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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Riastlin" data-source="post: 5603867" data-attributes="member: 94022">I absolutely agree with this.  I'm a firm believer that success doesn't mean much if everyone is guaranteed to succeed.  Its one of the reasons why I've come to the point where my npcs/monsters are often absolutely ruthless in combat.  Sure, PC death sucks for the player, and a tpk could, in theory (though not always) derail a campaign, but if every PC is guaranteed to reach level 30, then levels 1 - 29 really don't matter.That being said, my concern is that while death in combat can seem like a natural ebb and flow of the game and the luck of the dice, simply taking away a player's toys can feel arbitrary.  I'm not actually arguing against this per se.  I guess I'm just concerned as to how do GMs go about making it seem as though the decision wasn't purely arbitrary?  This is why for instance, I don't necessarily have a problem with stacking the deck against the PCs, making it likely that they'll suffer a setback, but simply "blowing the ship up" so to speak, smacks a bit too much of arbitrariness to me.  Also to be fair, we were only offered part of the story with regard to how the ship blew up.  We don't know if, for instance, the harbor the ship was anchored was attacked, etc.</blockquote>