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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8716194" data-attributes="member: 6801228">No, 5e is not designed that way. And I know, you are about to list all the things you think make 5e a carnival ride for Immortal Demi-Gods who act like clowns because consequences don't exist and fear isn't in their dictionary. I've run 5e since it came out. No one I have ever played with treated it that way. No one I have ever played with thought of it that way. I've run multiple groups with multiple people. Not a single thing in my experience backs up those claims. Don't even bother listing them, because I've read them multiple times from you, and they are actually 100% irrelevant. I'm talking about how people actually play at the table, and people plan constantly at my tables to mitigate risk. Your concept that they cannot possibly do so because 5e is too easy doesn't change the literal fact that they always do.None of this has anything to do with the point? Whether or not they are a team player because they listen to the plan or because they invest in buff spells and don't fireball the party has absolutely nothing to do with the point. The point is that it is quite dangerous to approach PC death with an attitude that is only a hair removed from "PC death is good because we can bully the player of the dead character into acting like we want, because they died when they didn't". For the following reasons1) You don't know that their death WASN'T because they were being a team player. One of the most common near-death expeirences I've seen in DnD is the tank sticking next to the enemy because their job is to take the hits so the rest of the party doesn't have to. I actually did this myself not too long ago, allowing my barbarian who had been bounced back up from 0 to stay next to the enemy, because the enemy made 3 attacks per turn and the only people left in fighting shape included a wizard and a low-con ranger. Yes, my character might have died, but they might have died because my plan was to NOT let the enemy freely assault the only people left who could take them down. 2) Weaponizing peer pressure is a very dangerous thing. Sometimes it is necessary, but social situations are complex and dynamic. Generally, if a PC dies and the player was doing something obviously stupid, then they will feel stupid. Having everyone rag on them about how stupid that was could very easily lead to hurt feelings and problems at the table. This is not a goal.3) People will likely be ragging on them anyways. They've likely been calling them out for making these decisions, and when they are proven right, they will generally point that out. As a DM, I'd be far more concerned about it going to far, than seeing this as a positive way to change behavior, because if their behavior needed changing, then it is something we should have been working on the entire time, not waiting til they died to "rub it in" that they were "playing poorly"Right, but this still assumes Bob was in the wrong. Which is not a given. Which is the point I keep trying to hammer home. Death may not have occurred because Bob made the wrong call. In fact, Bob might be dead because Jim made the wrong call. And if Jim starts ragging on Bob about how Bob should be a better player and work more like a team, then we have a serious situation. I'm not saying you never have a discussion of the team dynamics and how the players are approaching the game. Obviously, you should do that, especially if there are problems. But approaching PC death with the lense that is a good time to rag on the player about not playing "correctly" because they are dead and thus cannot ignore you and your complaints has so many layers of poor communication and problems to it, that you've had deep issues long before the PC hit 0 hp.Did you read the very first line of my response to you? I said: "We have VASTLY different conceptions of who Bob is in this scenario."So, stating that my Bob is less toxic than your Bob... is 100% the point I was making. You took [USER=6877472]@James Gasik[/USER] 's post about how a player's death can impact the entire party, and constructed it a call to punish toxic non-team players who are spotlight hogging and treating their team like sidekicks. But, Jame's point had nothing to do with toxic players or spotlight hogging. Because a team that works like a well-oiled machine, who is fully into buffing their fellows and every other good thing you can imagine? They are impacted MORE by the death of a member of that team, than a team with a toxic player they weren't counting on anyways. Yes, Toxic Bob is a problem, but he is a problem you start dealing with right away. And sure, he may ignore you until his character dies and he has a wake-up moment. But again, that doesn't mean character death was the only way. And focusing on Toxic Bob and his character dying ignores that maybe Toxic Bob led to the death of Jim, who did nothing wrong, except try to be a team player. Or maybe Bob is Non-Toxic Bob who is a key member of the party, and now that he has died the party is severely tactically limited, and thus ragging on Non-Toxic Bob accomplishes nothing except making him feel worse. This is why I've been pressing on this idea that PC death isn't always the fault of poor players or poor decisions or Toxic Bob's. Because if your conception of PC death doesn't allow for a team who works well together and doesn't have a toxic spotlight hog to still suffer PC death, then you are never going to understand why some of us work to prevent PC death. Because you will only ever see it as us excusing poor behavior and Toxic Bob's spotlight hogging, and pay no attention to the reasons we actually do it. Because you can't imagine a good team actually having a PC die.</blockquote>

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