D&D 5E Not dying?

[uzirath]

Out of curiosity, how do you handle spells like "Power Word Kill"? Are enemy casters prohibited from having the spell? Or do they always "happen" to target the person that you know has 100hp or more?

Good question. We generally steer clear of the instakill spells (for PCs and NPCs). Or, if an enemy has such capabilities, it is clearly telegraphed and the party takes extra care to avoid situations where it might come into play. Plots also regularly feature physical opposition that is effectively beyond the capabilities of the party, so much of the game focuses on resolving situations in creative ways that don't come to a straight out slugfest... steal the plans to the death star, but stay the hell away from the crazy dude in the black armor. Success leads to rebel victory. Failure leads to massive losses, tragedy, and an entirely new set of challenges.

 

[jasper]

Anyone else in this camp? How big a deal is character death at your table?
Plot armour camp. No I am across the lake playing Country Rap at 3pm in the Morning with speakers on 10, while smoking dogs on the pit, and have a drive in theater screen facing you and showing old star trek episodes dubbed into Russia running backwards.
The story comes from where after 3 crits on the dragon Jasper's thief died due to 3 crits from the last orc. Not what story the dm wanted us to read thru. But since death is always on the line, to get raise you just have to laying your money down.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Without the risk of death, combat isn't very interesting or exciting. You can simply say that a fight happened and the party won (again). There cannot be any real victory if there is no actual chance of defeat.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I can run a game fraught with peril, or an easier game where you only get challenged badly once in a while. It all depends on what my players are comfortable with. That being said, if there’s not a lot of risk, there’s going to be less reward. And they’re only cheating themselves – there’s a thrill of the game that only comes when the outcome is uncertain.

I do think all players need to be mature enough to know that character death can happen. If you’re not capable of handling it like an adult, then maybe this isn't the best choice of hobby for you. I’m not going to go out of my way to kill characters, and I generally am cheering for them to be victorious. But poor choices and overconfidence should have consequences, not to mention when the dice just go awry.

 

[Gradine]

For me it varies wildly based on the any number of circumstances. Who the player is, who the character is, what the particulars of the encounter are, where in the session we are, the nature of the campaign, etc. I've had campaigns with many, many PC "deaths" and other losses (smashed by a hill giant, killed by drider, throat slit by a lizardfolk, possessed by an evil relic, possessed by a more different evil relic and buried alive in an empty well by another PC, eaten by a bullette... and that was all one campaign! In fact, those last four were all the same player...) That was probably my longest lasting campaign, where PCs were mostly mercenaries and had a wildly rotating cast of characters.

On the other hand, I had a pretty long campaign with the same party of PCs for the entire run. It was in Eberron and each PC had was tied directly to the prophecy from pretty early on. I had some ideas on contingencies if any of the PCs died but they ended up never coming up, and I was pretty lenient on PC changes as most of my players were new and still learning the system as they were developing their characters.

I tend to run pretty Narrative-heavy games, and I like to incorporate stuff from PC backstories and events within the game into the story, which tends to dull the narrative impact when the PCs associated with them die unceremoniously (Narratively-interesting deaths, on the other hand, I'm all for). Ultimately I do what has been suggested elsewhere in this thread: work with the player to see what's most the interesting result, narratively or otherwise, of the PC "death" is. I've had PCs "die" and come back unexpectedly as NPCs, had PCs disappear and end up betraying the party (a kenku scout who warned the dignitary they were sent to entreaty that the party was instead being sent to poison them; another PC was a cleric of Dionysus who greeted everyone by offering them wine, you can guess how that ended up working out).

The key thing for those Narrative-heavy, death-light games, which has also been pointed out several times, is that there need to be stakes other than (and ideally worse than) PC death. And then being willing to follow through on triggering those massively negative consequences. And making sure nobody lets the PC forget their failures until they do something to make it right again.

Of course, if I'm running a dungeon-crawl or mercenary campaign with little to no overarching plot continuity, I'll let the dice land where they may. It really all depends on what the expectations of my players are and what the aesthetic goals of the particular campaign are. I don't really think there's a one-size-fits-all approach on how to "best" handle death.

I think the closest thing there might be to that is making sure there's something for your player to do if they die early on in a session. D&D tends to be a big social thing with me and my friends, so I do what I can to avoid excluding someone from play for an extended period of time. But even that might not be a universal issue.

 

[Cyrinishad]

The PCs in my games almost never die, but it is not because I won't allow the PCs to die, or am averse to presenting them with deadly scenarios... They are frequently right on the brink of a TPK, but a well-timed lucky roll, or a stroke of inspiration frequently pulls them out of the fire. They like living on the Razor's Edge. I will say however that even when PCs in my campaigns die, I am willing to write stories that allow them to bring back dead characters. I am fortunate that while my players will invest themselves heavily in a given character, they understand that death comes for everyone sooner or later (They just do their best to make it later)...

 

[Warmaster Horus]

The PCs in my games almost never die, but it is not because I won't allow the PCs to die, or am averse to presenting them with deadly scenarios... They are frequently right on the brink of a TPK, but a well-timed lucky roll, or a stroke of inspiration frequently pulls them out of the fire. They like living on the Razor's Edge. I will say however that even when PCs in my campaigns die, I am willing to write stories that allow them to bring back dead characters. I am fortunate that while my players will invest themselves heavily in a given character, they understand that death comes for everyone sooner or later (They just do their best to make it later)...

This is my favorite play style as a player. I really enjoy a good, dangerous challenge and the threat of death / TPK makes victory all the sweeter. There have been the occasional underestimations or swings of bad luck but usually the body count was not total and the party eventually recovered.

What I don't want to do is seem like I'm 'daring' the DM to kill me. I try to make dangerous but high-return, calculated risks. And if it doesn't pay off then I take the consequences. I've had players who think that they can make incautious moves and not be overly penalized for it. That's called a learning curve in my game...

 

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[Flexor the Mighty!]

Death is becoming more rare in my 5e game simply because the game is becoming less lethal as it goes on. I'm pretty sure I'm going to need a TPK to get kills anymore. This is really cutting down on my PC death victory shooters at the table as well, which I'm not liking. Death is part of the game for us, there are always new characters to be made and new options to try. Nobody is that hung up on character deaths.

I envy the player running our 3.5 game since he is getting kills left and right. I have the last of the original party members, a Brd8/Virtuoso 5 but if he buys the farm that is just how it goes. Being a reaver and tomb robber is nasty business. Quentin's mom always told him to stay out of the pit...

 

[Li Shenron]

Without the risk of death, combat isn't very interesting or exciting. You can simply say that a fight happened and the party won (again). There cannot be any real victory if there is no actual chance of defeat.

Sorry but I have read your posts for years and I do not believe that you really can't think of any adventurecoutcomes other than death or success. There are just so many ways to fail a quest without dying!