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

[Dausuul]

There's no CdG in 5e.

This thread has been using "coup de grace" to refer to attacking a downed enemy. Melee attacks on unconscious foes are automatic crits, which inflict 2 failed death saves per hit.

If you have multiple attacks, or two creatures doing it, this is a guaranteed kill. Sometimes you can get away with only one attack, but it depends on initiative order and luck (the creature must fail a death save on its own before the healer's turn).

 

[dave2008]

That is a VERY intriguing and tempting idea.

It is worth a shot. It is much easier than a lot of other solutions as the PCs do not have to do anything different.

 

[ccs]

My gaming group and I decided to try a little experiment. We did this in both 5E and Pathfinder 2E.

The experiment was as follows: we would play through three medium/hard encounters or two normally (with a break for rest and healing in between each), except that my role was to try to die. I played a level 10 rogue in both scenarios. The other players were to play as normal. There were some stipulations: I couldn't do anything immediately obviously lethal in one shot, and I couldn't refuse healing. So basically I was to play very, very badly on purpose. Don't worry, everybody was on board with the experiment.

The results: I couldn't die in either system. It's really, really hard to die even when you're trying to if you have other characters around to heal you. I got close to zero hit points a few times but bounced right back up, and even unconscious three times, but still got right back up again.

If you've a PC death wish, come play with me. My tables soaked in fictional blood. Including 22 4e characters (those took some killing).
Assuming that as the DM I'm in on the experiment I'll certainly oblige you. And I'll take out some of your party as well.
If I'm not in on it you still stand decent odds that somewhere in there your PC will need more than just healing.

 

[Retreater]

This thread has been using "coup de grace" to refer to attacking a downed enemy. Melee attacks on unconscious foes are automatic crits, which inflict 2 failed death saves per hit.

If you have multiple attacks, or two creatures doing it, this is a guaranteed kill. Sometimes you can get away with only one attack, but it depends on initiative order and luck (the creature must fail a death save on its own before the healer's turn).

Provided the attacks hit, which - even with advantage - is not guaranteed.

 

[Nefermandias]

Funny thing, a few days ago, some fellow was arguing that 5e was more lethal than B/X.

 

[Retreater]

Funny thing, a few days ago, some fellow was arguing that 5e was more lethal than B/X.

 

[tetrasodium]

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. Preparing too many heals meant the healer was curtailing their ability to cast other spells when needed or desired while not preparing enough had the obvious problem of people being likely to die. In 5e preparing a heal spell along with the other spells allows a caster to cast any combination of them in the exact situations needed as often or few times as they have unusedspell slots or needs

There was also the negative hp needing healing rather than going away. Yea a wand with a heal spell on it could heal you up between fights, but that's not going to be all that useful in the middle of a figh. 5e by comparison treats getting nicked down by a bad roll from a zombie that eats your last hp as getting crit by an ancient dragon while at1hp

Have you tried it?

A. This isn't true at all. You need multiple attacks, which many- perhaps even most- monsters of even middling CR have.

B. Again, this isn't required. Only one foe needs to focus on the unconscious guy- for instance, one ghoul that stats to devour him- and suddenly the threat is very, very real.

C. I'm not sure what your point is here. Isn't this always the case- that to kill a pc, you have to do a bunch of damage here first? It sounds like you're reiterating point A.

D. Again, this goes without saying. Of course a pc won't die if someone else can heal them first.

Let's say the party is facing off against monsters with a claw/claw/bite multiattack. Only one monster needs to focus on the unconscious guy to kill him, and it will slay him in a single turn if it hits with two of three attacks. Let's say the monsters all go on one turn, and one monster drops a pc. The next monster in line can probably kill him before any other pc even has a chance to respond; this is one reason why all the analysis about how letting pcs go down and then bouncing them back up is flawed.

In my experience, most people who either complain or crow about how hard it is to kill pcs in 5e simply haven't been in a combat where the dm took the gloves off and gave it a good try. Ruthless play, no giving the pcs a chance to heal the downed guy, good tactics, no fudging the dice to save the party.

That's a lot of assumptions there, all of which are going the pcs' way. You're assuming someone in the group has healing word and spell slots, that they aren't going to use their bonus action for something else, that there's only one attack available to spend on the fallen pc, that- once healed of around 5-10 hp- the pc won't just drop again in one hit, etc. These things aren't always true, and they are rarely all true. Or if they are, your encounters aren't using enough monsters to be as challenging as you want.

Seriously- if you want a more lethal game, even without changing the makeup of your encounters, it's easy to achieve. Even if the pc gets saved, you have taxed the party's resources more, used up some of their actions, etc., making the fight harder. Tactics are a far more effective way of buffing an encounter than some folks credit; they can change something from a difficulty of "easy" to a difficulty of "holy crap, run!!"

You have.. actual experience with 5e don't you? Like at a table in play with others rather than just white room theory crafting? Between your two posts I'm not even sure that your talking about 5e rather than some other system. You need more than multiple attacks, you need one attack to drop a second attack to cross off 2 death saves, and a third attack to execute before anyone heals the target for any amount of health. If any amount of healing is provided between the first and third attack then the process resets. This all pretty much needs to happen on one round because it goes back to the someone heals the target & everything resets to the drop targer>fail2>execute loop & healing is plentiful in 5e.

With healing word limited to druid, cleric, bard, alchemist, some & sorcerers... and healing spells limited to cleric druid ranger paladin some sorcerers some warlocks, & bard it's hardly a real concern that someone has the ability to heal another player in some form. I haven't even gotten into abilities like 1 point Lay on Hands & the celestial warlock's healing light All of that combined is why it's really only an option if the monsters are capable of getting all those attacks in before pretty much any heal capable class comes up in the initiative

How do you figure? If the bad guys can do so, and if they're serious about killing the party, damn right they ought to do it.

If you're complaining about it being too hard to kill pcs on the one hand and then arguing that encounters or tactics that might actually do so aren't reasonable, I'm not sure what you're looking for here.

"it's so hard to die" and "[it's] too hard to kill the pcs" are different statements that unquestionably have some overlap, but the differences are critical. That hard so die one means that concern of the possibility of death is also minimized due to the implausible conditions needed for it to occur

 

[Nefermandias]

If the gm needs to drop a player and counterspell a first level healing word and eattack the downed player and attack the downed player again before some other player can healing word unless a second counterspell is fired off by s second caster it pretty much screams how serious the problem is because those two casters could just spam fireball or something and just kick the party of downed players into failing death saves but that's not a reasonable encounter

Yes. People saying "just attack the downed PCs" are missing the point by a mile.

Chosing not to hit the downed PC pretty much guarantees his survival. On the other hand, if the DM do chose to hit the downed PC, it's guaranteed that they will die.

Killing a PC is now left to DM fiat. That's the real problem here.

 

[Marc_C]

Provided the attacks hit, which - even with advantage - is not guaranteed.

If the body is dragged away while the other PCs are engaged in combat its pretty much game over.

 

[Retreater]

Yes. People saying "just attack the downed PCs" are missing the point by a mile.

Chosing not to hit the downed PC pretty much guarantees his survival. On the other hand, if the DM do chose to hit the downed PC, it's guaranteed that they will die.

Killing a PC is now left to DM fiat. That's the real problem here.

Right. This is why I don't do it. It comes across as "rocks fall - everyone dies" if a DM runs encounters like this. It's like you're purposefully trying to kill the characters instead of presenting a realistic challenge.