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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Maxperson" data-source="post: 9534870" data-attributes="member: 23751">My game might be a middle ground, since I don't know how often PCs die in your game.When I run things, deaths happen between 0-1 times a campaign, which runs for a year to a year and a half. Once in a while I have 2, 3 or once 4 deaths in a campaign. In my early days of D&D I played with MANY players and DMs, but in the last 15 or 20 years, I primarily play with the same 4 guys.  As a result, they have seen permanent death happen, so the fact that happens so infrequently doesn't cause them feel invincible.  The KNOW that this fight could be the time someone's PC dies and doesn't come back.When I describe a huge creature, especially one new to the players, coming out and backhanding a rock outcropping, knocking the top off and into the chasm, they sit forward very intently and take that fight VERY seriously.  This happens even when I know from the monster stats and the PC abilities that death is only likely if things go so far sideways that it disappears from sight due to the curvature of the planet.The point is that you don't have to kill off a lot of PCs and destroy player investment in other things than survival in order to cultivate that sense of preservation.  My players both invest heavily in their characters, because the odds are that the character won't die, while at the same time being worried about survival because permanent death is on the table and they know it.</blockquote>

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