D&D 5E Perma-Death At Your Table: How Possible Is It?

[jasper]

Carry blank character sheets until AL changed the run you get auto raised for free. 107 Kills in 340 Sessions. I have always played stick another quarter in the slot for an extra life.

 

[jasper]

Yeah but unfortunately, there's a facet of modern gaming that has made raise dead/reincarnate trivial in most games.

You are told not to have mixed level parties. So often, this is what happens-

"Aw man, I died. That sucks."

"Hey maybe we can bring you back?"

"It cost 5000 gp though, that's going to be hard, might take us a few sessions."

"It's ok, I have an idea for a new character."

NEW CHARACTER HAS ENTERED THE GAME.

Gee a mixed party and James bringing in a new character at next session or he makes the pizza run and brings in a new pc. Sounds like my 1E games. Most of my 1E and 2E DMs were easy on raises. Some times we had multiple rods of resurrection.

Speak of System Shock Survival and Resurrection Survival only had 2 pc failed during all my years of 1E.

 

[cbwjm]

Death is a thing that can happen, we don't try to make it happen but if the rolls don't go the players' way then they may end up re-rolling. Depends on the campaign and how prevalent restoration magic is though, in the game I run, they are likely able to find a sufficiently high level priest who can restore life to a downed party member but sometimes the player wants to roll up someone new.

 

[James Gasik]

Oh well in AD&D, since you had mixed level parties as a matter of course, things were different. 3e had the "xp is a river" so it wasn't a big deal to be lower level- you'd catch up.

I'm not sure when the "everyone needs to be the same level" thing occurred. For all I know it's those darn aging penalties not giving me my bonuses to Int, Wis, and Cha again!

 

[overgeeked]

Carry blank character sheets until AL changed the run you get auto raised for free. 107 Kills in 340 Sessions. I have always played stick another quarter in the slot for an extra life.

I gotta know how you get 5E that lethal without house ruling things. Do you always confirm kills? Target low AC and HP targets first? Focus fire? Beef up encounters? Because it the whole time we played 5E straight, we had two deaths and both due to metagame reasons.

 

[James Gasik]

Well, it's actually kind of simple. Step 1- use the xp budget for 8 encounters to make 3 encounters. Step 2- focus fire the Cleric. Step 3- focus fire the Wizard. Step 4- use rat swarms that disease players so they cannot spend HIt Dice. Step 5- have random encounter checks every 20 minutes to prevent Short Rests.

 

[jasper]

I gotta know how you get 5E that lethal without house ruling things. Do you always confirm kills? Target low AC and HP targets first? Focus fire?Beef up encounters? Because it the whole time we played 5E straight, we had two deaths and both due to metagame reasons.

1. I have two regulars who do stupid stuff and the party don't back them. Aka close the door after Bob rushes in.
2. I roll out in the open so there is no dodging two nat 20s with disadvantage.
3. Depending on the monster, they may double tap down pc. I generally will roll a d20 INT check if not greater than the monster int. Monster get mean.
4. Depending on the module I will do the evil thing. Descent was evil, Strahd was evil, etc. But I do tell the players ahead of time and at the beginning of each session.
5. Random drop in players don't do team work. Some regulars won't do team work.
6. The dice hate Terrance due to him only showing up every six months. So the dice kill him. I think he has not been zero out or kill only three times when he played with me. Again roll in open.
7. Was a learning curve the first year where I was more lethal than now.

 

[Lycurgon]

We have PC Death in the game, but it is often not perma-death because PCs can return from the dead. Failing 3 death saves like the OP describes isn't what I would call perma-death. We have had a number of PC killed and returned with Revivify. We have had a PC raised by powerful NPCs we were working for.
So we have death occasionally, mostly due to bad luck or or choices, but what I would call perma-death is very rare.

 

[overgeeked]

1. I have two regulars who do stupid stuff and the party don't back them. Aka close the door after Bob rushes in.

Wow.

2. I roll out in the open so there is no dodging two nat 20s with disadvantage.
3. Depending on the monster, they may double tap down pc. I generally will roll a d20 INT check if not greater than the monster int. Monster get mean.

Sweet.

4. Depending on the module I will do the evil thing. Descent was evil, Strahd was evil, etc. But I do tell the players ahead of time and at the beginning of each session.

What do you mean by “evil thing”? Like actually play the villains as if they were smart?

5. Random drop in players don't do team work. Some regulars won't do team work.
6. The dice hate Terrance due to him only showing up every six months. So the dice kill him. I think he has not been zero out or kill only three times when he played with me. Again roll in open.
7. Was a learning curve the first year where I was more lethal than now.

Poor Terrance. I’ve played with people like that.

 

[Cadence]

It hasn't happened in the two 5e games I'm running yet or the two 5e games I've played in. In the one I'm running for my son and his friends, it's the first campaign for the friends and I've been playing to the age group and early on was trying to keep them interested (now they're high enough level they might be able to find someone to bring them back). In the one with the players 2.5-4.5 times older, they've had several get to needing death saves, and if they failed them they'd be dead. (But that party has a Cleric, Paladin, Bard, and Ranger in it).