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

[JiffyPopTart]

A DM can always kill characters if they want to. I think what people are generally trying to express when they call 5e “easy mode” is that the game is built to generally favor the players to win more often than they lose, if run according to all the guidelines in the books.

Old-school play is often more geared towards encouraging players to try and circumvent challenges via their own clever thinking, rather than to use their stats to try and overcome challenges directly. And 5e… isn’t really built with that as the assumed mode of play. The game balance is deliberately tilted in the player’s favor with things like the target 65% success rate, and “medium” encounters being ones that a party is expected to be able to win with no deaths, even if they don’t use any limited resources.

None of this to say 5e can’t be challenging. Again, the DM can always ramp up the challenge to whatever degree they wish. But, the way the guidelines are written suggests that the design intent is for players to reliably be able to use their stats to directly overcome most challenges they face. To someone who is used to or prefers that more challenge-circumvention model of gameplay, that can feel like “easy mode” because you basically never have to look for ways to circumvent a challenge.

I'm old (it was my 49th birthday today). Ive played those style of games, but do not find fun or value in them now. I now bounce off the idea of using my knowledge and real world physics as channeled through a surrogate. It's why I despise "puzzles" in adventures like a dirty diaper.

I find system mastery is better done through boardgames and storytelling through RPGs.

 

[Charlaquin]

The rogue was my character. At no time at my table has anything been said about expectations more than "this is harder than normal" for a particular adventure. The adventure the rogue died on wasn't harder than normal, it was just a series of bad rolls on my characters part followed by a good roll by the GM for the trap damage. You could probably crunch numbers and say how likely or unlikely a death was, but it seems like your stance is even if the math showed I only had a .1% chance of dying to the trap it's still on me a s a player form hoosing to go on the adventure the GM set before me.

Maybe you missed my earlier post responding to you about the matter, but when you gave the full context, I said I agreed with you, that death absolutely was random and unfair. You really never had an opportunity to make an informed decision, it just… happened, through what might as well have been automated processes.

This is not how I run the game, because I consider the feeling of agency so important. If it were me, first of all the trap would have been telegraphed in some way. Something in the description of the environment to tip you off that there might be a trap. This gives you the opportunity to initiate looking for the trap, rather than a roll behind the screen happening automatically. Then, if you did decide to try to look for the trap, assuming you didn’t eliminate any chance or consequences of failure with your action declaration, I’d have told you the DC you needed to find it. Also, failure wouldn’t have meant you had no idea there was a trap there, it just would have meant you hadn’t found the trap in that 10-minute turn. Then you’d have the information to decide to keep looking (taking up another turn, risking the possibility of wandering monsters) or risk going on anyway.

These kinds of procedures are essential to how I run the game because I never want a death to feel like there was nothing you could have done to prevent it. It’s paramount to me that the players feel like their decisions are the primary factor in determining what happens, not just random chance.

 

[Micah Sweet]

95% of all media involves the protagonist reaching their goal in the end. They are always going to reach their goal. Adrian Monk from the show Monk is going to catch the killer. Deku from My Hero Academia is going to defeat the villains. The Fellowship of the Ring is going to destroy the Ring of Power.

The vast, vast, vast majority of stories involve people achieving their goals. Sure, some stories involve people not achieving their goals. Dying in less than ideal circumstances. But those are notable because those are the exceptions. And even then, it is incredibly rare to find a story where the protagonist was given a goal, and they fail to achieve that goal because they died doing something unrelated.

The journey is the point. The journey and the friends you take it with. I don't need people randomly dying off to keep it interesting. I never have. And I don't see achieving goals as only meaningful if I could have died in the process.

Fundamentally different mediums. An RPG campaign is only a story where everything works out in the end by GM and player fiat if you want it to be. I do not.

 

[overgeeked]

See, I don't see this. I'm like you. I started about exactly the same time and went through the same progression. It's simply a taste difference. After all, Dragonlance had a No-Death clause in the modules. It wasn't secret - it was right there in the modules that you cannot kill the named PC's and a number of the NPC's before a certain point in the modules.

DL1 came out in 1984, so, I mean, that's not generational for us. That's right there from when we started.

The bulk of the group I played with in 84 were 8 years older than me and had been playing for years together. I don’t know how long. We almost never did modules, it was almost exclusively home brew. The Hickman Revolution passed us by. So while yes, I started in 84, I learned from people older and with years of experience who explicitly avoided modules and 2E. So everything that brought in the notion of RPGs as stories and keeping characters alive at all costs we skipped.

This... boggles me. Why is the "referee" so excited that they can kill characters again?

Because it’s fun. It’s way more fun to try big things and gamble than to know you’re immortal and can’t lose. Again, the emergent story of the group, not individual PCs as the protagonists of a story. If I want a story, I’ll read a book. I don’t play games for story. I play games for the challenges and the agency.

If they wanted to do that in 5e, it isn't hard.

It is when you have four people with about 40 years of board game, wargame, and RPG experience each. Encounter balance is wildly in favor of easy PC wins. Monsters are undertuned. PCs start with a Monty Haul grab bag of abilities. Healing is too plentiful. And death saves make it so even a semi-competent healer can keep everyone alive in most fights.

And, again, I fully reject this idea that 5e is "easy mode".

It is for us.

Killing characters isn't the point. It isn't the goal.

No, but it should be an option and a relatively easy one. Adventurers should start as peasants with a few more months training than everyone else and they should die if the player does something stupid. That’s a style we enjoy. You don’t. To each their own.

Because when PCs die too often and too close together, people stop caring about the game.

For some players, yes. For us, not at all. It perks up our ears and we pay attention more when the game’s challenging and hard. It makes us want to overcome and beat the odds. When it’s too easy we start snoring at the table.

It isn't a matter of "playing stupid" or "playing smart"

A lot of it is, for us. You take risks without precautions, that’s stupid. You fight dirty and use every trick you can to beat the monsters before you even roll initiative, that’s smart.

 

[tetrasodium]

This... boggles me. Why is the "referee" so excited that they can kill characters again? If they wanted to do that in 5e, it isn't hard.

And, again, I fully reject this idea that 5e is "easy mode". It just.. it leaves a foul taste in my mouth. It makes it seem like all the time I spent playing doesn't matter, because I wasn't playing a "real game". I know you didn't say that, but that's the feeling I always get when someone starts calling 5e "easy mode" because supposedly it is so hard to kill characters.

Killing characters isn't the point. It isn't the goal. To me, as the DM, it is the opposite of the goal. Because when PCs die too often and too close together, people stop caring about the game. It isn't a matter of "playing stupid" or "playing smart" I can make a death trap that is highly likely to kill you no matter how you play, and I can make three of them that will certainly kill someone by the time everyone is through it.

But I don't want to do that, it is utterly boring to me. I don't want to play a game where the main goal is this adversarial relationship where we see who is smarter than who.

...it's not even limited to d&d.

Spoiler

It's just video games are rarely tuned so that you need to crank the slider up & use modding tools to have a chance at failure through means other than suicidally reckless play

 

[Hussar]

The bulk of the group I played with in 84 were 8 years older than me and had been playing for years together. I don’t know how long. We almost never did modules, it was almost exclusively home brew. The Hickman Revolution passed us by. So while yes, I started in 84, I learned from people older and with years of experience who explicitly avoided modules and 2E. So everything that brought in the notion of RPGs as stories and keeping characters alive at all costs we skipped.

So, yes, it's got nothing to do with generation and simply a play preference for you and your group.

Which is perfectly fine, play preferences are great. But, it's not about how long someone's been playing. Obviously the Hickman Revolution was going on in the 80's. And it's not like it was unheard of before then. You skipped it, so, you think it's something that newer players do. Fair enough. I'm telling you that if you hadn't skipped it at the time, you'd realize that there were LOTS of story based play going all the way back to things like Against the Slave Lords and the GDQ series of modules.

 

[Hussar]

Fundamentally different mediums. An RPG campaign is only a story where everything works out in the end by GM and player fiat if you want it to be. I do not.

How do you figure?

If I play the A series of modules, the outcome is going to be pretty predictable, presuming we get to the end of the series. There might be a range of results, but, by and large, most of them are going to be pretty close. If I do the GDQ series, the story will end with the giants and drow defeated and Lolth dead.

It's not like this is new. This has been the standard in RPG campaigns for a very, very long time. Not ever game is an open world sandbox. There's a lot more to D&D than open world sandbox play.

 

[Mort]

I asked this in the other thread. Do you bring an umbrella with you when the weather report says there is a 5% chance of rain?

But that's not really accurate, it's 5% per attack.

So let's say you're closing with a monster that Demonstrably has a claw/claw/bite routine - 3 attacks a round. Combat averages 4 rounds.

Do you bring an umbrella 60% chance of rain? And if you didn't, are you still surprised when you get wet?

 

[DND_Reborn]

But that's not really accurate, it's 5% per attack.

So let's say you're closing with a monster that Demonstrably has a claw/claw/bite routine - 3 attacks a round. Combat averages 4 rounds.

Do you bring an umbrella 60% chance of rain? And if you didn't, are you still surprised when you get wet?

Excellent point, but FWIW your math is off a bit I think (maybe there are assumptions I am unaware of?).

The probability of getting hit by 1 or more critical hit (assuming you survive any early critical hits so the combat goes the full 4 rounds) when being attacked 3 times each round for 4 rounds is 45.96%.

So, do you bring an umbrella when there is (roughly) a 45% chance of rain?

 

[Mort]

Excellent point, but FWIW your math is off a bit I think (maybe there are assumptions I am unaware of?).

The probability of getting hit by 1 or more critical hit (assuming you survive any early critical hits so the combat goes the full 4 rounds) when being attacked 3 times each round for 4 rounds is 45.96%.

So, do you bring an umbrella when there is (roughly) a 45% chance of rain?

Hmm,

1 in 20 chance per attack = 5%

3 attacks per round * 4 rounds = 12 attacks

12 * 5 = 60%

What am I missing?