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

[Caliber]

Hmm, let's see. In my Wednesday night game, I'm playing through the H series of modules (and theoretically the P and E series once we reach the appropriate levels). We've had one complete TPK with no one escaping once, with I don't know how many everyone-but-one-or-two-Ks. I'd reckon close to a dozen, and that isn't a stretch at all.

I've personally died 7 or 8 times (we're in Pyramid of Shadows, having started over at our first complete and total TPK). I've come in with a new character after dying the last week and died again multiple times, sometimes in the very first combat with my brand new character! There's a reason I generally bring more than one character to the game, and why I advise most of the other players to do the same. Generally stupid tactics or blatant CdGs are completely uninvolved here; honestly I don't think anyone has ever been CdG'd, and most of the time if we're left bleeding after the fight we've been stabilized and captured rather than killed. And yet the death toll stands equal with the other two great meat grinders this group has played ... the Shackled City and Age of Worms APs.

On Thursday nights I am currently DMing a group through SoW. So far we're almost finished with the second module, and while no one has died in this one (yet) the first one was a veritable bloodbath. Admittedly though, in this case it was more bad tactics than anything else. The poor druid, though, really didn't do anything too stupid, other than thinking he could fight two needlefang drake swarms (the swarms were pretty clear on the fact that he, indeed, could not).

Edit: As a side note, no one has managed to get resurrected even once in either of my games, even though we were of appropriate level for a little while before the TPK in the Wednesday night one. I kinda think resurrection would be more common in earlier editions ...

 

[Lauberfen]

...It is true that not one player has actually used the phrase you quoted, but there are frequent comments back & forth about "how many saves have you missed?", "how many hp do you have left?" and "do you have any ongoing damage on you?"...

Wait just a second.

Characters have no way of knwing what HP other characters are on, nor how many saves they've failed. I believe they do get to know about ongoing damage etc.

In my group we're absolutely not allowed to discuss HPs, saves etc- so you just don't know. This makes it scary as hell, and you make sure you get people back up as soon as you can.

We also don't talk outside of our own turns, to avoid endless (and horribly unrealistic) discussion of tactics etc. The only exception to this is that when a character is unconscious and dying, and things look rough, the DM traditionally leaves the room to allow the players to discuss how to keep the party alive.

We find this works really well. We're happy with this, and since we all take turns DMing it's not something the DM's imposing on us.

 

[Akaiku]

Wait just a second.

Characters have no way of knwing what HP other characters are on, nor how many saves they've failed. I believe they do get to know about ongoing damage etc.

They can look. Professional heroes can tell with a glance how well a trusted ally is doing, how their morale is holding up and how many mistakes they are making on their fighting. 4th ed characters are by-default cool like that. Getting the mechanics is a shortcut that many players take so that they don't have to decipher the gm's description of those easily observable clues.

Also, the no talking unless it's your turn thing doesn't work for many people. It tends to remove people from the game when they aren't currently stabbing. Especially in a in-person game, it's rather hard to actually just have everyone not talk whilst playing, and tends to go against the social get-together idea usually present in RPing.

 

[KarinsDad]

They can look. Professional heroes can tell with a glance how well a trusted ally is doing, how their morale is holding up and how many mistakes they are making on their fighting. 4th ed characters are by-default cool like that. Getting the mechanics is a shortcut that many players take so that they don't have to decipher the gm's description of those easily observable clues.

Rules quote for this?

Also, the no talking unless it's your turn thing doesn't work for many people. It tends to remove people from the game when they aren't currently stabbing. Especially in a in-person game, it's rather hard to actually just have everyone not talk whilst playing, and tends to go against the social get-together idea usually present in RPing.

It depends.

Talking is fine. Discussing strategy or stating how many hit points someone has is not. If the strategy is talked out loud, the NPCs hear it too.

We had this just occur on Saturday with a player who is notorious for this. She asked who had fewer hit points out of two bloodied PCs for her Cleric to heal. The answer was, your PC does not know about hit points, but knows that both PCs are bloodied. Pick one.

It is a social game and having social conversations is fine.

Knowing that the PC has failed two saves is metagaming.

 

[Akaiku]

Rules quote for this?

And also:

We had this just occur on Saturday with a player who is notorious for this. She asked who had fewer hit points out of two bloodied PCs for her Cleric to heal. The answer was, your PC does not know about hit points, but knows that both PCs are bloodied. Pick one.

Was one pc worse off as a percentage of their max hp then the other? It's extremely gamest to say that players have 3 states of health: Fine, Bloodied and Dieing/dead. Telling your cleric that she can never tell which bloodied person is worse off is saying she went to healer school all that time and never took the primer of battlefield awareness.

The point was, no. There is no rule that says you know exactly the hp and stuff of anyone you look at. (I think there is a power that does that on foes and such, as an aside) Not being able to see such subtile details is gamest though, and gamism encourages metagaming. Although, the default rules in DnD 4th ed is 'say yes'. Where does it say you don't know hp totals of allies? Or how many saves they have failed? What about what conditions currently are affecting them, as without that information, granting saves would be a guessing game as well?

 

[KarinsDad]

Was one pc worse off as a percentage of their max hp then the other? It's extremely gamest to say that players have 3 states of health: Fine, Bloodied and Dieing/dead.

Not as gamist as stating that a PC with 3 hit points left is more injured or out of luck or tired or whatever than a PC with 5 hit points left and that other PCs can tell this with a glance.

 

[IanB]

Although, the default rules in DnD 4th ed is 'say yes'. Where does it say you don't know hp totals of allies? Or how many saves they have failed? What about what conditions currently are affecting them, as without that information, granting saves would be a guessing game as well?

This would be my take on it. There's no rules grounds for denying players this info.

 

[jbear]

Is it possible that many TPK's occur due to PC stubborness, unwilling to flee when one or two allies are dead or dying?

 

[KarinsDad]

This would be my take on it. There's no rules grounds for denying players this info.

Actually, there is DM guidelines grounds:

DMG page 26

Therefore, within the rules of the game and the limits of PC knowledge, Insight, and Perception, tell players everything they need to know.

Hit points are not part of PC knowledge.

There is no mystical Heal skill that imparts knowledge to the PCs that another PC has failed two Death Saving Throws.


Granted, a certain amount of this information is inevitable. But, explicitly allowing players to ask metagaming questions of this nature across the table does not match the DM guideline on page 26 of the DMG.

 

[keterys]

I'm pretty sure players need to know that someone has failed two death saves