D&D 4E Is character death acceptable in 4e? If so, how often?

[rainsinger]

Well, I've got two things here...

The first, is a few weeks back in my group we went up against a rather oversized force of goblins and kobolds. There are a couple of problems we ran into: 1) Party makeup - We consisted of a Ranger (NPC), Paladin, Bard and Fighter. Needless to say, we were not chewing through minions nearly fast enough so that really tore down on us quickly... to the point where we hadn't even thinned through half the field when we were all down to only second winds as healing options (yikes). Needless to say, Paladin eventually went down (GREATER GOOD!!! ) but we managed to pull it off with a touch of DM intervention. That's honestly the only thing that kept this from a TPK. My person opinion though, is that the threat of character death has to be there and be real to keep a truly dramatic sense of story going.

That leads into my second thing where I personally think that character death can actually help a group and/or storyline drastically. I can't tell you how many times over the course of my gaming someone in the group has died and it lead to all kinds of changes of pace, decisions leading to different routes taken and so on that made the story just that much better. Though, obviously, TPK is a whole other matter, the short version of my opinion is that character death on an occasional basis is not only acceptable, it should be somewhat expected.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

I try to make fights challenging but fair. I calibrate my battles so that the PCs will die if they're foolish or use bad tactics, and win if they're smart. This seems to be working so far; no deaths yet, but there's the constant possibility for one, and I like the feel of that.

That is consistent with how I run my games. To my mind, unless the fight has some actual risk to it, its not worth it to go to the trouble of having it.

As for the original posters question, I have had character death in games I have played in, and I do not thing it is a big problem. Generally, the deaths will happen when the following conditios are true.

1) A character has been brought to 0 or fewer HP while the fights outcome is still in question.
2) No one is able to heal stand the character up.
3) The other players are in bad enough shape that risking AoO's to stabilize the fallen ally are not a risk worth taking.

I had one Avenger die when he was dropped and a Goblin readied an action to finish him off if the other PC's did not let him flee. After some consideration, the players decided to just try to kill the Goblin. The readied action finisihed off the Avenger.

I have seen a Ranger get killed when the party ran out of healing resources in what was a near TPK. I cannot recall how he was dropped. Ultimately I told the Rogue's player out of character that since we were not able to reasonably expect to finish off the opponent, he should just use a shift action to get out of melee, then run while I got dropped. In character I was cursing that ones cowardace. I was permitted to survive for story reasons (and I wanted to keep the PC).

In other games I have had players at 0 or less and one more failed death save away from death; We had another monster on its feet, myself and another character were in very bad shape. We also had no healing resources and more badguys coming. We managed to stabilize the character, barricade a door to buy a few more rounds, and ran away.

If the characters were not meant to die occasionally, there would be no rules for '3 strikes and your out' death saves, and no HP.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[keterys]

I was DMing a group once that intentionally chose to get in over their heads (LFR lets you choose to play low or high tier, and I warned them their level was a little low for this module - doable, but very difficult) and came a whisker from a TPK... they were fighting a wererat and his rat minions and killed the wererat, but dropped to his rats. One PC was stabilized by another PC and one ran away... and the remaining three characters were rolling stabilization checks while I nibbled away at their hp and one of them rolled a 20 and popped back up, so I had the rats flee cause they had no one making them attack anymore and had already eaten.

Should I have been meaner and kept them fighting? Should I have had the stabilized one start rolling again as rats went after her already stabilized body? Meh, I'm for players living and it still reinforced that there was a very real chance of death cause everyone had to make 3 death saves and two people were at two failed

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Character death so far in our 4e play has been much rarer than in prior editions, where death was a near-constant.

I find the odd 'you almost never lose just one character' thing a little hard to get used to, but I think in practice it works out pretty well. Nobody likes to be that guy who dies in the first fight and has to wait for the rest of the players to finish the adventure before he gets to have his guy raised or can make a new character to introduce.

For my part, I haven't had any 4e characters die yet. Of course, I also shepherded Living Greyhawk characters to level 18, 16, 15, 13, 9, 4, and 3, Living Arcanis to level 12, played through the first half of Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil (I moved halfway through the game), and all the way through age of worms with only two character deaths (My Living Arcanis character died once to dual x3 crits and I lost one character to a 7th level TPK in age of worms). So, for me, at least as a player, death wasn't all that common in 3.x either.

As a DM, I haven't killed anyone yet in 4e while I killed more than a few characters in the halcyon days of 3e and 3.5. On the other hand, I don't DM 4th edition much either--and I've pulled my punches at least once to avoid near TPKing a party. (Another time, I probably would have at least come close, but I was reading the low-tier statblocks and using them against a party who wanted to play high tier--given a few more hits and a bit more damage on each hit, I would have had a good chance of killing a couple PCs; as it was, I only dropped one unconscious then collapsed the boat he was in, dumping his unconscious body into a river of raw sewage).

 

[Lucas Blackstone]

I'm surprised that a lot of people just say " Have monsters CdG all the time! " The rules specifically say not to do this, it should be a rarity, not a common tactic. Catching fallen enemies in AOEs is a perfectly acceptable thing though since it makes no sense for them to not hit the down players along with others.

 

[Lauberfen]

I think the idea being bandied around of the party just feeling 'he's got a few turns left, he can bleed' is nonsense.

In these situations the unconscious character has usually used his second wind already, so you're looking at heal DC15, and a turn of lost action. As previously mentioned, it's not always best to revive someone, if they then just get knocked down again.

No-one's talking about holding back on a healing word on an unconscious character (unless it's just before the monsters, where they will just jump on the prone and vulnerable character). It's about characters who are often not trained in healing giving up positions and attacks to have a chance at stabilising someone. If a character's on the floor, there's almost always a real threat to the party as well.

The one time my cleric died, and the party lived, there was no-one with a bonus to heal, and stabilising him would have meant losing a viable attack against still threatening opponents, in exchange for a 40% chance of stopping me dying, assuming that they then also won the encounter.

This is much like real battles- in general, if you're wounded on the losing side, you're dead. If you're wounded on the winning side, you might well make it. Since you're talking about less than a minute, it makes much more sense to remove the immediate threat to the whole party and look to the wounded later, if you possibly can.

 

[Blackbrrd]

I actually like the 3 failed death saves and you are dead.
I don't like the -bloodied and you are dead.

3 failed death saving throws is something that can be fixed with a heal check from another player and it ups the tension in a battle. In addition, no players in my game lets a downed character lie down. (In other words, you will probably only be out for 1 round).

I don't like dying from getting to -bloodied because it can be really random. A typical scenario is ongoing damage. There is usually nothing left for the players to do to stop it. Nothing is as anti climatic as somebody going due to ongoing damage.

In my campaign failed death saving throws stay with you until you have a long rest, but you can buy them back with two healing surges. In addition I don't think I would let any character die from ongoing damage. (it is just too lame).

I don't quite know how I would handle the death of a character, because either the players or I have to make some pretty big mistakes for it to happen. On the other hand, if there is no risk of characters dying the tension level in combat would drop too low for my taste.

 

[Jack99]

Dude-- the 3 death save rule is per DAY!

That would be cool if only it was true

So, I am not too keen on the 3 strikes and you are out rule. It can drastically affect player decisions and not for the better. IMO.

I want a downed player to be a priority, I do not want players to say "No worries, he still has a few more rounds". That is so meta-gamey.

I think the 3 strikes rule is anti-team instead of pro-team, so I don't like it. Fortunately, our Cleric has Berronar's Salve, so that mitigates it a bit.

My players roll their death-saves where only I (the DM) can see the result. Keeps it fun!

 

[Lauberfen]

We've always played it as an extended rest. The rules are unclear, but it's much cooler this way, so that's how we'll continue.

 

[the Jester]

Is character death acceptable in 4e?

If you are playing d&d of any type, and you don't think character death is acceptable, you are playing with a very different playstyle than I am.