D&D 5E Less killing

[Voadam]

D&D 5E is definitely the most-supported edition of any rpg game system on DriveThruRPG, and then there's DM's Guild.

Close.

A quick check for OGL 5e-Compatible on drivethru gave 6,780 PDFs.

Drivethru also has 81 PDFs for official 5e (mostly DDAL PDFs.)

A quick check for OGL Pathfinder 1e on drivethru gave 11,661 PDFs.

So Pathfinder 1e as a system has more PDFs on drivethru.

DM's Guild does put 5e over the top though at 25,810 PDFs.

For physical books 5e has more than 0D&D and Holmes Basic editions did. I believe every other D&D edition had more physical books than 5e.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

When I play with young kids, I just say that enemies are defeated and I narrate how:

• They are knocked unconscious
• They drop their weapons and run away, never to return*
• They are so humiliated that they surrender.

*An enemy who flees is different than an enemy who 'runs away' when defeated. A defeated enemy will never return to bother the PCs, an enemy who successfully flees may cause problems later.

Edit: the problem with enemies who surrender is the PC then have the opportunity to 'capture and torture' enemies which is, mostly, worse than just killing them.

 

[ART!]

Quantity =/= Quality?

That makes the pretty baseless assumption that less quantity leads to greater quality, or on the flip side, that greater quantity leads to fewer products of quality.

Does it?

It does not. "Quantity =/= Quality" literally states in no uncertain terms that neither is inherently equal to the other.

 

[Scars Unseen]

"Quantity =/= Quality" literally states in no uncertain terms that neither is inherently equal to the other.

Only if you take the quote entirely out of context. When it's said in response to a post claiming that previous editions - which had more quantity - were better supported - an assessment of quality - it's an implication of disagreement with the post in question. It is essentially saying "no, just because there were more books doesn't mean there were better books." It could further be inferred that the person making such a claim would be claiming that they felt the opposite was true: that the lighter publishing load of later editions resulted in a higher quality of output. Or they could just be contrary. I can't read into the motivation behind that post further than the first step with any certainty. But it certainly wasn't posted as a purely neutral statement as you're suggesting.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Only if you take the quote entirely out of context. When it's said in response to a post claiming that previous editions - which had more quantity - were better supported - an assessment of quality - it's an implication of disagreement with the post in question. It is essentially saying "no, just because there were more books doesn't mean there were better books." It could further be inferred that the person making such a claim would be claiming that they felt the opposite was true: that the lighter publishing load of later editions resulted in a higher quality of output. Or they could just be contrary. I can't read into the motivation behind that post further than the first step with any certainty. But it certainly wasn't posted as a purely neutral statement as you're suggesting.

Or, you know, it means exactly what @ART! stated. Especially in the context of someone else claiming 'higher quantity = higher quality'.

I mean, you know what they say about "inferring", right? Wait... I don't think I have that quite right.

 

[ECMO3]

The body count in D&D really bums me out, especially when it comes to my players (my kids).

The kill count of an adventurer who makes it to level 20 is only one seen by a small number of machine gun operators in modern times. Soldiers who kill in war have high incidence of PTSD and other mental illness. I have a hard time getting away from that idea that this Robocop II level bodycount really makes the game bleak and sad.

What if

• most enemies stopped attacking after half damage, and tried to reach safety instead
• when you take half your hit points worth of damage you get a level of exhaustion
• when you come back from zero hit points you have a level of exhaustion
• most opponents swoon or cower after 3/4 damage
• if you have killed a person, on a long rest you had to make a flat d20 roll and beat 10+ the number of people you killed or your rest doesn't clear any exhaustion

?

question: does that just ruin D&D or could it still be fun?

Well I think it is fantasy, which has traditionally been about good and evil and good overcoming evil. This is not the first time we have heard this argument though. The violence in the game, along with the magic, was used by the religious activists to rail against and try to ban D&D some 40 years ago.

I get what you are saying, but I don't think it is correct to compare real life to make believe. Make believe "killing" has been around forever with games like cops and robbers and army men and even board games like battleship or axis and allies. While we can debate the moral implications of such, those games don't cause PTSD, nor is there any evidence they lead to any other mental illness or maladjustment. I also think that PTSD itself is more the result of being shot at and being threatened with death yourself than it is about killing other people. I think people launching crusie missiles, flying Drones or dropping bombs kill far more people than machine gunners today and don't suffer the same levels of PTSD.

Considering that combat is a pillar of the game and that many of the class and subclass abilities are centered around combat it will be difficult to remove without changing the fundamentals of the game. Even the name of the "fighter" class is explicitly and specifically associated with violence and the "assassin" subclass is likewise named for something intrinsically tied to the act of murdering someone.

Finally the whole combat system is pretty fantastic. If you stab someone with a dagger in real life that person is likely going to die, and if you stab him 10 times (25 hps damage) he is almost certainly going to die. Meanwhile plenty of D&D bad guys will survive that 25 hps of damage and almost all will survive 1 dagger stab. So if we change the rules to say 0hp means capitulation there is still the problem that we are bashing people with a club 15 times or slashing them with a sword 15 times or literally lighting them on fire or electrocuting them before they "capitulate".

That said, it could still be fun without any death, although some parts would get tough to explain and some people will in fact fight to the death to defend what they have or to take from others and that will get difficult to role play around.

When you get down to it the game is make believe and I see little problem with pretending to kill fantastical evil creatures and beings.

 

[Scott Christian]

Not trying to derail the conversation, but this is one reason why it's important to have things the players can slaughter. Little devil minions that run around with pitchforks, little demons with bloody teeth that run around as minions, little goblins that want nothing more than to kill humans, brutish orcs that are twisted by their god to commit violence: rape, murder, slavery, etc.

Not that all those need to be in a game. But in the end, it is up to the DM to create the morality. In my campaign, very few (I mean very few) player races are ever killed by a PC. And when they are, it is a big deal. It can change the entire course of the adventure. To me, this helps the game's morality.

So I really don't see the need to change what a zero is or combat in general. I see the need for the DM to change their setting to be more in tune with making it immoral to kill things they don't want killed. In D&D, there are too many monsters to use playable races as a form of cannon fodder.