If every enemy just kos them and moves on, the players know they generally have some time to get to them before they'll have time to fail three death saving throws, unless ther'es an unlucky nat 1 in there.
It requires some trust in the DM from the players (though that's generally required anyway, I'd say), but having the DM roll the death saving throws without telling the players the results puts some urgency behind the healer to at least stabilize the PC.
That can work too. And again I don't think every enemy should always do this, and not every game should have it if it's not the sort of experience players want where their characters could die like that. I just don't think it's something that should NEVER be on the table.
"Never"? No, obviously not. The thing is, the fine art of being a DM is making the players think their characters could have died, without actually letting them die. If the players make the wrong choices, funeral services may be the only option left. Note that I said "choices". The DM has to leave an option open or their games aren't apt to be fun for those unprepared for their characters to head into the great beyond.
If an NPC focuses on all else and brings a player's character down, even if that's perfectly reasonable and well within the parameters of what they should do, it remains something I don't chose to do. Bringing back our poor Barbarian again (poor Barbarian, what did they do to deserve this?) if you want the NPC to keep carving away until that Barbarian is mincemeat, go right ahead. What do you get? Well, the Barbarian is likely to be out of the fight. Their fun is probably ruined. The Cleric who was trying to keep them up has failed, and they aren't going to be happy about it, so their fun might be ruined as well, and with the Barbarian down, the Cleric possibly low on healing, the party is one short, lower on resources, and may all perish, especially if they are fighting people so brutal and nasty as to carve on people who aren't fighting back. The only one at the table having fun at that point is the DM.
That kind of game isn't the sort I run. I kind of like Heroic Fantasy, with my players running the heroes of the story, and my job as DM is to help them tell that story better.
I'll reiterate support for Keith's The Monsters Know What They're Doing blog/book/rules. Running your monsters more convincingly makes fights a lot harder, yes - but it also makes your games better. It also turns out that Whack-A-Moling is a lot less of a problem in a game if your players know you are not at all going to treat 'Downed' as Time-Out Nappy Hour and their colleague who just fell over unconscious is at immediate danger of messy death. Especially with "simple" animals, most of whom are predators and will see a downed PC as exactly the sort of target their entire evolutionary history has predisposed them towards.
Yeah. I wouldn't make every enemy go for downed pcs all the time.
But there are cases where it makes sense. Some predators might just tear into a downed enemy as a meal depending on the monster/animal. Intelligent enemies can probably only see the cleric get the barbarian back on his feet so many times before they decide to make sure the barbarian STAYS DOWN this time. NPCs with a vendetta against a certain PC might go out of their way to try and kill that PC, leading to the party needing to change tactics to defend them etc.
Having every enemy spam attacks on downed pcs would get old fast, but when it makes sense, it's a good way to add urgency to a situation. And even then, depending on the party setup and what you have on hand, a player character dying might not stay dead for very long.
I’ve had the opposite effect in my games - getting KO’d is more impactful and means more to the party since I’ve been running much more dangerous encounters. The party panics when they see someone KO’d: they go out of their way to heal as much as possible, they drag their body to safety, they use potions and such relentlessly.
If anything, I’ve noticed my players love it more, the battle is more knife-edged and tense, and the situations are much more thoughtful when players think their characters are on the line.
It takes some tough love at first, but it’s made a lot of issues go away: 1) weak healing just to un-KO someone, 2) ignoring downed allies because “someone else” will use a heal, 3) builds based only on attacking with no regard for ally assistance, 4) no actual strategic placement during battle to rescue allies, 5) never healing before a KO happens, etc
It’s not as cutthroat as it sounds - older versions of DnD didn’t even have a KO mechanic. Technically, there’s literally nothing even cruel about hitting downed PCs - it’s just a relative perspective. Once the PCs strategize around it, it doesn’t feel oppressive at all.
I'll reiterate support for Keith's The Monsters Know What They're Doing blog/book/rules. Running your monsters more convincingly makes fights a lot harder, yes - but it also makes your games better. It also turns out that Whack-A-Moling is a lot less of a problem in a game if your players know you are not at all going to treat 'Downed' as Time-Out Nappy Hour and their colleague who just fell over unconscious is at immediate danger of messy death. Especially with "simple" animals, most of whom are predators and will see a downed PC as exactly the sort of target their entire evolutionary history has predisposed them towards.
Yeah. I wouldn't make every enemy go for downed pcs all the time.
But there are cases where it makes sense. Some predators might just tear into a downed enemy as a meal depending on the monster/animal. Intelligent enemies can probably only see the cleric get the barbarian back on his feet so many times before they decide to make sure the barbarian STAYS DOWN this time. NPCs with a vendetta against a certain PC might go out of their way to try and kill that PC, leading to the party needing to change tactics to defend them etc.
Having every enemy spam attacks on downed pcs would get old fast, but when it makes sense, it's a good way to add urgency to a situation. And even then, depending on the party setup and what you have on hand, a player character dying might not stay dead for very long.
I’ve had the opposite effect in my games - getting KO’d is more impactful and means more to the party since I’ve been running much more dangerous encounters. The party panics when they see someone KO’d: they go out of their way to heal as much as possible, they drag their body to safety, they use potions and such relentlessly.
If anything, I’ve noticed my players love it more, the battle is more knife-edged and tense, and the situations are much more thoughtful when players think their characters are on the line.
It takes some tough love at first, but it’s made a lot of issues go away: 1) weak healing just to un-KO someone, 2) ignoring downed allies because “someone else” will use a heal, 3) builds based only on attacking with no regard for ally assistance, 4) no actual strategic placement during battle to rescue allies, 5) never healing before a KO happens, etc
It’s not as cutthroat as it sounds - older versions of DnD didn’t even have a KO mechanic. Technically, there’s literally nothing even cruel about hitting downed PCs - it’s just a relative perspective. Once the PCs strategize around it, it doesn’t feel oppressive at all.
Yeah. It's not about killing pcs left and right. But making them act on their feet, come up with ways to save them, etc. It's not about racking up a body count but building tension. It's easy to kill PCs, the DM can do whatever they want, that's not actually the point of it. The point is to make things more urgent, to make the party think on their feet to save them etc.
Like you said it makes a sense of urgency 'oh we have to help that character NOW not in a turn or two' They might consider things like dragging someone to safety, casting darkness or invisibility etc to give cover and make enemies more likely to go for a fresh target they can see clearly, use a meatier heal so they're not going to just get downed in one hit again, Or take measures like healing earlier, with drawing to a better position etc BEFORE you can get KOd.
The point isn't to rack up a body count, that's easy to do as a DM you hold all the cards and can do whatever you want. It's like when a movie isn't going to actually start killing off the main characters...but the audience needs to believe you might to build tension. Personally I don't have every enemy do it because I like for it to feel impactful when it happens, a big 'oh crap' moment where they act fast to save a party member, but I can see the merit of doing it more regularly like you say.
Of course it also depends on the party, what kind of game you and the players are after but that goes for literally everything in D&D, there's no one singular catch all approach for every table on any subject. So that really goes without saying.
I'll reiterate support for Keith's The Monsters Know What They're Doing blog/book/rules. Running your monsters more convincingly makes fights a lot harder, yes - but it also makes your games better. It also turns out that Whack-A-Moling is a lot less of a problem in a game if your players know you are not at all going to treat 'Downed' as Time-Out Nappy Hour and their colleague who just fell over unconscious is at immediate danger of messy death. Especially with "simple" animals, most of whom are predators and will see a downed PC as exactly the sort of target their entire evolutionary history has predisposed them towards.
Yeah. I wouldn't make every enemy go for downed pcs all the time.
But there are cases where it makes sense. Some predators might just tear into a downed enemy as a meal depending on the monster/animal. Intelligent enemies can probably only see the cleric get the barbarian back on his feet so many times before they decide to make sure the barbarian STAYS DOWN this time. NPCs with a vendetta against a certain PC might go out of their way to try and kill that PC, leading to the party needing to change tactics to defend them etc.
Having every enemy spam attacks on downed pcs would get old fast, but when it makes sense, it's a good way to add urgency to a situation. And even then, depending on the party setup and what you have on hand, a player character dying might not stay dead for very long.
I’ve had the opposite effect in my games - getting KO’d is more impactful and means more to the party since I’ve been running much more dangerous encounters. The party panics when they see someone KO’d: they go out of their way to heal as much as possible, they drag their body to safety, they use potions and such relentlessly.
If anything, I’ve noticed my players love it more, the battle is more knife-edged and tense, and the situations are much more thoughtful when players think their characters are on the line.
It takes some tough love at first, but it’s made a lot of issues go away: 1) weak healing just to un-KO someone, 2) ignoring downed allies because “someone else” will use a heal, 3) builds based only on attacking with no regard for ally assistance, 4) no actual strategic placement during battle to rescue allies, 5) never healing before a KO happens, etc
It’s not as cutthroat as it sounds - older versions of DnD didn’t even have a KO mechanic. Technically, there’s literally nothing even cruel about hitting downed PCs - it’s just a relative perspective. Once the PCs strategize around it, it doesn’t feel oppressive at all.
Yeah. It's not about killing pcs left and right. But making them act on their feet, come up with ways to save them, etc. It's not about racking up a body count but building tension. It's easy to kill PCs, the DM can do whatever they want, that's not actually the point of it. The point is to make things more urgent, to make the party think on their feet to save them etc.
Like you said it makes a sense of urgency 'oh we have to help that character NOW not in a turn or two' They might consider things like dragging someone to safety, casting darkness or invisibility etc to give cover and make enemies more likely to go for a fresh target they can see clearly, use a meatier heal so they're not going to just get downed in one hit again, Or take measures like healing earlier, with drawing to a better position etc BEFORE you can get KOd.
The point isn't to rack up a body count, that's easy to do as a DM you hold all the cards and can do whatever you want. It's like when a movie isn't going to actually start killing off the main characters...but the audience needs to believe you might to build tension. Personally I don't have every enemy do it because I like for it to feel impactful when it happens, a big 'oh crap' moment where they act fast to save a party member, but I can see the merit of doing it more regularly like you say.
Of course it also depends on the party, what kind of game you and the players are after but that goes for literally everything in D&D, there's no one singular catch all approach for every table on any subject. So that really goes without saying.
Well said! I haven’t killed a PC in a looooong time. They’ve come close many times, but they’ve always found a way to recover, it’s amazing to see!
Great resource for learning about how different types of monsters will react based on their lore, culture and attributes.
Largely it bakes down to what motivates your monsters and how intelligent they are. Don't bother rolling checks, use the base INT mod.
The DMG tells you that anything with INT less than 6 is driven by instinct, and a commoner has an INT of 10, suggesting that is the average intelligence of a regular person.
A Polar Bear hunts for food, and probably judges threat level by how big or strong something is, but it also might take the most convenient thing (closest to it) and if it gets low it will likely try to run away.
An archmage knows what clerics are, it knows that if it kills a cleric it cannot heal the fighters and paladins.
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That can work too. And again I don't think every enemy should always do this, and not every game should have it if it's not the sort of experience players want where their characters could die like that. I just don't think it's something that should NEVER be on the table.
"Never"? No, obviously not. The thing is, the fine art of being a DM is making the players think their characters could have died, without actually letting them die. If the players make the wrong choices, funeral services may be the only option left. Note that I said "choices". The DM has to leave an option open or their games aren't apt to be fun for those unprepared for their characters to head into the great beyond.
If an NPC focuses on all else and brings a player's character down, even if that's perfectly reasonable and well within the parameters of what they should do, it remains something I don't chose to do. Bringing back our poor Barbarian again (poor Barbarian, what did they do to deserve this?) if you want the NPC to keep carving away until that Barbarian is mincemeat, go right ahead. What do you get? Well, the Barbarian is likely to be out of the fight. Their fun is probably ruined. The Cleric who was trying to keep them up has failed, and they aren't going to be happy about it, so their fun might be ruined as well, and with the Barbarian down, the Cleric possibly low on healing, the party is one short, lower on resources, and may all perish, especially if they are fighting people so brutal and nasty as to carve on people who aren't fighting back. The only one at the table having fun at that point is the DM.
That kind of game isn't the sort I run. I kind of like Heroic Fantasy, with my players running the heroes of the story, and my job as DM is to help them tell that story better.
<Insert clever signature here>
I’ve had the opposite effect in my games - getting KO’d is more impactful and means more to the party since I’ve been running much more dangerous encounters. The party panics when they see someone KO’d: they go out of their way to heal as much as possible, they drag their body to safety, they use potions and such relentlessly.
If anything, I’ve noticed my players love it more, the battle is more knife-edged and tense, and the situations are much more thoughtful when players think their characters are on the line.
It takes some tough love at first, but it’s made a lot of issues go away: 1) weak healing just to un-KO someone, 2) ignoring downed allies because “someone else” will use a heal, 3) builds based only on attacking with no regard for ally assistance, 4) no actual strategic placement during battle to rescue allies, 5) never healing before a KO happens, etc
It’s not as cutthroat as it sounds - older versions of DnD didn’t even have a KO mechanic. Technically, there’s literally nothing even cruel about hitting downed PCs - it’s just a relative perspective. Once the PCs strategize around it, it doesn’t feel oppressive at all.
Yeah. It's not about killing pcs left and right. But making them act on their feet, come up with ways to save them, etc. It's not about racking up a body count but building tension. It's easy to kill PCs, the DM can do whatever they want, that's not actually the point of it. The point is to make things more urgent, to make the party think on their feet to save them etc.
Like you said it makes a sense of urgency 'oh we have to help that character NOW not in a turn or two' They might consider things like dragging someone to safety, casting darkness or invisibility etc to give cover and make enemies more likely to go for a fresh target they can see clearly, use a meatier heal so they're not going to just get downed in one hit again, Or take measures like healing earlier, with drawing to a better position etc BEFORE you can get KOd.
The point isn't to rack up a body count, that's easy to do as a DM you hold all the cards and can do whatever you want. It's like when a movie isn't going to actually start killing off the main characters...but the audience needs to believe you might to build tension. Personally I don't have every enemy do it because I like for it to feel impactful when it happens, a big 'oh crap' moment where they act fast to save a party member, but I can see the merit of doing it more regularly like you say.
Of course it also depends on the party, what kind of game you and the players are after but that goes for literally everything in D&D, there's no one singular catch all approach for every table on any subject. So that really goes without saying.
Well said! I haven’t killed a PC in a looooong time. They’ve come close many times, but they’ve always found a way to recover, it’s amazing to see!
https://www.themonstersknow.com/
Great resource for learning about how different types of monsters will react based on their lore, culture and attributes.
Largely it bakes down to what motivates your monsters and how intelligent they are. Don't bother rolling checks, use the base INT mod.
The DMG tells you that anything with INT less than 6 is driven by instinct, and a commoner has an INT of 10, suggesting that is the average intelligence of a regular person.
A Polar Bear hunts for food, and probably judges threat level by how big or strong something is, but it also might take the most convenient thing (closest to it) and if it gets low it will likely try to run away.
An archmage knows what clerics are, it knows that if it kills a cleric it cannot heal the fighters and paladins.