D&D 5E What Level was your 1st Character Death in 5e?

[Goonalan]

I'm a DM.

Phandalin has had to add a little private plot for the guys I've killed in LMoP.

1st run through, 4 players x 1st- TPK first Goblin Ambush, a couple of the PCs could have got away, or settled for being captured, but didn't want to- they went down fighting (and rolling badly).

2nd run through (same Players as above), 4 players x 3rd(ish)- TPK by Green Dragon breath weapon- 3 down and dead or dying, followed by heroic last stand by Paladin = mulch.

Then two successful runs- no deaths

5th run through, 3 from 4 (1st level) PCs death by Goblins & Klarg, last guy left alive (but ko'd- three successes before three failures) and left alone by the two remaining Goblins who ran off, abandoned the lair. Last PC survived to join up with three new PCs to complete the adventure.

The thing is (obviously) at 1st level if the dice go bad for the Players, and great for me- CRITS! Then it can be a short game, unless you like Fudge.

Cheers goonalan

 

[Goonalan]

Addendum,

The issue is often, as a DM, avoiding killing 1st level PCs. Particularly if (and forgive me but one of these is a massive generalisation)-

1) You've not met your players in the real world (I DMed online for a good long while), or talked to them much- exchanging half-a-dozen e-mails doesn't count.
2) Their noob or semi-noob.
3) They're 'young folk', or the most frightening of all- children.
4) They've spent the best part of three hours last week rolling up their guy (PC) and then during the week prior to the first actual session of play spent more time reading spells, rules and whatnot, making sketches of their guy (and designing their family crest!), and have generally been soooooo looking forward to the game.

Killing these guys can be just... well, plain cruel- yes, they have to learn sometime but the deal is (from experience) that if the Player ticks 2 or 3 of the boxes above, and then their guy dies in action (or from a lucky Crit, or plain ol' in the moment wrong-headedness- I leap out of the window, err... you're on the top floor of a 100 foot tower- are you sure? Yes, I slow my decent with my daggers... it happened) then... they're not coming back to the game next week.

So, eat fudge.

With my regular Players (= old friends), well, screw them- they know the score, hard core.

As an aside I used to run a D&D game (3e, it was back in the day) as part of a class I taught (Narrative Structures in Electronic Game Design, or some such). One year I killed 28 (1st level) PCs (out of a possible 30) in under an hour- but hey, they were students, so they don't really count.

Cheers Goonalan