Rune
Once A Fool
Plenty of real-world jobs require that you die a little every day.
D&D 5E (2014) Lethality in 5e: what is your preference and how do you achieve it?
- Thread starter Li Shenron
- Start date
Plenty of real-world jobs require that you die a little every day.
Grazzt
Demon Lord
Pretty much the same way I run the game, and have for as long as I can remember (at least back to 1e). If the PCs are goofy enough at 1st level to go "Hey! Let's check out the cave of that well known dragon that's been terrorizing the city for decades", then they will encounter said dragon, not some level-appropriate wyrmling baby dragon with 20 hp.
jgsugden
Legend
A heroic game does not need death. Nor does it need a risk of death. It needs to *feel* like there is a real risk of death. Perception is the most important thing here. The best DMs are the ones that make the PCs feel like their doom is upon them ... only to manage a heroic escape or victory. The DM can't obviously twist the encounter or rolls to give them the victory - that feels like a cheat. It needs to feel earned an natural.
However, that doesn't mean that a good DM never actually kills a PC. Far from it. PCs that make bad mistakes, that decide to make heroic sacrifices, or that just have a really unlucky day should pay the ultimate price. It helps the DM create that realistic feeling of a risk of death - and it doesn't have to be a miserable experience. My top 10 moments in D&D are all the death of beloved PCs. However, if the players are not the type to embrace a heroic end to a PC, death should be rarer than in a game where a blaze of glory is celebrated.
However, that doesn't mean that a good DM never actually kills a PC. Far from it. PCs that make bad mistakes, that decide to make heroic sacrifices, or that just have a really unlucky day should pay the ultimate price. It helps the DM create that realistic feeling of a risk of death - and it doesn't have to be a miserable experience. My top 10 moments in D&D are all the death of beloved PCs. However, if the players are not the type to embrace a heroic end to a PC, death should be rarer than in a game where a blaze of glory is celebrated.
Psikerlord#
Explorer
I definitely prefer a more dangerous (not necessarily lethal) game. I use the following houserules to achieve it:Threads like this (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?402623-How-do-you-kill-a-10th-level-character/page12) always confirm me that there is hardly a playstyle choice in a RPG that can cause more problems than lethality, if the different players have different preferences or expectations about it!
It seemed to me since the playtest that 5e is clearly more slanted towards low lethality. Perhaps this is the wanted result by the majority of gamers these days, but it's undeniable that others prefer a higher level of lethality, and at the same time 5e promised us high degrees of customizations, so it should be easy to change lethality as well.
In this thread I'd like to hear from everyone what are their typical preferences/expectations on questions such as "how often should the game see a PC die" but also "how often should a TPK happen", "how easy should it be to reverse death" or "how costly should it be to reverse death".
With that, I also want to know how do you achieve those expectations in 5e (in case it doesn't already match them for you), what do you change in the core rules to "dial" the different lethality parameters in your game?
1. There is no resurrection, raise dead or revivify on PC spell lists (they still exist in the game but are extremely rare and hard to access)
2. Slow natural healing option from DMG.
3. Injuries from DMG, although I've made 2 changes: (a) the phrase "magical healing" means restoration, greater restoration or 6th+ level magic, (b) on a roll of 1-3, make a death save. If successful the limb etc is just fractured/damaged, not lost.
4. Criticals do max normal weapon damage and roll a bonus normal weapon dice. Cantrips max 1 die & roll an extra 1. Nothing is doubled (inc SA). Overall this produces more dangerous monster and PC crits (excepting rogues and paladin smite crits).
Psikerlord#
Explorer
hmm interesting I like this idea
The Crimson Binome
Hero
If you do go with that, I highly recommend letting permanent injuries be healed with Lesser Restoration.
Sword of Spirit
Legend
I don't run every game the same (for instance, the party TPKed in my last one-shot, and I'm planning my next one to make that the most likely--but not guaranteed--result), but there are some commonalities.
First, I run my campaigns on the simulationist side, so I like injury to matter a bit more than the default. Second, however, I think each campaign has a social contract involved, and I think it is good to get those expectations out in the open and agreed upon.
For instance, in my LMoP campaign, I'm running it by the book, with the rules more or less as written, and that's as complex as the social contract goes. I assured the party I wouldn't let the wild mage TPK them in the first few levels, but I otherwise have no specific safety nets that aren't assumed by standard 5e. If a character were to die and the cleric wasn't able to use the single revivify scroll on him/her, the party would be free to take their corpse to Neverwinter and pay the 500gp to get an NPC cleric to cast a raise dead, since I'm assuming Neverwinter has a cleric of appropriate level, and the presentation of resurrection magic in the core rule books implies it should be easy to get to a raise dead if you need one.
But I will probably never run a 5e game "by the book" again, not because it isn't fun, just because it isn't the specific kind of fun I'm going for. I prefer a world where death is about the worst thing that can happen to a character, and players should play their characters smartly and cautiously to avoid death. It's difficult to create that sort of attitude in players without giving death bite.
On the other hand, I do not believe in causing permanent damage to a PC without the possibility of that being an agreed upon component of the campaign and characters being made with that in mind. It's an issue of character identity and player ownership. If my concept of my character is a dashing and agile dilettante with a perfect face, then it is just unacceptable to me for him to end up with a permanent limp and a nasty scar. Same thing occurs with level drain or anything else that causes a character to become permanent less powerful than the rest of party. It's not the same character, and the dice or the DM took away ownership of character identity from me. I don't want that done, and I don't do it to my players. If I'm playing a game where it is possible, that's fine, as long as I know it is possible. And in such a situation I will make a character whose sense of identity isn't all that important to me or isn't pre-.
So how to make this all fit together in 5e?
Healing: I'm probably going with the HD only healing (no hit points healed overnight) and healer's kit required to use HD during a short rest. Second Wind can't be activated unless you are below half hit points, and provides temp hit points. The Healer feat is right out.
Injury: The Lingering Wounds table is a little too harsh for me, but I'm going to try a toned down version (Con save for reduced permanency of effects) in one particular adventure and see how much it slows down the game.
Resurrection: The price of raise dead and resurrection is multiplied by 10. True resurrection is already expensive enough, so I'll leave it as is. I'm not sure what to do with reincarnate yet. I'm unsure on revivify also. It's basically just magical CPR, but it is very valuable for a group to have it compared to not having it. Perhaps too much so. The death penalty that normally gets reduced by 1 after each long rest instead gets reduced by 1 after each month. That is where the real bite comes from. If you die the party will either have to take a lot of downtime waiting for you to get back up to fully functional status, or have to deal with you being hindered for a while--and if you don't have time for downtime that can hurt.
There are also non-mechanical aspects of being raised that are important to keep in mind. You might come back from the afterlife with another creature secretly trailing you, or your body might actually be possessed by someone other than you, or some being of power over there might simply be upset about your being snatched away from them. These actually taking place are extremely rare--1% of the time or less--but everyone knows this kind of stuff happens in the stories, and therefore if you get raised from the dead superstitious people are very wary of you. People of power who need the goodwill of their constituents (like nobility and royalty) are rarely raised from the dead for exactly that reason. Villains who just want to be feared are fine with getting raised, and adventurers are generally viewed as sort of sketchy folks anyway. If a great hero gets raised from the dead, even by a good cleric, there may still be some initial wariness, but people are normally going to accept them back after sufficient time has passed that they've proven that they are still the same old good-guy.
So for PCs it's basically expensive to get raised, plus people will mistrust you, at least for a while, if they know you've died and come back. So, a major hassle.
How often should PCs die? Difficult to say. With all these assumptions in place (including my slowed advancement XP tables), assuming the types of players I tend to have, I'd expect a PC death every few levels.
How often should a TPK happen? Rarely to never.
How often should player death or a TPK be irreversible? Never, unless that is part of the established expectations at the beginning of the campaign. Unless it's a one shot. Then all bets are off.
Sounds like the Lingering Injuries rules on page 272, perhaps eliminating the ability to fix it with magic.
First, I run my campaigns on the simulationist side, so I like injury to matter a bit more than the default. Second, however, I think each campaign has a social contract involved, and I think it is good to get those expectations out in the open and agreed upon.
For instance, in my LMoP campaign, I'm running it by the book, with the rules more or less as written, and that's as complex as the social contract goes. I assured the party I wouldn't let the wild mage TPK them in the first few levels, but I otherwise have no specific safety nets that aren't assumed by standard 5e. If a character were to die and the cleric wasn't able to use the single revivify scroll on him/her, the party would be free to take their corpse to Neverwinter and pay the 500gp to get an NPC cleric to cast a raise dead, since I'm assuming Neverwinter has a cleric of appropriate level, and the presentation of resurrection magic in the core rule books implies it should be easy to get to a raise dead if you need one.
But I will probably never run a 5e game "by the book" again, not because it isn't fun, just because it isn't the specific kind of fun I'm going for. I prefer a world where death is about the worst thing that can happen to a character, and players should play their characters smartly and cautiously to avoid death. It's difficult to create that sort of attitude in players without giving death bite.
On the other hand, I do not believe in causing permanent damage to a PC without the possibility of that being an agreed upon component of the campaign and characters being made with that in mind. It's an issue of character identity and player ownership. If my concept of my character is a dashing and agile dilettante with a perfect face, then it is just unacceptable to me for him to end up with a permanent limp and a nasty scar. Same thing occurs with level drain or anything else that causes a character to become permanent less powerful than the rest of party. It's not the same character, and the dice or the DM took away ownership of character identity from me. I don't want that done, and I don't do it to my players. If I'm playing a game where it is possible, that's fine, as long as I know it is possible. And in such a situation I will make a character whose sense of identity isn't all that important to me or isn't pre-.
So how to make this all fit together in 5e?
Healing: I'm probably going with the HD only healing (no hit points healed overnight) and healer's kit required to use HD during a short rest. Second Wind can't be activated unless you are below half hit points, and provides temp hit points. The Healer feat is right out.
Injury: The Lingering Wounds table is a little too harsh for me, but I'm going to try a toned down version (Con save for reduced permanency of effects) in one particular adventure and see how much it slows down the game.
Resurrection: The price of raise dead and resurrection is multiplied by 10. True resurrection is already expensive enough, so I'll leave it as is. I'm not sure what to do with reincarnate yet. I'm unsure on revivify also. It's basically just magical CPR, but it is very valuable for a group to have it compared to not having it. Perhaps too much so. The death penalty that normally gets reduced by 1 after each long rest instead gets reduced by 1 after each month. That is where the real bite comes from. If you die the party will either have to take a lot of downtime waiting for you to get back up to fully functional status, or have to deal with you being hindered for a while--and if you don't have time for downtime that can hurt.
There are also non-mechanical aspects of being raised that are important to keep in mind. You might come back from the afterlife with another creature secretly trailing you, or your body might actually be possessed by someone other than you, or some being of power over there might simply be upset about your being snatched away from them. These actually taking place are extremely rare--1% of the time or less--but everyone knows this kind of stuff happens in the stories, and therefore if you get raised from the dead superstitious people are very wary of you. People of power who need the goodwill of their constituents (like nobility and royalty) are rarely raised from the dead for exactly that reason. Villains who just want to be feared are fine with getting raised, and adventurers are generally viewed as sort of sketchy folks anyway. If a great hero gets raised from the dead, even by a good cleric, there may still be some initial wariness, but people are normally going to accept them back after sufficient time has passed that they've proven that they are still the same old good-guy.
So for PCs it's basically expensive to get raised, plus people will mistrust you, at least for a while, if they know you've died and come back. So, a major hassle.
How often should PCs die? Difficult to say. With all these assumptions in place (including my slowed advancement XP tables), assuming the types of players I tend to have, I'd expect a PC death every few levels.
How often should a TPK happen? Rarely to never.
How often should player death or a TPK be irreversible? Never, unless that is part of the established expectations at the beginning of the campaign. Unless it's a one shot. Then all bets are off.
Sounds like the Lingering Injuries rules on page 272, perhaps eliminating the ability to fix it with magic.
Rhenny
Adventurer
I like how early levels are deadly and final, but as players grow attached to the PCs in the mid and upper levels I like the spectre of death to be omnipresent, but true death only occurring when PCs make horrible choices or suffer terribly bad luck (bad luck that is so epic the player laughs and gives in to it). In middle and upper levels, I do like to have magical ways to bring PCs back if the player decides that he or she wants to play the character. I don't mind having revivification, raise dead, resurrection, and the like, available in some form or another. I do like the idea of lingering wounds and more permanent scars or special quirks that manifest after recovering from a fatal wound.
As, DM, if I once in a while attack a PC when he or she goes down and add on some failed death saves, and the players realize that one round more without healing or one critical hit could spell death, I think that's enough even if nobody ever dies. Then, when someone dies, I like to make the entire situation so much a part of the story that the others roleplay the solution and seek help if they want to restore their comrade.
As, DM, if I once in a while attack a PC when he or she goes down and add on some failed death saves, and the players realize that one round more without healing or one critical hit could spell death, I think that's enough even if nobody ever dies. Then, when someone dies, I like to make the entire situation so much a part of the story that the others roleplay the solution and seek help if they want to restore their comrade.
Psikerlord#
Explorer
yeah that would be my concern - on crits - lots of injuries. I normally restrict injuries to zero hp or fail death save by 5 or more.
Ahrimon
Bourbon and Dice
I hope that works for you. I've never been a fan of the critical fumble rules, or effects like that from critical hits without some other form of buffer. 99% of opponents are disposable, so if one looses an eye it's no big deal. PCs are center stage, so when one of them looses an eye it's a big deal. While short term (a single battle) the effects are the same, long term the consequences of these systems are stacked against the PC's especially since critical hits are a flat 5% chance. Add in a second buffer like a confirmation roll and I don't have as much of an objection.
Edge of the Empire (star wars) had a good critical hit table. Most effects were minor that wouldn't last more than the current battle, but if you had bonuses to the roll you could take off a limb or cause other serious injury. But in order to get those bonuses you had to roll really really well and/or have class bonuses to push the roll up.
From a players point of view Saelorn, I hope you pad the list a little bit and make the truly debilitating injuries a bit harder to get. But you know your game and players better than I ever could and I'm sure they trust you to be fair.
Happy gaming
Similar Threads
