Short version: When (if ever) is it "fun" for a player character to die in the game? Should character death be an ever-present threat, or should character death only be a threat for "meaningful" encounters?
Longer version: These questions came to mind after reading some very, ahem, spirited debate about the ongoing UA rules (specifically, whether monsters should be able to crit or not). This post is NOT about the UA, but about what, for you as a player (and DM, I suppose) makes the game fun and what kills the fun? Anecdotally, it feels like a lot of players who picked up D&D with 3rd Edition or later find character death decidedly UNfun, as in: it should be rare, should only be permanent at low levels, and should have some kind of "meaning" (definition left purposefully vague) within the plot or story of the game and campaign. Contrast this with my own (and others) who've been playing D&D much longer, and started with older (much deadlier) editions. Character death is just as likely with a random encounter as with the BBEG; it's simply part of the risk you take when you choose an adventurer's life. More than that: it lends a degree of "reality" and stakes to the game; life and encounters are inherently uncertain, and you're not guaranteed to survive tomorrow, let alone today's encounter with that band of gnolls.
D&D can be played a LOT of ways (though it seems to be designed to be combat-focused). You can have sessions or even campaigns in which you never roll to hit anything, but resolve all encounters and challenges through diplomacy, persuasion, guile, etc. You can have sessions or games which are nonstop meat grinders. And everything in between. None of the options are right or wrong, better or worse (though, again, some will be easier to manage because the game as designed is focused on combat and fighting).
And yes, 5E (and a few earlier editions) do encourage players to spend a good amount of time developing characters - personalities, backstories, allies, rivals, etc. It can be upsetting or sad when a beloved character dies (it's happened to me!) - but does that mean it's not fun?
I guess ultimately I, as a person with roots in old school gaming, have some frustration with how "padded for safety" 5E seems. I have a very hard time, to put it mildly, understanding the mindset of creating a character for the game and being upset if that character dies. Because for me, the bottom line is: adventuring is dangerous. Inherently so. And even though player characters are considered extraordinary in comparison with most commoners, level progression and CR (broken as it is) alone tell us that choosing to pick up a sword or wand and going looking for trouble means you run the risk of dying, be it at the end of a spear wielding by roadside bandits, the traps in an ancient ruin, or the spell cast by the villain they've been chasing for weeks. For me, there IS fun in that because it's what lends stakes to the game: walking into every or even just most encounters being fully certain you're going to survive and succeed becomes boring quickly, and just feels like a power fantasy rather than a series of meaningful challenges.
Even though I have strong opinions on this, please note again: I am NOT, after all, telling anyone how to play the game or how to have fun. I'm interested in dialogue and well intentioned back and forth, but I'm not here to slam anyone or tell you you're having fun the wrong way. (And if I'm contradicting myself here...well, so be it. I'm human, and doing my best to express this stuff and talk with others about it. I'm not claiming to be a bastion of impeccably consistent and logical thought!)
(Note: for the sake of this discussion, please assume a character death was NOT the result of blatantly bad DMing or encounter design. Those are separate topics, and I am very much on the side of a player who is upset because a 2nd level character was killed by a lich they had no chance of avoiding or negotiating with or a 1st level paladin who's forced to fight a drow champion wielding a vorpal sword.)
I agree with everything you’ve written there. I also started in the older editions when life was cheap. We ran 3 PCs at a time because we expected 2 not to make it during any given session. I lost more characters than I didn’t back then. If a PC survived to 5th level we dared start to hope, and started to get attached to that character. If, if one survived ‘til 7th… that’s when it got heartbreaking to lose one. I can’t speak for anyone else in this thread and I won’t, but for me and a number of players I know it’s the risk of character death that makes victory exciting.
What makes the game un-fun for me is feeling like my character has plot armor. If it feels like the DM is pulling punches, that kills the game for me. I would rather potentially lose a character than feel like I can’t lose one.
There’s been some assertion that attempts to meter character deaths to be meaningful manifests as characters acting as if they are invincible, going so far as to claim that it results in characters openly taunting their opponents or making incredibly reckless choices because the DM will never let them die. Of all the people advocating against ungratifying deaths, not a single person has indicated that they or their players behave in this manner. There is a far cry between not wanting to die to a random encounter due to a swack of bad rolls (or in my case not wanting an entire campaign to end due to these factors) and being a goddamn assclown acting in mean-spirited contravention of the spirit of gracious, cooperative gameplay expected from any team member participating in a team-based activity.
You do raise a lot of interesting points on how it can be frustrating to lose a character you spent time and energy on to something insignificant or lame. However, I don't think many people have been saying that not avoiding character deaths means having no character deaths at all. What I do think they are saying is that no character deaths would mean that there really aren't stakes, and that is why people like me play with (even if we don't enjoy) character deaths; We want there to be a valve for failure and no death means that success is inevitable and horrible decisions don't result in punishment.
I raised the distinction between aversion to character death and no character deaths at all in my very first post to this thread, and I would like to say good job for articulating the difference between these two things far better than I did. However, as I said above, I do think that death to a random encounter is alright if it is because the characters messed up, or rolled badly on repeat and refused to give up in an encounter where they knew the monsters wouldn't take prisoners. I know that some people will disagree with the part about rolling badly, but the dice are there for a reason and they really don't have as much power if your group decides to ignore them in certain situations.
So all in all, I don't like character death. I don't like it at all. But I am willing to play with it and grateful to have it in the game because it makes it so your choices matter and failures and bad decisions can have a bigger impact on your adventuring career than just a minor setback. If there are no deaths and every time you get defeated, you rise up again, then you are just riding down a railroad, waiting to reach your destination and there is no way you don't get there. This is no different than what Yurei is saying "Old Guards" do; It is making your one party equivalent to an endless supply of legendary adventurers.
"Random nonsense" is when a DM simply announces to the party that a character dies from some completely unavoidable, completely unforeseeable, usually utterly contrived happenstance. "You fall into a two hundred foot pit trap in the middle of the road and die. Go reroll." "You fall into an illusion-veiled acid pit right inside the merchant's front door and die. Go reroll." "A fire giant erupts from the earth in front of you, grabs you, and bites your torso off. You died, go reroll." The sort of thing that happens when a DM thinks that character death should be celebrated as the best part of D&D and that random unavoidable instant kills are Just Part Of The Fun.
Who here has advocated for that? Absolutely nobody. Yes, killing characters off for fun without telling the players anything about potential character death in advance of the campaign would be horrible. But it really just feels like you are debating with a fictional group of people who are so scarce as to be nonexistent. I am both a player and a Dungeon Master, and I have never run into someone who did anything remotely like this. I routinely help other DMs out in Dungeon Masters Only, and I have never seen a single person suggest anything tangentially related to "random nonsense" (as you call it).
And that is why so many people get so heated about this "debate". Because one half of the debate almost universally taunts, belittles, denigrates and dismisses the other half of the debate[...]
There is one group taunting and belittling (mostly fictional) viewpoints, and I'm not so sure that that group is the group you think it is.
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Speaking to the thread in general, I think we're all missing the most fundamental rule of D&D: There is no right or wrong way to play the game as long as everyone is having fun. If you and your group enjoy random character deaths and games where characters die all the time, then you play that way. If you are more like me, on the other hand, characters deaths can be a much less important part of the game that rarely, if ever, occurs.
Play how your group wants to play. it is getting quite tiring to see so many comments telling other people how their groups should and should not play.
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 :)
Rolling to hit, rolling damage, loop through that x times, cast heal.
It is dull without the possibility that you’ll lose your character.
Players will fall into side chatter, ‘what’s going on now?”, repeatedly falling into “wait, I didn’t understand, can I have a do-over, and dragging the game down into a crawl, because the players aren’t paying attention and why should they without stakes, the world is covered in NERF.
I am sympathetic to the idea of no bad wrong fun (but that includes that a game with a high death rate isn’t bad wrong fun either) and I can even see a market demand for it as parent gamers get their youngest kids into the game, but the game has _already_ been heavily NERFed. Perhaps there needs to be another game for these parents. Anybody remember 1d4 hit dice, no cantrips, and a single Sleep spell at first level? People had to pay attention and had to work together because the stakes were high. Making the NERF even thicker is just going to encourage players to pay less attention.
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.
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I agree with everything you’ve written there. I also started in the older editions when life was cheap. We ran 3 PCs at a time because we expected 2 not to make it during any given session. I lost more characters than I didn’t back then. If a PC survived to 5th level we dared start to hope, and started to get attached to that character. If, if one survived ‘til 7th… that’s when it got heartbreaking to lose one. I can’t speak for anyone else in this thread and I won’t, but for me and a number of players I know it’s the risk of character death that makes victory exciting.
What makes the game un-fun for me is feeling like my character has plot armor. If it feels like the DM is pulling punches, that kills the game for me. I would rather potentially lose a character than feel like I can’t lose one.
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You do raise a lot of interesting points on how it can be frustrating to lose a character you spent time and energy on to something insignificant or lame. However, I don't think many people have been saying that not avoiding character deaths means having no character deaths at all. What I do think they are saying is that no character deaths would mean that there really aren't stakes, and that is why people like me play with (even if we don't enjoy) character deaths; We want there to be a valve for failure and no death means that success is inevitable and horrible decisions don't result in punishment.
I raised the distinction between aversion to character death and no character deaths at all in my very first post to this thread, and I would like to say good job for articulating the difference between these two things far better than I did. However, as I said above, I do think that death to a random encounter is alright if it is because the characters messed up, or rolled badly on repeat and refused to give up in an encounter where they knew the monsters wouldn't take prisoners. I know that some people will disagree with the part about rolling badly, but the dice are there for a reason and they really don't have as much power if your group decides to ignore them in certain situations.
So all in all, I don't like character death. I don't like it at all. But I am willing to play with it and grateful to have it in the game because it makes it so your choices matter and failures and bad decisions can have a bigger impact on your adventuring career than just a minor setback. If there are no deaths and every time you get defeated, you rise up again, then you are just riding down a railroad, waiting to reach your destination and there is no way you don't get there. This is no different than what Yurei is saying "Old Guards" do; It is making your one party equivalent to an endless supply of legendary adventurers.
Who here has advocated for that? Absolutely nobody. Yes, killing characters off for fun without telling the players anything about potential character death in advance of the campaign would be horrible. But it really just feels like you are debating with a fictional group of people who are so scarce as to be nonexistent. I am both a player and a Dungeon Master, and I have never run into someone who did anything remotely like this. I routinely help other DMs out in Dungeon Masters Only, and I have never seen a single person suggest anything tangentially related to "random nonsense" (as you call it).
There is one group taunting and belittling (mostly fictional) viewpoints, and I'm not so sure that that group is the group you think it is.
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Speaking to the thread in general, I think we're all missing the most fundamental rule of D&D: There is no right or wrong way to play the game as long as everyone is having fun. If you and your group enjoy random character deaths and games where characters die all the time, then you play that way. If you are more like me, on the other hand, characters deaths can be a much less important part of the game that rarely, if ever, occurs.
Play how your group wants to play. it is getting quite tiring to see so many comments telling other people how their groups should and should not play.
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HERE.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 :)
Rolling to hit, rolling damage, loop through that x times, cast heal.
It is dull without the possibility that you’ll lose your character.
Players will fall into side chatter, ‘what’s going on now?”, repeatedly falling into “wait, I didn’t understand, can I have a do-over, and dragging the game down into a crawl, because the players aren’t paying attention and why should they without stakes, the world is covered in NERF.
I am sympathetic to the idea of no bad wrong fun (but that includes that a game with a high death rate isn’t bad wrong fun either) and I can even see a market demand for it as parent gamers get their youngest kids into the game, but the game has _already_ been heavily NERFed. Perhaps there needs to be another game for these parents. Anybody remember 1d4 hit dice, no cantrips, and a single Sleep spell at first level? People had to pay attention and had to work together because the stakes were high. Making the NERF even thicker is just going to encourage players to pay less attention.
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.
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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.