D&D 5E This Game is Deadly

[Psikerlord#]

It isn't a game if you don't have a chance to lose.

If a party uses great tactics, and the DM designs a well balanced encolunter, the chance of death should be small - but present. If the PCs make mistakes or get pretty unlucky, the Reaper should come knocking. That was the way in AD&D, 2E, and somewhat in 3E....

And death isn't a bad thing in the game.

You're a player, and you play characters... and if one dies and cannot be recovered, you get the chance to bring in another. Most of my favorite memories from RPGs are the deaths of treasured characters that went out in blazes of glory - sometimes heroi - sometimes comedic - and sometimes just cruelly unlucky. One of my favorites was the paladin that was egged on into charging an ogre by the halfing rogue - the ogre which took an Attack of Opportunity, rolled a natural 20, then rolled high enough to hit on the critical confirmation roll, then rolled max damage on the double damage - and killed my paladin in one hit from max hps... I friggin loved it. A sudden and brutal end filled with great role playing and a huge unlucky streak (a 1 in 20,000 chance).

Agree, some PC deaths are great memories (some, not all!)

 

[Psikerlord#]

Your view on this is not as universal as you state it. Of course it is plenty of a role playing game if you can lose despite playing smart. Indeed, your statement runs against the overwhelming majority of role playing games throughout the history of role playing games. Who hasn't heard of "dying during character creation" for Traveler (obviously the extreme example of all extreme examples). Huge numbers of smart players died during the original Tomb of Horrors due to bad die rolls, does that mean they were "not playing much of a role-playing game"? Bottom line is that historically for the genre of games known as tabletop role playing games, dying because of bad luck despite smart play is more an axiom. It's a claim accepted prima facia. Not having the real risk of death despite smart play is really a much more modern concept, and not one embraced even by all modern games. In fact, I think I could list the number of games where "death by bad luck" is not a real factor on one hand.



It's statements like this that make me harp on you constantly about you're lack of acknowledgement that you are a common outlier on this board for your perspective and experience of the game. And understand I have always said that you being an outlier is not itself bad - there is no judgement one way or another that you have an uncommon perspective and experience of the game. No, the judgement comes in you refusing to acknowledge that your perspective is different, that your experience is different, and therefore everything that's gone into honing your instincts about how others view the game is off.

Almost every poll we take here, you're in the incredibly small minority response. Almost every thread here when a huge overwhelming majority of posters is positive about X, you're negative about X (and sometimes the reverse). Almost every thread where people say their experience is Y, you disagree and say your experience is Z.

Again, that's not a bad thing. The bad thing is you not appreciating the ramifications of you being an outlier. It means you probably shouldn't be speaking for "a lot of other players" or for your view of what others think. Because everything you've built with your history of viewpoints says you are not closely in touch with what other people's views are or what they think about this game, given your very consistently differing perspective and experience with the game.

Bottom line, you cannot have it both ways. You cannot constantly proclaim your differing perspective and experience from the overwhelming majority, and also claim to speak for the majority based on your perspective and experience. It's got to be one or the other. And, given it's much harder to change ones perspective and experience, I would suggest it would probably be wisest to simply stop speaking to what you think the views of others are.

You cant know if he's an outlier though. You infer that he is based on forum trends, and/or personal experience, but neither of those data sources is reliable, at all. Perhaps you should refrain from asking him to acknowledge that he is an outlier, as he may very well not be.

 

[Mistwell]

You cant know if he's an outlier though. You infer that he is based on forum trends, and/or personal experience, but neither of those data sources is reliable, at all. Perhaps you should refrain from asking him to acknowledge that he is an outlier, as he may very well not be.

Let me see if I understand your position: when RE speaks for others and implies or outright says his view has a material amount of support from undisclosed other people, that's OK. But when I counter that by pointing out he seems to lack support here every time there is a poll, I can't know that so it's unfair?

He's an outlier here, and here is the audience for his post where he is speaking for others, so it's a fair claim for me to make. When a guy is consistently answering in the 10% or less minority in polls for months on end, it's not an unreasonable thing to be pointing it out when he speaks for others. The whole point of speaking for others is to try and make a claim that your view has a lot of support. So it's a fair counter to say hey, when given the opportunity to show that you have a lot of support for your views in general, every time you're coming up in the extreme minority.

I wouldn't be pointing it out, if he were not making such types of claims to begin with about what others think.

 

[drjones]

The characters in my game are halfway to level 3 and we have had one death back at level 1. Since they made 2 and learned their characters better things have been going well, combat is deadly yes but that goes both ways and so far it is favoring the players more. The encounter with certain thugs near a certain bar in a certain town which is named in the title was over in one freakin' round, complete with the halfing making a called shot with disadvantage to remove the leaders genitalia with his shortsword. But after a few hours of play they have been worn down and run out of resources (something I super struggled with in 4e in the teen levels, encounters took way too long so we would get in one or two a session and I ended up giving away full rests like candy because it was too difficult to remember where we were last time and big dungeons were tedious.)

Actually at one point a fighter noted that he was getting more beat up by a stupid pit trap than he was by the thugs and it was true, he burned two potions just out of fear of missing another skill check and falling back in.

Now we see if they have enough old school sense to retreat as their resources dwindle..

 

[Libramarian]

Are level-draining monsters back, or did you mean to type 'PCs'?

I was thinking total party XP, but I would be all in favor of bringing back level-drain. I think it's a great mechanic and doesn't seem too harsh in any game where players might have to start over at level 1 at some point. I'd like to run a pure dungeon-crawl campaign where character death = lose a level and get auto-raised at the nearest level entrance. I pitched it to my players but they didn't like the idea of a pure dungeon-crawl (imaginary seasonal affective disorder is a thing I guess).

 

[Psikerlord#]

Let me see if I understand your position: when RE speaks for others and implies or outright says his view has a material amount of support from undisclosed other people, that's OK. But when I counter that by pointing out he seems to lack support here every time there is a poll, I can't know that so it's unfair?

He's an outlier here, and here is the audience for his post where he is speaking for others, so it's a fair claim for me to make. When a guy is consistently answering in the 10% or less minority in polls for months on end, it's not an unreasonable thing to be pointing it out when he speaks for others. The whole point of speaking for others is to try and make a claim that your view has a lot of support. So it's a fair counter to say hey, when given the opportunity to show that you have a lot of support for your views in general, every time you're coming up in the extreme minority.

I wouldn't be pointing it out, if he were not making such types of claims to begin with about what others think.

You misunderstood my position. I was silent on whether making claims to represent the views of many is fair or not. All I suggest is that you cannot know if he is an outlier with any reliability, and consequently ought to refrain from asserting such.

 

[MortalPlague]

Also if you take any AoE damage while zero hp, it's an auto death roll failure, so there is also that risk.

That, in particular, has been responsible for a few PC deaths in my playtest games. Especially from AoEs that function every round.

...if you take 50+ hp damage make a death save or be reduced to zero hp, and so on.

With monster damage scaling the way it does, the damage amount would also have to scale. Otherwise, you'd be rolling this save a few times every fight around 12th level and onwards.

I really like your spend HD rule to reduce possibly lethal -ve damage. Perhaps also spend a HD to reroll a failed saving throw..? Some options such as this in DMG would also be excellent.

Agreed on this one; spending hit dice in that way sounds like a great idea. I'm not sure about saving throws on a one for one (since you eventually get a whole lot of hit dice), perhaps spending a fraction would work better? Half? A quarter, round up?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

You cannot constantly proclaim your differing perspective and experience from the overwhelming majority, and also claim to speak for the majority based on your perspective and experience. It's got to be one or the other.

I'm afraid not, Mistwell. It merely means I might represent a very different constituency to this majority you perceive. One that is less common on ENWorld, but more common elsewhere. Or not. But your argument rests on the assumption that ENWorld is tightly representative of the RPG industry as a whole, or D&D players as a whole, and I don't think anyone believes that - [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION], I certainly doubt does.

Also, re: polling, I'm afraid that's not simply true, from an objective/fact-based perspective. I'm all over the place! Sometimes wild minority, sometimes supermajority. I can prove this by pointing to specific polls, if you want.

(Recent examples of opinions on both ends of the spectrum - Like most people I thought that the Hermit background was awesome - very unlike most people I worry that backgrounds will be used as a lazy space-filler in 5E)

[MENTION=93321]Psikerlord#[/MENTION] - Precisely! We disagree on most things, but neither of us knows if we're an outlier, and nor does Mistwell. We can only speak for our own experiences and beliefs.

[MENTION=2525]Mistwell[/MENTION] - If you like I can add an "Everything in this post is IMO and IME." to my sig. - would that help? I mean, one assumes that, normally, but...

I mean, let's be real, it's quite possible, what with this being the internet that I am a complicated chatbot, or that the people I play D&D with exist only in my head, or are robots living on the dark side of the moon or whatever, but you don't have any basis for asserting I'm outlier beyond ENWorld, and even then, I think it's less consistent than you think, given the PMs and upvote comments I get.

One thing is that we're what, ten years different in age (entirely a guess - I'm 36) and I'm from a upper-middle-class (as 2E AD&D would put it!), vaguely academic/artsy-fartsy London (UK) background, and I presume you're from a very different one. Many people on this board are 10-15 years older than me and Americans, so some significant cultural differences are to be expected! Most of the gamers I personally know are of an age with me (within five years either way), wealthier than average, professionals in big cities (either London, NY, Boston or LA in most cases). I doubt that's typical.

 

[Blackbrrd]

It isn't a game if you don't have a chance to lose.

If a party uses great tactics, and the DM designs a well balanced encolunter, the chance of death should be small - but present. If the PCs make mistakes or get pretty unlucky, the Reaper should come knocking. That was the way in AD&D, 2E, and somewhat in 3E....

And death isn't a bad thing in the game.

You're a player, and you play characters... and if one dies and cannot be recovered, you get the chance to bring in another. Most of my favorite memories from RPGs are the deaths of treasured characters that went out in blazes of glory - sometimes heroi - sometimes comedic - and sometimes just cruelly unlucky. One of my favorites was the paladin that was egged on into charging an ogre by the halfing rogue - the ogre which took an Attack of Opportunity, rolled a natural 20, then rolled high enough to hit on the critical confirmation roll, then rolled max damage on the double damage - and killed my paladin in one hit from max hps... I friggin loved it. A sudden and brutal end filled with great role playing and a huge unlucky streak (a 1 in 20,000 chance).

Actually, I like creating some encounters that can't be solved through brute force. In other words, if you go in, expecting a "normal" encounter and don't adjust your plans as you get the hints that you are in over your head, there will be a TPK (or something similar). At the same time, I am pretty lenient when my players come up with ways of solving encounters without brute force. I am not trying to kill the characters, but trying to get the players to think outside the box.

 

[Umbran]

Almost every poll we take here, you're in the incredibly small minority response. Almost every thread here when a huge overwhelming majority of posters is positive about X, you're negative about X (and sometimes the reverse). Almost every thread where people say their experience is Y, you disagree and say your experience is Z.

Folks,

The fact that one person seems to run against the local majority really doesn't mean much - EN World itself is strongly self-selected group, so that we are unlikely to be a representative sample of gamers on the whole. Running against our local majority doesn't mean you're in the overall minority in the larger community. Until someone can cite real data, claims to know what the majority out there really thinks are pretty bogus.

Moreover, the way that this is addressed to a particular person ("*YOU* are always in the minority,") is inappropriate - it renders the argument a dismissal of the person, rather than a particular point of logic.

Despite disclaimers, arguments of this form come across as, "You are part of the minority, so shut up already!" Aside from the above note about statistics, it in general makes folks feel their ideas and experiences are unwelcome or not valued.

So, really, don't go there. We suggest you try to keep yourselves to things like, "I think enough people think like I do to matter". That's an opinion, and one that isn't hard to support.