"To Kill, or Not To Kill" is definitely Session 0 material.

I should have written it down somewhere, but after talking to my group, we essentially decided that the game would be "flexibly lethal", but that there would be times when the risk was elevated, and I would try to give them fair warning ahead of time. So, I guess my game has a "Story Mode" + Optional content. Story Mode is set to "Normal Adventure", but Optional content is "Hardcore". Whenever they test that boundary, I'll give them some time to weigh the consequences out of game. That way, if anyone dies, it's not a shock.

The Wild Magic Sorcerer in my party started deliberately psychically harassing a higher level "non-hostile" NPC for a couple session, and it nearly killed him after a difficult encounter. Fortunately, unconsciousness is a very forgiving buffer from outright death.

Quote from Bahamut_Kaiser >>

Quote from ironpacifist >>

Quote from Bahamut_Kaiser >>

I had this conversation with one of my DMs before I quit his campaign shortly after... "Is my character allowed to die?"

He kept giving us terribly underpowered challenges and beside all the other shortcomings of his homebrew campaign, I got the feeling that he was going to baby us along the railroad he was constructing just to continue his story.

Failure is a very important part of a players experience, as cool as it is to get custom minis for your characters, it is more costly to take death off the table than that mini. It's momentarily relieving to save a character they like, but in the long run it damages the integrity of the entire game. There are resurrection spells, there are even low level spells to preserve a dead player and the option to quest to get a much stronger cleric to resurrect your player, there is a DM screen and DM discretion so you can avoid a killing blow or nerf an encounter before the player dies. But if you let the player eat it, and than just say... nah, there's a unforeseen loophole that you just made up to undo failure, you just killed the integrity of the game. At that point, in your players mind, they are only dying when you want them to, and only living because you want them to. A clever DM can create this outcome without showing the players, but if a player dies, by perhaps jumping off a 200 foot cliff... to try to grapple a flying BBEG, when they fail that grapple check, you need to roll 20 d6 and let the player know that consequence and danger are real in your game (and yes this exact thing happen to a player I'm DMing now).

TDLR: the Mini isn't worth your campaigns integrity.

 OK i take a little issue with this.  You are slightly overstating the danger. Yes you can kill your game by doing it, but you won't kill every game you do it in.  For the record in my instance, the consequence was they didn't finish the dungeon.  They had to leave and a crucial enemy got away.  There was tonne of stuff they had to leave behind too.  What happened was no different than them having to go to town to ask for a resurrection except i didn't have to add an NPC who wasn't there before.  Not to mention this bruised his ego quite a bit, he'd already narrowly avoided death against that boss before and went in trying to settle a score and didn't.  I can guarantee you he did not leave my table that night feeling invincible.  

It's not a trick i can pull off every time which is why i asked the question, but i've never killed a PC, i pull my punches most of the time and yet my players never feel safe cause I through mecha tarrasques at them and don't give them cookies for failure.

 

Your not making your case by pointing out that they already survived defeat and you protected them from recklessly executing themselves by trying again. Saying you've never killed a PC when you present artificially overpowered opponents, that didn't kill them isn't strengthening your case either. 

The answer to your actual question is that they should buy a mini right away if your DMing, nobodies ever died in your campaign, so it's pretty safe. 

A lack of negative outcome doesn't mean you made the right decision. But than you weren't asking that question.

 Ok i will point out that the outcome of the fight in question didn't change because i did what i did.  He didn't rejoin the fight and the other players finished off the boss after 2 more rounds if our cleric (who saved him in the previous fight, not me) hadn't have moved away he would have cast revivify or whatever and have saved him.  Also i didn't say they were being reckless, you said that.  They had leveled up twice since the last fight with this boss which ended in a draw.  There was good reason to suspect they'd win this time which they did, the boss just happened to land two crits and rolled good in general.  and the mecha tarrasque was weaker than a tarrasque cause godzilla rules and was fighting 8 smart, rested lvl 10s with good magic items, that encounter was balanced

There's also i reason i ask these things on forums instead of to my friends who i play with.  I don't normally tell them i go soft and i don't advertise it.  You know i'm soft cause we're talking shop, the screens down here.   Integrity can also be regained, if they screw around.  Part of the reason i get away with this is cause my players don't jump off cliffs at lvl 1, if they start doing that yes they have to die.   More over the reason i did what is because the game would not necessarily been better if he seventy bucks including shipping on a mini or go without and be constantly reminded of how much money he wasted.  Shit he could have made another warforged paladin and i wouldn't have said no and that would also have been dumb probably.  

I didn't and have never taken death off the table, i sparred him once out of pity and he knows that.  You've assumed a behavior from my players which does not exist in them.  You've framed my actions in your philosophy, not in my reality which is a mistake on your part. 

Quote from ironpacifist >>

A while back i ran a campaign where my players got custom minis, it was really fun and they loved them.  We did this maybe 2 months into a 12 month campaign.  The session or the session after they arrived a character died and because they had just got the mini, i chickened out and let him survive.  It turned out fine this time, he was a warforged so repairing him from a bad stab wound didn't seem than strange in world.  But, it was a bad feeling and I could have had a way harder time of keeping it believable if the circumstances were different.

I like custom minis and want to use them again but when is best time to buy them so we minimize these uncomfortable scenarios?

It seems this was uncomfortable for you. That's ok, but I don't think it's something you need to take great pains to avoid. Would it have been uncomfortable for them as well (beyond the fact that losing a character is usually a bit uncomfortable anyway)?