D&D 5E [+] Questions for zero character death players and DMs…

[CreamCloud0]

See, if I can't die in a game unless I will it, then nothing I do in the game means anything to me. Its like that immortal ennui you see in vampire stories. Life ceases to matter, because there are no consequences you can't come back from.

Not to say your opinion is wrong or anything but are you saying if you couldn’t die that nothing would mean anything to you in the game world? That you don’t care about the NPC characters and events and influencing how they might play out, that you have no emotional connection to the world, that you wouldn’t play to find the things your character would be willing to give their life for?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

See, if I can't die in a game unless I will it, then nothing I do in the game means anything to me. Its like that immortal ennui you see in vampire stories. Life ceases to matter, because there are no consequences you can't come back from.

Again, this is simply false. (Edit: The bolded bit, I mean.)

Just because you won't die in a permanent and irrevocable way (unless you're cool with that) doesn't mean literally nothing matters. This is one of the key frustrations I have; people make this statement as though it were either self-evident or so thoroughly proven that one needn't justify it, but it's just flat incorrect. Death is NOT the only possible irrevocable consequence.

There are many, serious, and interesting consequences that cannot be simply reverted, but which don't involve your character dying.

 

[Charlaquin]

That was an actual thing that happened to an3e character of mine. It was a replacement 6th level character coming in as I had just lost a different one. Rogue pops up and joins the party for no real reason other than to play the game. First 15 minutes of play we had entered the dungeon/mine/whatever. I announced I would be searching for traps out in front of the party. GM rolls behind the screen for my search roll and I failed to spot the trap, which I then set off as I passed by it.

GM asked for a save, which I failed, so I took full damage. Trap damage roll was really good so it took me from full health to dead in one blow (notice full health to dead or dying in one hit is a common theme of deaths that feel random to me). This character lasted less than one hour of adventuring at 6rh level, which should be advanced enough to a iid the one-crot-kills-you stage of adventuring in 3e.

I literally have no idea how some people are playing if having a straight rogue and searching for traps when advancing down a hallway isnt enough caution to avoid the mantle of "It was your fault because you played poorly".

Ok, so with full context, yeah, this death was 100% not your responsibility, because you had no opportunity to make an informed decision here (other than, I guess to not play a rogue, which… that’s a crummy ultimatum). I would have run that whole interaction very differently, because I consider it so important for the players to have agency and to be able to feel like the outcomes follow from their actual informed decisions.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

That’s not a punishment. Punishment is retributive. Retribution is a response to wrongdoing. No wrong was done. What it is, is an outcome, and one that involved an element of chance, as well as a decision.

In games discussion, it’s fairly normal IME to refer to disincentivisation as punishment.
For instance, 3.5 punishes lack of system mastery by placing many trap options, even though the intent was to reward high system mastery with “even better” options and have lower system mastery simply result in baseline characters. 5e, by contrast, has very few trap options, and thus very very rarely do I see anyone talking about the system punishing new or casual players for not knowing the “right” way to build a given class, etc.

And the decision to fight the ooze.

Might as well just stop at “the decision to be an adventurer”.

Which may well have been the best decision! I don’t know the circumstances. But a critical hit, while random, is something you know is possible.

I know it’s possible to have an aneurism and die in my sleep.

Choosing to fight something you know has a 5% possibility of killing your character in one hit is a calculated risk.

The game does not set the expectation that every enemy has a 5% chance of one-shotting a character, nor the expectation that players will know the odds.

And if you choose to take that risk and your character does die, that’s not a punishment, it’s just the risk not panning out. You might as well call losing money a punishment for playing blackjack wrong.

Great, but you’re still talking about whether or not a punishment is justified for an action. Character death is not a punishment. Causality doesn’t care if it’s reasonable or fair for an effect to follow a cause.

It’s not simply causality, though. It is, as you’ve said, the result of choices. The choice to force mechanical “dead” to always mean narrative “dead”, for instance.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think this is the core of the problem. I would never describe DnD as a "push your luck" game. Those games to me are more like blackjack. You don't have all of the additional parts of a DnD game.

When my character writes letters to his Faerie Wife, explaining his turmoil in a world gone mad, I'm not pushing my luck to achieve greater rewards. When I confront the villain about their misdeeds, and how the ends do not justify the means, I'm not pushing my luck to get greater rewards. Some of the most rewarding things you can do in DnD involving losing those material gains for righteous causes.

For many of us, the premise that the game is a "push-your-luck" style game is wrong, and I think that is why we push back on death, because it isn't serving the needs of our table. It isn't just an undesirable result, it is a result that says the game is over. And I know you will express confusion, the game isn't over, you can make a new character, but for many of us the point of the game was to play THAT character, and them being dead means THAT game is over. Maybe we can play a largely similar game, but I've seen the effects of character loss on a game, and it never feels the same until a few sessions later when the new normal sets in. Playing a new character in a long-running campaign? It feels cheap to me. Like nothing I did before matters at all, because it was all erased, and now I'm trying to catch up in the last few minutes.

No, I totally get that. I’ve said many times throughout this conversation, unexpected character death is not right for every campaign. I have run and played in games without unexpected character death, and they are fun. I only object to the assertion that unexpected character death has no place in character-story driven campaigns. It doesn’t have a place in all such campaigns, but it can have a place in some of them.

I could argue about how the game mechanics of D&D are fundamentally push-your-luck gameplay, but I don’t think it’s as important as emphasizing that, yes, I do get where you’re coming from, and I think it’s a fantastic way to play. I only object to people acting like games with unexpected character death can’t ever be character-story focused, or like DMs who don’t take unexpected character death off the table only do so to “punish players for playing the wrong way.”

 

[Micah Sweet]

Not to say your opinion is wrong or anything but are you saying if you couldn’t die that nothing would mean anything to you in the game world? That you don’t care about the NPC characters and events and influencing how they might play out, that you have no emotional connection to the world, that you wouldn’t play to find the things your character would be willing to give their life for?

Not really, because the fact that death is entirely in my hands makes the entire world too unreal for me to take seriously in D&D. All of those characters and events cease to have meaning when my character is revealed as a facade like that. I cease being a character at all really, and instead a designated protagonist. As long as the possibility of PC death outside of my control is there, all those other things still matter. But, for me, character death is load-bearing for my suspension of disbelief.

As I've said elsewhere, this is a hang-up I have with D&D. Other RPGs sometimes treat death differently, and I will meet them where they are on that issue.

 

[Micah Sweet]

In games discussion, it’s fairly normal IME to refer to disincentivisation as punishment.
For instance, 3.5 punishes lack of system mastery by placing many trap options, even though the intent was to reward high system mastery with “even better” options and have lower system mastery simply result in baseline characters. 5e, by contrast, has very few trap options, and thus very very rarely do I see anyone talking about the system punishing new or casual players for not knowing the “right” way to build a given class, etc.

Might as well just stop at “the decision to be an adventurer”.

I know it’s possible to have an aneurism and die in my sleep.

The game does not set the expectation that every enemy has a 5% chance of one-shotting a character, nor the expectation that players will know the odds.


It’s not simply causality, though. It is, as you’ve said, the result of choices. The choice to force mechanical “dead” to always mean narrative “dead”, for instance.

The choice to not change the rules of the game, you mean? Certainly possible, but on a different level than character decisions.

 

[James Gasik]

I'm curious, Micah Sweet, how you would feel about this scenario:

In the pursuit of your rival, your party has traveled to a fortress on the border of the Positive Material Plane. The effects of that Plane rapidly heal your party of any physical wounds they take, and as long as you are careful to inflict some damage to yourselves, you are not at risk of exploding due to a massive intake of the Plane's energies.

That having been said, the fortress has defenses to negotiate, and time is of the essence, since you fear that one of your rival's agents has already preceded you. Worse yet, your party's "retrieval expert" has already found the first of many traps, that, if sprung, will magically scatter anyone in their vicinity to a random, alternate Plane of existence, which will no doubt be the end of your mission.

So death is not only not on the line, but it is effectively impossible- your fail states are "don't find the MacGuffin before the NPC baddie" and "get lost on some other Plane of reality".

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm curious, Micah Sweet, how you would feel about this scenario:

In the pursuit of your rival, your party has traveled to a fortress on the border of the Positive Material Plane. The effects of that Plane rapidly heal your party of any physical wounds they take, and as long as you are careful to inflict some damage to yourselves, you are not at risk of exploding due to a massive intake of the Plane's energies.

That having been said, the fortress has defenses to negotiate, and time is of the essence, since you fear that one of your rival's agents has already preceded you. Worse yet, your party's "retrieval expert" has already found the first of many traps, that, if sprung, will magically scatter anyone in their vicinity to a random, alternate Plane of existence, which will no doubt be the end of your mission.

So death is not only not on the line, but it is effectively impossible- your fail states are "don't find the MacGuffin before the NPC baddie" and "get lost on some other Plane of reality".

Firstly, this is a cool adventure and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Secondly, how is death impossible here? You are at risk to be teleported to a completely random plane, many of which can easily kill you very quickly (most of the Elemental Planes, for example).

Thirdly, I agree that in that specific scenario, death is less likely since the dangers are not specifically designed to be deadly (although they could be, see above). That doesn't mean that uncontrolled death is off the table in the campaign though, rather just less likely in that adventure. In short, cool idea, but doesn't really change my stance.

 

[James Gasik]

Firstly, this is a cool adventure and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Secondly, how is death impossible here? You are at risk to be teleported to a completely random plane, many of which can easily kill you very quickly (most of the Elemental Planes, for example).

Thirdly, I agree that in that specific scenario, death is less likely since the dangers are not specifically designed to be deadly (although they could be, see above). That doesn't mean that uncontrolled death is off the table in the campaign though, rather just less likely in that adventure. In short, cool idea, but doesn't really change my stance.

Hm. So what if I told you that instead of a random Plane, the traps just dump you in a town on the border of the Plane of Elysium? And that nothing you face in the fortress has any real chance to kill the players, since any Death save is considered to be successful?

Basically, death is off the table completely- are the stakes involved sufficient enough to allow you to enjoy the scenario? Or does there have to be some chance of death, even if it's literally a 1 in a million chance?

EDIT: alternately, it seems what you're saying isn't that taking death off the table for an adventure is problematic...just as long as at some point during the campaign, you can die?