So I've gotten back into DMing in the past year. I'm well into my second campaign but kind of running into a problem, and just wanted advice on this. My first game I didn't mind so much as it wasn't meant to be a big game (It turned into one), I was running Dragon of Ice spire Peak, and it started out great, but eventually turned into a much bigger game. We were all getting back into the swing of the game, and I was re-learning how to DM. The game spanned from level 1 to about level 11, and only two characters died, but only due to there own demises. But like I said I am well into my second game, and its been a lot grittier and dangerous, but the players have well played well and made smart decisions, but they are coming onto situations and level were death should be a definite thing, but I don't know if I want to kill them. Here is my problem, im not soft by far, and will beat the hell out of players character, but I cant seem to bring my self to kill them. I look forward more to the stories they create with them and the connections they have made, or will make, some even being connected to deeper parts of the story.
I guess my question for other Dm's is, have you ever been in this situation? If so how did you become comfortable with character death?
I don't enjoy killing PCs. It isn't fun for me, and I and my players attach pretty strongly to them because of how much RP is in my game. So how did I become comfortable? Well, I didn't. And I stopped trying.
The stakes in my game are pretty high - resurrection spells are not guaranteed to work. The gods in my universe are really accessible, however, and have a vested interest in souls. So if the character doesn't get revived, that doesn't necessarily mean death - it just means they enter the service of the gods and get NPC'd. It's less emotional stress on me if I know they're still out there somewhere, writing more of their story.
What I prefer to killing PCs are consequences that can't get resolved easily or at all. A Wish-level curse, psychological warfare, emotional trauma, separating them from beloved NPCs...stuff that hits right in the RP. A theme of my campaign has been "what do you do with your pain?" and literally every arc has been a villain trying to answer that. So I make my PCs answer it, too. And it's led to some amazing D&D. It isn't everyone's cup of tea, but it works for us.
Very much recognise you situation. In fact, I have explicitly said to my players that I am not in the business of killing characters that they have invested a lot into.
However, I have also stressed that it could still happen - but that it will not happen "lightly".
I think very single character has been down multiple times, but have usually managed to get brought back up - with two occasions where it came down to death saves. However recently, one character's soul got trapped when they fought a hag, and it was far from certain that the rest of the party would be able to free it, and have the character resurrected. In the end, they did pull through by the skin of their teeth, but the player with the downed character was building a replacement character in the week between sessions on my recommendation. It gave enough sense of "this is serious" to the other players that they really pushed themselves I think - and that's around where I want to be with the group feeling a real sense of threat in those epic moments where they are close to the culmination of a chapter.
I think the key warning signal should be if characters are starting to take unwise/unnecessary risks. That's a sign that they believe the DM won't really do it - and that's when you do need to either bring the hammer down or have a conversation (depending on the situation). Yet, even in those cases there can be ways out of permadeath (e.g. a while back, a group went up against a large number of satyrs - its was pretty evident that they were too tough an opponent, but the party was pushing it anyway - so Satyr's beat them all down apart from one escapee. But knocked them unconscious, bound, with only a little food and water, left in a corner of the forest. All gear gone - leaving the party very vulnerable)
Like yourself, as a DM I get invested in their characters too and want to see where it goes. So I definitely never lightly kill off characters in campaigns. If it happens, it will be part of a memorable moment for the group as a whole, a meaningful sacrifice. But it of course also depends very much on the campaign style- in a Westmarch or less story driven campaign, people might feel more relaxed about losing a character - I think it's very connected to the tone of the individual tables.
Perma-killed a character in my campaign last week. It was session 40, and the PC was level 12 - they were the cleric, so nobody else can resurrect, and the druid has no reagents for Reincarnation.
Sometimes, it's just what has to happen. If the combat goes against the PCs, and the dice aren't on their side, then characters can die. Personally I feel that there's no value in combat if there isn't the possibility of a character dying. It doesn't have to be a high possibility, but if it's not there, you might as well skip through combats and declare the PCs the winners, since that's the only outcome.
I'm of the opinion that the DM should probably not become comfortable with killing off a PC, unless the game is set in some grim-dark low-magic setting where life is cheaper than ale. To be certain, I've killed off plenty of PCs, and will most likely continue to do so, but I'm not going to cheapen the loss of a PC with a nonchalant "whatever, death happens...". I would expect PC death to be a meaningful event. Not something to get comfortable with. It is something that should be a reasonable outcome in any combat encounter. And the players shoud full well understand this before they put their character to that particular test.
DMs have the unsavory job of playing the opposition to the Hero. The DM has to be prepared to play that role to its full capacity, regardless of personal feelings. They need not be comfortable with it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I set challenging encounters and have trained my players to consider running away as a very viable option if things are too tough. Having said that sometimes the dice just fall the way they do, or players make bad decisions in the heat of battle and that death can make for a beautiful roleplaying moment.
This happened 3 sessions ago, the party Cleric got himself into a bad situation, was knocked prone by a spell while he was up front and got stabbed by the Hobgoblin Iron Shadow in front of him because that made sense. Got taken to unconciousnous and then 2 death saving throws. The other players lost track of initiative order and didn't heal him before his death saving throw and he then failed that.
This was a random encounter, the party having just levelled to level 6 after dealing with the first BBEG's of the campaign (and after 18 months of real life game play about 65 4 hours sessions give or take ) so we where all attached to him.
Being the only cleric in a party of 7 and with no one else having resurrection magic I gave the player 2 choices. Roll a new character and I would work them into the story, or, as the party where on there way by river and canal to the main capital city Full of temples, magic item shops etc the group would be able to find a way to resurrect him and he could run one of the npc boatmen in the meantime. (no more combat was planned).
The player decided to roll a new character, an orc paladin bard, who was found tied up, unconscious, in the hobgoblin camp the next session. The players buried the cleric, leading to some great RP as the party slowly discovered he was dead (3 of the party had gone off to find the camp before realising he had fallen), I then had the party meet a group of travelling boat gypsies the following night and RP a night of these travelling storytellers being told the stories of Brynn, an evening of the players recounting a years worth of game time to imaginary travellers who's bards would carry on the tale of Brynn, would travel to his grave and leave an offering. In my world that grave will grow and develop to a shrine and, eventually, in a years time, the characters will be in an inn and hear the song of there old companion being sung by a stranger. I also then put in a bit of combat (displacer beasts attacking the travellers who don't believe in killing) so the player could "blood" his new Orc Paladin and hit something.
If your worried about killing a player, then populate your world with Temples or High Priests who can bring a dead character back after even a medium period of time. Let them roll up a short term character with no backstory or anything to fill the gap and then make an adventure out of finding the temple and doing what needs to be done for the ritual. Or the Priest has a job he wants to done once the player is ressed. It means that PC death comes with a price, but, a character can be brought back if a player is really invested in the story. But it should always be the players choice.
It isn't that easy to kill PCs. They have to fail three death saving throws. If the party are negligent when a party reaches 0 HP and don't heal them fast enough, then it is the party's fault that the PC died not the DM's.
I absolutely have to agree with Sanvael here. I normally let decide along with the players to make the first 3-4 sessions of combat superficial- it’s not fun to have characters die so early on in the game. But from that point on, you kinda have to let them die. If you refuse to allow characters to be killed then there’s little point in running combat to start with- if you’re going to fix it so they win, why bother? And besides, dnd has many afterlives. If you’re that invested in the character, their story need not end here.
I do not think you have to kill players in combat for them to feel there are stakes - you just need to give the perception that you will kill them.
Personally, I have never killed a player in combat - I design my encounters for be dynamic and brutal, but still on the side of being winnable. It is not uncommon for me to drop all but one player who must scramble to give folks healing potions or for the same player to drop several times in an encounter. But I also do not target an unconscious player to force death failures and keep an eye on the players’ HP when targeting, using that meta information to help inform (though not fully define) how a monster will target. And, despite never killing one of them, my players go into big fights nervous that this may be the time one of them snuffs it, and celebrate their hard-earned victory after.
So long as your players fear death, that’s all that actually matters, and the DM has a wide swath of tools to strike that fear, even without ever killing someone.
But like I said I am well into my second game, and its been a lot grittier and dangerous, but the players have well played well and made smart decisions, but they are coming onto situations and level were death should be a definite thing, but I don't know if I want to kill them.
This is such a bizarre line of thought to me. Why would you want to kill them in any case? Sure, you should want to challenge them or impress upon them the high stakes of the situation, but killing a PC should never be your goal. Because if it is, the players can't do anything about it. You have unlimited power.
If they have played well and made smart decisions, let them reap the benefits of that. If making the right choices only led to you stacking the deck against them until someone died anyway, then what's the point of right choices? What's the point of any choices at all if you have a predetermined outcome for them?
Don't punish good choices just because you think no one will take the game seriously enough unless someone dies. If they make a dumb or reckless choice, feel free to be brutal with the consequences. Kill all of them if their mistake warrants it. But otherwise just stay the course. It sounds like they're engaged and playing well. There's nothing broken there that you need to fix.
I don't kill PCs without a storytelling reason. There is no point in it and it turns the game into a mechanic over a story.
each to there own but my players would hate this, it would make them feel I was mollie coddling them and, who am I to decide the right storytelling moment to kill a character. Character deaths are a storytelling moment and, if you want to let a character story progress instead of avoiding killing them just make resurrection easier in your world.
I do not think you have to kill players in combat for them to feel there are stakes - you just need to give the perception that you will kill them.
Personally, I have never killed a player in combat - I design my encounters for be dynamic and brutal, but still on the side of being winnable. It is not uncommon for me to drop all but one player who must scramble to give folks healing potions or for the same player to drop several times in an encounter. But I also do not target an unconscious player to force death failures and keep an eye on the players’ HP when targeting, using that meta information to help inform (though not fully define) how a monster will target. And, despite never killing one of them, my players go into big fights nervous that this may be the time one of them snuffs it, and celebrate their hard-earned victory after.
So long as your players fear death, that’s all that actually matters, and the DM has a wide swath of tools to strike that fear, even without ever killing someone.
I don't go out of my way but, intelligent enemies at least understand unconciousnouns and so if there is not an enemy threatening nearby they will attack a down opponent. I wont have an enemy dash for instance and lose an attack action, I will have them stab the down player, move full movement and then be ready to move and attack next time. It forces the players to ensure they dont leave someone hanging out with no cover or support. I know as a player I would get really irritated with my DM if he kept leaving me to survive mistakes and bad rolls. Do you also position things like Fireballs, Dragon breath etc so they miss the down player?
My players are the same, every one of them already has a new character created for if there's dies, but, I will always give a chance to bring it back if they want instead.
I do not think you have to kill players in combat for them to feel there are stakes - you just need to give the perception that you will kill them.
Personally, I have never killed a player in combat - I design my encounters for be dynamic and brutal, but still on the side of being winnable. It is not uncommon for me to drop all but one player who must scramble to give folks healing potions or for the same player to drop several times in an encounter. But I also do not target an unconscious player to force death failures and keep an eye on the players’ HP when targeting, using that meta information to help inform (though not fully define) how a monster will target. And, despite never killing one of them, my players go into big fights nervous that this may be the time one of them snuffs it, and celebrate their hard-earned victory after.
So long as your players fear death, that’s all that actually matters, and the DM has a wide swath of tools to strike that fear, even without ever killing someone.
I don't go out of my way but, intelligent enemies at least understand unconciousnouns and so if there is not an enemy threatening nearby they will attack a down opponent. I wont have an enemy dash for instance and lose an attack action, I will have them stab the down player, move full movement and then be ready to move and attack next time. It forces the players to ensure they dont leave someone hanging out with no cover or support. I know as a player I would get really irritated with my DM if he kept leaving me to survive mistakes and bad rolls. Do you also position things like Fireballs, Dragon breath etc so they miss the down player?
My players are the same, every one of them already has a new character created for if there's dies, but, I will always give a chance to bring it back if they want instead.
Yes, because that is what my players would want and it’s my job to make sure they have fun, and not be the ass who turns bad luck into “oops, guess what? Sorry about two years of playing that character!” Now, will I position enemies so the party has to figure out how to save a person before those death saves take them out? Sure.
Now, if I were DMing a party that was more focused on the strict gameplay and wanted that level of risk, then I would absolutely be inclined to hit dying players to knock them out of the game—and would almost certainly delight in it (a little bit of sadism can be important in a DM!). But that more mechanical, grimdark mindset doesn’t exist among my more roleplay focused players, and there is no reason to force that kind of gameplay on them just because I can.
I do not think you have to kill players in combat for them to feel there are stakes - you just need to give the perception that you will kill them.
Personally, I have never killed a player in combat - I design my encounters for be dynamic and brutal, but still on the side of being winnable. It is not uncommon for me to drop all but one player who must scramble to give folks healing potions or for the same player to drop several times in an encounter. But I also do not target an unconscious player to force death failures and keep an eye on the players’ HP when targeting, using that meta information to help inform (though not fully define) how a monster will target. And, despite never killing one of them, my players go into big fights nervous that this may be the time one of them snuffs it, and celebrate their hard-earned victory after.
So long as your players fear death, that’s all that actually matters, and the DM has a wide swath of tools to strike that fear, even without ever killing someone.
I don't go out of my way but, intelligent enemies at least understand unconciousnouns and so if there is not an enemy threatening nearby they will attack a down opponent. I wont have an enemy dash for instance and lose an attack action, I will have them stab the down player, move full movement and then be ready to move and attack next time. It forces the players to ensure they dont leave someone hanging out with no cover or support. I know as a player I would get really irritated with my DM if he kept leaving me to survive mistakes and bad rolls. Do you also position things like Fireballs, Dragon breath etc so they miss the down player?
My players are the same, every one of them already has a new character created for if there's dies, but, I will always give a chance to bring it back if they want instead.
Yes, because that is what my players would want and it’s my job to make sure they have fun, and not be the ass who turns bad luck into “oops, guess what? Sorry about two years of playing that character!” Now, will I position enemies so the party has to figure out how to save a person before those death saves take them out? Sure.
Now, if I were DMing a party that was more focused on the strict gameplay and wanted that level of risk, then I would absolutely be inclined to hit dying players to knock them out of the game—and would almost certainly delight in it (a little bit of sadism can be important in a DM!). But that more mechanical, grimdark mindset doesn’t exist among my more roleplay focused players, and there is no reason to force that kind of gameplay on them just because I can.
DM's shouldn't go out of their way to kill the player characters. It's more just that... this is a game with dice. If the dice go against you, they go against you.
I told my players a few levels back that if their enemies see healing magic, they will beat on a downed character - because if the monsters had death saving throws and the PCs saw healing magic, they'd absolutely try to deliver the coup de grace before the powerful enemy got a Heal for 70 hit points. Even then there's Revivify right in the middle of combat as an option. Otherwise you get "Whack a mole" style gameplay with PCs popping up over and over and the bad guys being dumbfounded about it.
When the level 12 Cleric I mentioned above died, I talked to the player afterwards. There's a chance that their character can return to life in the future. But the horror and anguish of losing that character takes the game to another level, especially with so much invested into them. The other characters in the party get to roleplay their grief. They get to resolve to bring him back, by any means necessary. Their adventuring drive has massively increased in importance. For players who love roleplay, character death is one of the best tools in your arsenal. And ultimately, you can send them on an epic quest to bring that PC back if you want to.
I do not think you have to kill players in combat for them to feel there are stakes - you just need to give the perception that you will kill them.
Personally, I have never killed a player in combat - I design my encounters for be dynamic and brutal, but still on the side of being winnable. It is not uncommon for me to drop all but one player who must scramble to give folks healing potions or for the same player to drop several times in an encounter. But I also do not target an unconscious player to force death failures and keep an eye on the players’ HP when targeting, using that meta information to help inform (though not fully define) how a monster will target. And, despite never killing one of them, my players go into big fights nervous that this may be the time one of them snuffs it, and celebrate their hard-earned victory after.
So long as your players fear death, that’s all that actually matters, and the DM has a wide swath of tools to strike that fear, even without ever killing someone.
I don't go out of my way but, intelligent enemies at least understand unconciousnouns and so if there is not an enemy threatening nearby they will attack a down opponent. I wont have an enemy dash for instance and lose an attack action, I will have them stab the down player, move full movement and then be ready to move and attack next time. It forces the players to ensure they dont leave someone hanging out with no cover or support. I know as a player I would get really irritated with my DM if he kept leaving me to survive mistakes and bad rolls. Do you also position things like Fireballs, Dragon breath etc so they miss the down player?
My players are the same, every one of them already has a new character created for if there's dies, but, I will always give a chance to bring it back if they want instead.
Yes, because that is what my players would want and it’s my job to make sure they have fun, and not be the ass who turns bad luck into “oops, guess what? Sorry about two years of playing that character!” Now, will I position enemies so the party has to figure out how to save a person before those death saves take them out? Sure.
Now, if I were DMing a party that was more focused on the strict gameplay and wanted that level of risk, then I would absolutely be inclined to hit dying players to knock them out of the game—and would almost certainly delight in it (a little bit of sadism can be important in a DM!). But that more mechanical, grimdark mindset doesn’t exist among my more roleplay focused players, and there is no reason to force that kind of gameplay on them just because I can.
If players want to stay alive and never die than to me that makes for a boring game, death happens, sometimes it happens because of dumb luck, but, it takes a lot of bad luck to kill a character even if you are putting in tough encounters. You have to get them down in the first place, then 3 failed saving throws and then no resurrection magic available, and then no NPCs within a close enough distance to take the body and get a bigger resurrection to happen. When I have had unexpected player deaths those moments have led to an even more interesting story then the one we where going to tell, you get to RP the grief of the characters, you get to set the challenge of having the characters get the body to where life can be brought back, you get to create new adventures based on what is required to get the components that priest needs, or clear the temple of evil, or accept a job with no information on what it is in order for the ritual to be cast.
If the player is not happy being a silent observer for a few sessions then give them an NPC to run, or quickly make a new character sheet that the party can bump into for a couple of sessions that helps them get that dead character to be resurrected. You are acting like player character death is an awful thing that ends a story, it doesn't have to I really suggest you think about tweaking things slightly, you will still be negating character death, but doing it while still allowing the death to take place, not simply letting players stroll through every encounter knowing they are bullet proof because you won't actually ever kill them.
One of the best parts of a campaign (not DnD) I have ever had came when I mis calculated on the toughness of an encounter and the characters decided not to run away, and then had some horrendous dice rolls. All but one died, that one travelled back to a nearby town, hired a group of heroes to help him recover the bodies of his lost friends to allow him to bring them back. The other players played the Heroes, and spent 3 sessions recovering the bodies, getting them to a temple and getting them resed. One of the players decided he wanted to keep the new character he had created for this small segway adventure, so his character suffering PTSD from being killed, chose to leave the adventuring life. The others parked the temp characters and carried on, but had all learnt an important lesson. I also RP'd a moment for each of them within the afterlife, seeing a glimpse of what was to come for them following the choices they had made to that point. Rescuing the bodies did not end the BBEG (he was long gone) so the characters still got to end that adventure but those sessions where the story went in an entirely unexpected direction they still talk about today.
It isn't that easy to kill PCs. They have to fail three death saving throws. If the party are negligent when a party reaches 0 HP and don't heal them fast enough, then it is the party's fault that the PC died not the DM's.
That depends how you DM. If a creature with multiattack knocks a PC unconcious with their first attack what do they do with their second attack. An intelligent creatur ecould well try to finish off the unconsious one knowing they are only a healing spell / potion away from being a threat again, an unitelligent one might be be more interested in feeding that the threat of the rest of the party. A second melee attack is likely to result in 2 death save fails and then you are down to the initiative order to determine whether they can be brought back before a roll with a 45% chance to kill them. A third attack (from the same creature or an ally) can kill the PC before the party can do anything.
Going back the the original point, I try not to kill my PCs unless they make a series of bad choices.
You can also die without getting saving throws. The last player death in a party I was in had their brain extracted by a mind flayer. Particularly at level 1 you can get insta death from a single hit: A giant poisonous snake is only CR1/4 but on a failed con save will do an average of 17 damage enough to kill the wizard outright, roll 20 or more (22% of the time) and it will insta kill the d8 hit dice characters with +2 con.
As a general rule, player characters should never die because of bad luck. Dice shouldn't be able to kill PCs, but their own stupidity should. I wouldn't ever kill a PC because one of their enemies scores a critical hit, but if PCs do something really stupid, I might kill them. The exceptions are players who want to change characters and want their old characters to die with a heroic sacrifice. When it comes to death, D&D should be far closer to a movie or novel than to a tactical game. Death should make sense from a narrative perspective.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
+ Instaboot to murderhobos + I don't watch Critical Role, and no, I really shouldn't either +
I’ve never killed a PC, but I’ve come close enough times that my players know that if my dice are “hot” they will go down to 0 HP. And at that point the PC has 3 death saving throws, to be stabilized, or to be healed or else they’re going to need a Revivify spell to bring them back from the dead.
It can happen in my games. But I don’t try to make it happen. I just role play and let the players role play.
So I've gotten back into DMing in the past year. I'm well into my second campaign but kind of running into a problem, and just wanted advice on this. My first game I didn't mind so much as it wasn't meant to be a big game (It turned into one), I was running Dragon of Ice spire Peak, and it started out great, but eventually turned into a much bigger game. We were all getting back into the swing of the game, and I was re-learning how to DM. The game spanned from level 1 to about level 11, and only two characters died, but only due to there own demises. But like I said I am well into my second game, and its been a lot grittier and dangerous, but the players have well played well and made smart decisions, but they are coming onto situations and level were death should be a definite thing, but I don't know if I want to kill them. Here is my problem, im not soft by far, and will beat the hell out of players character, but I cant seem to bring my self to kill them. I look forward more to the stories they create with them and the connections they have made, or will make, some even being connected to deeper parts of the story.
I guess my question for other Dm's is, have you ever been in this situation? If so how did you become comfortable with character death?
I don't enjoy killing PCs. It isn't fun for me, and I and my players attach pretty strongly to them because of how much RP is in my game. So how did I become comfortable? Well, I didn't. And I stopped trying.
The stakes in my game are pretty high - resurrection spells are not guaranteed to work. The gods in my universe are really accessible, however, and have a vested interest in souls. So if the character doesn't get revived, that doesn't necessarily mean death - it just means they enter the service of the gods and get NPC'd. It's less emotional stress on me if I know they're still out there somewhere, writing more of their story.
What I prefer to killing PCs are consequences that can't get resolved easily or at all. A Wish-level curse, psychological warfare, emotional trauma, separating them from beloved NPCs...stuff that hits right in the RP. A theme of my campaign has been "what do you do with your pain?" and literally every arc has been a villain trying to answer that. So I make my PCs answer it, too. And it's led to some amazing D&D. It isn't everyone's cup of tea, but it works for us.
Very much recognise you situation. In fact, I have explicitly said to my players that I am not in the business of killing characters that they have invested a lot into.
However, I have also stressed that it could still happen - but that it will not happen "lightly".
I think very single character has been down multiple times, but have usually managed to get brought back up - with two occasions where it came down to death saves. However recently, one character's soul got trapped when they fought a hag, and it was far from certain that the rest of the party would be able to free it, and have the character resurrected. In the end, they did pull through by the skin of their teeth, but the player with the downed character was building a replacement character in the week between sessions on my recommendation. It gave enough sense of "this is serious" to the other players that they really pushed themselves I think - and that's around where I want to be with the group feeling a real sense of threat in those epic moments where they are close to the culmination of a chapter.
I think the key warning signal should be if characters are starting to take unwise/unnecessary risks. That's a sign that they believe the DM won't really do it - and that's when you do need to either bring the hammer down or have a conversation (depending on the situation). Yet, even in those cases there can be ways out of permadeath (e.g. a while back, a group went up against a large number of satyrs - its was pretty evident that they were too tough an opponent, but the party was pushing it anyway - so Satyr's beat them all down apart from one escapee. But knocked them unconscious, bound, with only a little food and water, left in a corner of the forest. All gear gone - leaving the party very vulnerable)
Like yourself, as a DM I get invested in their characters too and want to see where it goes. So I definitely never lightly kill off characters in campaigns. If it happens, it will be part of a memorable moment for the group as a whole, a meaningful sacrifice.
But it of course also depends very much on the campaign style- in a Westmarch or less story driven campaign, people might feel more relaxed about losing a character - I think it's very connected to the tone of the individual tables.
Perma-killed a character in my campaign last week. It was session 40, and the PC was level 12 - they were the cleric, so nobody else can resurrect, and the druid has no reagents for Reincarnation.
Sometimes, it's just what has to happen. If the combat goes against the PCs, and the dice aren't on their side, then characters can die. Personally I feel that there's no value in combat if there isn't the possibility of a character dying. It doesn't have to be a high possibility, but if it's not there, you might as well skip through combats and declare the PCs the winners, since that's the only outcome.
I'm of the opinion that the DM should probably not become comfortable with killing off a PC, unless the game is set in some grim-dark low-magic setting where life is cheaper than ale. To be certain, I've killed off plenty of PCs, and will most likely continue to do so, but I'm not going to cheapen the loss of a PC with a nonchalant "whatever, death happens...". I would expect PC death to be a meaningful event. Not something to get comfortable with. It is something that should be a reasonable outcome in any combat encounter. And the players shoud full well understand this before they put their character to that particular test.
DMs have the unsavory job of playing the opposition to the Hero. The DM has to be prepared to play that role to its full capacity, regardless of personal feelings. They need not be comfortable with it.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I set challenging encounters and have trained my players to consider running away as a very viable option if things are too tough. Having said that sometimes the dice just fall the way they do, or players make bad decisions in the heat of battle and that death can make for a beautiful roleplaying moment.
This happened 3 sessions ago, the party Cleric got himself into a bad situation, was knocked prone by a spell while he was up front and got stabbed by the Hobgoblin Iron Shadow in front of him because that made sense. Got taken to unconciousnous and then 2 death saving throws. The other players lost track of initiative order and didn't heal him before his death saving throw and he then failed that.
This was a random encounter, the party having just levelled to level 6 after dealing with the first BBEG's of the campaign (and after 18 months of real life game play about 65 4 hours sessions give or take ) so we where all attached to him.
Being the only cleric in a party of 7 and with no one else having resurrection magic I gave the player 2 choices. Roll a new character and I would work them into the story, or, as the party where on there way by river and canal to the main capital city Full of temples, magic item shops etc the group would be able to find a way to resurrect him and he could run one of the npc boatmen in the meantime. (no more combat was planned).
The player decided to roll a new character, an orc paladin bard, who was found tied up, unconscious, in the hobgoblin camp the next session. The players buried the cleric, leading to some great RP as the party slowly discovered he was dead (3 of the party had gone off to find the camp before realising he had fallen), I then had the party meet a group of travelling boat gypsies the following night and RP a night of these travelling storytellers being told the stories of Brynn, an evening of the players recounting a years worth of game time to imaginary travellers who's bards would carry on the tale of Brynn, would travel to his grave and leave an offering. In my world that grave will grow and develop to a shrine and, eventually, in a years time, the characters will be in an inn and hear the song of there old companion being sung by a stranger. I also then put in a bit of combat (displacer beasts attacking the travellers who don't believe in killing) so the player could "blood" his new Orc Paladin and hit something.
If your worried about killing a player, then populate your world with Temples or High Priests who can bring a dead character back after even a medium period of time. Let them roll up a short term character with no backstory or anything to fill the gap and then make an adventure out of finding the temple and doing what needs to be done for the ritual. Or the Priest has a job he wants to done once the player is ressed. It means that PC death comes with a price, but, a character can be brought back if a player is really invested in the story. But it should always be the players choice.
It isn't that easy to kill PCs. They have to fail three death saving throws. If the party are negligent when a party reaches 0 HP and don't heal them fast enough, then it is the party's fault that the PC died not the DM's.
I don't kill PCs without a storytelling reason. There is no point in it and it turns the game into a mechanic over a story.
Be Excellent to one another. Rock on dude.
I do not think you have to kill players in combat for them to feel there are stakes - you just need to give the perception that you will kill them.
Personally, I have never killed a player in combat - I design my encounters for be dynamic and brutal, but still on the side of being winnable. It is not uncommon for me to drop all but one player who must scramble to give folks healing potions or for the same player to drop several times in an encounter. But I also do not target an unconscious player to force death failures and keep an eye on the players’ HP when targeting, using that meta information to help inform (though not fully define) how a monster will target. And, despite never killing one of them, my players go into big fights nervous that this may be the time one of them snuffs it, and celebrate their hard-earned victory after.
So long as your players fear death, that’s all that actually matters, and the DM has a wide swath of tools to strike that fear, even without ever killing someone.
This is such a bizarre line of thought to me. Why would you want to kill them in any case? Sure, you should want to challenge them or impress upon them the high stakes of the situation, but killing a PC should never be your goal. Because if it is, the players can't do anything about it. You have unlimited power.
If they have played well and made smart decisions, let them reap the benefits of that. If making the right choices only led to you stacking the deck against them until someone died anyway, then what's the point of right choices? What's the point of any choices at all if you have a predetermined outcome for them?
Don't punish good choices just because you think no one will take the game seriously enough unless someone dies. If they make a dumb or reckless choice, feel free to be brutal with the consequences. Kill all of them if their mistake warrants it. But otherwise just stay the course. It sounds like they're engaged and playing well. There's nothing broken there that you need to fix.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
each to there own but my players would hate this, it would make them feel I was mollie coddling them and, who am I to decide the right storytelling moment to kill a character. Character deaths are a storytelling moment and, if you want to let a character story progress instead of avoiding killing them just make resurrection easier in your world.
I don't go out of my way but, intelligent enemies at least understand unconciousnouns and so if there is not an enemy threatening nearby they will attack a down opponent. I wont have an enemy dash for instance and lose an attack action, I will have them stab the down player, move full movement and then be ready to move and attack next time. It forces the players to ensure they dont leave someone hanging out with no cover or support. I know as a player I would get really irritated with my DM if he kept leaving me to survive mistakes and bad rolls. Do you also position things like Fireballs, Dragon breath etc so they miss the down player?
My players are the same, every one of them already has a new character created for if there's dies, but, I will always give a chance to bring it back if they want instead.
Yes, because that is what my players would want and it’s my job to make sure they have fun, and not be the ass who turns bad luck into “oops, guess what? Sorry about two years of playing that character!” Now, will I position enemies so the party has to figure out how to save a person before those death saves take them out? Sure.
Now, if I were DMing a party that was more focused on the strict gameplay and wanted that level of risk, then I would absolutely be inclined to hit dying players to knock them out of the game—and would almost certainly delight in it (a little bit of sadism can be important in a DM!). But that more mechanical, grimdark mindset doesn’t exist among my more roleplay focused players, and there is no reason to force that kind of gameplay on them just because I can.
DM's shouldn't go out of their way to kill the player characters. It's more just that... this is a game with dice. If the dice go against you, they go against you.
I told my players a few levels back that if their enemies see healing magic, they will beat on a downed character - because if the monsters had death saving throws and the PCs saw healing magic, they'd absolutely try to deliver the coup de grace before the powerful enemy got a Heal for 70 hit points. Even then there's Revivify right in the middle of combat as an option. Otherwise you get "Whack a mole" style gameplay with PCs popping up over and over and the bad guys being dumbfounded about it.
When the level 12 Cleric I mentioned above died, I talked to the player afterwards. There's a chance that their character can return to life in the future. But the horror and anguish of losing that character takes the game to another level, especially with so much invested into them. The other characters in the party get to roleplay their grief. They get to resolve to bring him back, by any means necessary. Their adventuring drive has massively increased in importance. For players who love roleplay, character death is one of the best tools in your arsenal. And ultimately, you can send them on an epic quest to bring that PC back if you want to.
If players want to stay alive and never die than to me that makes for a boring game, death happens, sometimes it happens because of dumb luck, but, it takes a lot of bad luck to kill a character even if you are putting in tough encounters. You have to get them down in the first place, then 3 failed saving throws and then no resurrection magic available, and then no NPCs within a close enough distance to take the body and get a bigger resurrection to happen. When I have had unexpected player deaths those moments have led to an even more interesting story then the one we where going to tell, you get to RP the grief of the characters, you get to set the challenge of having the characters get the body to where life can be brought back, you get to create new adventures based on what is required to get the components that priest needs, or clear the temple of evil, or accept a job with no information on what it is in order for the ritual to be cast.
If the player is not happy being a silent observer for a few sessions then give them an NPC to run, or quickly make a new character sheet that the party can bump into for a couple of sessions that helps them get that dead character to be resurrected. You are acting like player character death is an awful thing that ends a story, it doesn't have to I really suggest you think about tweaking things slightly, you will still be negating character death, but doing it while still allowing the death to take place, not simply letting players stroll through every encounter knowing they are bullet proof because you won't actually ever kill them.
One of the best parts of a campaign (not DnD) I have ever had came when I mis calculated on the toughness of an encounter and the characters decided not to run away, and then had some horrendous dice rolls. All but one died, that one travelled back to a nearby town, hired a group of heroes to help him recover the bodies of his lost friends to allow him to bring them back. The other players played the Heroes, and spent 3 sessions recovering the bodies, getting them to a temple and getting them resed. One of the players decided he wanted to keep the new character he had created for this small segway adventure, so his character suffering PTSD from being killed, chose to leave the adventuring life. The others parked the temp characters and carried on, but had all learnt an important lesson. I also RP'd a moment for each of them within the afterlife, seeing a glimpse of what was to come for them following the choices they had made to that point. Rescuing the bodies did not end the BBEG (he was long gone) so the characters still got to end that adventure but those sessions where the story went in an entirely unexpected direction they still talk about today.
That depends how you DM. If a creature with multiattack knocks a PC unconcious with their first attack what do they do with their second attack. An intelligent creatur ecould well try to finish off the unconsious one knowing they are only a healing spell / potion away from being a threat again, an unitelligent one might be be more interested in feeding that the threat of the rest of the party. A second melee attack is likely to result in 2 death save fails and then you are down to the initiative order to determine whether they can be brought back before a roll with a 45% chance to kill them. A third attack (from the same creature or an ally) can kill the PC before the party can do anything.
Going back the the original point, I try not to kill my PCs unless they make a series of bad choices.
You can also die without getting saving throws. The last player death in a party I was in had their brain extracted by a mind flayer. Particularly at level 1 you can get insta death from a single hit: A giant poisonous snake is only CR1/4 but on a failed con save will do an average of 17 damage enough to kill the wizard outright, roll 20 or more (22% of the time) and it will insta kill the d8 hit dice characters with +2 con.
As a general rule, player characters should never die because of bad luck. Dice shouldn't be able to kill PCs, but their own stupidity should. I wouldn't ever kill a PC because one of their enemies scores a critical hit, but if PCs do something really stupid, I might kill them. The exceptions are players who want to change characters and want their old characters to die with a heroic sacrifice. When it comes to death, D&D should be far closer to a movie or novel than to a tactical game. Death should make sense from a narrative perspective.
+ Instaboot to murderhobos + I don't watch Critical Role, and no, I really shouldn't either +
If a PC does something that will probably work out okay, but has a low chance of killing them, is it stupidity or bad luck if they roll badly?
I’ve never killed a PC, but I’ve come close enough times that my players know that if my dice are “hot” they will go down to 0 HP. And at that point the PC has 3 death saving throws, to be stabilized, or to be healed or else they’re going to need a Revivify spell to bring them back from the dead.
It can happen in my games. But I don’t try to make it happen. I just role play and let the players role play.
Professional computer geek