Session to Death Ratio

[Holy Bovine]

In games I run PC death is rare. Maybe once every 25-30 sessions or so. In some games I have played we have averaged a PC death every other session (we had one where 3 PCs died over 2 sessions). In this case I really don't think it was through player fault. We had managed to skip an encounter to get to the BBEG and when we were winning due to some good tactics and luck the DM had the skipped encounter creatures just show up. So we had to suddenly fight the main (really tough) encounter with all his assorted minions plus an extra encounter at the same time. Of course 3 PCs died! I assumed it was what the DM wanted. haven't played that game in a long while (everyone was bummed even the DM, strangely).

 

[Obryn]

I haven't had many deaths recently in my 4e game, but I almost had 3 last session. (I might have had a TPK had I remembered the monster's action points...) I've had several over the campaign, though.

When I ran 1e, I was seeing regular deaths.

When I run CoC, I actually see somewhere in between. I run CoC so eroding sanity is almost as much a concern as sudden, horrible death.

-O

 

[Hussar]

My answer would honestly have to be, "it depends".

Generally the death rate will vary greatly depending on the game I'm running, the setting I'm running, and the general theme of the game. My last 3e game had no PC deaths in 60 sessions. The D&D campaign before that had a PC death about every 3 sessions.

I'm not sure how I should answer.

 

[Vegepygmy]

My current campaign will play its 58th session tonight. 10 player characters have been killed so far. So that's 1 death per 5.7 sessions. But each session is only 3 hours long (we play online using MapTool), so if I was using what I consider a "typical session" metric, I'd say the death rate is more like 1 death per 3 (6-hour) sessions instead.

 

[Pour]

After 65 sessions, I've had two deaths at sessions 14 and 45. I nearly had a TPK during session 3 and 30-something.

This deep in the game, death for a lot of my players' characters would probably equate to end game, at which point they'd drop and wait for the next campaign. They are extremely invested in their characters, and add all sorts of wonderful depth and complexity via fiction and rp outside the sessions. I don't pull punches because of all that, but it is something I keep in the back of my head, and more often or not I leave room for escapes and alternative methods of achieving goals.

I've also had 5 players come and go, my current group at 7 (and since split into two games at 4 and 3 people). Their characters have been NPCed, villainized or killed. So maybe I can say 3 deaths, then.

 

[Crothian]

19 sessions and no deaths. We've gone through 5 modules so far so that's pretty good.

 

[Lanefan]

First, an aisde: I'm truly surprised at the number of posts here indicating that character deaths are not tracked or recorded. I just can't imagine running a game and not keeping *some* records, the most important of which would be:
- new characters (name, race, class, player)
- character deaths
- character changes (retirements, race/class/name etc. changes)
- adventures played
- brief notes on who did what when, if only to give out ExP later

Now, to the main question:

While they tend to come in batches, my current campaign is running close to 1:1.5 deaths vs. sessions: 105 deaths in 176 sessions. That includes party NPCs, who I log the same as PCs; to sort those out would take longer than I'm going to give this. But the vast majority of those deaths were actual PCs.

The other campaigns I've run have been closer to about 1:3 at a very rough guess; but they've also reached higher levels and - truth be told - have at times had much more cautious players at the table. My current crew are a wonderfully gonzo lot...

As for what I prefer: I like some turnover, but prefer it to be steady rather than in batches: batches are annoying. My Friday group, for example, got beat to shreds (lost 4 PCs of a party of 7) in their previous session, then went to town last session and recruited a whole new set of victi...er, members; so 5 of 8 are now brand new and I need a bloody program to tell who's who! Fortunately, this is one of the more excessive and rare examples...

I find that once the PC Clerics get to 9th (or can cast 5th level spells) and thus can Raise in the field, there is very little character turnover...sure I can kill 'em, but they just come back. After that, in the long run things tend to get a bit too static for my liking.

I suppose my preferred rate of turnover (for whatever reason, not just death) would probably involve swapping out most of the party over the course of a year or so; more frequent if people have a stable of PCs they swap in and out from depending on what the party needs. I also prefer multi-party campaigns, to promote said swapping; and do my best to run such when I can. Linear or single-party campaigns tend to be much more static.

Lanefan

 

[Alzrius]

Fifth session today and we lost another PC...sort of.

One of our players quit, and I was running his character. The DM didn't care for the character much to begin with, and especially didn't like one player running two characters at once; he said at the beginning of the session that that PC was toast.

I took it as a personal challenge (though not an insult) and tried my best, along with the party, to save the character. But in the end, a giant spider still bumped her off (we were so close to saving her though). Ah well, c'est la vie.

At least my PC survived.

 

[Fifth Element]

I'm running a 4E campaign right now. It's been about 25 sessions to date, and no character deaths yet. One PC did get to two strikes on his death saves once. 4E characters can be tough to kill, but there's more to a challenging game than the threat of imminent character death anyway.

 

[Evilhalfling]

this campaign 5 sessions: no deaths (4e)
last campaign 20+ sessions no deaths, after a TPK in the first session. (3.5)