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Message: <blockquote data-quote="thecasualoblivion" data-source="post: 5113746" data-attributes="member: 59096">I have some observations based on playing 4E multiple times per week since launch:1. Its easier to kill the party than it is to kill a character. As a PC, barring a serious accident(like some of what has been described in this thread), you are unlikely to die in combat while your friends survive. I've killed vastly more PCs in TPKs than singly.2. If you are fighting only once per day, PCs are virtually invincible. Encounters are balanced around having multiple encounters per day, and only having one combat with unlimited access to healing surges and dailies makes a level appropriate encounter almost impossible to create. 3. While I rarely kill PCs, I regularly threaten death. I call these "oh s#$^" moments. I define these as situations where absent immediate and decisive action somebody(or everybody) is going to die. You let them taste death, and then you let them take action to prevent it, and I find it provides the same excitement and suspense as actually being able to die. You don't have to die to fear death.4. There are a number of tactics useable to kill people, some from a roleplaying standpoint. A habit I have developed, and one my players have come to fear is when I actually have the monsters try to kill somebody who goes unconscious, or as it has come to be called "imping" somebody. This nickname comes from the first time I almost successfully did this, where I had as part of the encounter strategy an assassin imp whose mission it was to try to kill one of the PCs with no regard for the lives of his allies, and then escape. During this fight, it went as normal until one of the PCs went down, and then this imp who had been popping in and out of sight on the sidelines jumps on the helpless PC and starts ripping them apart. This caused an "oh s&#$" moment, and the party's healer and damage dealers had to drop everything they were doing to stop that imp before it killed their friend, which they only succeeded in doing thanks to the dice cooperating, it was that close. I've used this tactic again, and in different forms in addition to having an escaping assassin. Sometimes, I'll have a cowardly or weak willed enemy decide that its more interesting to try to finish somebody off than worry about enemies who are fighting back. Sometimes a well disciplined and outmatched force will decide its time to "take one of them with us" while going out in a blaze of glory. I've had a dragon roll a grab on an unconsicous PC, move+AP to move again to escape and neither PC nor Dragon was ever seen again. I don't do this often, but I do it enough to instill the fear of god in PCs.</blockquote>

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