D&D General Kobayashi Maru: Should the fate of the character always be in the player's hands? POLL

[Lanefan]

In the case of D&D, I straight up assume resurrection magic is on the table.

Other than at quite low level, I do also (though Revivify is way too low-level; you'll never see it in anything I run). It's the first 4 levels or so when you often can't afford to pay someone else to cast it for you and barring acquisition of a scroll or something you sure can't do it yourselves.

That changes everything. It is easy in a campaign intended to be long with players invested in their particular character for the DM to say that your character might die, but you will never lose them unless you choose. You might have to play a substitute while the party comes up with the means for getting them back, but you can get them back.

I don't make that "can" quite so ironclad; I still use the 1e Resurrection Survival roll, which while the odds are usually way in your favour success is not guaranteed unless you have the constitution of a dump truck.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I don't make that "can" quite so ironclad

What about a wish? And in the rare case that doesn’t work...divine intervention. I remember one place in the 3e Epic Level Handbook where there was a way to kill creatures that couldn’t even be undone by divine intervention, but I would overrule that. Part of the fun of D&D is a world where, while you may not be guaranteed to be able to successfully accomplish any particular thing you personally attempt, you can theoretically accomplish just about anything given the proper approach, circumstances, and theoretically unlimited do-overs (preferably with interesting complications).

 

[Lanefan]

What about a wish? And in the rare case that doesn’t work...divine intervention.

A well-worded Wish or divine intervention can auto-revive someone, but wishes are rare and divine intervention even more so.

I remember one place in the 3e Epic Level Handbook where there was a way to kill creatures that couldn’t even be undone by divine intervention, but I would overrule that. Part of the fun of D&D is a world where, while you may not be guaranteed to be able to successfully accomplish any particular thing you personally attempt, you can theoretically accomplish just about anything given the proper approach, circumstances, and theoretically unlimited do-overs (preferably with interesting complications).

Yeah, I can get behind that.

There is one way to die in my games that negates the usual revival methods, that being to have your spirit (or soul) blasted into nothing. There's a very high-level homebrew spell - Spirit Blast - that can do this; PCs more often see it as a high-end psionic ability of things like major demons, master mind flayers, big-time Cthulhu-esque horrors e.g. Shoggoths, and so forth. Someone getting spirit-blasted is also an extremely rare possible effect of a wild magic surge, I don't think it's ever happened.

The only way back from that is either a well-worded Wish (wording that allows Wish to just replicate a standard revival spell won't work here) or divine intervention. Even walking into the land of the dead the hard way and fishing out the soul ain't an option, as there's no soul to fish out.

In my current game, 13 years in, I think I've used it against one entire party (i.e. everyone in the room, the creature doing it didn't care who it killed) and one partial party (they were too spread out to get them all), and everybody has made their save except one PC and one random prisoner; and the PC later came back via DI...and in so doing dropped a wonderful plot-advancement opportunity right into my lap.

 

[Democratus]

Not really what I'm talking about.

I mean when the monster is just there for your to run away from, not where the fight goes south and you have to retreat.

Think 'open' worlds where you get jumped by great wyrm red dragons and beholders at level 2 so the DM can laugh at your sadness.

I run an open world West Marches game. Just last night, the 1st-3rd level party encountered a dragon.

They fled into cover and hid. Then they traced the dragon back to its lair and started a stake-out. When the dragon flew off to go find food they raced into its lair, filled their pockets with coins and gems, and then ran for home.

It didn't make them rich, but they got a good amount of wealth for low-level adventurers and had a grand story to tell.

Encountering something very powerful out in an open world doesn't mean "rocks fall everyone dies". It means the world is a living place and clever characters can thrive even if they aren't powerful.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I run an open world West Marches game. Just last night, the 1st-3rd level party encountered a dragon.

They fled into cover and hid. Then they traced the dragon back to its lair and started a stake-out. When the dragon flew off to go find food they raced into its lair, filled their pockets with coins and gems, and then ran for home.

It didn't make them rich, but they got a good amount of wealth for low-level adventurers and had a grand story to tell.

Encountering something very powerful out in an open world doesn't mean "rocks fall everyone dies". It means the world is a living place and clever characters can thrive even if they aren't powerful.

I think what @Vaalingrade is saying is: if you mostly have these kinds of encounters, there are players who will get antsy and/or bored, because they want to fight stuff. They have all these cool combat abilities and weapons and features - not getting to use them isn't making the game more fun.

But in practice it's a balance thing, and it takes a pretty dense dm to not notice when they're way off base, so I'm betting it's much more of a theoretical problem than a real one.

Although I have been told that any time you let a fighter attack an enemy with a weapon, you are a terrible dm who shouldn't be allowed behind the screen, because that's very definitely not what the player wants. If they wanted to fight, they shouldn't have played a fighter.

 

[Mort]

Although I have been told that any time you let a fighter attack an enemy with a weapon, you are a terrible dm who shouldn't be allowed behind the screen, because that's very definitely not what the player wants. If they wanted to fight, they shouldn't have played a fighter.

Is there more context to this?

It's just hard picturing someone saying this and then not realizing what they said was, to put charitably, nonsensical.

 

[iserith]

I think what @Vaalingrade is saying is: if you mostly have these kinds of encounters, there are players who will get antsy and/or bored, because they want to fight stuff. They have all these cool combat abilities and weapons and features - not getting to use them isn't making the game more fun.

But in practice it's a balance thing, and it takes a pretty dense dm to not notice when they're way off base, so I'm betting it's much more of a theoretical problem than a real one.

Yes, probably theoretical. So here's a theoretical solution: Use that sweet Primeval Awareness power from the ranger to detect some monsters, then use tracking abilities to hunt them down and kill them.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Is there more context to this?

It's just hard picturing someone saying this and then not realizing what they said was, to put charitably, nonsensical.

I suggested that "fights that force players to use methods other than attacking" is a technique that shouldn't be overdone.

There was vehement opposition to this. It absolutely must be overdone.

 

[Democratus]

I suggested that "fights that force players to use methods other than attacking" is a technique that shouldn't be overdone.

There was vehement opposition to this. It absolutely must be overdone.

Sounds like you might not be compatable with the group at your table.

 

[Ibrandul]

"Other":

PCs should never die in an event over which the player had no control whatsoever.

But no player ever has absolute control over any game event capable of killing anyone, whether themselves or another character.

(The quasi-exception would be killing someone who does not resist, e.g. a willing ritual sacrifice, or PC suicide; in most situations it's a bit silly to make someone roll to have their own PC attack themselves. But even then, another PC or NPC could intervene to stop the event.)

So it's a matter of threshold.

And that is always a judgment call a DM must make in a given group, and with a given game.

For example, I'm DMing a long-running weekly game for three adults and two kids (ages nine and eleven). Two of those PCs (guess which ones?) simply are never going to die under any circumstances other than deliberate heroic self-sacrifice. The other three are mostly fair game, but as they were all novice players prior to this campaign, I'm still going pretty easy on them, not by fudging rolls—I never, ever fudge rolls—but by occasionally tweaking the game world mid-combat (roll perception; you see the outline of a secret escape hatch in the corner you've backed yourselves into!), and by offering direct advice when they're about to do something foolish that might get them killed.

But I would happily whack PCs with no mercy and no forewarning in a meat-grinder-mode Tomb of Annihilation campaign, sticking to the module precisely as written, if that was what the players had signed up for. Or in a different system where no-fault player/PC divorce laws were baked into the system itself, such as DCC.