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

[Lidgar]

OTOH,
I Survived Being Disintegrate'ed In Undermountain !
because we just came out of a long rest and Ranger5 has more HP than the spell's threshold.

That reminds me of another death we had at around 7th level - disintegrated by an undead beholder in Undermountain! Poor wizard.

And I take no pleasure in PC deaths when DMing - but we all roll in the open and let the dice fall where they may. This is the Way.

 

[Asisreo]

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

Yes, it was a mindflayer. Its not a super-duper strong encounter for a level 7 party but it was actually quite potent.

Round 1

The Cleric went first and cast Spirit Guardians and Spiritual Weapons but then the Mindflayer went next and used Mindblast which actually stunned everyone except the wizard, including the Paladin, Cleric, and Rogue. The Wizard tried to Dispel Magic the Cleric so he could recover but he didn't realize it wasn't a spell and couldn't be dispelled. I lent him a bone for another action but he said screw it and casted fireball which did damage but not enough. The rogue recovered but couldn't act yet and the Paladin remained stunned.

Round 2

The Cleric recovered too but couldn't do anything either. The mindflayer used his tentacles on the Paladin and the Paladin failed that intelligence save. The Rogue missed his shortbow attack on the mindflayer. The Wizard realizes to use Hypnotic Pattern even though it can't be positioned not to hit the Paladin or Rogue too. Mindflayer easily saves the DC 15 Wis save with their +6 and advantage, bummed Wizard. Paladin also saves just for the record.

Round 3
Cleric casts Bless on the Paladin and I think the Rogue and himself. He uses his BA to Spiritual Weapon since that wasn't broken from the stun. Mindflayer uses Extract Brains and crits. (I actually realized re-reading the action that they didn't have to overkill for instadeath but I guess it didn't matter since the Paladin with a max HP of 53 had roughly 20 HP left, the Mindayer does 80-something damage and insta-kills her. The Rogue lands his shortbow but the ally is dead so no sneak attack. The Wizard retries HypnoPat since its a longshot but would stop the madness. Mindflayer succeeds.

Round 4
Cleric drops bless to do his Spirit Guardians thing and does decent damage to the Mindflayer. Mindflayer uses Mindblast again and actually downs the Rogue while stunning the Cleric. Wizard is out of 3rd-level slots so he casts Magic Missile.

Round 5
Cleric fails 2nd save and Mindflayer Tentacles the Cleric and downs him. Wizard pops a healing potion on the rogue. Rogue sees they're losing and flees.

At this point, I saw the Wizard was about to flee too and I decided that the Mindflayer would rendezvous with their colony via Planeshift. They don't return for the cleric, though, and they failed their 3 saves.

 

[Monayuris]

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.

Crikey!

I had to go and re-read the rules. I never caught on to this in my years of playing 5E. When I hit downed PCs, I never even bothered to roll damage! I just had them mark the failed save. Man been running this wrong for so long. Thanks for that.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Yes, it was a mindflayer. Its not a super-duper strong encounter for a level 7 party but it was actually quite potent.

Mind flayers are always deadly at essentially all levels in essentially every edition of the game, and this encounter was pretty heavily in favor of the mind flayer. Yeah, "that's when a mind flayer would attack," but that doesn't make it less true. There are three D&D monsters that you should never underestimate because the game often lowballs them: dragons, beholders, and mind flayers.

Round 1

The Cleric went first and cast Spirit Guardians and Spiritual Weapons but then the Mindflayer went next and used Mindblast which actually stunned everyone except the wizard, including the Paladin, Cleric, and Rogue. The Wizard tried to Dispel Magic the Cleric so he could recover but he didn't realize it wasn't a spell and couldn't be dispelled. I lent him a bone for another action but he said screw it and casted fireball which did damage but not enough. The rogue recovered but couldn't act yet and the Paladin remained stunned.

Uh, what?

How did the cleric cast a 3rd level spell and a 2nd level spell in the same turn? That's not allowed even if a spell is cast as bonus action casting time. See PHB Chapter 10 under Casting Time, the Bonus Action entry reads, "A spell cast with a bonus action is especially swift. You must use a bonus action on your turn to cast the spell, provided that you haven't already taken a bonus action this turn. You can't cast another spell during the same turn, except for a cantrip with a casting time of 1 action."

And why exactly does Dispel Magic not work on Mind Blast? The ability reads, "The mind flayer magically emits psychic energy in a 60-foot cone." Sounds like a magical effect to me.

Round 2

The Cleric recovered too but couldn't do anything either. The mindflayer used his tentacles on the Paladin and the Paladin failed that intelligence save. The Rogue missed his shortbow attack on the mindflayer. The Wizard realizes to use Hypnotic Pattern even though it can't be positioned not to hit the Paladin or Rogue too. Mindflayer easily saves the DC 15 Wis save with their +6 and advantage, bummed Wizard. Paladin also saves just for the record.

Round 3
Cleric casts Bless on the Paladin and I think the Rogue and himself. He uses his BA to Spiritual Weapon since that wasn't broken from the stun. Mindflayer uses Extract Brains and crits. (I actually realized re-reading the action that they didn't have to overkill for instadeath but I guess it didn't matter since the Paladin with a max HP of 53 had roughly 20 HP left, the Mindayer does 80-something damage and insta-kills her. The Rogue lands his shortbow but the ally is dead so no sneak attack. The Wizard retries HypnoPat since its a longshot but would stop the madness. Mindflayer succeeds.

So, you focused down the Paladin. That's fine, but that's exactly what you did. That's why you killed a PC. In 3 rounds you did 4d8+4 + 2d10+4 + 20d10 (147) damage to them when they have 53 hp max (below average unless they had a Con of 13 or less). Instant death is not why this character died.

Round 4
Cleric drops bless to do his Spirit Guardians thing and does decent damage to the Mindflayer. Mindflayer uses Mindblast again and actually downs the Rogue while stunning the Cleric. Wizard is out of 3rd-level slots so he casts Magic Missile.

Round 5
Cleric fails 2nd save and Mindflayer Tentacles the Cleric and downs him. Wizard pops a healing potion on the rogue. Rogue sees they're losing and flees.

At this point, I saw the Wizard was about to flee too and I decided that the Mindflayer would rendezvous with their colony via Planeshift. They don't return for the cleric, though, and they failed their 3 saves.

Beyond that, your players clearly have no concept of what Mind Flayers actually do or what they're good at. You started the encounter with the Mind Flayer able to mind blast the whole party, your PCs failed multiple consecutive DC 15 saves even with a 7th level Paladin clearly nearby (since the party must have been within 30 feet of the mind flayer since the stunned paladin was immediately in melee range), then you rolled a natural 20 on one of the highest damage attacks in the entire game, and the party in general doesn't seem to understand how to use their own class abilities as they spend rounds 3, 4, and 5 doing things that sabotage themselves (shortbow with no ally, repeatedly using spells that the creature resists, etc.).

This is not a remotely average encounter. Your party rolled about as bad as they possibly could, you rolled about as well as I could imagine, and when your players got frustrated by the encounter they gave up.

However, given how things are roughly described, what was the goal of this encounter? Did the characters know they would be facing a mind flayer? Do the players have any knowledge of what mind flayers can do? Did you make it clear to the wizard just how obviously ineffective hypnotic pattern was from the first casting? Did you remind the rogue that the shortbow would prevent him from using sneak attack? Did you, the DM, tell the players when they were making decisions that their characters would obviously know were poor decisions, or did you let them walk into bad choices because they lack system mastery? In the middle of an encounter that was sliding quickly towards TPK?

 

[loverdrive]

It's like 80% of stories I hear from the Lost Mines. Klarg probably has more frags than any other NPC in 5e history.

I personally run my games with no death at all (well, only by active choice), so I'm not exactly bothered by massive damage rule.

 

[Xetheral]

I concur that the result of the mindflayer battle was the combination of the mistaken ruling that Dispel Magic wouldn't work, plus the characters apparently not knowing how dangerous being grappled by a Mindflayer is. If they'd known about the Extract Brain ability, and its dependence on grapples, then they could have all used Shove on the Mindflayer whenever it established a grapple. The Mindflayer has a +0 Athletics check, so even the Wizard would have had better odds of saving the Paladin with a Shove than with a Hypnotic Pattern. (Note that Shoving the Paladin would also work to break the grapple, although most Paladins have a higher Athletics check bonus than the typical Mindflayer does.)

I recommend not using super-lethal monsters like Mind Flayers against the PCs until they've had a chance to hear IC about its special abilities and the counter to those abilities.

 

[werecorpse]

I would have also ruled that dispel magic didn’t work to remove the stunned condition sure its occurred because magic was used but imo it’s not a magical effect its what happens to you if you get mind blasted - but that’s not the point.

A mind flayer is a powerful foe at 7th level because it’s blast targets a saving throw that is not usually very string; and it’s the classic monster that if all goes right for it will kill a character Of about the right level. My advice as soon as you see “if a character is reduced to 0hp it dies“ or an attack that does an average damage of about 10+5xcharacter level it’s not a normal monster. The wraith is another one of these - very deadly for CR5.

These monsters are rare and let’s face it the CR system needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. I still feel that on average a 7th level character is unlikely to die from this kind of attack. Don‘t stress about too much but keep an eye out for those warning signs.

However one of the reasons these monsters are so dangerous is that they can remove the safety of dropping to 0hp and being still 53hp from death (in your Paladins case).

 

[Imaculata]

Mindflayers are just super dangerous in any edition. I believe the DM has some responsibility in clearly communicating what the creature can do to the players, to prevent such avoidable deaths. Foreshadowing its extract brain ability is one of those things I would definitely clearly telegraph.

 

[Asisreo]

Uh, what?
How did the cleric cast a 3rd level spell and a 2nd level spell in the same turn? That's not allowed even if a spell is cast as bonus action casting time. See PHB Chapter 10 under Casting Time, the Bonus Action entry reads, "A spell cast with a bonus action is especially swift. You must use a bonus action on your turn to cast the spell, provided that you haven't already taken a bonus action this turn. You can't cast another spell during the same turn, except for a cantrip with a casting time of 1 action."

Allow me to correct myself, He actually casted Spirit Weapon and I don't think he actually casted Spirit Guardians until the last round or 2. My bad.

And why exactly does Dispel Magic not work on Mind Blast? The ability reads, "The mind flayer magically emits psychic energy in a 60-foot cone." Sounds like a magical effect to me.

You're correct that you can target Mindblast, but Dispel Magic only affects spells itself. Even though Mindblast is a valid target, the spell would basically do nothing but waste the turn and slot. That's why I gave them a second chance on their action.

However, given how things are roughly described, what was the goal of this encounter? Did the characters know they would be facing a mind flayer? Do the players have any knowledge of what mind flayers can do? Did you make it clear to the wizard just how obviously ineffective hypnotic pattern was from the first casting? Did you remind the rogue that the shortbow would prevent him from using sneak attack? Did you, the DM, tell the players when they were making decisions that their characters would obviously know were poor decisions, or did you let them walk into bad choices because they lack system mastery? In the middle of an encounter that was sliding quickly towards TPK?

The goal was to set up the next hook. I was maybe expecting someone might die, but the Cleric had revivify and a couple of diamonds which is fine. Its when the cleric was downed while the rogue fell that made the rogue and wizard players basically high-tail it.

They knew about mindflayers but they never really experienced one until then, which is why I waited until it was a medium encounter and why it was a single-target fight with the fight beginning in melee. The plan was for me to showcase what a general Mindflayer would do so that at levels 15-17, the adventure to the Elder Brain would be a bit more telegraphed and they won't be too surprised during an actual boss fight. Get their ducks in a row with spell picks and magic items.

I essentially telegraph everything, though, and I try to make even the metagame clearer so they don't misunderstand me. When he used the tentacle attack, I essentially said "He connects his chin to her head and teeth begins clasping down on the head. He'll try to extract her brains next turn." My party was definitely doing their best, though.
The rogue just plain never had a chance to sneak attack since its not like anything could spare a Help action, the Wizard's 3rd level slots consisted of Counterspell, Dispel Magic, Hypnotic Pattern, and Fireball and he was waiting for me to cast a spell, which is why he saved his last 3rd-level slot. The Paladin tried staying close to at least the Cleric but the Rogue and Wizard are usually too squishy to be within 10ft of the front line, even for the +4 to saves. The cleric is used to his Spirit Guardians, Spiritual Weapon trick so I don't blame him for doing that.

Mindflayers can be deadly in particular but this isn't an isolated event. Like I said, death feels much more frequent for all my games than what I see in forums so I generally don't know if there's any inconsistencies in play. I've had a level 10 player die to bands of hobgoblins, a level 12-13 player die fighting a Death Slaad, I lost the same player's character twice to vampires.

It just feels like I may be running a completely different game.

 

[rgoodbb]

Seen it from a Disintegrate spell on a 13th level Barbarian. Pretty nasty spell.