Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is LIVE! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
In Depth Critique of Part 3 of Basic Rules
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6355332" data-attributes="member: 996"><p>Conveying danger mechanically can be a bit of a challenge. If you're not invested in a character, you're not too fearful for it. If you are, you may be /too/ fearful for it to have it behave heroically. If you blow through a few characters, you may be blaze about character death, which also saps the sense of danger. It's a delicate thing, and I'm not /sure/ lethality in the system helps that much, but I can see how it /might/. Say you roll up your first D&D character and it dies, you think 'wow this game is deadly.' Then you roll up your second character, play it a little more cautiously, get a little luck, and it survives to 2nd or 3rd or 5th or whever it becomes pretty safe in the ed in question. By 9th or so, even if it dies, it can be resurrected. So, you're now in basically no danger of lasting death, but you have that first impression of 'this game is deadly.' Of course, your first impression could also be 'this game sucks' and you never play it again. :shrug:</p><p> </p><p> Well, I'm sorry for that.</p><p></p><p> I'll offer an anecdotal counter-example. The first 5e playtest I ran, a player spent hours building and creating backstory for her character. It died on, it's turn, on the second initiative count of the first round of the first combat of the first session of that first Encounters playtest season. Critical hit, reduced to negative hps, 1 away from death, failed a death save to avoid taking that 1 hps, died. If she'd just rolled /lower/ initiative, someone could've stabilized her. </p><p></p><p>She took it in good humor, reprised a similar character at the next session, and played through the season. (Admittedly, she didn't participate in the playtest again, but she was big enough to finish the season.)</p><p></p><p>5e Encounters, BTW, lets your character be automatically raised by the next session, if you belong to a faction and are under 5th level. (Maybe each faction has a mass-raising party every Thursday and gets a bulk-rate discount.) So it looks like bringing up this issue during the playtest wasn't a complete waste of time.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 6355332, member: 996"] Conveying danger mechanically can be a bit of a challenge. If you're not invested in a character, you're not too fearful for it. If you are, you may be /too/ fearful for it to have it behave heroically. If you blow through a few characters, you may be blaze about character death, which also saps the sense of danger. It's a delicate thing, and I'm not /sure/ lethality in the system helps that much, but I can see how it /might/. Say you roll up your first D&D character and it dies, you think 'wow this game is deadly.' Then you roll up your second character, play it a little more cautiously, get a little luck, and it survives to 2nd or 3rd or 5th or whever it becomes pretty safe in the ed in question. By 9th or so, even if it dies, it can be resurrected. So, you're now in basically no danger of lasting death, but you have that first impression of 'this game is deadly.' Of course, your first impression could also be 'this game sucks' and you never play it again. :shrug: Well, I'm sorry for that. I'll offer an anecdotal counter-example. The first 5e playtest I ran, a player spent hours building and creating backstory for her character. It died on, it's turn, on the second initiative count of the first round of the first combat of the first session of that first Encounters playtest season. Critical hit, reduced to negative hps, 1 away from death, failed a death save to avoid taking that 1 hps, died. If she'd just rolled /lower/ initiative, someone could've stabilized her. She took it in good humor, reprised a similar character at the next session, and played through the season. (Admittedly, she didn't participate in the playtest again, but she was big enough to finish the season.) 5e Encounters, BTW, lets your character be automatically raised by the next session, if you belong to a faction and are under 5th level. (Maybe each faction has a mass-raising party every Thursday and gets a bulk-rate discount.) So it looks like bringing up this issue during the playtest wasn't a complete waste of time. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
In Depth Critique of Part 3 of Basic Rules
Top