D&D 5E Take Infinity Damage

[GameOgre]

I like making failure more interesting, and something like this gives options for the rest of the party to spend action, resources and possibly risk themselves to saving a party member.

I can understand that. At the same time dice rolls fail and losing a character due to one failed dice role.......sucks.

Unless the falling pc was way high up on his turn he would fail and fall and die. no time for other party members to do anything. Now slowing it down is perfectly fine but that is just a separate system to shift the odds in your favor.

One of my players loves to DM from time to time and loves for every fight to be epic,loves for traps to be deadly ect..but as he quickly discovered if you put the pc's in life or death situations on a steady bases they will fail and die a lot.

We love to think our characters will beat the odds but really they don't. A 50% chance to die will see the pc's dead 50% of the time. The way they beat the odds is if the odds only seem to be against them. Dice rolls don't care about the characters or story or fun. They don't give a crap about challenge level or whatever else.

If you made them save or die with only a 1-5 chance on the dice roll to fail. They would still die about 20% of the time.

For my table a 20% chance to lose your character on one roll just isn't fun for most encounters.



Edited to add-
On the other hand if the party needed to be faced with the results of their (negative) actions such as "there is a 15 foot pit filled with lava in front of you" and the pc's just laughed and jumped over it. I got no issue at my table with a simple fail or die roll.
It's only when that roll would be the result of just pure random chance that I would feel the need to stack the deck.

if I made the adventure in the underdark and put in a lava filled moat and a bridge the pc's needed to use to cross it and a fight happened and during the battle one of the pc's was picked up and hurled off the bridge or whatever......I would feel like a arsehat to just tell him "welp you plunge into he lava and are dead."

 

[Blue]

I can understand that. At the same time dice rolls fail and losing a character due to one failed dice role.......sucks.

I was agreeing with your stacking the deck and giving multiple chances with increasing consequences. I was commenting on how those increased consequences were not just a flat impact on the character who failed the roll(s), but also had consequences to the rest of the party on how to rescue them - especially of import if time is of the essence or there's a battle raging when someone falls.

 

[mellored]

IMO:

"You wake in a cold sweat, you party slumbering around you. It takes you a moment to realize you are sitting outside the lava dungeon. It's the morning before you adventure in.
You just had a horrible premonition of you falling and dying. You warn the others that you really need to avoid touching the lava, and all precautions should be taken.
You pinch yourself, and are absolutely sure you are not dreaming this time. You remind yourself that there are no do-overs in real life.
Also, the dungeon is not going to be the same one that was in your dream."

 

[GameOgre]

I was agreeing with your stacking the deck and giving multiple chances with increasing consequences. I was commenting on how those increased consequences were not just a flat impact on the character who failed the roll(s), but also had consequences to the rest of the party on how to rescue them - especially of import if time is of the essence or there's a battle raging when someone falls.

Gotcha!Opps sorry! I think I just failed my Int check and and was feeling talkative and wanted my voice to be HEARD! Now im leaving to go deal with a bunch of 2 and 3 year olds who will ignore everything I say for the next six hours.

 

[Krachek]

Perhaps in a no-option save-or-die I'd allow something like this. Trouble is, in lots of situations the player has had other options they could of taken but opted not to and is now in a very bad spot due to these earlier decisions. I'm a believer in consequences for taking big risks without reasonable mitigation. That way if you succeed, you really earned it. And if not, well, better luck next time.

That said, I'd play it by the book. If there's damage to be rolled and saves to be made, go for it. Maybe they can pull a miracle save out. But I would only extend special, life-saving options to rare situations where a PC gets into a lethal, one-shot-kill situation with little or no ability to make a decision to avoid it.

Each table has its own atmosphere and severity. Better know your DM style before approach a lava pit.
But true Luck is real.
There is story of normal people who survive explosion, car crash, plane crash, and even skyfall, where obviously no one should have survived.

 

[Olrox17]

I'm surprised nobody mentioned Fire and Brimstone, the comprehensive d20 guide to lava. It's a free PDF!
http://www.scratchfactory.com/Resources/LavaBanners/LavaRules.pdf

 

[iserith]

Each table has its own atmosphere and severity. Better know your DM style before approach a lava pit.
But true Luck is real.
There is story of normal people who survive explosion, car crash, plane crash, and even skyfall, where obviously no one should have survived.

I think this is something of a distraction though. Yes, in real life, things like you mention do occur. But this isn't real life. It's D&D, a game, and therefore fairness is something that matters. (I have no expectation that real life is fair.) So, to me, fairness trumps a simulation of reality.

I would say it's equally reasonable to have lava just do a set amount of damage or be instantly fatal for the unprotected to fall into it. There is no objective standard that says how many d6 damage or whatever it should do. What makes it fair is that the players know the scope of the danger beforehand - whatever it may be - so they can make decisions accordingly. And, knowing that, if they make a decision that leads to the death of their character, that's also fair even if the outcome is undesirable.

 

[cmad1977]

You don’t set something like that up if you aren’t willing to pull the trigger.


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[Warmaster Horus]

Each table has its own atmosphere and severity. Better know your DM style before approach a lava pit.
But true Luck is real.
There is story of normal people who survive explosion, car crash, plane crash, and even skyfall, where obviously no one should have survived.

Table culture has to be taken into account. However as a DM one thing I want in my table culture is that my players respect the prep and challenges I put in front of them. Over the years I've found that the more you fudge bad consequences the more your players sense your reticence to do so and push their luck further and further - a tendency I call 'daring me to kill them'. You can only have so many improbable certain death escapes before it gets old.

So these days I have no problem putting killing-level damage on a character that ignores prudent precautions to obvious deadly threats. Death is hardly the end of a PC in D&D and if they actually do pull off something spectacular, then it has that much more phenomenal impact at the table. One thing I won't do is have a save-or-die situation that isn't somehow telegraphed to give the players some sort of option of understanding, avoiding or mitigating the danger to some degree. This doesn't mean I have to spell everything out for them, if they don't check for traps at the tomb entrance, that's on them. But DM-gotchas! are not enjoyable by anyone.

 

[Monayuris]

I’d probably give a saving throw to not fall into the lava.
Make it: no problem you catch yourself
Miss by less than 5 or 10: to fall but catch yourself- you will fall to you death in 1d4 rounds (no additional checks unless there is a change in situation)
Miss by more than that: you fall to your death.

Death would still be certain if you fail, but maybe someone can get to you in time)