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

[Hussar]

If you're predisposed to that style of play, yes. If it's not a style of play you're interested in, no.

A couple of thoughts.

1. The obvious one is that no playstyle will ever work without player buy in. If your players are totally uninterested in a particular way of playing, there's nothing you can do about it. They will not like it and it won't work. I spent the last several years bashing that wall and it's frustrating. But, at the end of the day, you just have to accept that you have two choices - adapt your playstyle to the players or get new players who share your playstyle. It really is that simple.

2. It would probably be best to look at systems that don't really have character death to answer your question. I'm reading Ironsworn right now (and I REALLY want to give it a go) and I realize that death is on the table but is extremely rare. You'd pretty much have to deliberately decide that your character is going to die now for your character to die. Yet, it's absolutely chock a block with impactful choices and consequences. I highly recommend it and it's a free download. Ironsworn RPG - Downloads

Other systems follow this vein too. Older version of Doctor Who (I haven't seen the 5e version) made it so that it was virtually impossible to kill a PC. A number of the more pass the story stick, hippy dippy indie games follow this vein too. There's a hoard of these kinds of games out there to read.

It's an interesting question, and, frankly, it's a perennial one because the lethality level of a game does strongly impact virtually everything about how the game is played.

 

[Hussar]

This reminds me of a scene from the Teen Titans show...

#Robin falls off a building#
#Slade grabs Robin's hand to keep him from falling off#

Robin: Why did you save me??
Slade: Because I'm not through with you yet!

This would absolutely be a perfect example of how a no-death campaign works. When the PC drops to zero HP, they fail.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Ooh! That’s an interesting premise. Can you give a brief summary of how they work?

Here's the summary provided in the PDF:

• A character is dying.
• The player and character describe the virtuous String they are holding onto.
• The GM (with possible input from the other players) describes the Thread attached to the String.
• The player can now accept this Thread and live, or choose to refuse the Thread and pass on.

My synopsis:
The player can choose to save their PC from death by telling their story about what is giving them the will to live (the String, or Virtue). In exchange, for a 5e game, the PC gains a flaw (the Thread, or Vice).

 

[Micah Sweet]

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?

I'm thinking on the campaign level, yes. Death out of PC control needs to exist in the game, not necessarily in every scenario.

I will say, however, that you're going out of your way to force death out of the picture in your example, to the point of testing my verisimilitude suspenders.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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.

I can't see it. There is so much my characters and by extension myself care about that "will I die" isn't even a question. And, really? No consequences you can't come back from? That really reads as not giving consequences enough credit. I've had characters maimed by wild magic, I've had characters lose entire home towns. You think people who care about their character's backstory can just "come back from" losing a fight and seeing the people they were supposed to protect ruined?

Death is far far from the worst thing I can do to a player character.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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.”

That's fair. I wouldn't say it makes it impossible, just that I've found "unexpected character death" to be highly disruptive and problematic to the style I play in. But it is easy to overstate that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I can't see it. There is so much my characters and by extension myself care about that "will I die" isn't even a question. And, really? No consequences you can't come back from? That really reads as not giving consequences enough credit. I've had characters maimed by wild magic, I've had characters lose entire home towns. You think people who care about their character's backstory can just "come back from" losing a fight and seeing the people they were supposed to protect ruined?

Death is far far from the worst thing I can do to a player character.

And yet if it isn't on the table, the rest of it loses all meaning for me in D&D.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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

The primary determining choice on the part of the character was to be an adventurer.

Either way, the choice that determines the outcome was ultimately the choice to play D&D. At that point, trying to claim that randomized character death isn’t “really” random because choices lead to it…seems a bit strange.

 

[Charlaquin]

The primary determining choice on the part of the character was to be an adventurer.

Either way, the choice that determines the outcome was ultimately the choice to play D&D. At that point, trying to claim that randomized character death isn’t “really” random because choices lead to it…seems a bit strange.

You don’t have to fight any given enemy in any given moment. Sometimes exercising the better part of valor is the appropriate choice.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

You don’t have to fight any given enemy in any given moment. Sometimes exercising the better part of valor is the appropriate choice.

Okay.

So, what I am trying to convey is, regardless of any given choice in a moment, you’re playing an adventurer. Making choices that will lead to physical danger is inherent to the premise. The relevant choice isn’t fighting or not fighting a given enemy, it’s playing the game in the first place.

At which point, we’ve just turned “random” into a meaningless concept because nothing in the game is random. It’s all the result of having chosen to play D&D.

Further, the game does not feature an expectation that DMs will even know that there is a 5% chance of a given critter one-shot killing a PC, and certainly no expectation in the rules that players will know the odds. That means it is random from the perspective of the player, which is what is relevant to this discussion.

So, I don’t buy it. The death is random, and any argument about whether it’s technically really random or whatever is a pointless and futile semantic exercise.