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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 7932713" data-attributes="member: 6801228">I think there is plenty of luck with all of the dice rolling in the game already. Randomness is still alive and well in many aspects of the game. We don't need random deaths on top of it.You just finished pointing out that there is a massive difference between "dying on a 2 or on a 1" and "dying on a 1 or not at all" The players being too scared to fight an enemy and never even trying is vastly different from saying they can never fail. In fact, making it so they will at least attempt would seem to make things more likely to fail than if they retreat from every threat they are not confident they can face."Go clear out the graveyard it is full of ghouls""Give us better equipment, ghouls are scary" "Here, take this bright light, ghouls will avoid it and not fight you" More seriously, you could get similar items for similar reasons in 5e. Ghoul paralysis is still scary in 5e, trust me, I've seen people freak out over it in a 5e combat. I would think it would show somewhat that the difference in deadliness isn't so great if players would still want counter-measures either way.Okay, but you don't need to mimic the horrors of war to get Combat as War. I've played in a 5e game utilizing that philosophy, in fact myself and the DM asked the other players if they would be okay with it, explained what we meant, and have gone forward with it. And we did not need instant death effects to make it feel scary. We have not needed to have enemies who can permanently maim us. In fact, we have had a maiming. We just had a character lose a hand to a trap. Our monk touched something they shouldn't have and lost their hand to it. But, that was a very rare occurance, the first time anything like that has happened in over a year. Beyond that we have simply fought for our survival and done a heck of a job dealing with enemies who are usually much scarier than us, until we out think and out fight them. Realism is a fine goal, but you don't need to have permanent effects on PCs to achieve Combat as War, it is a mind-set not a series of abilities.A sports team is an interesting analogy, and I can see it. I disagree with it as a full approach though, because the characters are the story. And so, if they move to a different team, their story follows that new path. For me, a campaign is more about the characters in it than the party. A story changes drastically when a character of importance leaves it, and I don't want to encourage that loss. Because it leaves behind it unwalked paths and stories that can now not be told that the players wanted answers to, but now cannot because those were the stories of a person who died and is no longer part of the narrative.</blockquote>

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