D&D 5E Instant Death. Am I the only one who experienced this or what?

[Charlaquin]

People might also be avoiding instant death by using average damage for monster attacks.

 

[commandercrud]

People might also be avoiding instant death by using average damage for monster attacks.

Always roll!

 

[Lidgar]

I’d say it happens in most campaigns I play in or run, especially at levels 1 and 2. But I’ve also seen it happen to an 8th level sorcerer who was crit by a 5th level chromatic orb. Very messy.

 

[Mannahnin]

There is no such thing as negative HP in 5th Edition D&D, correct.

Its essentially whenever the damage = current HP + max HP.

I'm a bit curious, do you often play with medium encounters? Prefer using average damage? Never play with low HP PC's?

I'm trying to imagine a playstyle where this doesn't show up at least once in a typical 1-10 campaign.

I have a tendency to run hard encounters, in part because adventure and real time pacing makes it tricky to run 6-8 encounters in a game day. I roll damage, but the PCs did get a slight HP buff in the game I was running for about a year and a half (it's on hiatus at the moment; hoping to resume next year). The PCs had recently hit 8th level when we went on hiatus, as I run relatively slow advancement.

To detail the HP buff, since it seems to be the most relevant data point for your survey, I let them always take the top half of the die if they roll lower. So, for example, a Fighter gets to roll their D10, and if it's lower than a 6, she gets a 6. This was very useful for them with the difficulty of fights I was throwing at them, especially in the first few levels, though I'm regretting it a little now.

No one's died from massive damage yet. The only PC death was one which got polymorphed into a weasel by some malevolent pixies, then swallowed by a Giant Frog. He failed one death save, then rolled a natural 1 on the second save before another PC got to him.

I've had, I think, three fights over the course of the campaign which were so nasty that they nearly wound up being TPKs, but in each instance, one or two PCs held on conscious and fighting (actually in one of them, the Fighter made two natural 20 death saves to stand up and resume fighting) until the end, and were able to stabilize and heal the rest.

For most of the campaign I did not have enemies specifically target downed PCs (though they occasionally got caught in the AoE of damaging spells), though I started to change that later in the game. Had an evil angel specifically coup de grace the Fighter and kill her in front of her best friend in one of their last fights, but said best friend was a cleric with Revivify, so that was temporary.

 

[Lidgar]

And for reference:

Instant Death​

Massive damage can kill you instantly. When damage reduces you to 0 hit points and there is damage remaining, you die if the remaining damage equals or exceeds your hit point maximum.

For example, a cleric with a maximum of 12 hit points currently has 6 hit points. If she takes 18 damage from an attack, she is reduced to 0 hit points, but 12 damage remains. Because the remaining damage equals her hit point maximum, the cleric dies.

 

[LordEntrails]

Instant death happens in my games. Not often, but when appropriate. Monsters generally don't attack unconscious PCs, but on occasion they do. Just like more often now NPCs don't die at 0 hit points so my players are starting to attack them when they are down. Tactics go both ways.

Can't recall the last time I had a TPK, and PC deaths haven't happened in a long time either. But I feel that's because my players know I won't save them from bad rolls or bad decisions, so they are cautious. Besides, the sorcerer with a helm of teleport is kind of a chicken some times!

 

[Mannahnin]

The other full campaign of 5th ed I played in went 8th-20th, and again, I don't think we ever had an instant death due to damage. Maybe it was just due to monster selection.

My subjective experience has been that the instant death rule (has to be a single hit, basically, for [Max HP + Current HP]) makes it very difficult to do unless a very big damage monster specifically targets a low HP character while they're at single digits or down. Which doesn't happen much, IME. It was much more of a factor in 4th ed, which had negative HP and death automatically occurred at negative = half max HP.

 

[billd91]

It's happened once (so far) in a campaign I was running. Wraith rolled a crit and the PC failed his save, so not only did he take 8d8+3 necrotic damage (which was more than he had at the time), but the same amount also came off his hit point maximum. That pretty much did him in. It was glorious!

 

[Zubatcarteira]

Happened once to our Monk, took some 90 damage at once from a Paladin crit and insta-died. The Cleric instantly Revivify'd them, but still.

 

[TheSword]

I once had a sorceress who was grappled by a red dragon chewed to 0 hp and the. Flung into a mountain. It was instadeath. I was quite aggrieved. So I created a dirty Uber broken character. Campaign ended. Sad. Lose lose