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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 6727695" data-attributes="member: 37579">Originally posted by wrecan:When is it okay for a PC to die?When the dice dictate it.What events are deemed "important" enough to allow for PC death?I don't worry about "importance". I've had PCs die in climactic battles and PCs die in the middle of adventures. Death is death.Does it matter that a dead PC can be brought back relatively easily?Not really. Nobody like their PC dying. I find NPC resurrection to be more problematic.As a DM, if your PCs never die, how do maintain a level of imminent (or even momentary) threat?By failing in their goals. If you live, but the kingdom falls to demons, you failed. If you live, and the village is burned by the orc horde, you failed. If you live, but your equipment is lying at the bottom of the ocean, you failed.For me, in a well-crafted game, death is one of the least motivations for players. Plot is the primary motivation. Now, a plot could be "Oh, geez, I don't wanna die!", but most plots have a less fatalistic story arc, somewhere between "I want to find the Scepter of Stonehall and be rich" and "I want to stop the Dread Lord Morgataw from conquering the Noble Kingdom... and be rich." <img src="http://community.wizards.com/sites/all/modules/custom/forest_site/smileys/wizards/smile.gif" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Do you think the game works better if your PCs never die?I don't think it matters. The game works better is the players are invested in what happens to their characters and the world the characters inhabit.But these questions all dodge the real issue your grappling, imo. The real question is...How do you choose how deadly do you intend to make your adventures?I mean, we're the DMs, right? We could ensure no PC survives the Grimtooth's Hall of Antimagical Oubliettes. We could also ensure every adventure is through the Gumdrop Forest of Tickle Fights. I assume most DMs fall somewhere in between the two. For me, I design adventures where the PCs are likely to all survive, but some bad rolls or bad choices might affect that. But I don't plan TPKs. I don't write Tomb of Horrors-like adventures. Nor do I generally write cakewalks.Originally posted by wrecan:I think this is a false choice. Nobody who play a RPG in an ongoing campaign ever really chooses the first or second choice. Tomb of Horrors was a tournament module -- even Gygax wouldn't run his regular players through it. Maybe as a one-shot for fun you play this way, but not for an ongoing campaign in any edition.And nobody runs D&D in which the ending of an entire campaign is preselected from level 1. Players have free will, so it's almost a guarantee that cannot work unless the DM completely railroads them. So really every game is a "Hybrid". This is just an easy way to avoid the tough question.When you write a scenario, how do you determine how lethal it will be? Do you have in mind the goal of trying to kill them all? Do you try to kill just one each adventure? Do you make it lethal enough for them to possibly die, but know they won't if they're smart. Do you try to make ti fun without it necessarily being lethal at all? Do you actively avoid situations where PCs might be killed?</blockquote>

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