D&D 5E It's so hard to die!

[Marc_C]

Typically, I don't even get the opportunity to try to save them.
They lose the first few turns of initiative and the party wallops on them. They get one round of action to try to do something cool. Then the rest of the party wallops on them. Then the second round starts, and by the time the enemy's second turn comes up, it's all over - or the party is just mopping up the dregs that are left.
That's a typical 5e combat for me.

I use different initiatives for monstrous leader, sergeants and troops in an encounter. It spreads to love around during the combat round. Typically, if I have 5 humanoids. 1 will be the leader, another the sergeant and the 3 others troopers.

Encounter distance is another device I use. Sometimes it takes 2 rounds for the PC to reach the opponents. The PCs get hit with range attacks. Monsters don't advance. They let the PCs come to them.

 

[Nefermandias]

The expectation of 5e is that there are 6-8 encounters per day. Do you really find that it makes that much difference to your spellcasters that they are avoiding casting their spells in about four encounters in a day or about four encounters in a week? Or are you ignoring the expected pacing of 5e and making sure the spellcasters are always topped off when the explicitly stated intent of the game is that resource management should be a thing?

The practical point of the gritty rest mechanic is so the DM doesn't have to throw entire waves of monsters at the PCs every day. My variant of it is that you can also take a long rest in a designated and aligned holy place; in practice this means that in a dungeon you only need to rest for a night - while wilderness adventuring takes longer because it's far slower paced.

That's correct. People doesn't seem to understand that all Gritty Realism does is slowing down the pacing of the game. Instead of having adventuring days, you have adventuring weeks. It's perfect for campaigns with a lot of wilderness travel, but otherwise it doesn't change the balance or anything.

 

[Dausuul]

I'm surprised this thread grew so many pages without anyone mentioning how the shift from 3.x's vancian spell prep to 5e's spontanious casting affects the comparison @Corrosive made . Back in 3.x a healer would need to prepare each spell infividually at the cost of not preparing some other spell in each slot dedicated to a heal.

Only if your healer was a non-cleric, or an evil cleric.

 

[FrozenNorth]

That's a lot of "ifs." Like you can finish off a character if that character was the party's only healer, if no one else has spell slots, if you have another monster nearby to coup de grace, and if you managed to chip away at a monolith of hp to begin with.

Well, they are additive alternatives (and not exhaustive), so they add up to a pretty reasonable probability.

Take a 4-person party. They probably have one healer and are carrying several potions of healing to compensate.

So yes, there is a reasonable chance that the character downed is the healer. Or that it isn’t convenient for one of the other characters to incur attacks of opportunity and spend their action pouring a healing potion down the healer’s throat. Or that they may be fighting 4 or more creatures, so the creatures could kill the downed character before someone can save them, or an area of effect catches the downed character as well as the rest of the party.

 

[Nefermandias]

Only if your healer was a non-cleric, or an evil cleric.

Just keep in mind that spontaneous conversion used your full turn action.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Because it is not "perfectly clear they will be." There is no guarantee the enemy has healing magic; in fact, healing magic is fairly rare. And if the enemy lacks healing magic, double-tapping means you are wasting your attack. That attack could be the one that makes the difference between victory and defeat.

“Healing magic is rare” is a setting assumption. It may be true, but it may not. I completely agree that certain setting assumptions make the game less lethal than it otherwise could be.

However, I also believe that if a DM wants to make his games more lethal, he shouldn’t act like setting assumptions are universal and off-limits.

 

[FrozenNorth]

"The fighter's down and the path is clear! Get the wizard before he throws another fireball!"
"No, I have to coup de grace the fighter so the wizard doesn't heal her."

That’s not ordinary intelligence though. Ordinary intelligence is observing that one character has a prominent holy symbol that they used to cast a spell blessing their allies at the start of the fight.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

I disagree that hitting a downed PC is deciding on PC death by DM fiat:

The Monsters Know What They’re Doing

 

[FrozenNorth]

Encounter distance is another device I use. Sometimes it takes 2 rounds for the PC to reach the opponents. The PCs get hit with range attacks. Monsters don't advance. They let the PCs come to them.

This is particularly good if the enemy archers are able to set up blinds to protect themselves against player ranged characters and modify the environment to punish melee characters from charging them.

Who checks for a pit trap when being peppered with arrows?

Sometimes I feel that DMs miss the obvious. I think it id too rare for dug-in enemies to be actually dug in.

 

[Retreater]

Had my one of my first individual PC deaths in 5e last night, so it is possible - it was just under a very specific set of circumstances - and it felt so unusual that the players were sort of stunned by the outcome.
We're playing in Chapter One of "Rime of the Frost Maiden," so I'll put the write up in spoilers. But basically we had three 3rd level characters (one player was out for the session) defeat a CR 8 encounter (2 CR 2 monsters and 1 CR 4 monster) with a single character death.
The characters approached the den of a lesser giant in a narrow corridor. His ogre friend and cave bear animal companion couldn't get to the back rank without squeezing around another tunnel. Cleric boosted the frontline fighter's armor so the giant couldn't reliably hit and alternated using Command to keep the ogre running away and Healing Word to keep bringing the fighter up - who never had to make a single Death Save. The one character death was a squishy warlock who got attacked by a bear, who just went all in on the warlock - attacking him even when he was down. So two death save failures, and then unluckily the player failed the third one (but probably only because he forgot to spend Inspiration) - had he held out one more round, he would've been insta-healed and the encounter would've had no deaths at all.