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

[Umbran]

If you remove death from the table D&D looks a lot like 5th edition.

Mod Note:

The snark serves to increase the ill-will in the Universe. It does not do good things for the discussion. So, please don't apply it again. Thanks.

 

[Spohedus]

Our last campaign went like this:

LMoP: levels 1-5
Hidden Shrineof Tamoachan: 5-6
Red Hand of Doom: 6-11

I understand the OP's question. As a player from the 80's this was a concern of mine for some time. That being said, in actual game play from this campaign (over 20 months of gaming), we have had five straight up character deaths (3 revivify's/raise deads, one lost character, one hand waved death save...more on that later). We have had many other very hairy situations where the PCs felt the fear of death or fell below 0. For some of the campaign, we implemented a house rule where falling to zero HP gave you a point of Exhaustion until you received a long rest. The players that went through this content (which is all standard adventure path; RHoD converted to 5e) felt absolutely challenged and absolutely heroic at times. There have been memorable epic sessions that we will talk about for decades.

Every death resulted in a clear lesson learned. The player changed the way they played that character and integrated the death into their own story arc. Death is not the end in this game once you are Level 5 (assuming you have a cleric, and the party is wise enough to buy diamond dust). We also had the house rule that when a player rolls a Death Save for the third time, they can decide whether the character is dead or not. Similarly, per the rules, it is their choice whether they accept a Raise Dead or not. That allows those that want to re-role a new PC to re-role and those that don't, they deal with exhaustion and live to continue on with their story. We have had two CHOOSE to end the character's story and re-roll a new one. One chose to stick with it (the dice were cruel to that one).

I agree that death is individually felt by the player in the experience and doesn't need any rule changes. The biggest fear as a DM is the dreaded TPK. I don't think that fear is particular to 5e.

Cheers!

 

[Tonguez]

I played a game recently that emulated She-Ra ‘Princess Action’ style. Instead of Death it used an Angst mechanic - so everytime you get traumatised you gain a Heart Scar aspect and if Scars ever goes over 5 you loose your Princess Mojo.

DnD is already a superhero game, so removing the possibility of death just removes another bit of resource management

 

[toucanbuzz]

That said: 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?

Contrived.

For me, the best part of D&D is how the story writes itself. Week in and week out, I have no idea what we're going to script next. If I remove the threat of death, I'm not letting the story unfold. Some of the most memorable stories I've ever had came from character deaths, even group deaths. For example, at the end of a Red Hand of Doom campaign, the players were outmatched and outdone by an avatar of Tiamat. They weren't going to win. Through sheer luck and circumstance involving a magic item squirreled away from level 1, the earth under the worked stone of the avatar's base was exposed. Knowing what would happen next, the party's druid lured the avatar into a well where the rest of the party lay, dying, and cast a spell to move the earth. Millions of tons of earth and stone buried the avatar and 3 party members permanently. In the epilogue created by the players, the druid shapeshifted away and was never seen again. The party's names became legend. Statues were erected. People named their kids after them.

That's one of a dozen wonderful stories surrounding player death, and even campaign wipes.

Absolutely none of this would occur if I, the DM, had decided in advance to fudge rolls because I needed the PCs to survive, perhaps to fulfill a prophecy I wrote in advance or whatever railroad design you want to imagine. It is no different if the players were collaborating on this effort to fudge away anything lethal so you could make the story you intended to make.

That, to me, would be the ultimate insult to the game: to predetermine how it should turn out.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Absolutely none of this would occur if I, the DM, had decided in advance to fudge rolls because I needed the PCs to survive, perhaps to fulfill a prophecy I wrote in advance or whatever railroad design you want to imagine. It is no different if the players were collaborating on this effort to fudge away anything lethal so you could make the story you intended to make.

That, to me, would be the ultimate insult to the game: to predetermine how it should turn out.

And what about those of us who don't include--and again, I cannot stress this enough--sudden and permanent death, but NEVER, explicitly ABSOLUTELY NEVER, fudge rolls or predetermine outcomes?

I exercise my ability to use the tools I've established in-fiction creatively, and to insert new developments into the world that can be discovered, puzzled out, and (sometimes) controlled by the players. I never, EVER fudge rolls. I never, EVER "fulfill a prophecy" in the sense of forcing the world to end up the way I want it, and I do my damnedest to avoid railroading the party. (It does, I admit, still sometimes happen; this is only my second campaign I've ever run, so I admit that I make mistakes.)

I always "play to find out what happens," as the Dungeon World rules put it. I have ideas, story elements, villains, etc. The party controls what is relevant and what is not. Dice--and, much more importantly, decisions--determine the story's final shape.

 

[jgsugden]

One thing to consider here - Players don't like to invest a lot in the story of a PC only to see the PC die and the story be unresolved. However, the death of a PC does not need to mean the story goes unresolved. The death of a PC can become part of the story. This can be a way for the investment to be paid off, even if the PC is no longer amongst the living.

We see this in Critical Role during campaign 2.

Spoiler

When Molly dies, the storyline developed around Molly did not. Instead, his death was worked into the story and paid off 8 or 9 levels after the death of the PC. His storyline may just end up being the trigger for their high level adventures - the connection to the Vecna of Campaign 2, although I think the Luxon is more likely going to end up being the BBEG - and end up being The Chained Oblivion.

 

[Neonchameleon]

A friend and I were talking about running games, player characters, story and protagonists. Long story short we decided that in most cases, the protagonists' lives are not really on the line and if they are it is at a climactic or dramatically appropriate time.

Before I continue: I do not believe this is the best way to play D&D. I like emergent story, and sometimes the story is "you fell in a goblin hole and got eaten by rot grubs." Adventuring is dangerous business, the heroes are the ones that survive, and so on.

That said: 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? If you play this way, how does it work and how does/did it go? if you don't play this way, what do you think? if you refuse to play this way, why and what are you worried about?

Thanks!

This is one of the reasons D&D isn't even close to my first pick for an RPG most of the time. There are, in D&D only either three to six actual mechanical long term consequences on the table ever:

1. Gaining XP with your power directly increasing as you level up
2. Gaining loot
3. Death
4. Losing loot
5. Level drain
6. A long term spell or poison debuff

Losing hit points is not an injury - the only hit point (outside 4e) that has any actual mechanical effect on your abilities is the last one and in no edition does the consequence take longer to recover from than serious fatigue.

D&D has, at least since the 1980s (with both the departure of Gygax from TSR and the publishing of the Dragonlance series as watersheds), been steadily de-emphasising the last three consequences with level drain in particular having been steadily cut back until it no longer existed. Which means that the only things D&D itself brings to the table are loot, XP, and death.

This doesn't mean that there's nothing on the table in D&D in terms of consequences that aren't death, loot, or XP such as social status and the reaction or survival of NPCs. It means that none of the consequences are provided by the D&D rulebook. Meaning that, unless you enjoy the tactical combat side, the D&D rulebook is rules heavy and does very little to contribute to your enjoyment.

Meanwhile other games such as Fate, Blades in the Dark, Leverage, Apocalypse World, WFRP, Pendragon, and others (those are just the ones that spring to my mind) have a range of things including success-with-consequences results, long term injury rules, mechanical support for NPC relationships, costs for holding values - and ability to say with a role that that's what you consider important through meta-currency. And even ways to make death meaningful and a mechanical watershed for your character but non-permanent. For example one of the options in Apocalypse World when a character runs out of hit points is to come back as a different playbook (i.e. class) such as the Hardholder, the town boss, being left for dead and coming back as a gunlugger looking for revenge. It's in many ways as meaningful as death-and-a-new-character but far more narratively compelling.

 

[nevin]

Wow... that's a sad list if that's all you've ever had to worry about in a D&D game. My parties have built kingdoms, installed kings, established Keeps and built out fiefdoms, because of them I've got a city that is the lace producing capital of the world. (something I never planned).
And all of that is stuff that can be on the table. Reputations, property, Followers, Orders, Kingdoms, Navies, It can all be affected by thier actions good or bad. If you let the players pursue their plans you'll be surprised how much it expands the actual consequences you can use on them.

I've had players blow all Their riches saving a kingdom, sacrifice thier character and willingly die for the cause. Retire to marry their love and roll a new character. Make choices that ruin the reputation of the order they built from the ground up. Sounds like you think D&D is just dungeon crawls and taking out pirates. Those mechanical things get you through the fights. In a really good game players get so invested in thier personal goals (that don't have to derail the game) that level loss, death, etc are probably the least scary or effective things I can do to them.

Now that means as DM you have to back off a little and let them do things that may put you way out of your comfort zone. But it is worth the effort.

 

[GMMichael]

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.
. . .
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.

"More worried about their weapon." That's horrible! But it does tell us a little about what happens (to stories) when the main characters 1) have hit points and 2) can be re-rolled/resurrected.

I wouldn't want to dungeon-crawl with constant trap-checking and fleeing-to-memorize-spells either. But I'm not sure that taking random death "out of the equation" fixes those issues. They're caused in large part by GM-design, so you can solve them without removing death. Also, there are other consequences that would motivate those behaviors, like losing a prized weapon, or like intentional death (unrelated to poor dice rolling).

And what about those of us who don't include--and again, I cannot stress this enough--sudden and permanent death, but NEVER, explicitly ABSOLUTELY NEVER, fudge rolls or predetermine outcomes?

I exercise my ability to use the tools I've established in-fiction creatively, and to insert new developments into the world that can be discovered, puzzled out, and (sometimes) controlled by the players. I never, EVER fudge rolls.

Never say never. Being in control of a roll's story outcome is the same power as the ability to fudge. To wit:
Fudge: "The terrasque rolls a 20, I mean, a 3. Its claw gets stuck in a crevice only yards away from you."
Non-fudge: "The terrasque rolls a 20. Its claw does double damage to the boulder you're using for cover, obliterating it."

That said: 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? If you play this way, how does it work and how does/did it go? if you don't play this way, what do you think? if you refuse to play this way, why and what are you worried about?

I generally don't let death happen unless a PC chooses it. There are oodles of interesting ways to punish players - killing the character is too kind

A D&D campaign without random death looks like one that doesn't have a lot of combat. Or civilized opponents. A campaign wouldn't have to change much if "random bad die rolls" resulted in other misfortunes. Maybe: "you don't have to throw out your character sheet, but you do have to recreate it on another sheet. You can rejoin the game when you've copied your sheet without errors."

 

[Neonchameleon]

Wow... that's a sad list if that's all you've ever had to worry about in a D&D game. My parties have built kingdoms, installed kings, established Keeps and built out fiefdoms, because of them I've got a city that is the lace producing capital of the world. (something I never planned).
And all of that is stuff that can be on the table. Reputations, property, Followers, Orders, Kingdoms, Navies, It can all be affected by thier actions good or bad. If you let the players pursue their plans you'll be surprised how much it expands the actual consequences you can use on them.

You misunderstand. I'm referring to what the various 300+ page rulebooks in D&D bring to the table rather than to what the DM and players bring to the table independently of the D&D rules.

I will accept that older editions had some domain management aspects (that were nerfed into non-existence by 3.0) - but if you are building a kingdom and installing a king this isn't because of something D&D has brought to the table. It's something you as a group have brought and could happen just as easily in almost any unfocused fantasy RPG system of about the right power level.