D&D General If not death, then what?

[JiffyPopTart]

I think you mentioned this before. If a player did this in my game, they would not be invited back. It is insanely disrespectful IMO.


While this sometimes happens, more often than not what seems like dumb luck (a critical hit, for example) only led to death because the player insisted on playing their PC as though they were invincible.

For example, in my last session a week ago, a player has the chance to have his PC disengage and reform with the rest of the party, but he insisted on attacking even though he was already injured and below half HP. He hit, but the monster survived and critted him, for instant death.

So, while some people might say, "Oh, that isn't fair, it was just bad luck." My answer: "Maybe, but what happened before that?" Odds are, the PC put themselves at risk and should have been considering other options.

That being said, sometimes it is just "dumb luck", but IME more often than not there are underlying circumstances.

This might be your experience, but not mine. I lost a 5e character is the last session I played.

10th level wildfire druid. Battle against a big wizard guy and minions, including a huge giant zombie.

Cast Heat Metal on the zombies armor and hide behind a building at extreme 9oclock of the battlemap from the BBEG who is at 3oclock Spend a couple rounds just hiding behind the building concentrating on my spell.

BBEG casts some spell with a giant radius that catches me by accident (it was centered on two other visible party members). Failed a CON save (vs DC17) and took 52 damage knocking me out from full health.

The other three party members were out of sight (I was hiding behind a building) and didn't notice I was bleeding out. Failed 3 death saves in a row and died.

Not only did I in no way contribute to being killed by poor choices ... I was playing suboptimally by not casting spells for several rounds to continue to remain completely hidden behind a building.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And if the DM fairly and neutrally lays out, in advance, that death will be uncommon, and when it does occur, it will always be either temporary (as in, you'll get better without intervention) or reversible (you can be revived, but it will require effort)?

Ok, I can imagine fairness and lethality being orthogonal. But making those kinds of changes, to me, makes it a different type of D&D. One I don't want to play.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This might be your experience, but not mine. I lost a 5e character is the last session I played.

10th level wildfire druid. Battle against a big wizard guy and minions, including a huge giant zombie.

Cast Heat Metal on the zombies armor and hide behind a building at extreme 9oclock of the battlemap from the BBEG who is at 3oclock Spend a couple rounds just hiding behind the building concentrating on my spell.

BBEG casts some spell with a giant radius that catches me by accident (it was centered on two other visible party members). Failed a CON save (vs DC17) and took 52 damage knocking me out from full health.

The other three party members were out of sight (I was hiding behind a building) and didn't notice I was bleeding out. Failed 3 death saves in a row and died.

Not only did I in no way contribute to being killed by poor choices ... I was playing suboptimally by not casting spells for several rounds to continue to remain completely hidden behind a building.

How did you feel about that? To me, while that is resoundingly unlucky, I would accept it and play a new character. Or I may or may not accept resurrection depending on how I'm feeling at the time and how important my character is to what the party's doing. At 10th level coming back from death is definitely doable. It's a heck of a story of misfortune.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

If the DM is playing fairly and neutrally, the PCs die when the rules say they do.

And of course its a game style ideally decided prior to play. No more or less valid than many others.

This might be the great divide....fair and neutral aren't synonyms in my games. I'm facilitating a game where the PCs are the main stars of an incredible journey, and I am there to give them chances to be stars and incredible. I'm not there strictly to be a non participant in the story acting as a neutral arbiter and nothing more.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This might be the great divide....fair and neutral aren't synonyms in my games. I'm facilitating a game where the PCs are the main stars of an incredible journey, and I am there to give them chances to be stars and incredible. I'm not there strictly to be a non participant in the story acting as a neutral arbiter and nothing more.

Yeah, that's the divide. You can be fair the way you're playing, but definitely not neutral.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

How did you feel about that? To me, while that is resoundingly unlucky, I would accept it and play a new character. Or I may or may not accept resurrection depending on how I'm feeling at the time and how important my character is to what the party's doing. At 10th level coming back from death is definitely doable. It's a heck of a story of misfortune.

I don't get attached to most characters because they always die before they have achieved anything interesting by way of personal story goals. My characters have left behind a small countries worth of now abandoned shops, towers, collections, projects, and other infrastructure of never completed dreams.

Somewhere a small lumber mill is stockpiling some prime ironwood that will never get delivered to a small village of crafters sitting idle with a rocking chair design that wood was purchased for. Elsewhere stockpiles of illicit weapons lay unclaimed and hidden in sandy dunes, never to be delivered to rebels. In one town an entire 3 room stocked high end Magic Shoppe lays dormant inside a portable hole buried with the skeleton of a 2e ranger long left buried. In another grave a dead cleric/mage of Azuth with a key that opens a portal to an almost complete interdimensional library of all knowledge.

All of those stories....much more interesting and long more memorable to me as a player than "the kobold druid who went on 5 unrelated adventures then died to a spell he never saw coming.

But at this point we are truly in the weeds of different play experiences and desires.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't get attached to most characters because they always die before they have achieved anything interesting by way of personal story goals. My characters have left behind a small countries worth of now abandoned shops, towers, collections, projects, and other infrastructure of never completed dreams.

Somewhere a small lumber mill is stockpiling some prime ironwood that will never get delivered to a small village of crafters sitting idle with a rocking chair design that wood was purchased for. Elsewhere stockpiles of illicit weapons lay unclaimed and hidden in sandy dunes, never to be delivered to rebels. In one town an entire 3 room stocked high end Magic Shoppe lays dormant inside a portable hole buried with the skeleton of a 2e ranger long left buried. In another grave a dead cleric/mage of Azuth with a key that opens a portal to an almost complete interdimensional library of all knowledge.

All of those stories....much more interesting and long more memorable to me as a player than "the kobold druid who went on 5 unrelated adventures then died to a spell he never saw coming.

But at this point we are truly in the weeds of different play experiences and desires.

digging some of that stuff up again would probably be a pretty cool adventure.

 

[grankless]

Games where death is a player choice, to me, always preferable to one where you can die because Random Zombie 6 clawed you a few too many times. Death is the most boring thing that can happen to a character, generally. There's way more interesting things that can happen. Forged in the Dark games allow you to resist any consequence, including death; but you're taking costs for that. Emotional scars, stress, being knocked out of a scene, long lasting injuries. But your character sitll exists. The other players don't suddenly have to invent a new friendship with this character.

In my Pathfinder 1e games, a specific character died three times. HE was the only one who ever actually got knocked out to 0 at all, but that's 1e for you. His death wasn't very emotionally affecting, he got back up each time.

In Pathfinder 2e, one character has died so far. There was a lot of good roleplay to be had about characters grieving and wrrying while they brought his body to their next destination to try and get him resurrected. This tension exists because while they could afford it, in that game it's still essentially a skill check to raise someone. This, too, is a lot more interesting for storytelling than "if you have money you get to come back to life, if not you're gone forever".

But in Beam Saber, I don't need to worry about that. It's a game of daring pilots doing great actions. Death is the ultimate fail-state - it either happens because the player wants it to, or because they've gotten way too full on Harm and have no choice. This is still more interesting than just "bang, you're dead".

 

[Micah Sweet]

Games where death is a player choice, to me, always preferable to one where you can die because Random Zombie 6 clawed you a few too many times. Death is the most boring thing that can happen to a character, generally. There's way more interesting things that can happen. Forged in the Dark games allow you to resist any consequence, including death; but you're taking costs for that. Emotional scars, stress, being knocked out of a scene, long lasting injuries. But your character sitll exists. The other players don't suddenly have to invent a new friendship with this character.

In my Pathfinder 1e games, a specific character died three times. HE was the only one who ever actually got knocked out to 0 at all, but that's 1e for you. His death wasn't very emotionally affecting, he got back up each time.

In Pathfinder 2e, one character has died so far. There was a lot of good roleplay to be had about characters grieving and wrrying while they brought his body to their next destination to try and get him resurrected. This tension exists because while they could afford it, in that game it's still essentially a skill check to raise someone. This, too, is a lot more interesting for storytelling than "if you have money you get to come back to life, if not you're gone forever".

But in Beam Saber, I don't need to worry about that. It's a game of daring pilots doing great actions. Death is the ultimate fail-state - it either happens because the player wants it to, or because they've gotten way too full on Harm and have no choice. This is still more interesting than just "bang, you're dead".

I'm fine with different attitudes toward death in other games. But not D&D. To me, a roll of the dice has to have the potential to ruin you.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm fine with different attitudes toward death in other games. But not D&D. To me, a roll of the dice has to have the potential to ruin you.

An interesting turn of phrase--particularly since "ruin" is rather more flexible than "death."

It seems to me that the distinction, then, is that I find a ruin which happens simply because someone forgot to keep the sump empty rather dull and pedestrian, while a ruin which happens because a great temple complex was lost to the jungles after massive social unrest and upheaval is captivating.

That is, random and mundane "ruin" doesn't really do it for me. I want the ruin that befell Rome or Teotihuacan or Angkor, not the ruin of the Jameson Farm that went defunct because Ol' Man Jameson died from an infected horse bite, nor the ruin of the obscure author who wrote one moderately decent book and then died in a freak airplane accident.