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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 6583838" data-attributes="member: 97077">The easiest way to take death off the table without cheapening the challenge or reducing the difficulty is to just make the stakes about something other than life or death. The first step in thinking about how to set up scenes this way is to consider the goals of the monsters (or NPCs or villains or opposition or whatever). Most DMs in my experience will set the goal of the monster as "Kill All Player Characters." But that's easily changed to something else.For example, the opening scene of Lost Mine of Phandelver has four goblins attacking the characters. The "safety valve" on that encounter is that the goblins do not kill the characters - only knock them out and take their stuff. What if instead, the goblins had no vested interest in killing the characters at all and only wanted to rob them. Imagine how much different that scene would turn out. The challenge level would remain, but the threat of death would be off the table. Take a look at how I set up this scene <a href="http://community.wizards.com/forum/product-and-general-dd-discussions/threads/4116201" target="_blank">here</a>. If the PCs win, they defeat the goblins and don't lose any of their goods. If they lose, they're in the hole to their quest-giver for a certain amount of gold.How about this one? <a href="http://community.wizards.com/forum/product-and-general-dd-discussions/threads/4154981" target="_blank">The Temple of Bazim-Gorag</a>. Here, the slaadi have no interest in killing (most) PCs. They want to implant eggs in them instead and then let them go. So if the PCs win, they get the treasure at the heart of the temple. If they lose, they're now on a timer to get rid of those eggs or die an Alien-style death sometime soon. This gives them time to reverse their losses.So that's my solution to the deadliness of lower levels - change the stakes! Once they've left the apprentice tier, then it's good to keep having these sorts of scenes, but also mix in ones where life and death are on the line.</blockquote>

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