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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blue" data-source="post: 7288162" data-attributes="member: 20564">D&D shows it's roots in that combat is the single largest mechanical operation by the wall clock.  (RP can take an entire session and be loads of fun, but the mechanical aspects of it like ability checks will still be way less than your average encounter.)The mechanically supported risk of combat is damage and likely death - most commonly of the character's foes.  DMs can and should add on additional risks and rewards around combat, but the most basic and most innately supported is not dying / killing your foes.There is no risk if there is no downside.  And no risk means no tension, and little feel of victory if you win.  So, there needs to be an actual cost to the worst failure.Let's flip this around - if dying has less or equal penalty to running away, you'd always fight to the death.So there's a cost for coming back to life.For many, who put time and effort into creating the character's personality, backstory, has relationships with PCs and NPCs, possibly contacts, titles and other advantages you can't get in character creation, the cost to come back to life is less than forgoing all of those.  And it's worth it.For games that have people come back at 1st or a lower level.  Or with no/random magic items.  So it's still worth it.For some, the death is awesome and appropriate and the player wants to end their character's story - also cool.It's when characters are interchangeable, with little outside what their character sheet says AND new characters are as powerful as existing - that's where making a new character is better than the cost of raising an old character.  For me, that type of casual game is not my bag so I haven't experienced it.You can tell good stories through failure, up to and including death.  Think back to Sturm in Dragonlance - wasn't a dry eye that read that.  Death does not make a bad story unless you weren't fighting for anything worthwhile to risk your life for in the first place.</blockquote>

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