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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Puddles" data-source="post: 8259142" data-attributes="member: 7026093">I'm not sure the analogy between player-death and the Kobayashi Maru is the best. For me the Kobayshi Maru is more about encounter design than the minute-by-minute trading of blows, and I think players should always have the chance to turn an unwinnable scenario into a winnable one. This is the Matt Coville "change the conditions of the test" adage, and it's the great joy of D&D as a DM to have your players come up with a crazy plan and then pull it off despite the odds.When it comes to player death, I think the threat of it is the necessary spice to make action compelling. Having the threat of death always being a possibility is what I love about the game, and while it will occasionally create an unsatisfying conclusion as mentioned in your OP, I think it's important to remember that those are far and few between, rather than the norm.For me the biggest lesson for a DM is putting too much weight on a single or few dice rolls. This is why I dislike "Save vs Death" mechanics because too much is riding on that one dice roll. In my opinion, the threat of death should always be present but it should take a string of bad luck to cause it. This is to not only reduce the odds of it happening but also to foreshadow it narratively to the players. It's the reason why I think the Death Saves mechanic is great because, not only is it fairly unlikely, a player has had multiple rounds in combat to come to terms that their character might not survive this fight before it happens.So I would say a good DM is one that makes sure no single dice roll ever becomes too powerful, or at least, no single dice roll can be the detriment of the entire team. Instead the DM should put as many dice rolls as possible between the character and death, but to make sure this doesn't feel contrived, you need to put in the work during encounter design. For me, what I like to do is just populate my encounters with loads of hooks and levers for my players to draw upon when things start getting desperate. This means once the string of bad luck begins, once the players' plans are thwarted more and more by the dice, they still have lots of things to try, lots of agency, lots of ways to pull off a James T. Kirk in the Kobayashi Maru and change the conditions of the test.(Edit: Cleaned up the typos and removed my presumption in the 3rd paragraph that stated everyone dislikes 'save vs death' mechanics, it's of course just my opinion.)</blockquote>

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