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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Oryan77" data-source="post: 5898527" data-attributes="member: 18701">I try not to be a killer DM but I'm not afraid to let a PC die when I feel it is a legit death. I've killed plenty of PCs in my time.But if it came to a point where PCs were dropping off left and right, or that my players even referred to me as a "killer DM", then that is a warning sign to me. I feel like that means I'm not a very good DM because I am not judging the difficulty level properly.There are way too many things to influence the outcome of an encounter. You need to be good at balancing the difficulty so that it is hard without being unfairly difficult. Part of PC deaths can always be poor setup by the DM. Even if it is not necessarily my fault, I need to be aware if there is an issue while running that encounter. If I feel that the encounter is fair, although difficult, I'll let it play out normally and if someone dies, he dies.But if I realize that a monster is more powerful for its CR than expected (maybe the party build is not built well against this enemies attacks), then I may "forget" to use an ability, or I may fudge a dice roll. But I only do this if I feel the encounter is much too difficult than I meant for it to be.There is also the fact that I may be a better tactician than my players. I'm not playing chess. So my ability to "beat them" should not necessarily be used in my advantage unless it makes sense to do so. People like to wear the "Killer DM" title like a badge of honor. But I think if there are enough PC deaths that it causes the game to not progress at a steady pace, then it's not an honor, it's an error. Keeping the game moving forward while at the same time still making it hard and lethal is what I prefer to be known for. I'm not a perfect DM, so I am not going to pretend that there isn't something wrong with an encounter when I'm running it. I don't think it is fair to the players if I kill their PCs because of some unfortunate oversights on my end.</blockquote>

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