D&D 5E Let 'em live or die?

[prabe]

Why do you say that the threat of death is a strawman? Maybe for you, but for many of us, it adds a thrill, it spices up things and raise the tension by quite a margin when a combat comes down to a few die rolls. When the balance can tip either way it is fun.

I'm pretty sure that what @Umbran was calling a strawman was the idea that those who are saying death shouldn't always be on the table were saying death should never be on the table. If someone doesn't want pointless random deaths, that doesn't mean characters won't die meaningfully and/or heroically.

 

[jasper]

You still have a 10 day time limit and the cost. The bare minimum is 500 gp and, presumably, this is a Level 2 group. You have to kill a lot of goblins to put together that kind of cash.

Dear Gary Goblin. Black Leaf just died at level 2. We have your location. We have your passwords. Now we could come get the bloody cash; or you can send it by Western Union. Your choice.
Signed
Evil Jasper.

 

[iserith]

Without the threat of death, any "loss" is only temporary. Death (in theory anyway) is permanent. One of the problems with 5E (for me) is that recovering from death is too easy once you reach 5th level.

Think of it this way: without death, you might lose the battle, but you'll always win the war (or at least result in a stalemate).

That is not necessarily so. Failure can mean options are curtailed or eliminated. You failed to defeat the BBEG (but didn't die) and now the doomsday device has gone off, destroying the kingdom. There's possibly no coming back from that. You lost and the world is worse now because of it.

 

[jasper]

OR you could
Hey deadite. You are only mostly dead. This Flo from Purgatory Death insurance. Would you like to buy death insurance? Aka Season 9 Adventure League allow you to sell your soul for a 20 on your death saves.

How death happens depends on your group. When I was homebrewing 3E a new pc was added at the lowest level of PC still in the group. Today it would just be average level. Also if I was being nice, the group could go into a no fault loan and owe the bank money.
But I mostly play with the words, "Drop another quarter into the box for an extra life."

 

[Guest 6801328]

Ok, by "realistic" I mean the reaction of a lord in a medieval time. Fantasy yes, but reactions, expectations and point of views will still be the same. See magic here as a kind of technology and everything will make sense. A lord/high priest/wizard or whatever will not waste precious resources for nobodies. Heroes, they will try to save/rescue/bring back, but a nobody? I mean, if it cost them nothing, yeah, sure. But if the cost is prohibitive, they'll do it only if something will come out for them in the long run.

Unless that medieval lord has been looking for nobodies just like these adventurers to be the patsies in a scheme he has been hatching. Or one of the adventurers bears an uncanny resemblance to his long lost love/sibling/parent/friend. Or the witch in the woods made a cryptic prophesy that has been a riddle until these adventurers walked in. Etc. etc. etc.

The problem with the question "what would this character do?", whether it's a PC or an NPC, is that it seems to be asking, "If this scenario happened 100 times, what would be the answer 99 times?"

I want to know what the answer would be that 1 time out of 100, and why.

Look at it this way: 99 times out of 100 when a Hobbit is asked to go an adventure, he/she will say no, and you won't get a very good story. (Unless reading about Hobbits going about their everyday lives grabs your attention.)

 

[Bedrockgames]

While DMing today, a PC died today, 2nd level on the cusp of 3rd. It was partially good DM rolls, partially poor planning. The battle:

Spoiler

The PCs attacked a xvart lair then left to take a 1 hour short rest. Xvarts aren't stupid, and they regrouped the bulk of their forces in a central war room while directing a force to trail the PCs and block any escape. Rather than infiltrating the lair and taking it room-by-room, 5 2nd level PCs faced a very deadly encounter of 13 alert xvarts, 1 xvart warlock, and 1 giant tick. Given the PCs had killed a sacred whiptail centipede, destroyed the centipede hatchery, and insulted their deity, this wasn't a battle where prisoners were going to be taken. It wasn't a glorious death that anyone will write stories about.

I generally don't like pulling punches in my games and roll in full view. In doing so, I can't fudge away a character death when the dice do their thing. I'm not inclined to because if players catch on the DM is going to intervene every time death is near with a convenient plot device, it'll cheapen the experience. After all, why roll in combat when you know the DM won't really let you perish, perhaps because you wrote an awesome backstory that fits with the campaign?

Still, it stinks. I can tell she was bummed, and there's not many options for low-level characters. A few weeks ago, I pulled a DM intervention for another gamer whose character died at 1st level due to a really unfortunate random encounter roll. Thanks to befriending some fey, they quested and got hooked up with a druid reincarnate, and a hefty IOU. It was good times and in the past I've turned low-level death into a quest.

Should I intervene, again, though, with another convenient story plot device given I just did so? I've got ideas, but it feels contrived to do this twice in a row and so quickly.

This is very much a playstyle issue in my view and you are the one that ultimately has to live with the decisions made at your table. That said, I do think the game has lost something the more death has been taken off the table since I started playing. I consciously moved away from notions of plot immunity or soft death for players, when I realized it was making the game less fun for me long term.

 

[DND_Reborn]

But, what you say raises a question. Why is death the thing that makes it so?

Because without it, the adventure will always continue.... (or at least end in a stalemate?).

Look at it this way, suppose your party is level 1 PCs who are captured by a Archmage. You are imprisoned. Your chances of escape are zero... or are they? If the players insist and the DM wants to run it, you might eventually find a way to escape. The adventure goes on.

If the Archmage just KILLS you all...

Why do you say that the threat of death is a strawman? Maybe for you, but for many of us, it adds a thrill, it spices up things and raise the tension by quite a margin when a combat comes down to a few die rolls. When the balance can tip either way it is fun.

Yeah, it isn't a strawman at all IMO.

I'm pretty sure that what @Umbran was calling a strawman was the idea that those who are saying death shouldn't always be on the table were saying death should never be on the table. If someone doesn't want pointless random deaths, that doesn't mean characters won't die meaningfully and/or heroically.

If that was the case, sure. If a DM wants only "meaningful and/or heroic" deaths that is of course fine.

I mean, every time a PC gets on a horse to travel anywhere, the DM could say "Roll a DEX (Animal Handling) check. What, you rolled a natural 1? Damn, you fell off your horse. (Rolls dice.) Wow... you won't believe this, you broke your neck, man. That's unlucky; guess your PC is dead. Sorry, buddy."

If a DM and group wanted a game like that, knock yourselves out. IMO, anytime you choose to enter combat and any other dangerous situation, you risk death -- whether heroic or not.

That is not necessarily so. Failure can mean options are curtailed or eliminated. You failed to defeat the BBEG (but didn't die) and now the doomsday device has gone off, destroying the kingdom. There's possibly no coming back from that. You lost and the world is worse now because of it.

Yeah, but the game goes on, doesn't it? Maybe the next adventure is a way to undo the damage and make the world better?

My point is, unless you are dead, you can always "play on" and keep going. I'm not talking about just failing one adventure, but the fact that a particular PC is done playing in it.

As I said before, without death, you might lose a battle, but the war rages on and if the DM doesn't allow for PC deaths, they will win eventually (or the players will give up).

I remember once a person posted how in their group PCs didn't die unless the player wanted them to die. I mentioned that to one of my players on Sunday when we were discussing hit points and other things and he laughed SO hard! It's fine if others want to play such a game, but it definitely isn't for me (nor I imagine anyone else in my groups, but you never know...).

 

[Guest 6801328]

This debate makes it sound like there's a binary choice between, "The character is dead if the dice say so" and "the risk of death is removed from the game."

But there are an infinite number of gradations between those two extremes.

 

[Umbran]

I'm pretty sure that what @Umbran was calling a strawman was the idea that those who are saying death shouldn't always be on the table were saying death should never be on the table. If someone doesn't want pointless random deaths, that doesn't mean characters won't die meaningfully and/or heroically.

This. Nobody here is arguing that there is should be no threat of death at all.

 

[prabe]

As I said before, without death, you might lose a battle, but the war rages on and if the DM doesn't allow for PC deaths, they will win eventually (or the players will give up).

I think there's a persistence in conflating "death" and "defeat."

Death isn't necessarily final, unless you want it to be, and there are other ways to lose permanently. A non-final death can set up a story arc, as can a final one. You can have a situation with no PC deaths that results in an irreversible defeat for the PCs.