D&D 5E (2014) Lethality in 5e: what is your preference and how do you achieve it?

[Li Shenron]

Nice to see lots of ideas here!

Since many of you mentioned some concepts particularly often, I'd like to add to those some little out-of-the-box thinking on my part, just to see if it brings any additional food for thought:

1) "If death isn't a possibility, then there is no challenge in the game"

Really? Sure the threat of death is the most obvious factor that motivates players to play well. But death doesn't equate to failure, there are a lot of ways to fail without dying. I think in general a RPG can be much more interesting than just "win or die", if only we could put some more creativity in our stories.

2) "PC should die because of bad player's decisions"

What's a "bad decision"?

The DM knows everything, so it's easy for her to say "opening the treasure chest is a good/bad decision", but the players can often only guess. The DM might make the treasure chest #34 trapped, and treasure chest #41 holding a ring of 3 wishes. Is there really any ground to morally judge (and therefore punish) a player that makes the wrong choice? The DM might give clues, but where is the boundary between a clue too faint to believe in and a clue too good to disbelieve in, when the same DM is other times going to trick the same players with false clues?

Truly the only way to consistently define "good/bad decision" is by the outcome. Did you die attacking the orcs? Then it was a bad decision, simple as that.

Unfortunately however, in a game with dice the outcome is random. There is no way to know it beforehand. The best the players can do is estimate the odds (i.e. the probabilities of success/failure) and decide if the reward is worth the risk or not, but very rarely the risk is zero. The only zero-risk decision is not to play.

To me these mean you can't ever really say that a PC deserved to die. You can accept it dies, or you can overrule that it doesn't die, but there is no deserve involved IMHO.

3) "PC should die because of very bad luck"

If I see someone being very unlucky, my first feeling is to help them. Why should penalize someone even further (i.e. permanent PC death), just because of bad dice rolls, which already bring negative consequences such as typically not being able to complete your wanted step forward in the adventure?

-----

Just to be clear, as I said at the beginning of the thread "PCs protection" is not the only way I want to play the game, I really like playing the old-school dungeons like Tomb of Horrors as well. To me these are 2 ways to play the game that I can equate to "horror movie" vs "TV series".

What I don't like, is having players with bad feelings because their PC died unsatisfactorily when playing in "TV series" mode. I say "unsatisfactorily" because I believe that for most players the problem is more with dying too early / in the middle of something or in a way that is appalling, while under different conditions they would have accepted it.

Resurrection never really fixed the problem, since it opens other cans of worms (especially, you have to "fit" the idea of resurrection itself into the fantasy world).

So if/when playing in "TV series" mode, why not just decide all together in case of a PC's death, if this feels good or not? If not, then come up with another option, not always just a technical penalty (like a lingering injury) but also simply a negative story outcome.

As a matter of fact, sticking to the "failure equates death" principle means that reducing the death rate implies increasing the chances of success. So maybe once the DM is free from the burden of such equation (i.e. a PC dropping "dead" might still be alive, but whatever he was trying to do is obviously botched), she can actually increase the challenges, make encounters more difficult so that players are forced to often find solutions other than combat, or stock a locale with traps, without fear that this would result in people having to scrap their PC and restart new ones.

 

[delericho]

1) "If death isn't a possibility, then there is no challenge in the game"

I'm not going to address this one, as I didn't make that claim. My preference is that in D&D death should be a possibility, but YMMV of course. And, as you point out, removing the possibility of death doesn't necessarily remove all challenge.

2) "PC should die because of bad player's decisions"

It's possible I mis-spoke when I said that - what I wrote could well have been read as "if a PC makes a bad decision then that PC should die", when my position would be closer to "if a PC dies, it should be because of one of these two things..."

What's a "bad decision"?

Well, I did give several examples in my post. But it boils down to this: if the best available information suggests that a course of action is likely to have a bad outcome, and you do it anyway, then it's a bad decision.

And, FWIW, I don't agree that the outcome is the only way to judge whether a decision is good or bad. If I had chosen simply to skip work today in order to play video games instead, that would have been a bad decision - even if my employer was then gracious enough to overlook it as a moment of madness.

The DM knows everything, so it's easy for her to say "opening the treasure chest is a good/bad decision", but the players can often only guess. The DM might make the treasure chest #34 trapped, and treasure chest #41 holding a ring of 3 wishes. Is there really any ground to morally judge (and therefore punish) a player that makes the wrong choice?

Who said anything about "morally judging"?

But, in any case, if you're in the midst of a dungeon environment filled with life-threatening dangers, monsters, and traps, then simply opening either chest #34 or #41 is a bad decision. At the very least, you should check for traps first!

The DM might give clues, but where is the boundary between a clue too faint to believe in and a clue too good to disbelieve in, when the same DM is other times going to trick the same players with false clues?

This is an important point, though. Simply put, I don't 'trick' my players with false clues. It's simply not my job - my job is to accurately describe what they perceive.

3) "PC should die because of very bad luck"

If I see someone being very unlucky, my first feeling is to help them. Why should penalize someone even further (i.e. permanent PC death), just because of bad dice rolls...

Because that is what the dice say should happen.

Now, as I said in my first post in this thread, I don't want to see PCs constantly dying as a result of one bad roll. My expectation (certainly with D&D, but also with most other RPGs) is that the designers will have done significant design work and playtesting to ensure that those random rolls hit a lethality "sweet spot" - not too many deaths, but probably a few (especially after a sequence of bad rolls). Even better is if they could outline their thinking in the DMG (or equivalent) with guidance so I can tailor the game to suit myself if needed.

But once that background work is done I want the possibility of PC death, and I want that to be at least partially random. (Again, in D&D - the same is not true in all other games.)

And, yes, that means that long-held and cherished PCs can die, and it also means that some of those deaths will be of the order of Wash or Newt - not everyone gets the big death scene. For me, that's a feature, not a bug.

Of course, I understand that YMMV on this issue, and maybe quite dramatically. Which is another reason I would like the DMG to provide those guidelines on tweaking the "lethality dial".

 

[steeldragons]

1) "If death isn't a possibility, then there is no challenge in the game"

Really? Sure the threat of death is the most obvious factor that motivates players to play well. But death doesn't equate to failure, there are a lot of ways to fail without dying. I think in general a RPG can be much more interesting than just "win or die", if only we could put some more creativity in our stories.

Woooah. I think you're drawing a dichotomy that no one is arguing. I haven't seen anyone suggesting to make the game "win or die". There's a wide range of possible different outcomes between there. But you did start the thread/ask about people's preferences of lethality. So that's what folks are commenting on instead of "how many different ways can the PCs "fail?", which is not what the thread poses.

2) "PC should die because of bad player's decisions"

What's a "bad decision"?

In the context of this thread? One that leads to PC death.

The DM knows everything, so it's easy for her to say "opening the treasure chest is a good/bad decision", but the players can often only guess. The DM might make the treasure chest #34 trapped, and treasure chest #41 holding a ring of 3 wishes. Is there really any ground to morally judge (and therefore punish) a player that makes the wrong choice? The DM might give clues, but where is the boundary between a clue too faint to believe in and a clue too good to disbelieve in, when the same DM is other times going to trick the same players with false clues?

Yes. All true. But, say, a PC walks up to the chest and doesn't check for traps? "There's over 40 chests here. They can't all be trapped!"

That's a bad decision...and one that could lead directly to PC death.

Or the example a few have used of the level 1 party who decide to go hunt down a dragon...cuz, ya know, "Dungeons & Dragons."

That's a bad decision...and one that could lead directly to PC death (if not TPK).

The stalwart knight, fighting his heart out while companion after companion go down until it's just him and the badly beaten nearly-out-of-spells mage. Given a momentary break in the fighting, breathing heavily and ignoring the pains and blood running down his legs, he notices the sea of dead orcs at their feet. Orc blood mingling with that of their 4 fallen companions. The knight is shocked back to the present by the battle roar of a new batch of 10 more orcs charging down the tower steps.

"We've got to get out of here! Come here, I will turn us invisible and we can escape!" the mage shouts in panic.

"NO!" cries the knight. "We stay and FIGHT! We must AVENGE our fallen friends! This evil can not be left to fester! The line must be drawn HEAH and no further!"

"Well, been nice knowin' ya." <casts Greater Invisibility> "...psycho." With that final word as a farewell, the mage fades from view and hightails it out of the orcish fortress and to the nearest tavern to drown her sorrows and mourn her lost comrades.

THAT'S a bad decision. In character, yes, perhaps. Makes for a great story, yes. But for the player looking to prevent the death of their knightly PC, a bad decision.

Truly the only way to consistently define "good/bad decision" is by the outcome. Did you die attacking the orcs? Then it was a bad decision, simple as that.

Just so.

Unfortunately however, in a game with dice the outcome is random. There is no way to know it beforehand. The best the players can do is estimate the odds (i.e. the probabilities of success/failure) and decide if the reward is worth the risk or not, but very rarely the risk is zero. The only zero-risk decision is not to play.

Well....yeah. That is what nearly every decision the player/PC makes does, weigh the risk against the reward. It's all most decisions in real life are. Of course there is not knowing it beforehand (least with out an oracle or some other sort of pregcognition...which isn't always out of one's grip in a magical fantasy world).

To me these mean you can't ever really say that a PC deserved to die. You can accept it dies, or you can overrule that it doesn't die, but there is no deserve involved IMHO.

Granted, I have not gone back and reread the thread, but I don't recall anyone saying that any PC "deserves to die." I'm not sure what/where your objection or point is supposed to be here.

3) "PC should die because of very bad luck"

Again, I have not noticed this in the thread. I have seen "PCs could [and do] die because of very bad luck"...I haven't noted anyone saying they should.

Just to be clear, as I said at the beginning of the thread "PCs protection" is not the only way I want to play the game, I really like playing the old-school dungeons like Tomb of Horrors as well. To me these are 2 ways to play the game that I can equate to "horror movie" vs "TV series".

I'll just point out, more explicitly, that there are eons of worlds of play between "PC Protection" and a death-grinder like "Tomb of Horrors" in which the question is never (and was never intended to be) "if you die", simply "when" and "how". Again, this seems to me an odd dichotomy to draw when there are limitless avenues between those two possibilities.

What I don't like, is having players with bad feelings because their PC died unsatisfactorily when playing in "TV series" mode. I say "unsatisfactorily" because I believe that for most players the problem is more with dying too early / in the middle of something or in a way that is appalling, while under different conditions they would have accepted it.

Well, there, I suppose...I mean I get what you're saying, but if the PC dies "unsatisfactorily" to the player...there's not a whole lot I can do about that. And if there to be bad feelings or anger at the DM, other players, table as a whole, because your pretend elf died in a pretend world in a game of make believe...when you can make up a new one and keep playing...then there are bigger issues at work than how the DM handles lethality in their games.

I'm not a huge believer in the whole "making people feel" thing. Our emotions are our own. And everyone needs to, kinda, get a grip and deal with what's in their head instead of blaming others for, somehow, "controlling" the way they feel, i.e. "You made me sad." No, you became sad as a result of X stimuli. I didn't make you. Get a hold of yourself! [the generic "you"s all around. Not you, Li Shenron. ]

We're not playing a TV Series. We're playing an RPG. Death of your character is on the table as a possibility. If you can't handle that, that's on you. Maybe you'll be more careful/thoughtful/creative next time and your character will live longer as a result.

I guess that sounds harsh. But that's basically my playstyle.

If I sat at a table, knowing it was going to be a TV Series style game, and I don't have to die until I decide/want to...well, I'm not sitting at that table so it's kinda moot.

As a matter of fact, sticking to the "failure equates death" principle means that reducing the death rate implies increasing the chances of success. So maybe once the DM is free from the burden of such equation (i.e. a PC dropping "dead" might still be alive, but whatever he was trying to do is obviously botched), she can actually increase the challenges, make encounters more difficult so that players are forced to often find solutions other than combat, or stock a locale with traps, without fear that this would result in people having to scrap their PC and restart new ones.

Again, who's equating failure with death? There are tons of ways to fail that don't include death. Has anyone said otherwise? This thread [you, Li Shenron] asked about the "preference and how you achieve it" of lethality. If you want to talk "failing to succeed/ways to fail in an RPG" that's a whole 'nother kettle of kuo-toa.

EDIT: In the interest of avoiding unnecessary conflict, just amend anywhere I seem to be speaking universally, "...anyone is saying...", to "I'm saying/not saying..." /EDIT

 

[Li Shenron]

No conflict wanted, just to hear what other people think about these issues, and how do they generally achieve their preferences (especially how they are going to do that in 5e).

Also, when talking about preferences or "wanted results" in terms of lethality, I kind of assume that this means the gaming group's preferences, and that the DM is working to that end with the players, not against them.

 

[steeldragons]

Also, when talking about preferences or "wanted results" in terms of lethality, I kind of assume that this means the gaming group's preferences, and that the DM is working to that end with the players, not against them.

Agreed. Absolutely.

 

[Blue]

I like my players to sweat and the *threat* of death to be real, to give more meaning to the victories. That said, in the last campaign I ran we had three character deaths/death-like (turn to stone, etc.) total over seven years of bi-weekly play, none permanent, so I don't think I qualify as a killer DM. I did have the party run from encounters, or scout out and then completely avoid encounters. I've reduced them to negatives, had encounters end with multiple people in single digits, and otherwise put fear into them. And I roll in the open in combat and play it how it lands. Planning a session, I'm looking for challenging and fun encounters, knowing my players are good and regularly "box above their weight class". (And the occasional cakewalk to show them how cool they've gotten.) But during the session I'm cheering for the PCs even as running the foes as intelligent (or not) and as fearless (or NOT) as they are. I celebrate their tactics and cheer their crits, even while throwing hordes of foes against them.

Steven Brust has a series of books where resurrection magic is commonplace. Assassins are used to send a message much like breaking kneecaps in a more gritty world, since unless they destroy the brain/spine or use soul-sucking weapons the person will come back. (And those types of assassination cost more.) Death in D&D with the default rules, apart from a TPK, is rarely permanent for PCs above the first few levels. Really, it more like a game of monopoly where someone eliminated needs to sit out for a while. (And give them some monsters to run to attempt to inflict the same fun on their comrades-in-arms to avoid that.) There's a buffer between dropped and death, and then another buffer between dead and out-of-game, and those can let you free yourself to challenge the party without trying to kill them off "for-reals".

While this is a 5e post, 13th Age has some lessons we can yoink about lethality. First is that their raise dead spell works easy on a PC once, and then it's harder and harder to bring them back. So there's a safety valve for bad luck, but real penalties to stop "invulnerable foolhardy" from becoming an alignment.

It also has an optional sidebar from one of the designers about how they won't kill you with an unnamed foe. Though that doesn't mean the gnoll that dropped your PC won't take you back to the *named* gnoll shaman and set up a big ritual sacrifice that the other PCs have to rescue you from.

 

[Mondas711]

I have 2 places that I DM. On Wed nights I DM Adventurer's League for the local game shop and I also DM a group at home when we get together. I'm sort of a math type of guy so I don't really like using house rules because I feel that the game was designed to be balanced and was playtested for quite a while before it was released. Also, in Adventurer's League I'm not really allowed to house rule because I have specific guidelines for PC death that have to be followed because it's an organized game. Both of my groups have players who are either inexperienced or have played for several years but only sparingly. They get nervous after a few hard hits and almost freak just from being unconsious. Strangely, most of them are very comfortable with the characters they are playing and are not poring over the rule books trying to decide what class/race they can do cool things playing next. As such, I will probably keep the lethality low at this point because I don't think my players need a high lethality game to achieve suspense. The availability of being brought back to life is standardized for Adventurer's League play and I really see no reason to change it in my home game either. Because it costs gold and the DM decides how much gold the characters receive I feel 1,250 gold is a number that can be worked with.

I've had killer DMs before that wrap their TPKs in the guise of "Well things just didn't work out well for you guys this time." They were usually smart enough that it took me several TPK to realize that maybe I wasn't the problem. If you are one of these DMs please make it clear to your players that in your campaign there is no little to no chance for survival as one slip up means it's off with your head. Make sure they want to play that style and that your not hiding your intentions because there is a limited number of players in your area. If they don't want to play that style, either step aside as DM or tell them to hit the door for their own sanity.

This is where I think 5th edition shines brightly over the other editions. In earlier editions, killer DMs could make TPK happen easily and say that they were just playing the encounter. Now I think if you have a killer DM on your hands, players will be able to tell easier because he will constantly use every choice to kill characters.

 

[Nebulous]

I guess I like a medium level of lethality, and that's sort of how I see 5th edition right now. They're only 4th level, and a fireball spell nearly killed 3 of them last session. I feel like as DM I have a good amount of control over just how dangerous I want an encounter to be. My preference is to usually have them win, but have shocking moments where they are perilously close to death and don't know how they will survive. Actual *death* is not that common. So far I have not used any rules different than the default.

 

[Celebrim]

1) "If death isn't a possibility, then there is no challenge in the game"

Really? Sure the threat of death is the most obvious factor that motivates players to play well. But death doesn't equate to failure, there are a lot of ways to fail without dying. I think in general a RPG can be much more interesting than just "win or die", if only we could put some more creativity in our stories.

I hear this a lot, and find it very unpersuasive. First, the overwhelming majority of RPGs are based on literary genera that are usually marked by high action and violent conflict. I see very few RPGs out there that are based on a romantic drama, slice of life drama, political drama, and so forth where the terms at stake are a characters well being and happiness. There aren't a lot of RPGs out there that make their explicit goal emulating the conflicts of say an episode of 'Friends' or 'Gilmore Girls', and to the extent that we could find a few those RPGs are far from the mainstream, poorly known, and have very few fans. There are a number of independent games that have tried to drum up interest in play where the characters happiness was of primary consideration, but so far none have been very successful and more than a few seem to want to replace violence with sex. While I was MUSHing I saw lots of play centered around trading sexual favors and who likes who, and I've seen at least one PnP game that seems to want to emulate that style of play, but I dare say this is unlikely to make a leap into the broader gaming world any time soon for a variety of reasons nor does this style of play necessarily preclude risk of death.

Secondly, there is no direct relation between a story being creative and whether or not death is a potential consequence that the protagonist is facing. You didn't die isn't necessarily a more creative outcome. At some point 'obscure deaths' and averted deaths grate many fans even in the settings we expect them to happen, and begin to trivialize and wear down the quality of the story.

And thirdly, in the context of the vast majority of settings actually being played, applying the rule that failure doesn't necessarily mean death and supposing that other sorts of failures can always substitute with the same degree of dramatic tension only results in stories without the real danger of failure. For the vast majority of gamers, all they care about is continuing the story and increasing the power of their own character or playing piece in the environment. While they may secondarily care about other things, very few actually have as a primary goal anything other than survival. If this was not true, we'd regularly see players preferably taking death over other outcomes. I've never seen it happen with any PC avatar. Heck, I've only once seen a player retire a PC from a game because the PC's goals were considered by the player to be more important than continuing the PC in the story, on the path to power and wealth.

The fundamental problem here is that neither the GM nor the game can define for the player what it means to win. So long as the player defines winning primarily as staying alive to fight another day and every crash you can walk away a good one - and in my experience 95% of players do - removing death from the table functionally removes the possibility of failure whether you the GM believe it or not. I suppose 'inescapable imprisonment' or 'maiming you can never recover from' (as with CoC full SAN drain) is equivalent to death, but generally the 'fail forward' crowd seems to eschew these outcomes as well so that fail forward becomes euphemism for 'nothing less than a partial victory, ever'.

So if/when playing in "TV series" mode, why not just decide all together in case of a PC's death, if this feels good or not? If not, then come up with another option, not always just a technical penalty (like a lingering injury) but also simply a negative story outcome.

Because even in TV series, these are minor setbacks, and not failure. Further, in a game setting, you the story teller can't impose values on your players. In a story, a protagonist can always feel hard rending agony for the death of an NPC, losing a favored possession to a rival, not getting the girl, or whatever. In a game, it's not up the GM to actually feel that and as a point of fact, rarely do I see players actually feel that even if they bother to RP it.

she can actually increase the challenges, make encounters more difficult so that players are forced to often find solutions other than combat, or stock a locale with traps, without fear that this would result in people having to scrap their PC and restart new ones.

In this sense though, what is actually the challenge? If a locale is stocked with traps, but I know that those traps can do no more than inconvenience me temporarily and the story will always go on with new opportunities, what actual challenge do I have to face? What skill are you actually concretely cultivating in the player? In most cRPGs, which effectively have no death outside of rare and usually optional 'hardcore' mode, the sort of skills you are cultivating are generally obvious - improved reflexes, improved planning and problem solving. But even cRPGs don't do this by 'failing forward'. They do this by 'failing nowhere', forcing you to replay the same obstacles again and again until your skill improves. If you actually could fail forward past obstacles in a cRPG, developing skill would be entirely optional. The same applies to PnP RPGs.

It seems to me that the only sort of story that supports 'fail foward' is slap stick comedy. (See 'Toon' for an example of this done well.) To suggest that because the audience knows the protagonists of action adventure stories won't die but will win in the end allows for fail forward is to get it backwards. The protagonists of action adventure stories are believed in by the audience because in the overwhelming majority of cases they are presented as making cunning decisions and evidencing superhuman levels of skill, so that even in the odd cases where they are surprised or overwhelmed, we still can believe in them finding a way out of their troubles. If in fact these protagonists were goofs that made bad decisions and yet the story played this straight and not for comedic effect, the sympathy of the audience would completely change. Either the audience would lose interest in the protagonist, or the audience would begin to actively root for the protagonists horrible demise. For example, this is how slasher style horror movies are played. The erstwhile protagonists are stupid, and the audience can see that, so at some level the fans of the genera are actually rooting for the antagonist and want to see the protagonists pay for their mistakes. If the protagonists of an RPG are bumbling and make poor decisions, eventually not even most of the players are going to be rooting for their own survival, and ultimately the narrative you'll create will be at best one of a slap stick comedy.

 

[Nebulous]

While this is a 5e post, 13th Age has some lessons we can yoink about lethality. First is that their raise dead spell works easy on a PC once, and then it's harder and harder to bring them back. So there's a safety valve for bad luck, but real penalties to stop "invulnerable foolhardy" from becoming an alignment.

.

No one has actually died in my campaign yet. If they do, I was considering two houserules:

1) Every time you're resurrected you lose a point of Constitution.

Or
2) Instead of dying, you receive a permanent disfigurement and have to roleplay that in the future.

These were just ideas, i might not do them. My players would probably just roll up a new character and move on and not think too much about it. They're also not a huge fan of houserules unless something is agreed upon by the group to be problematic.