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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Barastrondo" data-source="post: 5086114" data-attributes="member: 3820">That's why The Story is defined as we go instead of ahead of time. If the hero dies, even if the odds are against it, then clearly that's part of the story. At that point you move into potential contingency plans like "so hey, is there some way to raise the dead?", or a shift in protagonist. I know that if I'm mucking around with D&D with a storytelling technique in mind, the default assumption regarding raising the dead is (a) it shouldn't be done all the time, and (b) it should be an interesting process. Find a gate to the Underworld. Duel a Valkyrie for the right to keep your lover among the living. So therefore, having death as a potential option doesn't hurt "The Story" as it evolves. There are many satisfactory ways to build an interesting new chapter out of an unexpected death. That said, setting the odds of death to "low" is a popular option because it keeps character death high-impact. In a game where you lose 1-4 PCs every couple of weeks, or more often than that, you run a risk of each PC's death being more of an anecdote than a story. Not that there's anything wrong with anecdotes -- they're a lot easier to recount at cons, and there's less of a "you had to be there" limiter. But if a character's death has a real story impact, then that's quite valuable for everyone at the table.</blockquote>