic dragons are not the same level of threat. Haven't been proven wrong yet, and if it seems close, I just describe more. No need to go out of character and start using Defcon levels.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure, a level 1 character with low con might die to a 30 ft pit trap. A 12th level character SHOULDN'T die to a 30 ft pit trap.

Again, as I pointed out to Micah, treating everything as the same level of danger just leads to confusion. A house fire is dangerous. But a house fire, while a serious threat to me, is only a mild threat to fire fighter, and is a trivial threat Spider-Man. So if I'm telling Spider-man, "there is a dangerous house fire" he's as likely to scoff at me as anything else, because I'm not wrong that it is dangerous, but it isn't dangerous TO HIM. And if suddenly he ends up inside and dealing with a sentient radioactive soul fire that can warp space.... well I didn't lie, it is dangerous, but it certainly isn't what was foreshadowed.

I recall a certain movie featuring a certain web slinger where he entered a certain burning apartment building. It would have of course been more dangerous to a civilian, or even a firefighter, but it was still worth being cautious to Mr. Parker.

 

[Lanefan]

Many, many, many players do not react that way. Far too many to make it a general policy.

Then that needs to change, I'd say. Danger means danger.

I don't use instant-death lethal traps like that, so not a concern.

If a typical 1st or 2nd-level character has 10 h.p. and the average damage of a 30-foot fall is 10.5 then some will survive the trap outright, while most will be (in my system) checking for consciousness and bleeding out or (in 5e) making death saves. 18 damage - the max for a 30-foot fall - isn't going to kill anyone outright in my system where death is at -10; and nobody dies outright in 5e from something like this due to the death-save mechanic.

But even then, if I've heard the caves are dangerous and I still go there, then die to a pit trap because nobody could get down to me in time, I still have no right to complain.

It's shockingly effective! I don't have to deploy it often, but any time I do it's an immediate "...some reflection is in order."

And it also immediately tells me if I've done a bad job of describing something if they look at me blankly and-or ask "What's wrong with [whatever we're doing]?".

One of the biggest arguments I ever had with a DM was one of these. The situation: a few Very Bad Guys riding in a low-height flying vehicle (similar to the landspeeder that Luke, Ben, etc. ride into Mos Eisley on); as with the landspeeder, their heads and shoulders are sticking out above the sides of the vehicle.

The Bad Guys have the vehicle fly a few feet into the air, flip over, and power-dive toward the ground. Both as player and character I think they have to stop before they hit the ground or the riders will all be squashed by the vehicle, and it's my turn to act, so I have my character (the actual Lanefan) baseball-slide into their flight path so as to attack their exposed - and now upside-down - heads when they stop.

DM: "Are you sure?"
Me: "Yes I'm sure. They have to stop or they're all gonna get killed."
DM: "Are you sure?" (variants on this exchange repeated several times, with no added description coming from the DM other than to clarify what he'd already said)

End result: I slide in, the vehicle doesn't stop, I get squashed and die, and the occupants do not: there was a dome of force protecting the vehicle's occupants that we had no knowledge or warning about.

Yeah, that argument went on for a while.

Okay. I don't have 40 years of personal experience. But I do have seven-ish, plus many more talking with others and trying to help them diagnose their issues, and have seen it far too many times to count. I have never seen a situation where this player behavior arose with absolutely no connection to the DM teaching them to engage in it.

And, furthermore? People wouldn't complain about it all the time if DMs-in-general were perfectly happy with murderhoboism in their campaigns. The fact that it is probably the single most common complaint of actual, practicing DMs should be a pretty big clue that your position on the matter is, at the very least, nowhere near universal.

A lot of that complaining, though, comes across to me as holding a heavy undertone of unwillingness to let themselves go into react mode when the players go off-script. The DM is set on running a heroic adventure (or an adventure of any kind, for that matter) rather than just allowing the players - in true sandbox mode - to have their characters bash around in the neutrally-presented setting however they like.

And it's not just murderhoboism. I see these complaints more often whenever CvC comes up

Whereas I--and plenty of other DMs--just don't find that experience enjoyable or worthwhile. Aren't you one of the folks claiming that the DM is supposed to have fun too?

I am, but I also somewhat assume the DM is having at least some fun as long as people are willing to play in and engage with the game and-or setting she's running.

And for me, it's exactly the opposite. That's why it's a joke in my family (and I'm sure for many others) that, when players get into fisticuffs in any other sport, we say, "We came for a <sportsball game/match/etc.>, but a hockey match broke out!" The fact that hockey players stop engaging in the sport I'm actually there to watch, and start beating the everloving feces out of each other, is an annoying distraction from the actual purpose of the event, not an excellent alternative entertainment.

As a fan, both are not equally entertaining and my take is if they want to fight, they shouldn't be hitting the ice.

Yeah, it's this sort of thinking that's made hockey a lot more boring over the last few decades.

 

[Lanefan]

And yet, the most common response, and one seen in this very thread from Lanefan, is that in such a game harrassing and disrespecting the DM would be exactly how they would behave, and therefore death is NEEDED because otherwise the players won't take the challenges seriously.

So, if everyone agreed to the rules.... how does the game fall apart? How do we have these terrible outcomes of players not taking the game seriously?

Were I a player in this situation I'd make it clear I'm playing "under protest", as it were; by specifically not agreeing to what I see as a poor principle for play (while still otherwise accepting the invite into the game) and then doing what I can to haul that poor principle out into the light in order to expose its poor-ness.

And I'd hope my own players did the same thing when I'm the DM.