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

[ccs]

It's happened a few times in games I run & a few times in games I've played in. Fortunately not to any of my recent characters though.....

 

[CleverNickName]

I think that "instant death" is a lot like Bigfoot: you read about them, and you hear lots of stories on the Internet about them, but you never actually see one for yourself.

I've been playing 5th Edition for almost five years now, as both a player and a DM in three different gaming groups. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen characters die at all, and it's never been from an instant-kill. If a character died at all, it was because they got knocked down and double-tapped by the Evil NPC, or they fell out of range of the cleric and failed three death saves.

 

[jgsugden]

I've always believed the benefit of this rule is in the threat of the instant death, not in the actual instant death. It creates the "risk" of death that provides some reason for caution when PCs get to lower hp totals. That encourages actual fear when the hp totals are low ... but it is mostly an illusion because few things can deal that high level of damage when used at level appropriate places after PCs reach 3rd level.

In AD&D, my house rules was that your PC died when they reached negative hps equal to their constitution, and they lost 1d4 hps per round when unconscious. We lost a lot of PCs to heavy blows when at low hps, even with the lower average damage of that edition. 5E is much better.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

It is certainly more common at low levels. I would guess it also happens more if everyone rolsl HP at level up because then, in the low levels when you've only had a few rolls, it could be pretty streaky. The time I rolled a 1 on my first level up for a wizard I spent level 2 with a 9 hit point max, which meant a constant anxiety about instant death. Fortunately for the character, level 2 doesn't last very long.

As a DM I've killed a few characters with it, but the highest was level 4. The lowest was level 1 in the first little encounter of the campaign. It is striking because it often feels a bit like it comes out of nowhere.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Do you check instant-death damage? If your player is a level 1 rogue and gets hit with 18 damage, do you tell the rogue they instantly died with no saves after?

When the level 5 unconscious barbarian takes 50 damage due to an autocrit increasing the average damage of a CR 5 creature like a triceratops and they roll quite high on damage, do you tell them revivify or roll a new character?

I feel instant death contributes alot to not only preventing yo-yo healing but also incentivizing in-combat healing of significance more than just Healing Word and the general reminder that their characters could die without any prevention could be reason enough to have them make more careful decisions.

Yes, we check for instant death. I can't remember the last time it came up, however. I remember it happening once, but it was so long ago that I don't remember if it was a PC or an NPC (it was not an enemy).

I can't imagine putting something that routinely deals 18 damage in a single strike up against level 1 PCs, though. Yes, an orc can crit and can deal 27 damage with a greataxe and a single ogre is not even deadly for level 1 PCs... but it's simply never come up before. Level 1 lasts one session at our table. Level 2 lasts two sessions. Those aren't based on XP. That's just how long we play those levels before moving on. Everyone is excited to get to level 3, but we don't like starting at level 3 since there's a lot of development that happens in the first three sessions.

Personally, I don't think the instant death rule is a very good rule. It comes up so rarely and adds so little to the game that it's just not that valuable. Yes, we roll with it. But I don't think it's a rule that stands up to the barest of scrutiny. I certainly wouldn't use it in combination with polymorph, for example, even though power word kill will kill a creature polymorphed into a goat outright.

Edit: Dropped a word or two.

 

[Shiroiken]

IME it's the most common form of death. At lower levels, getting healed from 0 HP (or being dropped to only a few HP) puts you in a great deal of danger, as the likelihood of this is fairly high. As you gain levels the probability drops significantly, unless the enemy specifically targets a downed PC. Death by failed saves is pretty rare, but evenly distributed across every level.

If you want a more consistently lethal version, change the Massive Damage threshold to equal your Con score plus twice level. At level 1 and 2 it'll be harder to die, but after that it'll get easier rather than harder.

 

[Rhenny]

Yup, first level got one of our PCs too. Big fighter got crit by a bugbear boss in our 2nd session into Lost Mines of Phandelver. He got pulped!

 

[werecorpse]

Every so often, there are questions about the deadliness of D&D and how to improve it. From short adventuring days to yo-yo healing to instant-win control spells.

When I see these questions, especially coming out of a recent game that I DM, I feel like I'm somehow playing a different game. So, I want to know if there's any way that perhaps this forum is making the game artificially easier than the designers intended.

Do you check instant-death damage? If your player is a level 1 rogue and gets hit with 18 damage, do you tell the rogue they instantly died with no saves after?

When the level 5 unconscious barbarian takes 50 damage due to an autocrit increasing the average damage of a CR 5 creature like a triceratops and they roll quite high on damage, do you tell them revivify or roll a new character?


I feel instant death contributes alot to not only preventing yo-yo healing but also incentivizing in-combat healing of significance more than just Healing Word and the general reminder that their characters could die without any prevention could be reason enough to have them make more careful decisions.

Yes I do and so have the GMs I've played with. This type of death happened a couple of times at levels 1-2 and then infrequently up to about level 4 but not since then Iirc.
I also play the auto crit on an unconscious character but the Insta death chance seems rarely relevant past about 4th level whereas the impact of 2 failed death saves always matter.

The risk of this insta death may have made a small difference to preventing yo yo healing but it has been pretty negligible in my gaming experience and has not been noticeable in the vast majority of encounters. A noticeable prevention of this has been the GM running the monsters that if they realise you are, or are likely to be, yo yoing from unconscious to back in the fight (either because they have seen it happen or they are savvy combatant) they melee attack unconscious characters a couple of times to kill them.

5e doesn’t have to not be deadly - in a world where goblin hordes have been battling against enemies with readily accessible healing and yo yo potential for decades as soon as the bugbear or hobgoblin drops an adventurer the goblins scuttle in to knife the downed adventurer. They KNOW that an unconscious enemy with access to healing magic is one that is just part of the way to being defeated, BUT is easier to hit and is 2 good blows away from being out long term.

 

[Asisreo]

The reason I bring it up is because death seems far more frequent in my games. Its not just the same players, either. It feels like even players who have gotten a good firm grasp of the game concepts struggle in what are usually basic encounters.

I'm trying to determine what exactly makes the game so easy for your party yet my party struggles any time I designate an "adventuring day."

For reference, a character goes unconscious once every 1-2 sessions and a PC dies roughly once every level up.

Even at levels 6+, I find characters succumbing to challenges that shouldn't have much threat of killing a PC.

Maybe its because I have good (bad) luck and a good sense of tactics but even when I do things like avoid hitting downed players purposefully or force squishy characters into melee, my players struggle to survive.

Also, my group just lost 2 characters to only the second medium encounter of the day, one of which due to a instant death from a critical at level 7 and my players, who enjoy challenges, are saying that my game is somehow more deadly than they expect despite me never really putting them against deadly challenges.

 

[werecorpse]

Can you be specific about the monster and the hit points of the PC?

Its not uncommon for monsters to do multiple dice damage making criticals dangerous but against these creatures the characters should react accordingly.
Battling a Chasme demon with its approx 40 damage attack needs to be treated differently than a drider doing multiple attacks doing about 8. That demon bug can insta kill easily enough especially if it follows up an attack on a creature it has made unconscious. In my world they are deadly demon assassins