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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8238773" data-attributes="member: 18">My view seems pretty similar to yours, like really similar. Sorry if that's unhelpful.I've been DM'ing since 1989, so 32-ish years.I've had this attitude since the beginning, because it was expressed to me by the DM who taught me, an older female second-cousin.Since 4E/5E I no longer tend to pull punches re: killing PCs, because I almost never have to. Both games are designed in such a fashion, that, in order to die, usually you have to have monumentally messed up, or the party has, or both. I would if a player clearly didn't want to die and had been let down by the party, but I have yet to see that happen. I don't have much truck with people who do stuff like attacked downed PCs to cause death saves on a routine basis because I feel like it's a peculiar species of cheap metagaming in most cases (and often the same people are literally the first to write threads complaining about players metagaming, so I find it hypocritical). Players seem to be pretty happy with the rules on death/dying in my experience in 4E/5E, so of the PCs that have died, I haven't heard any complaints (unlike 1/2/3E where it could easily be total naughty word lol).I feel similarly but I honestly think the system is a big part of it. In 2/3E, there was a ton of save or die, or big one-shotting hits (esp. given vast HP variances between PCs), and a lot of it felt cheap, boring, and dumb, like, PCs could just die at random in some inconsequential encounter and there was literally nothing to be done except res them which was a PITA if it was even possible. In 4E/5E that almost never happens, so deaths tend to be more earned and more interesting.This is very true. I've had fun DMing games with a bad player, or playing in games with a bad player, but with a bad DM? That rapidly strangles the fun out of a game.</blockquote>

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