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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zog" data-source="post: 2016641" data-attributes="member: 5083">Give the party some form of a get out of jail free/avoid TPK solve problem once card/favor.  A single wish, from a helpful and generous spirit.  The ability to summon a powerful cleric or wizard or friendly extra-planar being.  Thus, they know they can avoid total disaster once.  You still have lots of tension, only instead of being Will we be killed? It is Will we have to use our one-shot?  It relaxes things around the table a great deal - the players know they can get out if they really have to - they don't want to use it, but they can if they must.  I've found that simply having such a thing, even if never used, removes cold, debilitating  fear, without eliminating drama or tension or fear of failure or lack of challenge.Another idea would be to demonstrate just how easy it is for a DM to kill characters.  Create some sort of 'dream scenario', a nightmare of what might be or the like.  And have all of the monsters (just a bit tougher than normal) focus all attacks on 1 PC (taking AOO if need be), and keep attacking once the character is down and at negative.  Repeat in every encounter in dreamscape - the longer a single PC survives, the more info about future events/problems/plot the party can accquire.  And explain, in and out of game, that the dreamscape is what the world would be like without the guiding hand of a benevolent ruler (ie, the God gods - aka, a friendly DM).  The goal of the DM is to make the players fear their PCs might die, but NOT actually kill them (baring bad luck or really stupid choices or brave heroic deaths).</blockquote>

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