Yeah, I’m never happy when a character dies, but if it never happened it would be unbelievable and the clutch victories would lose their meaning. I mean, if every day is a sunny day then what’s a sunny day?
Yeah, I’m never happy when a character dies, but if it never happened it would be unbelievable and the clutch victories would lose their meaning. I mean, if every day is a sunny day then what’s a sunny day?
With all due respect as I don’t mean to pick on your specifically but who has suggested characters should never die aside from the detractors to those of us advocating for meaningful deaths over a meat grinder style of game? There has been consistent reference to how terrible the game would be if characters never died, something I don’t really see anyone suggesting should ever be the case.
I am on my second character in my current campaign. My cleric/sorcerer died permanently at the hands (tendrils?) of a morkoth at level 9 but it was actually her second death. She had died once before at level 3 when a giant owl (IIRC—it was a bird with 2 claws and a bite anyway) crit twice and hit with the third attack. Went from full HP to straight up dead. Then, because the DM felt really bad about the dumb luck of it all and I was not enthused with the idea of a new character, he did me a huge favour. Her corpse was brought to the nearest town. It was in no way large enough to really justify the existence of any spellcaster who could cast the spell to bring her back but the DM had one there anyway. And since we couldn’t afford the high-level spell casting service either, the DM had the NPC agree to raise her and have us then go on a quest to pay for it. Some will cry foul at all the DM fiat, at the so-called training wheels, but I was exceptionally grateful to be saved from what amounted to nothing more than hot dice. It was certainly kinder than if she was just dead because meat grinder. It was much more fun for me. As well, rather than detracting from the game, bringing my character back from the dead ultimately resulted in extra adventure for the party, who was more than happy to pretty much move mountains to get their friend and healer back.
Her second death, OTOH, was entirely different. It happened during a terrific BBEG struggle and was the result of a tense challenge where no one could spare the action economy to stabilize or heal her without seriously jeopardizing their own lives and the overall tide of battle. It was great fun even as she lay there dying!! Unlike at level 3, there was the chance for a Revivify as the battle concluded with a minute of her death but I ended up declining it. I was saddened by her death but was in no way disappointed by or resentful of how it happened. I did not feel robbed. I had the chance to roll death saves instead of being insta-gibbed. I had been playing her for over a year by this point. I had a backup character that I was enamored with. Most importantly, this death felt like a worthy one. So she stayed dead.
That is what I’m talking about. I feel like this is what others are talking about as well. Not no death ever. Not absolute plot armour. Meaningful death that is fun and feels right as a player rather than a robbery.
Edit: FWIW, over two and bit years—12 levels—in the course of the campaign I’m referring to, the party had had to cast Revivify a handful of times, maybe ten in all and one other player did decide to leave his character dead to start a backup at level 7. So death does happen…
What is it that makes a BBE battle more “meaningful” than a random encounter? If my character dies while adventuring, it simply is what it is. It’s the nature of the lifestyle. Live by the sword, die by it and all that. I mean, “adventurer” is basically a nice way of saying “freelance contractor,” which is a nice way of saying “tomb raiding mercenary” in this context. And even if the death isn’t related to the main story, it’s still “meaningful” because it’s the death of a hero. It’s meaningful because it reinforces the sense of the PCs’ mortality, and makes appreciating our PCs all that much more meaningful.
And I never said anything about a meat grinder campaign either. At no time did I ever say anything about a meat grinder. All I said was that the risk of losing my character during any given battle makes victory more more meaningful to me.
What is it that makes a BBE battle more “meaningful” than a random encounter? If my character dies while adventuring, it simply is what it is. It’s the nature of the lifestyle. Live by the sword, die by it and all that. I mean, “adventurer” is basically a nice way of saying “freelance contractor,” which is a nice way of saying “tomb raiding mercenary” in this context. And even if the death isn’t related to the main story, it’s still “meaningful” because it’s the death of a hero. It’s meaningful because it reinforces the sense of the PCs’ mortality, and makes appreciating our PCs all that much more meaningful.
And I never said anything about a meat grinder campaign either. At no time did I ever say anything about a meat grinder. All I said was that the risk of losing my character during any given battle makes victory more more meaningful to me.
I mean, I just explained why her first death was not meaningful compared to the second: having only played the character a very short while; having been insta-gibbed with no chance at death saves; having no chance at a Revivify; having no backup I character in mind.
Compare this to a climactic BBEG confrontation where the character I’d had a chance to enjoy for quite awhile and was ready to move on from if the dice gods so willed it participated in a significant portion of the battle and made a difference in the overall outcome before eventually falling. Then nervously watching the rounds tick away as her friends scrambled to end the bad guy in time to save her. At least getting the chance to roll death saves even if she succumbed in the end versus simply two crits, a hit and SPLAT in a single round.
Is it really that difficult to see the difference?
AWeirdPotato, I just want to reiterate that I do not mean my initial comments to be targeted specifically at you even though you were quoted. Your statement just exemplified, with admirable brevity mind you, a position that others have posited as well. Cheers and no hard feelings :)
I'll weigh in as one of the OSR guys who has yet to find a group to play with online. I never felt like we played "meatgrinder" games and every character death mattered to me. I like a game where actions have consequences and the dice do as well. Sometimes they go against me. I remember once at a buddy's house we had a party of 8 with 2 DM's running the adventure. As we entered a room once, DM 1 leans over to DM 2 and whispers "throw a dagger". We played with Crits and Fumbles back then. Nat 20 and the level5 ranger was dead. We were unable to get his body back to town so he was forced to start a new character. That was over 30 years ago and I still remember the impact of that scene.
We we vested in our characters back then just as you are now. Just in a different way. We tended (at our table anyway) to let the adventures help guide our character development and it was a co-op between the group and the DM. We built every character from level 1 and if they managed to see level 7 your character truly was Heroic! Seems like a lot of the players now are almost more vested in creating backstory then gameplay. Or at the least, their version of gameplay is a more narrative give and take story creation with the DM and less trying to surmount obstacles the DM has created. That's fine if it works for your group. As long as everyone is on the same page and having fun it's a win/win. This is where the idea of Session 0 makes a lot of sense to me.
As I am trying to learn 5e and (unsuccessfully) looking for an online group, I have been watching many YT vids of games. I really enjoyed watching Acquisitions Incorporated and understand WHY it is done the way that is is. But I don't particularly enjoy games where a character can just dive off a cliff and the DM finds some way to let them live just so they get to keep their character. Stupidity hurts. Plus, we would never have attempted attacking a dragon at level 5 (a vid I watched did this and the DM definitely didn't seem to play the Dragon as an entity that wanted to survive.) But it seems that is quite normal in a lot of adventures now. I would expect the Dragon to want to survive as much as the PCs do. Otherwise it kinda becomes a weird LARPing encounter where the bad guys just accept their fate and lay down and die.
I guess the sense danger and the fact that my character could die makes the victories that much better for me. Do I want him/her to die? Absolutely not. Having a character die and the DM weaving the reviving of the character when possible is a great adventure hook too. I guess in the end I land somewhere between Grimdark and (for lack of a better term) what I will call the new way a lot of 5e seems from the outside. Again, I may be off base having never actually gotten to play 5e yet.
In the end as long as everyone at the table is having fun and playing a game style they enjoy, it matters not what any other table is doing or enjoys.
One time I had one of my players, (A Rogue) die in a fight. Instead of killing him and getting it over, as the character had been with us for a while and had undergone much development, I developed an alternative plan. The next session the character found himself in a courtroom. The Court of the Unclaimed, as it was called, was for people who had died but didn't serve an deity, so their souls were unclaimed upon death. There was the Rogue and his "Lawer" the angel of mercy and there was the "Prosecutor," the angel of death. There was also a jury made up of multiple people the Rouge had encountered on earth, and a defense team made up of the rest of the party, who had their consciousness sucked into the court in order to participate in the trial. It was a ton of fun and even though the next session was mostly roleplay, I think everyone had a blast. It also served as a good recap of the adventure thus far, as it had been going on for a while and everyone was 16th level.
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Quokkas are objectively the best animal, anyone who disagrees needs a psychiatric evaluation
One time I had one of my players, (A Rogue) die in a fight. Instead of killing him and getting it over, as the character had been with us for a while and had undergone much development, I developed an alternative plan. The next session the character found himself in a courtroom. The Court of the Unclaimed, as it was called, was for people who had died but didn't serve an deity, so their souls were unclaimed upon death. There was the Rogue and his "Lawer" the angel of mercy and there was the "Prosecutor," the angel of death. There was also a jury made up of multiple people the Rouge had encountered on earth, and a defense team made up of the rest of the party, who had their consciousness sucked into the court in order to participate in the trial. It was a ton of fun and even though the next session was mostly roleplay, I think everyone had a blast. It also served as a good recap of the adventure thus far, as it had been going on for a while and everyone was 16th level.
That is a very cool and unique way to game bringing them back. What was the verdict? A DM (and the player) can have a lot of fun with stuff like this, but you can only get away with it so often or it can become repetitious.
One time I had one of my players, (A Rogue) die in a fight. Instead of killing him and getting it over, as the character had been with us for a while and had undergone much development, I developed an alternative plan. The next session the character found himself in a courtroom. The Court of the Unclaimed, as it was called, was for people who had died but didn't serve an deity, so their souls were unclaimed upon death. There was the Rogue and his "Lawer" the angel of mercy and there was the "Prosecutor," the angel of death. There was also a jury made up of multiple people the Rouge had encountered on earth, and a defense team made up of the rest of the party, who had their consciousness sucked into the court in order to participate in the trial. It was a ton of fun and even though the next session was mostly roleplay, I think everyone had a blast. It also served as a good recap of the adventure thus far, as it had been going on for a while and everyone was 16th level.
Yours is a table I am pretty sure I would enjoy playing at. By 16, there is a high probability I would eat the character death, having already done so much with it, and while I would mourn the loss, I would also be satisfied to know my companions had finished the fight and won, even if it cost me my character's life. It was mentioned earlier that many of us who are "anti" character deaths, are only so at early stages and in pointless situations. Examples already provided of where a couple crap rolls ended a character, or worse, no rolls from the character or chance, just BOOF you done!
A character falling in the 3rd or 4th round of a big fight is a lot easier to handle than no chance death. We, of the storyteller first clan, just don't want that shocking, "too bad bub, you did nothing wrong and now you're dead" thrown into our games. There's too much of that IRL already and it always sucks, so we don't want that depressing downer strolling along with us when we are trying to enjoy something.
A character death in a meaningful combat might compare to an auto accident in nasty weather for someone who decided ot chance trying to get to work. There's purpose, meaning and so forth. A character death because the bridge that appeared sturdy collapsed without warning is like putting on all your proper gear for skateboarding, then being hit by a drunk driver walking to the skate park. One is something that COULD have been avoided by different choices, the other was preordained by some ******* who should have known better. (With acknowledgement that some folks LIKE that level of randomness, such events in their game don't necessarily denote the *******, as it's just part of their table play) I will agree, the fan base of D&D is "softer" now than earlier editions. The perceived "softness" however, is most often tied to a strong desire for a strong story with longer term characters involved. No matter how you try to spin it, you can't have long term character arcs and random deaths at the same time.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
What is it that makes a BBE battle more “meaningful” than a random encounter? If my character dies while adventuring, it simply is what it is. It’s the nature of the lifestyle. Live by the sword, die by it and all that. I mean, “adventurer” is basically a nice way of saying “freelance contractor,” which is a nice way of saying “tomb raiding mercenary” in this context. And even if the death isn’t related to the main story, it’s still “meaningful” because it’s the death of a hero. It’s meaningful because it reinforces the sense of the PCs’ mortality, and makes appreciating our PCs all that much more meaningful.
And I never said anything about a meat grinder campaign either. At no time did I ever say anything about a meat grinder. All I said was that the risk of losing my character during any given battle makes victory more more meaningful to me.
I mean, I just explained why her first death was not meaningful compared to the second: having only played the character a very short while; having been insta-gibbed with no chance at death saves; having no chance at a Revivify; having no backup I character in mind.
Compare this to a climactic BBEG confrontation where the character I’d had a chance to enjoy for quite awhile and was ready to move on from if the dice gods so willed it participated in a significant portion of the battle and made a difference in the overall outcome before eventually falling. Then nervously watching the rounds tick away as her friends scrambled to end the bad guy in time to save her. At least getting the chance to roll death saves even if she succumbed in the end versus simply two crits, a hit and SPLAT in a single round.
Is it really that difficult to see the difference?
That seems to have more to do with your mindset than the fact the character died. I’m simply of a different mindset. Besides, if anything the loss of a character one has only played for “a very short while” should be way easier to digest than the death of a long running character.
One time I had one of my players, (A Rogue) die in a fight. Instead of killing him and getting it over, as the character had been with us for a while and had undergone much development, I developed an alternative plan. The next session the character found himself in a courtroom. The Court of the Unclaimed, as it was called, was for people who had died but didn't serve an deity, so their souls were unclaimed upon death. There was the Rogue and his "Lawer" the angel of mercy and there was the "Prosecutor," the angel of death. There was also a jury made up of multiple people the Rouge had encountered on earth, and a defense team made up of the rest of the party, who had their consciousness sucked into the court in order to participate in the trial. It was a ton of fun and even though the next session was mostly roleplay, I think everyone had a blast. It also served as a good recap of the adventure thus far, as it had been going on for a while and everyone was 16th level.
That is a very cool and unique way to game bringing them back. What was the verdict? A DM (and the player) can have a lot of fun with stuff like this, but you can only get away with it so often or it can become repetitious.
Kraken Fan #69
Th verdict was eventually innocent, had he been found guilty his soul would either be annihilated or petrified, the petrification being the worse of the two options. For determining the verdict, I had each of the 12 members of the jury roll a D4, and add modifiers based on the rogue's actions on earth and in the afterlife. For example, if he killed someone who was on the jury, he would have gotten a -3 modifier from them, but he might be able to alleviate that modifier by making an incredibly convincing argument. There were different thresholds for judgement, 10 or lower soul petrification, 15 or lower soul annihilation, 20 or higher soul reincarnation (in a different body), 25 or higher second chance on earth.
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Quokkas are objectively the best animal, anyone who disagrees needs a psychiatric evaluation
Character death is part of the game. If you're going to sanitise the game to the point death never happens unless it's contrived and agreed you will take a lot of the challenge out of the game. Success then has less meaning and is less satisfying. But even as an old-school player (started in 1982) I don't want arbitrary and contrived play, I don't want any extreme either whether that's a DM going all out to kill PCs or continually fudging things to protect them.
As a DM I try to carefully craft a story framework either with overarching storylines or on a more open world basis. PCs invariably grow into interesting characters, sometimes in ways that are unexpected and as a result the experience can be very rewarding. I try to use intelligent villains in a way that is realistic: what do they know of the PCs, would they see them as a threat? Are they making attempts to learn about the PCs and their tactics and evolve themselves? Such villains and their minions would then adapt and in my campaigns this can mean catching the PCs out. If this leads to death, then so be it. Or if a party of third level rogues types descend into a sewer and attack a black pudding, they can have no complaints if two of them die, especially as the pudding was easily avoidable and this was suggested by one who eventually waded in to help and got killed (after I prompted the player that he could hear the scream of one of his comrades who had just evaded death).
I'll generally have plans in place for scenarios. I'll have options. But I'll allow gameplay to play itself out and that might mean making a decision on the fly, maybe using the rule of cool, or rewarding great roleplay, but it equally means if a PC gets in harms way, whether heroically, through stupidity, bad luck or simply making the wrong call, then death might be one outcome.
The players I regularly play with get this and we all generally don't want our characters to die, but we recognise they might. D&D gives a lot of protection to PCs. In some settings we've played in like Cyberpunk Red, Twilight 2000, Warhammer Dark Heresy, combat is brutal but then the focus tends to rest more on roleplay and it doesn't detract from having fun.
I don't try as a DM to kill players, as I see my role to create an immersive and collaborative story that we'll talk about for years, but there are villains and monsters that might in the right circumstances try and kill the PCs, or they may want to capture or eat them or in some cases talk to them. In my last major campaign they defeated a lich with minions who was definitely trying to kill the PCs - he failed in an attempt to disintegrate the cleric and succeeded with power word kill on the barbarian who was the next immediate threat, but D&D being what it is, the lich was then taken down by the halfling paladin and the barbarian raised successfully by the cleric. No fudged roll, just a good chance that paid off.
I even allowed a Divination attempt by the cleric to call upon her deity, with roleplay from all the PCs calling upon their deities which would then determine a good chance of success, and if successful (which they were) their desire to be fully healed and rested would be translated as an instant long rest being granted to the party on the verge of their final battle against a lich at the end of an 18 month campaign (I had previously scuppered all attempts at a short rest as the lich sent harrying forces at every opportunity, so I thought this fair enough). These do or die rolls made for great atmosphere and theatre, especially as it was a day long face-to-face meet up once Covid restrictions were lifted.
Death should always be a risk, and sometimes the dice just aren't with you, but it doesn't always have to be the outcome. In the above campaign, the PCs carefully approached a death knight and negotiated with him. This eventually led to a spin off mini-campaign to redeem him, which was successful and very rewarding for the players.
What is it that makes a BBE battle more “meaningful” than a random encounter? If my character dies while adventuring, it simply is what it is. It’s the nature of the lifestyle. Live by the sword, die by it and all that. I mean, “adventurer” is basically a nice way of saying “freelance contractor,” which is a nice way of saying “tomb raiding mercenary” in this context. And even if the death isn’t related to the main story, it’s still “meaningful” because it’s the death of a hero. It’s meaningful because it reinforces the sense of the PCs’ mortality, and makes appreciating our PCs all that much more meaningful.
And I never said anything about a meat grinder campaign either. At no time did I ever say anything about a meat grinder. All I said was that the risk of losing my character during any given battle makes victory more more meaningful to me.
I mean, I just explained why her first death was not meaningful compared to the second: having only played the character a very short while; having been insta-gibbed with no chance at death saves; having no chance at a Revivify; having no backup I character in mind.
Compare this to a climactic BBEG confrontation where the character I’d had a chance to enjoy for quite awhile and was ready to move on from if the dice gods so willed it participated in a significant portion of the battle and made a difference in the overall outcome before eventually falling. Then nervously watching the rounds tick away as her friends scrambled to end the bad guy in time to save her. At least getting the chance to roll death saves even if she succumbed in the end versus simply two crits, a hit and SPLAT in a single round.
Is it really that difficult to see the difference?
That seems to have more to do with your mindset than the fact the character died. I’m simply of a different mindset. Besides, if anything the loss of a character one has only played for “a very short while” should be way easier to digest than the death of a long running character.
Of course it’s only my mindset. We are discussing the subjective matter of fun. What else could it be when we’re discussing how people feel about things?
Your mindset seems to acknowledge there is a difference between the deaths described but is simply unwilling to validate the idea that not all deaths are equal to meet us halfway. Instead, this thread is full of people who share my mindset being told we are somehow ruining the game by the people who share your mindset, mostly as they beat the ever-loving stuffing out of a strawman named “the game would be awful if characters never die”.
Clearly you haven't been keeping up with mainstream pop culture in the last decade or so. ;)
Why? Because you count the set up and planned character deaths in a show. An actor signed up for five episodes...and "wow" in Episode Five they "stay behind" for "no reason" to fight a building on fire..and a cross beam falls and kills the character. Or the actor wants to leave the show then they "trip for no reason" so the zombies can eat them. Yea..wow...character death. It is NOT random character death.
Wait, what? You really think that the reason the character dies is because the actor has only signed up for five episodes rather than the reason the actor only has a five episode contract is because the character is supposed to die suddenly and randomly? Okey then.
I think that the shift away from the use of character death was a shift in the thinking of what this game is about, and what the players are in relation to that game. I think in older editions players were adventurers in the contemporary sense, and from 3e onward they were no longer adventurers and more like heroes. Death is always a possibility in the lives of adventurers because their lives are dangerous and complex. But heroes never die, or at least they shouldn't.
Many of my players are discouraged by "plot armor". They want to be challenged. Death in my games is not only an ever present threat, I make resurrection much harder. It makes my players think things through rather than incentivizing players to just derp their way through encounters or traps with no fear of repercussions for their actions. The game gets boring if their is no challenge.
What is it that makes a BBE battle more “meaningful” than a random encounter? If my character dies while adventuring, it simply is what it is. It’s the nature of the lifestyle. Live by the sword, die by it and all that. I mean, “adventurer” is basically a nice way of saying “freelance contractor,” which is a nice way of saying “tomb raiding mercenary” in this context. And even if the death isn’t related to the main story, it’s still “meaningful” because it’s the death of a hero. It’s meaningful because it reinforces the sense of the PCs’ mortality, and makes appreciating our PCs all that much more meaningful.
And I never said anything about a meat grinder campaign either. At no time did I ever say anything about a meat grinder. All I said was that the risk of losing my character during any given battle makes victory more more meaningful to me.
I mean, I just explained why her first death was not meaningful compared to the second: having only played the character a very short while; having been insta-gibbed with no chance at death saves; having no chance at a Revivify; having no backup I character in mind.
Compare this to a climactic BBEG confrontation where the character I’d had a chance to enjoy for quite awhile and was ready to move on from if the dice gods so willed it participated in a significant portion of the battle and made a difference in the overall outcome before eventually falling. Then nervously watching the rounds tick away as her friends scrambled to end the bad guy in time to save her. At least getting the chance to roll death saves even if she succumbed in the end versus simply two crits, a hit and SPLAT in a single round.
Is it really that difficult to see the difference?
That seems to have more to do with your mindset than the fact the character died. I’m simply of a different mindset. Besides, if anything the loss of a character one has only played for “a very short while” should be way easier to digest than the death of a long running character.
Of course it’s only my mindset. We are discussing the subjective matter of fun. What else could it be when we’re discussing how people feel about things?
You mindset seems to acknowledge there is a difference between the deaths described but is simply unwilling to validate the idea that not all deaths are equal to meet us halfway. Instead, this thread is full of people who share my mindset being told we are somehow ruining the game by the people who share your mindset, mostly as they beat the ever-loving stuffing out of a strawman named “the game would be awful if characters never die”.
Dude, whatever. I never said you ruined anything. I simply gave my opinion and you decided to @ me for it.
Character death should be something that can happen, with how I DM.
However, my goal is to never try and kill a character. With how I DM, I am wanting these characters to grow (both in levels, but also story wise) - whether through the backgrounds I am using that they created, or for my own story.
In the five years I have been DMing my current campaign, only one character managed to die, so far. A second death with their second character, was actually a planned one, that he had wanted to do - so I worked it into a story. (I originally had not allowed Artificers in my world - but they reached an area where I could see one fitting - so we planned a heroic death for the second character, to introduce the third character).
I will not, however, hesitate to kill a character who does something stupid - like, run up and stab a sleeping, ancient red dragon in the toe, when the rest of the party is trying to stealth out of the cave (or anything else like that).
Even when characters go down, I allow my players to do a Medicine check as an action - to try and stabilize the downed player. Any any failed Death Save or failed Medicine check (DC starts at 10), increases future Medicine checks by 1. So if they failed 1 death save, the first Medicine check is going to be DC 11.
All of this just so ideally, characters do not perish, but also adds a nice way of putting Medicine to good use (which takes their whole turn to do - flavored as attempting to bandage the downed player).
Yeah, I’m never happy when a character dies, but if it never happened it would be unbelievable and the clutch victories would lose their meaning. I mean, if every day is a sunny day then what’s a sunny day?
With all due respect as I don’t mean to pick on your specifically but who has suggested characters should never die aside from the detractors to those of us advocating for meaningful deaths over a meat grinder style of game? There has been consistent reference to how terrible the game would be if characters never died, something I don’t really see anyone suggesting should ever be the case.
I am on my second character in my current campaign. My cleric/sorcerer died permanently at the hands (tendrils?) of a morkoth at level 9 but it was actually her second death. She had died once before at level 3 when a giant owl (IIRC—it was a bird with 2 claws and a bite anyway) crit twice and hit with the third attack. Went from full HP to straight up dead. Then, because the DM felt really bad about the dumb luck of it all and I was not enthused with the idea of a new character, he did me a huge favour. Her corpse was brought to the nearest town. It was in no way large enough to really justify the existence of any spellcaster who could cast the spell to bring her back but the DM had one there anyway. And since we couldn’t afford the high-level spell casting service either, the DM had the NPC agree to raise her and have us then go on a quest to pay for it. Some will cry foul at all the DM fiat, at the so-called training wheels, but I was exceptionally grateful to be saved from what amounted to nothing more than hot dice. It was certainly kinder than if she was just dead because meat grinder. It was much more fun for me. As well, rather than detracting from the game, bringing my character back from the dead ultimately resulted in extra adventure for the party, who was more than happy to pretty much move mountains to get their friend and healer back.
Her second death, OTOH, was entirely different. It happened during a terrific BBEG struggle and was the result of a tense challenge where no one could spare the action economy to stabilize or heal her without seriously jeopardizing their own lives and the overall tide of battle. It was great fun even as she lay there dying!! Unlike at level 3, there was the chance for a Revivify as the battle concluded with a minute of her death but I ended up declining it. I was saddened by her death but was in no way disappointed by or resentful of how it happened. I did not feel robbed. I had the chance to roll death saves instead of being insta-gibbed. I had been playing her for over a year by this point. I had a backup character that I was enamored with. Most importantly, this death felt like a worthy one. So she stayed dead.
That is what I’m talking about. I feel like this is what others are talking about as well. Not no death ever. Not absolute plot armour. Meaningful death that is fun and feels right as a player rather than a robbery.
Edit: FWIW, over two and bit years—12 levels—in the course of the campaign I’m referring to, the party had had to cast Revivify a handful of times, maybe ten in all and one other player did decide to leave his character dead to start a backup at level 7. So death does happen…
What is it that makes a BBE battle more “meaningful” than a random encounter? If my character dies while adventuring, it simply is what it is. It’s the nature of the lifestyle. Live by the sword, die by it and all that. I mean, “adventurer” is basically a nice way of saying “freelance contractor,” which is a nice way of saying “tomb raiding mercenary” in this context. And even if the death isn’t related to the main story, it’s still “meaningful” because it’s the death of a hero. It’s meaningful because it reinforces the sense of the PCs’ mortality, and makes appreciating our PCs all that much more meaningful.
And I never said anything about a meat grinder campaign either. At no time did I ever say anything about a meat grinder. All I said was that the risk of losing my character during any given battle makes victory more more meaningful to me.
I mean, I just explained why her first death was not meaningful compared to the second: having only played the character a very short while; having been insta-gibbed with no chance at death saves; having no chance at a Revivify; having no backup I character in mind.
Compare this to a climactic BBEG confrontation where the character I’d had a chance to enjoy for quite awhile and was ready to move on from if the dice gods so willed it participated in a significant portion of the battle and made a difference in the overall outcome before eventually falling. Then nervously watching the rounds tick away as her friends scrambled to end the bad guy in time to save her. At least getting the chance to roll death saves even if she succumbed in the end versus simply two crits, a hit and SPLAT in a single round.
Is it really that difficult to see the difference?
AWeirdPotato, I just want to reiterate that I do not mean my initial comments to be targeted specifically at you even though you were quoted. Your statement just exemplified, with admirable brevity mind you, a position that others have posited as well. Cheers and no hard feelings :)
I'll weigh in as one of the OSR guys who has yet to find a group to play with online. I never felt like we played "meatgrinder" games and every character death mattered to me. I like a game where actions have consequences and the dice do as well. Sometimes they go against me. I remember once at a buddy's house we had a party of 8 with 2 DM's running the adventure. As we entered a room once, DM 1 leans over to DM 2 and whispers "throw a dagger". We played with Crits and Fumbles back then. Nat 20 and the level5 ranger was dead. We were unable to get his body back to town so he was forced to start a new character. That was over 30 years ago and I still remember the impact of that scene.
We we vested in our characters back then just as you are now. Just in a different way. We tended (at our table anyway) to let the adventures help guide our character development and it was a co-op between the group and the DM. We built every character from level 1 and if they managed to see level 7 your character truly was Heroic! Seems like a lot of the players now are almost more vested in creating backstory then gameplay. Or at the least, their version of gameplay is a more narrative give and take story creation with the DM and less trying to surmount obstacles the DM has created. That's fine if it works for your group. As long as everyone is on the same page and having fun it's a win/win. This is where the idea of Session 0 makes a lot of sense to me.
As I am trying to learn 5e and (unsuccessfully) looking for an online group, I have been watching many YT vids of games. I really enjoyed watching Acquisitions Incorporated and understand WHY it is done the way that is is. But I don't particularly enjoy games where a character can just dive off a cliff and the DM finds some way to let them live just so they get to keep their character. Stupidity hurts. Plus, we would never have attempted attacking a dragon at level 5 (a vid I watched did this and the DM definitely didn't seem to play the Dragon as an entity that wanted to survive.) But it seems that is quite normal in a lot of adventures now. I would expect the Dragon to want to survive as much as the PCs do. Otherwise it kinda becomes a weird LARPing encounter where the bad guys just accept their fate and lay down and die.
I guess the sense danger and the fact that my character could die makes the victories that much better for me. Do I want him/her to die? Absolutely not. Having a character die and the DM weaving the reviving of the character when possible is a great adventure hook too. I guess in the end I land somewhere between Grimdark and (for lack of a better term) what I will call the new way a lot of 5e seems from the outside. Again, I may be off base having never actually gotten to play 5e yet.
In the end as long as everyone at the table is having fun and playing a game style they enjoy, it matters not what any other table is doing or enjoys.
Kraken Fan #69
One time I had one of my players, (A Rogue) die in a fight. Instead of killing him and getting it over, as the character had been with us for a while and had undergone much development, I developed an alternative plan. The next session the character found himself in a courtroom. The Court of the Unclaimed, as it was called, was for people who had died but didn't serve an deity, so their souls were unclaimed upon death. There was the Rogue and his "Lawer" the angel of mercy and there was the "Prosecutor," the angel of death. There was also a jury made up of multiple people the Rouge had encountered on earth, and a defense team made up of the rest of the party, who had their consciousness sucked into the court in order to participate in the trial. It was a ton of fun and even though the next session was mostly roleplay, I think everyone had a blast. It also served as a good recap of the adventure thus far, as it had been going on for a while and everyone was 16th level.
Quokkas are objectively the best animal, anyone who disagrees needs a psychiatric evaluation
That's fantastic, Candlekeeper.
That is a very cool and unique way to game bringing them back. What was the verdict? A DM (and the player) can have a lot of fun with stuff like this, but you can only get away with it so often or it can become repetitious.
Kraken Fan #69
Yours is a table I am pretty sure I would enjoy playing at. By 16, there is a high probability I would eat the character death, having already done so much with it, and while I would mourn the loss, I would also be satisfied to know my companions had finished the fight and won, even if it cost me my character's life. It was mentioned earlier that many of us who are "anti" character deaths, are only so at early stages and in pointless situations. Examples already provided of where a couple crap rolls ended a character, or worse, no rolls from the character or chance, just BOOF you done!
A character falling in the 3rd or 4th round of a big fight is a lot easier to handle than no chance death. We, of the storyteller first clan, just don't want that shocking, "too bad bub, you did nothing wrong and now you're dead" thrown into our games. There's too much of that IRL already and it always sucks, so we don't want that depressing downer strolling along with us when we are trying to enjoy something.
A character death in a meaningful combat might compare to an auto accident in nasty weather for someone who decided ot chance trying to get to work. There's purpose, meaning and so forth. A character death because the bridge that appeared sturdy collapsed without warning is like putting on all your proper gear for skateboarding, then being hit by a drunk driver walking to the skate park. One is something that COULD have been avoided by different choices, the other was preordained by some ******* who should have known better. (With acknowledgement that some folks LIKE that level of randomness, such events in their game don't necessarily denote the *******, as it's just part of their table play) I will agree, the fan base of D&D is "softer" now than earlier editions. The perceived "softness" however, is most often tied to a strong desire for a strong story with longer term characters involved. No matter how you try to spin it, you can't have long term character arcs and random deaths at the same time.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
That seems to have more to do with your mindset than the fact the character died. I’m simply of a different mindset. Besides, if anything the loss of a character one has only played for “a very short while” should be way easier to digest than the death of a long running character.
Th verdict was eventually innocent, had he been found guilty his soul would either be annihilated or petrified, the petrification being the worse of the two options. For determining the verdict, I had each of the 12 members of the jury roll a D4, and add modifiers based on the rogue's actions on earth and in the afterlife. For example, if he killed someone who was on the jury, he would have gotten a -3 modifier from them, but he might be able to alleviate that modifier by making an incredibly convincing argument. There were different thresholds for judgement, 10 or lower soul petrification, 15 or lower soul annihilation, 20 or higher soul reincarnation (in a different body), 25 or higher second chance on earth.
Quokkas are objectively the best animal, anyone who disagrees needs a psychiatric evaluation
Character death is part of the game. If you're going to sanitise the game to the point death never happens unless it's contrived and agreed you will take a lot of the challenge out of the game. Success then has less meaning and is less satisfying. But even as an old-school player (started in 1982) I don't want arbitrary and contrived play, I don't want any extreme either whether that's a DM going all out to kill PCs or continually fudging things to protect them.
As a DM I try to carefully craft a story framework either with overarching storylines or on a more open world basis. PCs invariably grow into interesting characters, sometimes in ways that are unexpected and as a result the experience can be very rewarding. I try to use intelligent villains in a way that is realistic: what do they know of the PCs, would they see them as a threat? Are they making attempts to learn about the PCs and their tactics and evolve themselves? Such villains and their minions would then adapt and in my campaigns this can mean catching the PCs out. If this leads to death, then so be it. Or if a party of third level rogues types descend into a sewer and attack a black pudding, they can have no complaints if two of them die, especially as the pudding was easily avoidable and this was suggested by one who eventually waded in to help and got killed (after I prompted the player that he could hear the scream of one of his comrades who had just evaded death).
I'll generally have plans in place for scenarios. I'll have options. But I'll allow gameplay to play itself out and that might mean making a decision on the fly, maybe using the rule of cool, or rewarding great roleplay, but it equally means if a PC gets in harms way, whether heroically, through stupidity, bad luck or simply making the wrong call, then death might be one outcome.
The players I regularly play with get this and we all generally don't want our characters to die, but we recognise they might. D&D gives a lot of protection to PCs. In some settings we've played in like Cyberpunk Red, Twilight 2000, Warhammer Dark Heresy, combat is brutal but then the focus tends to rest more on roleplay and it doesn't detract from having fun.
I don't try as a DM to kill players, as I see my role to create an immersive and collaborative story that we'll talk about for years, but there are villains and monsters that might in the right circumstances try and kill the PCs, or they may want to capture or eat them or in some cases talk to them. In my last major campaign they defeated a lich with minions who was definitely trying to kill the PCs - he failed in an attempt to disintegrate the cleric and succeeded with power word kill on the barbarian who was the next immediate threat, but D&D being what it is, the lich was then taken down by the halfling paladin and the barbarian raised successfully by the cleric. No fudged roll, just a good chance that paid off.
I even allowed a Divination attempt by the cleric to call upon her deity, with roleplay from all the PCs calling upon their deities which would then determine a good chance of success, and if successful (which they were) their desire to be fully healed and rested would be translated as an instant long rest being granted to the party on the verge of their final battle against a lich at the end of an 18 month campaign (I had previously scuppered all attempts at a short rest as the lich sent harrying forces at every opportunity, so I thought this fair enough). These do or die rolls made for great atmosphere and theatre, especially as it was a day long face-to-face meet up once Covid restrictions were lifted.
Death should always be a risk, and sometimes the dice just aren't with you, but it doesn't always have to be the outcome. In the above campaign, the PCs carefully approached a death knight and negotiated with him. This eventually led to a spin off mini-campaign to redeem him, which was successful and very rewarding for the players.
Of course it’s only my mindset. We are discussing the subjective matter of fun. What else could it be when we’re discussing how people feel about things?
Your mindset seems to acknowledge there is a difference between the deaths described but is simply unwilling to validate the idea that not all deaths are equal to meet us halfway. Instead, this thread is full of people who share my mindset being told we are somehow ruining the game by the people who share your mindset, mostly as they beat the ever-loving stuffing out of a strawman named “the game would be awful if characters never die”.
Wait, what? You really think that the reason the character dies is because the actor has only signed up for five episodes rather than the reason the actor only has a five episode contract is because the character is supposed to die suddenly and randomly? Okey then.
I think that the shift away from the use of character death was a shift in the thinking of what this game is about, and what the players are in relation to that game. I think in older editions players were adventurers in the contemporary sense, and from 3e onward they were no longer adventurers and more like heroes. Death is always a possibility in the lives of adventurers because their lives are dangerous and complex. But heroes never die, or at least they shouldn't.
Many of my players are discouraged by "plot armor". They want to be challenged. Death in my games is not only an ever present threat, I make resurrection much harder. It makes my players think things through rather than incentivizing players to just derp their way through encounters or traps with no fear of repercussions for their actions. The game gets boring if their is no challenge.
Dude, whatever. I never said you ruined anything. I simply gave my opinion and you decided to @ me for it.
Character death should be something that can happen, with how I DM.
However, my goal is to never try and kill a character. With how I DM, I am wanting these characters to grow (both in levels, but also story wise) - whether through the backgrounds I am using that they created, or for my own story.
In the five years I have been DMing my current campaign, only one character managed to die, so far. A second death with their second character, was actually a planned one, that he had wanted to do - so I worked it into a story. (I originally had not allowed Artificers in my world - but they reached an area where I could see one fitting - so we planned a heroic death for the second character, to introduce the third character).
I will not, however, hesitate to kill a character who does something stupid - like, run up and stab a sleeping, ancient red dragon in the toe, when the rest of the party is trying to stealth out of the cave (or anything else like that).
Even when characters go down, I allow my players to do a Medicine check as an action - to try and stabilize the downed player. Any any failed Death Save or failed Medicine check (DC starts at 10), increases future Medicine checks by 1. So if they failed 1 death save, the first Medicine check is going to be DC 11.
All of this just so ideally, characters do not perish, but also adds a nice way of putting Medicine to good use (which takes their whole turn to do - flavored as attempting to bandage the downed player).
Check out my publication on DMs Guild: https://www.dmsguild.com/browse.php?author=Tawmis%20Logue
Check out my comedy web series - Neverending Nights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wr4-u9-zw0&list=PLbRG7dzFI-u3EJd0usasgDrrFO3mZ1lOZ
Need a character story/background written up? I do it for free (but also take donations!) - https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?591882-Need-a-character-background-written-up