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

[Blue]

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.

I would recommend talking about it with your players BEFORE it happens. A "hey, you just died and I've got a surprise house-rule to make it worse" could sour a player much more than "I want death to be meaningful so if it happens there will be additional permanent repercussions.".

And again, sometimes bad luck happens. I'd be worried about either (a) making the players too risk-adverse with their characters, or (b) incentivizing players to toss existing characters (and plotlines and backstory and relationships and ...) for new characters that don't have penalties.

If you want a higher price for lethality, maybe once per level raise dead works as expected (to account for a string of bad luck), but if you die again something more permanent happens.

 

[Nebulous]

I would recommend talking about it with your players BEFORE it happens. A "hey, you just died and I've got a surprise house-rule to make it worse" could sour a player much more than "I want death to be meaningful so if it happens there will be additional permanent repercussions.".

And again, sometimes bad luck happens. I'd be worried about either (a) making the players too risk-adverse with their characters, or (b) incentivizing players to toss existing characters (and plotlines and backstory and relationships and ...) for new characters that don't have penalties.

If you want a higher price for lethality, maybe once per level raise dead works as expected (to account for a string of bad luck), but if you die again something more permanent happens.

Oh yeah, I wouldn't spring it on them without warning. In general my players like the RAW and don't like it mucked with at all. I however am a tinkerer and love to tinker, but I do it in more subtle ways. For that matter, I would love to see an Enworld spawned Book of Houserules. Just chock full of different ways to change 5th edition.

 

[Skyscraper]

For the record, I have myself more than one preference

On one hand, I am completely fine with an old-school high-lethality game where you have no guarantee that the encounters will all be balanced to your current party level, and save-or-die traps or spells are in. When you play this kind of game IMO you should treat it as watching a horror movie: you just know that many are going to die, so a major part of the fun is in finding out how. The trick is not to get attached to your PC, should you be required to create a new one when you least expect it.

On the other hand, I do not want to alienate players who do get attached to their PCs, and I can too enjoy a game where you are supposed to develop your PC's story and character to the fullest.

Eventually, the problem for me is that I cannot tolerate the middle ground, and the majority of rule systems and gaming groups do exactly that, for fear of making too much of an extreme choice.

Very interesting point about the gaming groups and rule systems tending towards a middle ground. I guess the point is that the middle ground offers some sense of suspense, where no one knows if their PC is going to die; while actually not killing PCs all that often. Perhaps this is what most people appreciate?

 

[Li Shenron]

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.

But this is actually what I feel about playing a game where yes you can die, but then the Cleric will bring you back, and the story goes forward. Or it doesn't bring you back, Bob the Fighter really dies, but the rest of the party wins the encounter, the player of Bob the Fighter gets the shaft of having to scrap his character plans, creates a new PC Joe the Ranger... and the story 'fails forward' exactly as expected anyway!

See, what I am trying to suggest, if that instead of using PC death as the only type of failure, only to cause grief to the player but zero effects on the story, it might actually be better to try and find more real story-changing failures. Simple ideas might be that Bob is injured beyond the scope of healing spells and the whole party needs to retreat, or Bob is captured and the whole party needs is derailed from the main objective, or Bob needs to be saved now and this makes the BBEG flee? Something that would make the whole party pay instead of one player, and to emphasize that accidents or mistakes actually have an effect on the story.

 

[Rhenny]

[MENTION=6788507]Mondas711[/MENTION] - your post made me think about how some of my players react to going unconscious. Many of them outright fear it and think of it as death. I wonder if that's because they had experience with OD&D or if it is just pride?

 

[Celebrim]

But this is actually what I feel about playing a game where yes you can die, but then the Cleric will bring you back, and the story goes forward. Or it doesn't bring you back, Bob the Fighter really dies, but the rest of the party wins the encounter, the player of Bob the Fighter gets the shaft of having to scrap his character plans, creates a new PC Joe the Ranger... and the story 'fails forward' exactly as expected anyway!

Now you are using 'fails foward' in a sense that is so loose as to be meaningless. If the party wins the encounter, of course we ought to expect that the story goes forward. It goes forward with the complication 'Bob is dead', but of course it goes forward because the party won! Had the party lost, then of course we'd expect the story to change in some way.

The fact that you equate winning an encounter with failing only me shows that 'fails forward' in practice just another way of saying 'never less than a minor victory'.

See, what I am trying to suggest, if that instead of using PC death as the only type of failure, only to cause grief to the player but zero effects on the story...

This would only be true if Bob had no role in the story and was about to be replaced by Bob II, which admittedly is a method many groups actually use, but in this case 'story' per se is not the major priority of such groups. Instead there, death is a setback of some sort on their way to higher level. Again, if the party wins but Bob dies, of course we'd expect the rest of the party - all that part of the party that wasn't Bob - to inherit the outcome and fruits of victory. Of course Bob's defeat is primarily personal.

...it might actually be better to try and find more real story-changing failures.

Well, real failures however minor actually would.

Simple ideas might be that Bob is injured beyond the scope of healing spells and the whole party needs to retreat, or Bob is captured and the whole party needs is derailed from the main objective, or Bob needs to be saved now and this makes the BBEG flee? Something that would make the whole party pay instead of one player, and to emphasize that accidents or mistakes actually have an effect on the story.

None of those stories require any creativity at all nor are any of these stories unlikely in your average game of D&D played with whatever primary agenda you like. In short, these aren't things that the GM has to have happen by fiat because he's trying to rescue a player from death, nor are they outcomes that need to be privileged by the system. These are stories that happen quite naturally because the players themselves are trying to rescue themselves from death. We don't need a special system for ensuring accidents and mistakes have at least that much impact on the story, though frankly those impacts are so small I should be somewhat apologetic to offer them up as examples of impact on the story at all. No these sorts of strategies for rescuing at least a partial victory from the jaws of defeat are things that players will just do so that they can live again to fight another day. None of these are particularly story-changing at all, much less stories involving real failure. Bob gets captured and then we don't get back in time to stop him from being ritually sacrificed and eaten, so that he can't even be resurrected because we don't have a body, now that is at least some sort of failure. The BBEG wins and the party is forced to watch his triumph and flee because his ascendance is so great, that it is beyond the power of the PC's to see how ever they'll be able to bring him low again. That's at least some sort of failure, albeit one that I think most players would in practice treat as a partial victory because at least they got away. "We still live!" "Aure entuluva!"

Really though, if it bothers you that a death can be revoked at a price, then the solution would seem to make death less revocable. As a practical matter, having rules that ensure anything that might have been a death converts to some other sort of failure, is like having unconditional unlimited resurrections built into the rules. Yes, I too would have a problem if resurrections were occurring three times per day, and might find it silly. But that's no less silly than what you propose and is at least established within the fiction rather than imposed without it.

 

[Schmoe]

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.

You've raised an interesting point. When I first joined these boards, back when it was Eric Noah's first discussion board, the stories of the "Killer DM" were altogether real and common. I read many posts from disheartened players who were in games where it seemed like the DM was just out to get them. Nowadays I get the sense that this particular community has matured quite a bit. Posters here who DM generally want to work with their players to create an enjoyable game for everyone. Players often have the flexibility to look for new games, or if they don't, they have worked it out with their group so that they are in games they are comfortable with. But I don't think that means there aren't people out there who still need some advice on how to run a good game. It's easy to forget that.

I don't think the solution is really to change the ruleset to make death something that is only rarely a concern. Instead, I think it's important to reiterate exactly what has been said in this thread - the DM needs to be fair with the players and give them a clear understanding of how the game will proceed so that they can know what to expect and either go along, raise some objections, or look elsewhere.

 

[Sorrowdusk]

I'm broadly of the view that PCs should die for one of two causes: poor choices on the part of the player, or "outrageous fortune". The first of these is pretty clear - if the PCs rush in when they really should take a rest first, or they don't make appropriate preparations, or they take on that dragon at 1st level, or they refuse to flee when they should, or similar, then I'll have no hesitation in killing one or more PCs. The second of these is more of a wild-card: I want a game where characters can and do die unexpected deaths, and where even long-standing and indeed cherished PCs can die simply because that's what the dice dictate. But I don't want that to be too common. So, to give an example, because 5e has a crit on a natural 20 (and thus 5% of all attacks), I don't want a single crit from a "level-appropriate" threat to be enough to one-shot a PC. But if the dice really turn against a character, then I have no problem with him dying. Indeed, perhaps the best balance I've found there is "three strikes and you're out" - one bad roll shouldn't kill a character, but a crit, followed my max damage, followed by a second crit probably should. In practice, I would like to see that lead to two to three character deaths in a campaign from "outrageous fortune" (more in the event of bad play, of course). IMO, the frequency of a TPK should really depend on how the remaining PCs respond when the first PC dies. If they promptly realise they're over-matched and seek to retreat, my preference is to allow them to do so. If they fight on, though, then the gloves are off - if the dice don't fall their way, they're done. It has been a long time since I've had a TPK. (Well, excluding my first session of "Lost Mine", but that only had 2 PCs, so doesn't really count.) My preference here is that it should be very costly - to the extent that the player will almost always just prefer to create a new character instead. However D&D has tended towards the opposite, at least once you get to mid-high levels. That being the case, I think I'd actually be inclined to play a different game entirely if I wanted both that cap on resurrection and that power-level in use. 'fraid I can't answer this one - to date I've only managed two sessions of 5e. I'll need several more sessions before I even know whether the default settings suit, never mind have any thoughts on how to 'fix' them.

Which begs the question do you end your campaigns of D&D "early" and conclude them at X level or....do you just see how far the party can get even if they do reach "high" level? That aside if a PC were to die at 20th or 18th level....they'd be pretty unique in the campaign world, if they did die and somehow couldnt be resurrected what is the NEW character rolled like? Are they also high level as well? If lower, how many levels behind?

 

[delericho]

Which begs the question do you end your campaigns of D&D "early" and conclude them at X level or....do you just see how far the party can get even if they do reach "high" level?

Almost all of my campaigns end in one of three ways:

- A TPK will almost always end the campaign. I can recall only two cases where we've brought in "replacement heroes" to carry on the campaign, but those were very exceptional circumstances. Any unused material I have prepared just goes into my recycling folder, and likely gets repurposed later.

- Most campaigns start out with some notion of an "end point", and some rough idea of how long they'll run (in terms of time and level range). Once they get to a suitable end point (not necessarily the one envisaged), they'll naturally end.

- In some few cases I've found that a campaign really starts to lose steam after a while. Either players have had to drop out, or the enthusiasm starts to wane, or whatever. In these cases I'll look to build to a natural end point (ideally at the end of the current story arc). This tends to resolve the 'main' plot, but generally leaves some stuff unresolved - like a show that gets told it can finish the current season but isn't getting renewed.

That aside if a PC were to die at 20th or 18th level....they'd be pretty unique in the campaign world, if they did die and somehow couldnt be resurrected what is the NEW character rolled like? Are they also high level as well? If lower, how many levels behind?

Bearing in mind that my recent experience of this has been largely with 3e, which doesn't handle mixed-level groups terribly well, I've generally had replacement characters come in at the same level as the remainder of the group, and with equipment as per the WbL table (which is actually less than their peers will have).

I don't have enough experience with 5e to say whether I would stick with that policy, bring in new PCs at 1st level, or something else.

 

[Plaguescarred]

We prefer a more gritty play and thus houseruled the long rest to recover 100% HD/0%HP instead of 50% HD/100% HP. This cause wounds to possibly carry over rather than completly heal overnight.