How often would you like to die?

[Stormonu]

You guys are just plain cruel.

If we're talking 0 hp = unconscious and dying but-not-yet-dead, once in a campaign is fine for me. Seeing the panic in players eyes when they get whittled down to a handful of hit points and the next blow could take them out is exciting enough for me.

Watching PCs yo-yo during a combat has no appeal to me. Once a player is down, I want them out of the rest of the fight, not back the next round or two. I miss the days of being out of action for a day if you got dropped to 0 hp or less.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

First, there is no below zero. 2nd, ideally, never, but characters get unlucky and do stupid things. So it happens, but there is no telling when. It could happen 3 times a week or never in an entire campaign. The possibilty should come up quite often, however. Stupid play, honest mistakes, and just plain bad luck should have consequences.

 

[FireLance]

Well, just to chime in a bit, "average character", "average player" and "average campaign" are meant to provide a baseline (still subjective, but hopefully less so) so that we don't get comments like "it depends on the character", "it depends on the player" or "it depends on the campaign", or "players who make stupid mistakes get characters who die more often" (which, alas, has already happened in this thread).

Anyway, with that in mind, please carry on.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I want appoximately 0.25 deaths per character per campaign. No really, I've measured it, and that is the number that works out great for us. So out of 8 characters, we want about 2 deaths, total.

In practice, that ranges from about zero to 4 or 5 deaths per campaign, because we don't fudge, and out of all the opportunities to go from "mostly dead" to "dead," we never really know which ones will stick. I did have a 3E/AE game that had no deaths in a level 1 to level 15 campaign, but that was because we were allowing "Hero Points" to cancel out a death, and we had about 4 or 5 such cancels over the course of the campaign.

I like the threat present often, the reality very limited. However that works out, we can live with the results. Well, three quarters of us can live with the results. The other quarter can roll up a new character ...

 

[Elf Witch]

I don't have a number it varies. Stupid gets you hurt good planning keeps you alive.

I am perfectly happy to go through an entire campaign with no deaths.

As a player if I am dropping to 0 every combat I would not enjoy the game. I am not a stupid player so it means the DM is stacking the deck.

I don't know why some DMs feel that the game is not as good of they don't kill at least one PC.

I will kill PCs but as a DM I enjoy it more when the players play their parts smart. Because I want them to succeed.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Some characters deserve to die more often:

• Kender Thief (or a kender masquerading as any other class);
• Drow Warlock (especially the 4E version);
• Every character that steals from other party members;
• All of Jeff B's characters (oh, he deserved it all right!);
• Any character in a serious, long-term campaign whose name is "Bob Dude" or something similar.

 

[delericho]

A clever player should have a 95% chance of having his character survive from the start of the campaign to the end. Of course, it's worth noting that a "clever player" would be one who can recognise pretty quickly that he should have his character flee or surrender as things go wrong. And, of course, a character played in such a way is trading off his chances for success in the campaign against those of surviving the campaign - no guts, no glory.

(And even clever play shouldn't be a guarantee survival. There should be a very very small, but definitely non-zero, chance that a character could be taken out by a freak run of rolls, whether that's by stepping in a death-trap, an unlucky critical hit, or blowing a sequence of saving throws. Hence my suggestion of a 95% survival rate.)

Assuming a more standard level of play, I would suggest PCs should have about a 70% chance of winning a level-appropriate encounter, and that about 70% of encounters should be level-appropriate. (Of the remainder, most should be weaker, with only a small number of tougher encounters, and a tiny percentage of 'overwhelming' encounters.)

Of course, given the PC tradition of fighting every encounter to the bitter end, that would mean a TPK in every adventure. I don't really have a problem with that, though - if the players insist on throwing their character's lives away, that's their call.

 

[radja]

about once a day, a character is brought to 0 hp in my campaign. deaths are rare but combat at least needs to feel dangerous.

 

[delericho]

Of course, if we're specifically talking about getting dropped to 0 hit points or less (or some equivalent - dying but not dead), then that's a different question entirely.

One of the things I really don't like about 3e/4e is the habit of characters to go down easily, be quickly bleeding to death, then receive some healing and spring up as if nothing had happened. It seems really bizarre that a character can one moment be so seriously wounded as to be moments from death, and the next to be running around as though nothing had happened.

I understand why it works like that (it makes for a better game), but it really doesn't feel right.

My gut feeling, then, is that characters should probably go down a bit less often (once per adventure feels about right), that most such characters then die (unless they very quickly receive healing), and that if they do receive such healing they should at least suffer something from it (say a -1 to rolls until they take a short rest).

 

[Bluenose]

I wouldn't presume to suggest all characters should "die" with the same frequency. Some characters are reckless, others aren't. Some act in ways that put them at greater risk than others. I wouldn't like to suggest they should all get the same result from different behaviour. I expect an "average" PC to be "dying" roughly three adventure, and about a third of those to actually die.