D&D General Why fear is good for PCs

[Brotton Goodfellow]

Snipping the bit of my post about how something relies on using the gm as life support for what mechanics should be carrying in order to ask how the gm could choose to serve as life support for the missing mechanics is an odd choice.

I don’t fully agree with your sentiment that the gm is life support for the game. Tinkering with the mechanics to get a desired effect (in this case frightening the players) is a time honoured tradition in the hobby. Being creative and imaginative is also kind of a big part of the hobby. So if I, as the DM, have to think beyond what’s on a monster stat block to make it frightening, that’s the juice for me.

Besides I don’t think a stat block alone can make a creature or encounter frightening. That’s been my point. I can find plenty of “scary” monsters in 5e, with all sorts of nasty attacks and abilities, but if I don’t put a little extra creativity into it, it can (will) fall flat with players just as much as giant ants can.

There are better systems that deliver on fear for sure (Trophy Gold is an excellent example). In my opinion 5e/5.5e isn’t directly a horror genre game, but, as I’ve experienced, with some creativity it can absolutely be one.

 

[tetrasodium]

I don’t fully agree with your sentiment that the gm is life support for the game. Tinkering with the mechanics to get a desired effect (in this case frightening the players) is a time honoured tradition in the hobby. Being creative and imaginative is also kind of a big part of the hobby. So if I, as the DM, have to think beyond what’s on a monster stat block to make it frightening, that’s the juice for me.

Besides I don’t think a stat block alone can make a creature or encounter frightening. That’s been my point. I can find plenty of “scary” monsters in 5e, with all sorts of nasty attacks and abilities, but if I don’t put a little extra creativity into it, it can (will) fall flat with players just as much as giant ants can.

There are better systems that deliver on fear for sure (Trophy Gold is an excellent example). In my opinion 5e/5.5e isn’t directly a horror genre game, but, as I’ve experienced, with some creativity it can absolutely be one.

You don't have to agree. Your own post 67 comment demonstrates it with "How could I take something like giant ants and make it actually kinda frightening to encounter?"
and extending that to tinkering with mechanics that no longer exist in a meaningful fashion by going beyond the statblock in your next poyjust doubles down on that demonstration old editions had plenty of monsters that were absolutely terrifying, they still exist lack the terror. The player facing mechanics are missing or sabotaged functionally

 

[RainOnTheSun]

Brings to mind...

View attachment 440178

Ohhh, so that's where 13th Age got its owlbears from!

I like the single glove of dexterity rules. Imagine you're in the middle of a fight and this guy suddenly stuffs his hand into your pocket and pulls out a potion like he's playing Final Fantasy.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

By the same token, D&D doesn't require reflexes, muscle memory and puzzle-like fight mechanics. The biggest thing D&D needs on that regards.is the ability to roll a d20 on a flat surface. So you really can't compare the two challenge levels equally despite the same fail conditions of losing all your health = loss.

I don't see why one can't look at the challenges each have and decide what types of difficulty are relevant. "I've got to repeat this over and over to develop muscle memory and remember the puzzle" and "I've got to figure out the mechanics of this and solve it on the first try or I never do it again" are both setups for challenge, and I think the second is much better at creating a sense of fear (the relevant one to this thread) since there's a real chance of actually losing while it's impossible to hit a loss in the first, you simply get bored or frustrated with retrying and choose to stop.

'Losing all your health = loss' is not true in either case. Losing all your health doesn't necessarily lead to death in D&D, you hit 0 and then might need to get to -10 or fail 3 death saves or take 3 hits before you die, your party might still win the fight and might resurrect you. Losing all of your health in Elden Ring leads to 'respawn and try again', you haven't actually lost the game and your character can come back and try again. There is usually a loss condition of somehow failing the fight in D&D, which leads to the fight now having failed in the world and things being different, while there isn't a similar condition in Elden Ring as the fight simply sits there waiting for you to try it again.

Then again, if you take D&D characters as toons rather than character, the respawn idea does start to look familiar. After all, what is Bob II, Son of Bob off to avenge his father's death but a thinly veiled respawn? Especially for those players who literally reuse the same stats.

Typically in a TTRPG it is not a respawn, it's making a new character who lacks the history of Bob I who is coming into a world that's in a different state than what Bob faced. While it's possible to play a TTRPG where the party gets into a battle, dies, goes back to town, picks up duplicate characters, then can venture back into the exact same fight and attempt it again, that's very much not the typical way to run a world, and it 'lets add a II to every characters name and try the fight again' definitely doesn't sound like something I'd consider a 'deadly' game where PCs fear death. Also the versions of D&D that many people are talking about don't allow reuse of the same stats as you roll for PC stats and HP.

Being allowed to infinitely repeat a boss fight until you get it right (and roll well) is definitely not the norm in TTRPG play.

 

[Emerikol]

I went through my DM thought process this week and asked myself: why do I think keeping my PCs afraid is so important?

Here’s what I came up with:

Why Fear is Good (Landscapes of Fear, part 2)

This is part 2 of a series on landscapes of fear ( Part 1 , Part 3 ): today I am going to talk about why it’s important to build a landscape...

dreamshrike.blogspot.com

Hope this is valuable to a new DM: I ran a pretty flat campaign my first time out the gate, and it’s been a learning process ever since.

If you have any tips on how you scare your 5e PCs, pass them along please, I love hearing good tricks.

Right now mine are in a hostile ancient city with defenders of an equal CR, and there’s a mythos that hits the casters with Faerie Fire and wild magic every time they attack the guards with magic. And fifty foot walking statues with laser eyes that just dropped a building on them. But the tables will turn…

I would say suspense but some aspect of fear sure.

 

[Stormonu]

That's good as well! I use the "Flee!" rules from 13th Age; the group can choose to flee as long as there's still someone up, and the party escapes- but there's a campaign loss. The cult sacrifices the lamb, the princess eats the dragon, the great demon is summoned, etc.
But I still run dangerous combats, have a fear of failure, and still have character death on the table. I think you can do both.

Damn, that's hardcore.

Having read that blog in the initial post, I agree that engagement is what you want out of players. Not necessarily fear. You want the players to care - they cheer when the friendly NPC achieves their goal; the players do their utmost to keep their PC from dying; the characters are invested in the world and are awed when it changes, and so on.

There should be consequences to constantly solving things through violence that I think 5E tries too much to buffer that sort of play. But I also don't like the funnel game and certainly want nothing to do with "rock falls, everyone dies" kind of games.

As I've gotten older, I don't like "D&D the Combat Simulator"; I like the exploration of strange and unusual places, the revelations of my character's place in the world, solving the strange mysteries and such - with the occasional combat for a quick adrenaline rush. But I don't want it room-to-room fights against opponents who have been carefully chosen for me to beat by barging my way through it.

 

[Lanefan]

I mean, we can put that question to the thread - for people who think PC death is a good way to create fear that improves the game, do you count it as 'PC death' if a PC drops to 0HP and 3 failed death saves, or -10 HP, or otherwise hits a 'dead' condition, but also they instantly respawn back in town and can come right back into the same fight/trap/journey/etc. and try again?

Yes, a death-revival cycle does count as a death. And unless a party has revival effects available in the field there's no "instant respawn"; they have to get the corpse back to town and then find (and pay!) someone willing to revive it.

Then again, in my game coming back from the dead a) isn't guaranteed even if attempted and b) almost always leaves the revived person down a point of Con, meaning dying is usually a Bad Idea. There's also some other possible after-revival death effects, both beneficial and baneful, reflecting the idea that death really can change you.

 

[Lanefan]

OK, so people in this thread who talk about thinking PC death is good for creating an atmosphere that includes fear, do you allow PCs to have an NPC back in an always safe area that they can teleport to when not in combat who will ressurrect every dead PC (even if their body is unrecoverable) as long as there isn't a total party kill? He charges a token amount of money, but PCs can just pickpocket the money back from him without penalty, so it's effectively free.

In order:

There's often NPCs in safe areas who can, and more or less usually will, provide revival effects. Once the PCs are high enough level, they can sometimes do it themselves.

If the body is unrecoverable but they have a part of it (finger, toe, etc.) then it takes a much higher-level caster to revive - you need Resurrection instead of Raise Dead. Reincarnation is another option, but rarely used as it's close to certain what comes back won't be the same as what died. If none of the body was recovered then it's likely no revival can be attempted; a Wish can work but those are generally not a purchasable commodity.

The costs are not trivial. Raise Dead and Reincarnation cost around 6000+ g.p. and Resurrection around 12000+; and if you try stealing that back you're in for a shock as those funds are sacrificed to the caster's deity as part of casting the revival spell.

 

[Lanefan]

Then again, if you take D&D characters as toons rather than character, the respawn idea does start to look familiar. After all, what is Bob II, Son of Bob off to avenge his father's death but a thinly veiled respawn? Especially for those players who literally reuse the same stats.

The bolded wouldn't fly here as stats are always rolled for; and while random chance might give you the same stats again, it's a long way from likely.

In a point buy or array game, though, I guess it could become a problem.

 

[Maxperson]

Damn, that's hardcore.

And also might be the result of a Distracted DM!