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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 7939612" data-attributes="member: 6801228">That is the ideal, but people will use the strategies and care they are going to use either way. And this sometimes leads to "pixel-ing" because if you trigger any trap, you die, so you take a 10 ft pole, give it to a hireling and have them tap every. single. square. Actually, traps are a good example. Let me ask you this. Is the Tomb of Horrors challenging? Is it equally challenging if you know the answers to all the traps? In video game design, this is a phenomena, though I can't remember the official term, but I tend to think of it as shallow challenge. Do the wrong thing, die. Do the right thing, move on. The problem is, after you solve it, it is boring. Because you just repeat the same steps.And, another part of this, is that death is not a failure condition of DnD. "My character died" does not mean you have failed to complete the game, because you simply roll up another character. Killing PCs is meaningless in the grand scheme of the game, unless you make it meaningful, and part of making it meaningful to me, is making it rare. I've had players freak out over dropping to 0 hp. 0 hp, there are three healers in the party and only two enemies left. They freak out, and it becomes a bit of a scramble to save the party member, who is objectively in no real danger. So, I don't need to make it so poisons instant kill, or dropping to zero hp instant kills, because my players already fear death, even though I can't think of a single 5e PC I've killed without the player asking me to (they were leaving the game, wanted to go out in a cool manner, so I did)They haven't been eliminated, they've been shortened. The attrition is on the daily side of the scale, so you have to consider your resources for the day. Now, I will fully admit, that causes some issues with wilderness survival campaigns. Traveling three weeks through the woods where you fight maybe once every two days, is not a challenge for the party. I've somewhat mitigated that by having HP require you spend HD during a long rest to heal, it shows some attrition on the parties resources. But on the daily scale, such as clearing a temple complex where you can get into two or three fights a day, those strategic decisions still appear, just on a shorter time scale. It isn't "do I use this spell now that I might need in three days" it is "do I use this spell now, or will I need it in the next room".See, I agree with you, choices make the game challenging. But "poison kills you if you fail a save" doesn't give the player a choice. What choice is there? Never get ambushed by a spider? You don't want to get ambushed anyways, so you are already trying to prevent that. Don't fail a save? You don't have a choice in that matter. Now, I've never played B/X or OD&D, so maybe you are right, but it seems to me that all 5e did, is make it so that one bad choice doesn't kill a character. Which, I appreciate, because a dead character doesn't make choices. I like the chance for them to make multiple bad choices and get more and more desperate to get out of them. You have to live with it, if you made a choice. The party lays down for the night, checking the campsite. The DM asks them to roll dice for perception. They all fail, especially the person on watch. The DM declares they never wake up, they are dead. What do you as the player have to live with here? That you made a bad roll? You don't even know what killed you, so you have no way to change anything you did. The thief checks for traps on the door, rolls poorly, dies. What do they do next time differently? The fighter is walking through the woods with the party, goblin archers spring out of an ambush and shoot him with poisoned arrows. He fails the save, dies. What regrets should he have? "Sometimes bad things just happen" is generally the response to these sort of scenarios, but that kind of highlights the point. Those things are deadly, but they aren't challenging, because the players made no decisions. "Next time they scout ahead for the goblins", who said they didn't do that this time? IF you make all the correct decisions, and still die due to bad luck, then there are no regrets, but also no challenge. Except to get luckier next time.You can fail without dying too. Being captured by Drow Slavers instead of rescuing the princess is still failing. Yet, no one died. TPK just means the story ends and you have to start another. And, save or die effects aren't challenging, they are a coin flip. Earlier in this thread I gave the example of a coin flip dungeon. Enter a room, flip a coin. Heads you lived, tails you died. Go to the next room. That is deadly, 50% chance of any character dying at any time. But it isn't challenging, because you can't make any decisions to effect the outcome.Thank all the dice gods that Vancian is nearly dead. I hate the idea of trying to predict how many times I need a spell. I'm also not sure why hp increasing past 9th level, in a game that goes to 20th level, is a bad thing. I'd be a little miffed to gain no benefits for 11 levels of play. I like that skills are easier to perform, means I can succeed on things instead of randomly flailing about. I also like that anyone can climb or sneak. After all... anyone can climb or sneak. Seen a nine month old climb up a playset up past my shoulders. If they can climb, why can't any adult try climbing a surface. Also, side note, what does most of this have to do with deadliness? "Anyone can climb, the game is so much less challenging", what, previously if you fell in a pit you just died because you couldn't climb out? "Now anyone can talk the duke around to increasing the bounty" doesn't make the game less challenging. And, frankly, less missing, less dying, more actual things happening that allow for decisons, which are the real challenging part of the game... I'm not seeing a lot of problems here.Alternatively:Torches make Light cantrips unnecessaryRations make Goodberry cantrips unnecessary. Torches cost coppers, rations 5 silver. 10 gold will last you nearly a full week and that is pocket change to most adventuring parties. Plus, survival rolls or even the Outlander background (because if you've spent your life living off the land... you should be able to live off the land) do the same thing. Also, a Giant in the Playground thread I was in pointed out that 3.X had far more spell slots that 5e. So, maybe more spell slots compared to B/X, but not the last twenty years of the game. Recovering to full after the unit of challenge is kind of what you expect, isn't it? After a month of resting in 3.5, pretty much every debilitating effect in the game was gone, right? Ability score drain recovered at a point a day, hp recovered at a point a day, spells slots recovered daily and healing spells, scrolls, potions, and wands were plentiful. Magic attack cantrips may be more plentiful, but that allows magic users to be more than poor fighters at low levels. Most of my magic users don't bother getting a crossbow, it isn't worth it to them. Which I like, I want my mage using magic, not shooting a crossbow. If I wanted to shoot a crossbow, I'd play a rogue.</blockquote>

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