D&D 4E Yet another thread on Mortality and Death in 4E

[sabrinathecat]

I'm sure this has been discussed before.

Since 4E came out, our group has had very few deaths compared to previous editions. Most of those were unlucky combinations of die rolls at 1st level. Aside from that, we had a Roc pick up a fighter and drop him 200 feet, an assassin that thought he was charging into 3 artillery Gnolls who were actually skirmishers, and my warlock who was trying to delay the arrival of the second half of a double-encounter. The fighter was raised, the assassin replaced because the player didn't care for the class mechanics, and the warlock came back as a revenant.

Last night, we had a true fatality.
Ar the lvl 14 Barbarian Warforged was struck down by a TangleFiend and three Everblight Elven Soldiers of the Vernal Court. With some help from a Gremlin. Tangle Fiend had a minor action attack that tripped and proned (in theory, could have tripped two people in a round and then...) and as a standard action could attack with all 4 claws, each of which would do +2d6 vs prone targets. Ar took the brunt of this creature for 3 rounds. The Gremlin would daze (burst
2 save ends, recharge on a 6--worked 3 times) and dominate (save ends) at will.
Rondel the Dwarf NPC Ranger flubbed his perception roll and did not realize how badly damaged Ar was, and thus did not act to stabilize the mortally wounded Warforged.
Ar clung to life for 6 rounds before failing his 3rd death save.
It is really hard to kill a character in 4e, especially after 1st level. Most of the party was lvl13. The Barbarian was 14. The monsters were 13 except for the Gremlin who was 17. I had scaled the encounter for the full party of five, but in round 2, one of the players had to leave for family activities, and the fight was already on--otherwise I would have used the lvl7 Gremlin.
The campaign was known as All-Strikers, because that's what everyone wanted to play. Even throwing lvl+4 encounters at them, they tore through most of them with short, brutal efficiency. Per the rules agreed upon at the beginning of the campaign, the party of All Strikers will finally have a leader. Next character to die will be replaced by a defender. Killing the next PC will be a little harder to do with a leader in the party, but I am up for the challenge. Not as a nasty DM, but just to see if it can be done.

Death and failure should be consequences, but not the only consequences of players risking their lives and breaking into other people's homes to murder them and take their stuff.

 

[D'karr]

It is really hard to kill a character in 4e, especially after 1st level.

Death and failure should be consequences, but not the only consequences of players risking their lives and breaking into other people's homes to murder them and take their stuff.

I haven't found this to be true with my group, or with 4e as a whole. As a matter of fact I've had more PC deaths with 4e than with all other previous editions combined. What 4e does is provide a very good fighting chance to the PCs, and the ability to have a heroic comeback. It also let's the DM play with the gloves off. And like you mentioned there are some cool options for coming back after death, revenant being one of them.

However that "fighting chance" that the game provides can easily create a sense of overconfidence in certain players. Since I've always been pretty much a RBDM(tm) my players know better than to risk death because they know they can easily lose a fight.

I think the trick really lies in having a variety of encounters. There are some that are going to be cakewalks, and the PCs usually start getting a good feel for those early on. Some encounters are going to be a bit tough but winnable, and they start getting a feel for those too. There are some that are overwhelming, and they should get a good feel for when an encounter falls in that category. If the DM adds that variety then combat hardly ever becomes stale, and I find that the perceived grind level also goes down because of the variety.

But there are some encounters that are deceptive. They might seem like a cakewalk, or just a challenge and then the monsters really pull the claws out and it becomes a bloodbath. It is at times like these when my players are almost immediately looking for another way out. I have learned that there always needs to be another option to fight to the death, on the PCs or the monsters side. I like to have other ways to either avoid the combat, get out of the combat once started, or end the combat with other means.

I must say, I've enjoyed the variety and my players seem to be having a really good time. So it looks like it is working.

Looks like your players are having fun too. So whatever you are doing it must be working for you guys too.

 

[C4]

Last night, we had a true fatality.
Ar the lvl 14 Barbarian Warforged...Ar clung to life for 6 rounds before failing his 3rd death save.

Not to rain on your parade, but...

Warforged Resilience: You have a +2 racial bonus to saving throws against ongoing damage. Also, when you make a death saving throw, you can take the better result of your die roll or 10.

 

[sabrinathecat]

Wow.
Not sure the player knew that.
Thanks.

Yeah, I've been working a variety of monster types. Right now, they are playing in the feywild, in a distorted version of Wizard of Oz (yes, the Wizard of Ooze will be leaping out at them). Their next stop will be the shadowfell to recover the last shards of Morgoroth's Mirror (again--see the old "A Light in the Belfrey" module). At that point, I expect them to be about 18th lvl, fighting both Morgoroth (who will be almost a joke), the Wizard of Ooze, the wizards warforged guardsmen, and a few other nasties.
The first 6 levels were building them up to run into ALitB, with constant references to Avonleigh (the lost frontier settlement) and the cult of Mor'Grath. So bouncing between necromancers, goblins, eladrin politics, and such like, followed by some lycanthrope uprisings, and off to Oz.

Everyone's games are different. Dice are often the real killer. 3 crits for 36 damage each did a lot to the warforged. And for once, people weren't rolling the crits against my poor monsters.
Add to that, we'd just finished Scales of War, with lvl30 characters, and were going back to lvl13&14, and it was a big adjustment for everyone.

 

[Storminator]

I haven't found this to be true with my group, or with 4e as a whole. As a matter of fact I've had more PC deaths with 4e than with all other previous editions combined.

Our games have seen a bunch of deaths as well - many single PCs, a couple pairs, one trio, one quad, and one TPK.

But none of that compares to the 1e days. We would send 8 PCs into a 1st level adventure and half of them would die. Then we'd send another 8 into another 1st level adventure, half of them would die, and we'd bash the 2 groups together and send them into a 2nd level adventure. By the time you got to 7th level you stand atop the Pyramid of Dead PCs.

PS

 

[Jhaelen]

We haven't had _that_ many deaths in 4e yet, compared to 3e but enough that I'm quite afraid of getting too careless. We've also had a number of very close calls that took the combined effort of the group to safe the downed party member. Our most lethal encounter featured a Zombie Cactus (it's a Darksun campaign) that kept at least half of the group dominated the whole time. We eventually decided to cut our losses and fled. Since it's Dark Sun, there's also practically no chance of getting resurrected.

We've only just reached Paragon tier, yet. The two most common causes for death are:
- a character moving out of range for healing, e.g. by charging or teleporting into the fray
- a character ending her move in a position that makes her the ideal target for a whole bunch of enemies with aura effects and/or ongoing damage continuing to harm her when down.

I've been guilty of doing the former, including falling into a pit after being knocked unconscious (I hate pits!), and sometimes my character also gets mobbed by enemies after a lucky 'nova round', doing too much damage for his own good. I've learned since to deter enemies from attacking my pc (a Dragonborn Dragon Magic Sorcerer) by picking powers that reflect damage back on them, but artillery enemies are clearly my nemesis.

 

[D'karr]

Since it's Dark Sun, there's also practically no chance of getting resurrected.

Our playtesting group played in a weekly Dark Sun campaign for about 6 months after the Campaign Setting came out. During that time every player had at least one character die, and I believe one player had six character deaths, in one of those he returned as a revenant. Dark Sun was fun, and brutal - almost too brutal to keep a long running campaign going.

 

[S'mon]

I haven't seen a PC killed since Heroic Tier, they're 14th now. With a Leader or two in the party it's unlikely that random PCs will die in a fight, although I do find that in 4e TPKs or massive defeats with most of the PCs dead aren't any less likely than in pre-4e. I occasionally see PCs killed when a nasty monster focuses on finishing off a fallen character, either they are assassin or predator types or they have a multi-attack routine.

I like the reduction in random deaths, since they are often more annoying than dramatic and can leave a single player out of the game for several hours, which is annoying.