Killed lately?

[jrients]

The CR system does tend to encourage balance in encounters where previously a DM might not have worried about it. I've built a lot of dungeons in earlier editions by rolling randomly on charts. It didn't matter how tough the PCs were, if the dice said 12 trolls lived in room 52a then by God I but 12 trolls in there. And the wilderness encounter tables in earlier editions were brutal on low-level groups.

 

[Zappo]

I see a lot more death in 3E than in any of the previous editions. When I played Basic D&D and, lately, 2E, we had maybe one death every six months. Now, it is maybe one every six sessions! 3E PCs are more powerful, but monsters are much more powerful.

 

[Psychic Warrior]

Just after 3E came out I ran a 2-3 session game of Basic D&D. The players went through about 2 characters each and about 8 henchmen.

In 3E D&D there have been about 7 characters deaths (3 permanent) in 4 years of playing.

 

[DarrenGMiller]

I think there is a combination of factors at work here. First, 1E AD&D did have a number of save or die situations, or instant death, no save even. Those have been removed in 3.x. CR's also provide some guidelines as to appropriate challenges.

The next factor is the number of options open to characters. This has increased survivability and also made sure that if a DM does not build adversaries well, then the mortality rates have gone way down. So, the DM has to know more rules if he allows all of the options open to players (or even most of them). Also, I think the power spiral started earlier and steeper in 3.x. By this I mean that in order to increase sales of supplements, there has to be some upward creep in power to make neater, more attractive splatbooks that players will want to buy. With production of adventures left to 3rd party publishers, WOTC is selling mostly to players, thus the power spiral has been accelerated. I do think it could be worse (2E's was pretty steep). Fortunately, the DM has access to these supplements and can ban his players from using them to build characters.

The third factor is a change in role-playing style. I have done a bit of research on the differences in gameplay between different age groups (reading of existing material, informal surveys, etc.) over the last few months. It has become intriguing to me (and Monte started it with an article in Dungeon that got me thinking about it, plus it became an issue at my table). During the game's formative years (OD&D, BD&D, then 1E AD&D for a bit), there was not as much emphasis on story. As the storyteller style was developed, it became more important to keep characters alive for the continuation of story and plot. Thus, lethality of adversaries was lessened to allow for good role-playing and good drama (not that some early players didn't start this). I think some of this has translated to the DM'ing style of many DM's that started playing the game from the late 80's until now. Monte actually does a pretty good job of explaining it (old school v. new school DM'ing) and I believe it. I have seen it at work. Also, players expect to live more and develop cool long-term characters (not that we didn't have them in the early 80's, they were just more disposable, since they were less customizable), and since most DM's need happy players to continue DM'ing, they have allowed for this long-term character development, to get PC's into the PrC's and feats that are available.

All of that being said, I am an old school DM. My first 3E campaign, I was learning the new system and made resurrection magic freely available, even at relatively low levels, because I wanted to see how the new system worked as it progressed. After that (the PC's reached about lvl 17), my campaigns have been notoriously deadly, even though the continuing plot elements are present. My second 3E campaign reached lvl 18, but there were probably 2 dozen character deaths in there (one player accounted for pretty much half of those and the rest probably lost 2-3 characters each on average), including 1 TPK. My next campaign died due to player problems and lack of continuity due to high mortality rate (about 6 PC deaths in three months). Then we played D20 Modern and there were few deaths (we played to about lvl 12) and went back to D&D via Midnight with the Grim & Gritty rules, where the mortality rate was actually not as high as one would think (IIRC, 3 PC deaths in about 6 months). After Midnight, we played a short sea-going campaign with a high mortality rate (both of my campaigns with the highest mortality rate were sea-going, hmmmmm.... I think it is the swashbuckling bravado that makes them foolish). My current campaign has had 2 PC deaths in about a dozen sessions, both from the same player (the guy who racked up a dozen in the campaign mentioned above - he is not stupid, just doesn't like to run away - he was also responsible for most of the deaths in the Midnight game for the same reason). So, byond the above mentioned combination of factors, I think it depends on the DM, the game style and the players.

Just my 2 CP.

DM

 

[Evilhalfling]

3.x is more leathal than anything I playerd outside Darksun
my last 3.5 campaign went to 1 death per 3 sessions, the CoSQ that I played in was 1.5 per seesion. DarkSun was 1 for 1 but seemed more creative. This was a style issue for darksun -
my list of kills - attacked a group of undead in noble clothing (near litches), fell down a shaft, became undead(nearly killed the entire party) poisonus Jazrats - cloak of Poisonesness, tortured to death after lipping the high templar.

 

[Rystil Arden]

As for the arguments that deaths need to be lessened to allow storytelling, this is only true if you eliminate resurrection options as a houserule. In my main campaign, all of the characters have died myriad times over the past 3 years, but they never had a TPK or a single permanent character death, so the story continues unhindered.

 

[Fieari]

While it's true that I'e never had more deaths outside of a game of Paranoia since I switched to 3.xEd, this may have something to do with my players rather than the game. One palyer in specific, really... who dies so much I almost suspect it's on purpose, except he fervently denies this. I mean, really. He dies WAY too often, esspecially compared to the rest of the party.

 

[Goblyn]

While it's true that I'e never had more deaths outside of a game of Paranoia since I switched to 3.xEd, this may have something to do with my players rather than the game. One palyer in specific, really... who dies so much I almost suspect it's on purpose, except he fervently denies this. I mean, really. He dies WAY too often, esspecially compared to the rest of the party.

This may be due to an understanding problem, rather than stupidity, as so often offered by DMs. He might be understanding your descriptions and such differently than you do, and Bad Things happen as a result.

I was a player in A RttToEE game and a fellow player continually made plans that made our DM do a double take. The ideas sounded fine to me, until the DM re-explained the situations, and we all promptly vetoed the plan.

This makes me wonder about the issue of player stupidity ... I don't think it is ... that, however, is a topic for another thread.

 

[Rystil Arden]

This may be due to an understanding problem, rather than stupidity, as so often offered by DMs. He might be understanding your descriptions and such differently than you do, and Bad Things happen as a result.

I was a player in A RttToEE game and a fellow player continually made plans that made our DM do a double take. The ideas sounded fine to me, until the DM re-explained the situations, and we all promptly vetoed the plan.

This makes me wonder about the issue of player stupidity ... I don't think it is ... that, however, is a topic for another thread.

I think player stupidity is sometimes a factor. My main group is smart, but they still lose characters (although they've never had a TPK yet). I played with a group of people who I knew to be dumber than my main group, and in the game they were in fact dumber, and willing to do stupid things for no apparent reason:

1) Casting a Charm Person [which failed to take hold] on a fellow PC whose rage was a result of failed magical experiments, which causes him to enter an uncontrollable frenzy when he makes the save against anyone who targets him with a spell that is non-harmless, causing the frenzied character to TPK everyone else, since they weren't prepared for combat and he got some crits.

2) Entered a complex where they knew there was a goblin crossbow ambush (and they knew where it was) without casting even their hour/level duration protection spells, let alone any of their others, and they didn't bring anything more than one simple torch for light, allowing the goblins to use their Darkvision against them (none of the PCs had it), which they knew would happen from their last fight with goblins. The 4 32 Point-Buy 3rd-level characters were TPKed by 8 average goblins.

 

[Fieari]

Example of my player's stupidity:

The party is fighting a demon from the Fiend Folio whose name I've temporarily forgotten. Now, as one of its abilities, this demon can turn into a living cloudkill. In cloud form, its AC skyrockets AND there's a flat miss chance, but can only move 10 or 20 feet per round (I forget which). While solid, it gets a much higher movement, but the AC goes down.

Now, at this time, the players' ability to hit the creature in cloud form was next to nothing. So, most of the party's plan was basically to keep backing off and lure it into solidifying so they could hit it with ranged things. The trouble is, this one player decided that it would be a better idea to sit next to the thing and engage it in melee. Engage a cloudkill, in melee.

Every round, it would engulf him (attracting an attack of opportunity, which would miss, more or less invariably). He'd roll his save, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding. He'd then back out of the cloud, just FIVE FEET AWAY FROM IT. Next round, this would repeat. The rest of the party is yelling at him to get the heck away from the demon so that they can try hitting the thing while it's solid. But no, this goes on for five rounds.

Guess who bites it in the end?

It can't just be a failure to describe the situation correctly. I mean, this wasn't a single save or die situation, and it wasn't a string of situations. It was ONE situation that was happening every round for five rounds WITH the rest of the party telling him how to solve his problem, and him not doing it. That sounds like a deathwish to me, but he denies this...

I don't know how to deal with that sort of thing, other than to sigh, roll my eyes, and say "Next character. Try harder this time, please?"