Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="DM_Blake" data-source="post: 4120914" data-attributes="member: 57267">This is good, I agree with this - most of the time.On the other hand, if PCs cannot die, they begin to act like the A-Team (remember that old show? I hear there's a movie coming out soon). Those guys could crash a helicopter at full speed into a cliff, fall hundreds of feet to the rocks below, and walk out of the wreckage).I once had a DM that I knew never killed PCs. In fact, he saved them from death no matter what. In a new game he started, I had my little level 1 rogue sneak attack the heck out of a hill giant. He meant it to be a roleplaying encounter, but I turned it into a kill. Yes, I killed the giant. Solo. Because that giant miraculously missed me over and over, and I found ways to get away, then come back and sneak attack it, get away, repeat. I leveled up to level 4 off of that one kill.Now that's a ridiculous example. No sane DM would allow that.But PCs need to fear death. They need to know that if they make foolish plans, there will be consequences that cannot be hand-waived away by having their friend "heroically" save them.Without fear of death, the PCs decision making goes from "OK, that looks like a tough fight. We need to carefully plan out a strategy to make sure we all live through it." to "OK, there's another walking pile of loot for us. Charge! The DM will make sure we don't die!"OK, that's kind of drastic. It's not really quite that bad. But I hope it serves to illustrate the point of how players in many games really do view encounters as a source of XP and loot, rather than as a risky tactical or strategic challenge to be overcome.Now this I agree with. It should be up to the DM.What I don't agree with is the Core rulebooks having a rule about this - it should be a footnote in the world-building section in the DMG to educate DMs about it and leave it up to them. It should be a rule in a campaign setting, not a core rulebook.</blockquote>

Verification