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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JamesonCourage" data-source="post: 5481790" data-attributes="member: 6668292">I've basically been roleplaying for 15 years. My brother got me into it. This is essentially how he GMed. He's a very fun GM to play with. However, after about a year, I noticed that no matter how dangerous things were, I wasn't going to die. The other players noticed it, too.I began to see if I could die. Now, I wouldn't do anything outright stupid. I did, however, start playing more dangerous characters.First, a sorcerer that liked melee spells whose mindset was all about combat. I was still strategic, and I'd only move in when I felt safe enough (self buffs, flanking, little chance of being swarmed, etc.). Nowhere close to dying.Second, I played a lawful good fighter, who was all about bringing the bad criminals to justice. Not the thieves. No, the violent criminals. So, I worked against bandits, opposing armies, monsters, etc. Got dropped to 4 once. Didn't get hit for the rest of combat.Lastly, I played a spiked chain fighter. Lawful Neutral. I took Diehard, just to see if I could push combat. I got knocked to -4, and kept attacking. I made it to -8 (from just me attacking) before combat ended, and we won. I walked out holding the head of the boss (cleric). Walking out at -8 holding the head of the evil boss would have been a lot more epic if I was afraid of dying.After that, I just stopped trying. After playing on and off for with my brother for years (since 3.0), he's never killed me. Out of my regular group, he's never killed anyone. So that's the danger. You risk killing the thrill, the feeling you earned something. You might rob someone of the otherwise epic feeling of walking out, in the negatives, holding the head of the evil guy.Personally, I'd suggest pulling punches only when you messed up. If you tried to give them a tough fight, but it ends up dominating, that's a GM mistake, and it's within his power to fix it. However, I have a very solid rule of everyone rolling in the open, including the GM. I even say DCs before player rolls sometimes, just so they know I'm not fudging things (I trust them not to metagame).Now, what you can do if you roll in the open is change tactics. Yeah, the enemies may have just dropped the party fighter, but the rogue is rolling well still. Have the enemies engaging him call for help. When the other minions move to the rogue (away from other party members), that gives an opportunity for the cleric to heal the fighter (just to stabilize him, if not to bring him back into the fight), and the wizard to throw an AoE at the minions (figuring the rogue has Evasion, or the AoE is non-harmful, or both). Moving the minions away from the wizard and cleric isn't a sound tactic in this scenario, but if you misjudged the encounter to begin with, I'm totally okay with fudging tactics to even the odds.I say that if it's someone's time to die, let them die. It sucks, yes, but it gives a much richer feeling of accomplishment when any character achieves a certain level of awesomeness. Also, death is a great roleplaying opportunity, and I like how it usually plays out. Lastly, it gives the player a chance to make a new character, which can be a good thing (better for party cohesion due to mindset, better for party makeup, get to try a new concept, just wanted something new to do, etc.).But hey, play what you like <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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