D&D General What does D&D look like without Death on the Table?

[jgsugden]

D&D needs to have a risk of failure.

That risk of failure absolutely does not need to be death.

My games typically feature only a few 'deadly' combats per level, but I strive to make sure there is something to be achieved other than fighting when it is not a deadly fight. They might be saving someone (or something) before it is killed/destroyed. They might be trying to avoid someone raising an alarm. They might be trying to solve a puzzle while keeping their resources available for the real fight coming up. They might be chasing a fleeing enemy. They might be fighting someone that can have them turned into criminals if they attack back... all sorts of options are available to make sure that the game has challenges, even if the PCs are not at risk of death absent incredibly bad luck.

I'll go so far as to say that I find it essential to have combats with no real threat of death to make the PCs feel like heroes. If every battle is a struggle, they feel weak and barely capable of getting by ... but if they fell a mighty beast with a flourish, it gives them that feeling of being mighty heroes. That can feel like Spider-man fighting off thugs rather than like Robin escaping the Joker's clutches.

 

[Reynard]

I kinda want to run a campaign in an MMO setting - as in the pc's and npc's are aware that they're in a game that plays by DnD rules. If you're pc dies, the player (who a sort of meta-character) still has an Account and can either make a new character or pay to get the pc rezzed - although probably with level loss or some such.

This idea has been on my mind for a while. I feel like it is a great way to breathe some life back into the game with old hand players. Let them revel in their metagame knowledge and use it against them!

 

[embee]

Death is on the table. I think it always should be. My 5e players sit up and take notice when they have to start doing death saves because they know I won't save them.

In theory, sure, they can always get a priest to raise dead at a chantry. But with raise dead spells, I think you need to RP having the ACTUAL DIAMOND. And that's just for Raise Dead. Meaning the party has 10 days to get out of where they are, get to a city, find and buy a 500 gp diamond, and then get to the chantry with the body and with all the vital innards intact.

It also gives a good reason for a D&D version of DeBeers to exist in the world. Why is there a diamond cartel? Because you need diamonds to cheat death.

 

[Phion]

Momento mori friend

 

[Umbran]

You can't make such a tantalizing suggestion and just leave it.

Go on...

Well, let's talk about what other games that have death off the table look like...

I'll start with the one I know best - Fate. Death isn't strictly off the table, but neither does it happen by chance. Death of a PC is a direct choice. While Fate handles other scenarios equally well, let us consider a straight up physical fight as the base situation...

If the PC is getting close to being beaten, the player can concede - if the player concedes, the player gets to narrate how the character is removed from the scene, and fail to reach their goal, but manage to survive.

If the player does not concede before being "taken out", then the GM gets to narrate what happens. And the GM can choose, "Your character dies." And, I suppose sometimes that's a fitting thing to do in the moment. But usually, if you have a choice... why would you do that? Saying, "...and you die," is not itself very interesting, so most GMs I know don't choose that often. They instead use it as an opportunity to do something interesting that continues the story in some way.

The results are, in my experience... kind of pulp-actiony. Players are a bit more free to attempt more dramatic, low-probability solutions, because they have somewhat more confidence that it won't outright end their investment in the character.

This is not to say the results aren't also gritty - Fate has an innate way of handling long-term impacts on characters that D&D lacks - "Consequences". If you were trying really hard to do hazardous stuff, you probably rack up some Consequences that won't fix themselves overnight. Long-term injuries are easily modeled with higher level consequences.

 

[Umbran]

I kinda want to run a campaign in an MMO setting

Ready Player One, the game.

 

[Reynard]

Ready Player One, the game.

Except, you know, good.

 

[Umbran]

Except, you know, good.

The metric for "good" is not well defined, so I choose not to try to speculate on the relative quality of anyone's home game vs a work that was on the New York Times Bestseller list and that spawned a movie that grossed a half-billion dollars.

 

[Scott Christian]

Do consequences for failure still exist in this version of the game?

(I think they can, but I am asking for clarification before I answer.)

I am still waiting for the answer to this.

Presuming you have taken death off the table, what do you do as DM if the PCs are having a really hard time with some relatively unimportant or random fight and it looks like you are in TPK territory? Do you fudge to let them survive by the skin of their teeth? Do you have NPCs swoop in and save them? Do you have them all "knocked out" and wake up later? Do you apply some other penalty (permanent wounds, etc)?

I think it is freeing for a GM to remove death from the table. But think consequences should exist. In the homebrew version, I have removed death. It has allowed me to never fudge a roll. Not worry too much if the PC's encounter something way out of their league, and still decide to fight it. Not worry about a "lethal" consequence for PC's actions because they have to break the law, like attacking a judge. It also allows a broader range of tools for me as GM to use.
But there are consequences. Big ones. They roll on a death table. This represents their "encounter" with near death. It permanently does something to their character. Here are a few:

• Permanently lose 5' of movement
• Permanently lose some HP

There are others that do not translate well to D&D. But for D&D I would have permanent attribute drops. They are also burdened with a status (like exhaustion). So they can die all they want. If they want to play the reckless fighter who fears nothing and charges headlong in all the time, awesome. They can play that character, and even better, I don't have to manipulate things in order for their character to survive. I let the dice fall where they fall, and then, if needed, consequences proceed.

 

[GrahamWills]

if a group decides to treat their PCs like protagonists in a longer story and effectively take the kind of unsatisfying, random death caused by bad die rolls out of the equation, what does a D&D campaign look like?

It looks like every other fantasy camping I've run or played in, except that players invest more strongly in role-playing their characters at low level. At mid-high level, death in D&D is just an expense, so it really just makes a difference at low level.
Instead of players just treating low-level characters as numbers and ice rolls until they can be sure they will survive, players buy into their characters more when death is very unlikely. Pretty much as you'd expect.

So, for me: high death rates → low character investment; low death rates → high character investment.

If you play this way, how does it work and how does/did it go?

Back in the day, I recall a mid-tier character being attacked by a rust monster and a raging barbarian ogre with a high-grit weapon. They were by far more worried about their weapon being destroyed than being killed. BY FAR.
Random death is a tremendously boring result. As a threat it is motivating, but if you have good role-players they will be more motivated by, and care more about losses related to:

• their loved ones, family and friends
• their community
• prized possessions -- especially for some reason homes.

Another effect is that players are less cautious. Whether you view that as a good thing or not is a matter of choice. For me, I got fairly tired of the rogue always announcing his they were checking for traps, or the party always wanting to go home when out of healing spells, or taking all their spells as boring damage or damage mitigators rather than more fun role-play friendly spells.

So, for me: high death rates → emphasis on avoiding death; low death rates → emphasis on role-playing