Killed lately?

[twofalls]

3.x makes the game less lethal

As a GM who has experienced each edition of the game, I'd say that 3.x is less lethal than the earlier versions only because the CR system (which is far from perfect) gives less experienced GM's a guideline by which they can measure what a party of adventurers can handle. There is a learning curve to the skill of evaluating what your party can deal with in terms of combat encounters. I personally prefer fewer and much more lethal combats than the CR system suggests. My sessions typically feature one combat where the combined total CR of the creatures involved (if I bothered) would probably be 2-3 higher than the average level of the PC's. My players fear combat and do their level best to avoid it. I prefer it this way, and I've had tremendous success simply evaluating their strengths and providing appropriate challenges.

New GM's without this experience are less likely to TPK because they have clearer guidelines in 3.x. Between OD&D to 2eD&D this was not the case. Not to mention that 3.x characters have a higher power curve than earlier editions of the game.

Edit: Wolf70 makes some great points about the evolution of storytelling. The desire to keep PC's around for a continous storyline is definatly present in my games. As my players and I have matured what we want from our game has most certainly changed quite a bit.

 

[Rystil Arden]

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?"

This sounds like someone I know. If they are really similar, then I would say that he legitimately doesn't have a deathwish, but rather merely lacks a simple self-preservation instinct for his in-game character.

 

[Patman21967]

Well,
I think I will lose a PC or 2 tomorrow night. I just hope it's not the Cleric, then all I have to listen to is the complaints about losing a level...TPKs IMHO just do not make sense. I go to all the trouble of creating a decent story and sense of accomplishment for my players, to not just end the game because something stupid happened....Now I have been known to get tired of a certain campaign, or lose interest in it, and instead of telling them that....just whack them....then start a new onw.

 

[Werewolf_26]

I recently had three PC deaths in the same combat. It was within a dungeon that had orcs, vampire spawn, and a necromancer using magic jar to jump around and cause havoc among the party. The Party (or as we call it, the Small Army) traveled deeper into the depths of said dungeon to find a vampire cleric that has been ruining things for the PCs, their families, and their towns for several decades now. Anyway, the necromancer split the party using a well placed black tentacles spell, putting 4 PCs on one side of the battle field and 7 on the other. A small group of vampire spawn assaults both parties which is taken care of in a few rounds, as both groups are well prepared for the vampires and their lesser minions.

However, they did not expect the Necromancer to hide more minions in the room. A trio of orc barbarians with great axes laid in wait behind illusionary walls, listening for when the necromancer gave the command word in orcish to them to strike (they had discussed the plan before hand, gone over what they were to do, and they knew the PCs were coming and generally who they were. The bad guys have been keeping tabs on the party for over a year game time). The Necromancer takes over one of the characters, and through him casts a ghoul touch on the other wizard traveling with the 7. The party's monk knocks out the Necromancer, while the Wizard stands there helpless because of the ghoul touch, leaving the druid, war mage, cleric, fighter, and rogue to deal with the three barbarians. Luck was not on their side. A bit of confusion, goes a long way.

The Orcs lucked out, and were able to deliever coup de graces to the helpless wizard and the knocked out Necromancer's host. Which quickly resulted in the party focusing their attacks on those two particular orcs and the death of those two in the following round. The last remaining orc, on a final swing against the rogue, criticaled dealing enough damage to send the poor rogue to -14.


The villains had a good trap set up, a plan they could follow, and luck on their side. I've found that most of our player deaths these days result in the following ways:

1. Random roll of the dice (either a failed save, or an unexpected critical)
2. Unwise actions on the side of the player (doing something without really thinking it through)
3. Lack of cooperation and tactics between characters in the game.
4. Forgetting an ability that would have been really useful (would have saved them)

What I have noticed, in the evolution of our playing group in particular, is that they tend to play a lot more cautious and careful than they used to. The newer players pick up things quickly, and the older players have become better teachers to the new players. If we've seen a decrease in character deaths, its mostly due to more careful players than the game system.

I do my best to write challenging and interesting encounters and I do find that the Challenge Rating system is helpful in setting up some of the battles, but when you have a group as large as ours (it varies between 6 and 12) sometimes it doesn't seem to work as well.

Players do seem to have a lot more options and tricks to stay live in this edition, but I've also found that with so many tricks available, its sometimes hard for them to remember all their tricks until its too late.


I've also played with a few groups that played the game for the battle aspect of the game, they enjoyed combat, but none of the parties they made were particularly organized. Not saying that they were ineffective, but they approached things as individuals and never really meshed together as a group. And when things got difficult, or confusing, as combats sometimes get, they had a tendancy to crumple under the pressure and one or more characters ended up dying each game session just because they really didn't discuss how to do things TOGETHER. I stopped playing with those groups and focused more on trying to get my players to better cooperate, to avoid the cycle that the other group I played with was stuck in.


Deaths are something I don't strive to get from the games as a DM, but I allow them to happen when they do. The dice fall as they may and the players do their best to deal with the challenges I've set before them. If anything, most of them have learned how to avoid shameful deaths and do a much better job of working together than they used to.

 

[Goblyn]

I think player stupidity is sometimes a factor.

And I'm not arguing against that point. What I mean is that I believe[/i] unfortunate as well as very deadly situations are more often attributed to player stupidity than in actuality.

Example of my player's stupidity:

I'm not sure what to say, as you were there and I was not. Perhaps the demon's abilities were confusing to or improperly understood by the player. Maybe he put more stock in those AoO's than was popular opinion. Maybe he was replaced by one of the very conniving and sentient chicken-beings from the Red-3 side of reality and that being wanted to see his character die.

Or this particular case could be simple stupidity. See my response to Rystil Arden.

Anyway, regardless of what may or may not be gained from this discussion, we probably should not hijack this thread any further.

 

[DarrenGMiller]

Edit: Wolf70 makes some great points about the evolution of storytelling. The desire to keep PC's around for a continous storyline is definatly present in my games. As my players and I have matured what we want from our game has most certainly changed quite a bit.

Thanks TF!

DM

 

[MonsterMash]

Well if not for the fate points system the DM in the Lost City of Barakus campaign I'm playing in uses then we'd almost certainly have had at least a couple of character deaths by now, with my cleric having had to use two points already to avoid certain deaths.

My experience so far with 3e is that low level combat can be more lethal as a single orc is a much bigger threat than in OD&D or 1e, but there are less of the instant death on a failed save situations.

 

[Viashimo]

Ah, death. The joy of any player.

In one campaign everybody except one person has died at least twice, rangers - cautious ones at that - tend to live a lot longer than most other people. On the other hand, nobody has died recently in that one.

In a different world, a monk of mine just died. Though I admit I'm surprised I'm the only one who died - the guy with 115 hp was at -5 and almost everyone had sustained large amounts of damage. 6 level 8 characters ambushed by 6 level 8 NPCs(2 wizard/4 fighter). There was a socking that happened.

As a DM, I found alot of players being very near death in 3e, and I'm about to start a 3.5e, which will be give a stronger basis on which to compare. I find it's alot of the DM style - sometimes the DMs just don't want people to die so they rig it up a bit. Other DMs are pretty much ambivalent to death, and let it happen if it comes. I'm played under both kinds of DMs and the first couple times I DMd I was leaning towards not killing my players, but now am pretty ambivalent towards player. Lethality is fairly subjective and the DM and what kind of challenges go into the quest/campaign.

EDIT: About the older editions. I played some 2nd ed AD&D, but not much. I found that mortality was more common depending on the DM again. There would be larger level disparities between characters, so some would rock all, and others would have to hide and hope for an experience gain. I remember one where we had to charge across a courtyard in order to get inside a castle to take down the ruler. Archers lined the walls and nobody died right then but everybody took a pounding. I ended up dieing later on to some ridiculously powerful guards. Darn.
Death is subjective.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I'd have to say that 3e is more lethal; mainly because monsters do so much more damage, there isn't much of a difference between "badly wounded" and "very dead".

Definitely the case in my experience.

In earlier editions PCs of 7th level+ could rely upon the hp buffer to keep them alive and after a few rounds of combat (1d8 damage, 1d10 damage, 1d8+2 damage) they decide to retreat. In 3e creatures can do 2d10+7 - critical hit! 4d10+17 and the PC has gone from fighting fit through dying to decapitated in one blow.

In early editions it was a rare beast that did 4d10 damage, now most of the mid-high level challenges will do far more than 22 average damage in a melee round. hp have increased somewhat but nowhere nearly as quickly as damage output.

I've probably killed 10x, 20x the number of PCs in 3e as in previous editions.

 

[diaglo]

I'm just curious here and I'm looking for opinions. Has D&D gotten progressively less lethal for PC's with each new edition? It's purely subjective, but that is my impression. Whether it's true or not I'm not trying to put a value judgement on it as if to say that more, or less, lethal is a good or bad thing. I'm just asking in general here. Forget about exceptions like Tomb of Horrors or "another TPK in Barakus". It takes a heck of a lot more time to create a character in 3.5 than it did in OD&D, so are DM's more lenient because of this?

it is still wise to run. when all the warning signs say this is a bad situation. and your gut feeling is that it is a bad situation.

running is still a very viable option.

and one to be heeded.