So, I am reading the stats for the Sea Serpent and I am seeing it is a 13 hit dice creature and it has a +7 bonus to attack. IT has 139 hit points. I am guessing because it is a dragon with more power that it a good challenge for 8th level party or so, other 13 hd creatures maybe one or two less.
Have not yet played 5e all that much but am old school DnD player from the Basic DND Set before AD&D and have been recently at Pathfinder, sorry did not like 4th at all so stopped playing. Anyrate, trying to get my mind around the power levels and how combat will work because it seems like lower level characters are not at that much of a disadvantage to hit compared to higher levels and it does not seem the damage is different so do combats tend to take longer, Am trying to get a feel for how the game changed.
Anyone care to help out just leave a comment below:
I'm also a long time player and if I should try to summarize the difference in combat to AD&D (2e) I'd probably highlight the following
1. All classes are more complex than in 2e and have wider ability to support and do damage. The mechanics are changed to heighten these abilities. An example is the Thief's Backstab which has changed to a sneak attack. The backstab required quite a bit of maneuvering and subterfuge, the sneak attack (basically) only required the target to be in combat with the Rogue's friend
2. Spellcasters have damage dealing cantrips that don't deplete spell slots - and these level up like the Fighter's number of attacks (more or less). E.g a Warlock has 4 beams with his Eldritch Blast at 17th level, each requiring a
3. All classes hit equally well,( with their best mode of attack). Every few levels (4 generally, less for Fighters) you get to increase your abiity scores (or take a Feat if you use them). This means you're able to improve to hit, AC, HP as you level up. Proficiency bonus also levels up so if you are using your best type of attack you ought to get a lot better bonus to the to hit (i.e. deal more damage) at level 9 than at level 1
4. CR (challenge rating) is a guide to level of characters that need to be in play to make it interesting. It's far from perfect and IMHO a well coordinated party can defeat single higher CR monsters
E.g. a 9th lvl Wizard can cast a Firebolt every round without expending a spell slot (it does use an action). This gives 2d10 dam and uses the spell attack modifier on the attack roll. This is calculated by adding the INT modifier and the proficiency bonus (+4 at 9th lvl). At 4th and 8th lvl there were opportunities to increase INT so the modifier could easily be +4 or +5. That gives 45-50% chance to hit AC 20 and deal avg 11 damage each round. On top of that the wizard has three 3rd lvl spell slots (Fireball?), three 4th lvl spell slots and a 5th lvl spell slot, so theoretically in a seven round period could dish out 61d6 Fire damage (DEX save for half) just by keeping the Fireball on repeat
In the same seven round period a Fighter could attack 15 times with his weapon of choice (7x2+1 (Action Surge)) - 30 times if two weapon fighter - and with at least the same to hit chance as calculated above (The Fighter will have had three options to increase his primary stats by 9th lvl)
I'm not sure the combat is slower than previous editions at all - if anything slows combat down in 5e it is the many choices each class has to attack that may slow it down, not the ability to deal damage
Hope this was helpful and you pick up the hobby again!
So the thing with monsters in 5e is that as they grow in power the biggest changes will be the consistency with which they hit, their ability to take a hit and extra powers and abilities that they will gain, though that having been said there are low level monsters that can be absolute nightmare fuel for even the most powerful of parties (Inetellect devourers can and will wreck you). Also, due to the fact that AC doesn't go insane like some other editions players can attack and hurt some really powerful monsters, they are likely to be blasted into roll up a new character land in short order.
In the same seven round period a Fighter could attack 15 times with his weapon of choice (7x2+1 (Action Surge)) - 30 times if two weapon fighter - and with at least the same to hit chance as calculated above
A couple things wrong with this math. TLDR for the OP, two-weapon fighters do not simply get 2x the number of attacks.
For one, Action Surge would grant 2 extra attacks at 9th level, so the fighter is attacking 16 times. For another, two-weapon fighters just get one additional attack per round (assuming they never use their bonus action for anything else). So at 9 it would be doing (7x3+2) = 23 vs the single-weapon fighter's 16.
It may be I have not yet had the time to really look through or play 5e as yet.
I am responding to 4th edition where you could auto heal 25% one in combat and clerics had all the insane healing and monsters had it too. Never played that but I was thinking how does anyone ever die.
3e had a lot of cheese but was fairly will balanced and combat took and hour and a half of game time because to the increased mechanics but even epic combats rarely lasted more than 10 rounds and most less.
1e as we played it was much more tactical and the unbalanced classes meant you had to go in protecting your wizard. The Wizard was useless in combat and quite easy to kill but could lay out devastating spells that would wreck any group unchecked to it was protect your mage while you identified the enemy mage and wiped them out. I guess in a way it was like trying to establish air superiority on the battlefield. It was a completely different game from even second edition. But that is just my take!
Fifth Edition combat tends to be what's known as rocket-tag gameplay: combat tends to be fast and decisive since most characters can dish out a lot more damage per round than they could in Second Edition but aren't significantly tougher. Armor Class isn't as easy to pump up anymore, which means that accuracy tends to be pretty high even at low levels. It's not like back in the day where it was easy to have two or three rounds where nobody on either side dealt any damage at all. Combat rarely lasts beyond three rounds: monsters aren't designed to simply soak up hits while doing little in return and enemies have fewer resistances and immunities than they used to. You still need to do things like protect the wizard, they're somewhat less squishy than they used to be (their hit dice are now d6s instead of d4s) but that largely translates to being able to take one extra poke from a goblin before they go unconscious.
Oh, that's a thing that's changed, too: at 0 HP you go unconscious instead of automatically dying. You stay on the ground bleeding and making Death Saves until someone heals you, you roll a natural 20, or you fail three of them and croak.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Sounds to me like combat is more swingy, more dependent on dice rolls. Since you're rolling fewer, anomalies have greater effect.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
In 5E? No, it's not nearly as swingy as 2E. Not remotely. Also, there aren't remotely as many "save or die instantly" effects in 5E. Second Edition was full of them.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat." -Sun Tzu
When compared to how it use to be played, 5e characters pack a punch when compared to an older version of D&D. Have played all of the editions (except 4e where I agree with you on that version). An interesting term that I heard was that in AD&D, you start as a ZERO to become a HERO.
In 5e, a first level character is more powerful when compared to other versions but I will agree that they are more capable of delivering a hit than older editions but to me I prefer the older versions vs 5e but that is just me. Nothing wrong with 5e to be honest, except for the fact that a new player to 5e gets instant gratification vs older versions where you had to put your time in to get to that level. The combat is pretty straight foward....just have to figure in Prof Bonuses, etc., along with your DEX or STR bonuses for damage depending on which weapon they choose to wield.
I personally run an AD&D, Pathfinder 1e and 5e session each month so all of these younger players can appreciate what they have in 5e rather than them just playing 5e thinking that this is how it has always been played.
Yeah, I agree with you about the monsters playing dumb. The way I DM it is certain encounters are just there for flavor, we know the party will prevail because we need to get past them to go to the next chapter of a book so I will attempt to fudge to keep players from dying. After all if you TPK the party then the campaign ends.
The final battles are different, generally I like to see that the party survive so it is best to offer the ability to retreat or run away but these battles the villain should be played smart because they need to be challenging or they are not memorable. This creates an issue though because to weak or too powerful takes away from the game meaning the fights have to be balanced. The best way is to have the villain enter, kick the party's rear end but leave them wounded because they were not his pressing concern and see how well they do and then as a DM you figure out roughly when the fight will be even, but game styles vary.
Even in the most brutal games however this is always an issue because game flow matters and nothing ruins game flow like a TPK. Myself, I will try and allow the carnage to occur and put the party in the position that the dice place them but do things like have the villain take hostages, force the party to accept a deal with the devil, have a calvary force ride in to save the day but only just before the party is about to be eliminated entirely, or pull a villain had an emergency and had to leave the party or even the old classic batman villain ending to a fight where I beat you but don't kill you and instead leave you in an elaborate Rube Goldberg trap to die so that next week we see how the party gets out of it. These are tropes from old serial movies but hey they work so why not if it can be done seriously enough not to lose suspension of disbelief.
I am an old school gamer so I like math in my RPG systems because I like math. I played the Spacemaster RPG and wanted to use the advanced ship0 combat rules which meant on the grid you assigned a marker negative to positive to signify the height above or below the plane of the map and to fire at a person or move to another square you had to use all three dimensions and the Pythagorean Theorem to determine your distance, but most people did not want to go that far. I do not mind the crunchiness of the system because rather than push power gaming I saw it as a way to define character especially skill point systems. I liked the original 3e four points at 1st level because you had extra points to put in useless knowledges or skills you may never use in game but were necessary to flush out your background. To me just writing it up is not as good because the narrative had no connection to your character sheet.
I had an idea for a horror game because as DM I was planning on the monsters killing many people in terrible ways to emphasize the deadly nature of the threat to make players scared of it. As such I used a tiered system and allowed each character to make as many characters as they wanted. They all started out with two characters. A Lead character (Face Card) and a Supporting Character (Number Card). There were three types Face, Number and Blank. A Face Character is a Leading Character representing the player's group, a Number Character was a supporting character either a sidekick or even unrelated but all Face characters have to have a story arc, a reason for being and even if the player did not link their story arcs as a DM I would reserve the right to link them in game myself. This could be through negative challenges to overcome like curses etc. A blank wass free and you could have any number of blanks and I as the DM could instruct you make a blank. I blank had no states, taking the average value for whatever stats are needed. The only thin a blank had was a one paragraph minimum write up describing who the character was which could be as general or specific as the player wanted.
A character could play only one card at a time and when they did the character was On Screen but when the player wanted to bring another character on screen as well they had to bring the other off screen. Off screen and On screen meant the player made decisions for the character and Off Screen meant the DM dictated what happened in downtime since they were last off screen.
The rule was this, Face or Lead characters were protected. They could not be attacked off screen, the player had the right to bring them on screen to deal with anything that was going to happen to their Face Cards in game and the DM would protect the character from dying in game as much as possible with the exception of the player knowingly doing something "STUPID" meaning the character deserved it. The rule is that STUPID is defined by the player not the GM. The GM can warn the player, if you do this it will be considered STUPID and you could die but the player then could back out. Fate would protect the FACE cards.
The Numbers are characters that a player could play with writeups, histories, etc. but the rule is at minimum they have to have a character sheet describing who they are with states before they can come on screen. Number cards have no protection of Fate and while GMs had to be fair in judging what happens if a number character opened the wrong door and got wiped out so be it.
Blanks are open season for the GM, as GM I can force you to bring any blank on screen even if it is not anywhere the other members of a party can see and I can do everything in my power to be cruel and evil to the poor blank. If it is a star trek universe it is wearing a red shirt and we also call them redshirts. One rule though: If a red shirt is attacked by the horror the party is currently fighting or one of its evil minions and through sheer dumb luck of the dice survives they the blank is now a Number card and the player is allotted the 500 XP to convert the blank to a number card because it proved tt mattered and was not a red shirt.
Experience went to the player and not the character, experience points were assigned by the player to their FACE or Number cards in whatever order they like. Everyone starts with one Face and one Number card. A Face cost 5,000 XP just to have a slot (was using rules for d20) and a Number 500XP while a blank was free. A character could promote for free one number card to a Face card if they had no Face left alive. If a Face died then half the value of the XP assigned to the FACE were lost and the remainder returned to the player to be reassigned as they like and yes players could kill off their FACE to get a new one so long as it was a "meaningful" death defined subjectively as aiding the narrative of the game. If a number died then the half XP assigned to the number was returned as well but the slot remained. Any blank, even one just created, could be promoted to a number granted a slot was available or just purchased but the only way to add a new Face other than the first was for a player to complete a season show-ender, this is defined as a set of goals to achieved that completes a story. Then at the GM's approval a player could pay the 5,000 XP to add a FACE card but like a card deck the Face cards are only King, Queen and Jack. ACE stands for a character that is retired (points would go back to player but character is at it peak and there is no more reason to play it) and Joker is for the GM only, so no more than 3 Face cards. The reason this worked so well for a horror game was because I as the GM could destroy characters in the story as the evil supernatural horror would to most people it came across because that was the dynamic of the story. It would not cost much to the players because they got half the XP back they lost to use as they see fit, so killing off a number for the XP for something else might be something they are OK with and it got the party involved in the horror story because NPC deaths off screen were not the norm. Instead, the players made blanks and made the decisions to fight and were there when the horror made the kill.
I came up with this Red shirt system for playing horror campaigns because player character deaths had to actually happen for the monster to be terrifying and the player worried about losing it but the main characters in the party had to be the ones to be there for the next episode in the TV show as it were. It worked well especially when players started giving my pointers on which of their characters they wanted to see die and how it should happen but maybe for a long campaign this might work in normal D&D. Maybe if the characters are all part of a war or a rebellion or something that would be extended conflicts with similar goals. Who knows!
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So, I am reading the stats for the Sea Serpent and I am seeing it is a 13 hit dice creature and it has a +7 bonus to attack. IT has 139 hit points. I am guessing because it is a dragon with more power that it a good challenge for 8th level party or so, other 13 hd creatures maybe one or two less.
Have not yet played 5e all that much but am old school DnD player from the Basic DND Set before AD&D and have been recently at Pathfinder, sorry did not like 4th at all so stopped playing. Anyrate, trying to get my mind around the power levels and how combat will work because it seems like lower level characters are not at that much of a disadvantage to hit compared to higher levels and it does not seem the damage is different so do combats tend to take longer, Am trying to get a feel for how the game changed.
Anyone care to help out just leave a comment below:
I'm also a long time player and if I should try to summarize the difference in combat to AD&D (2e) I'd probably highlight the following
1. All classes are more complex than in 2e and have wider ability to support and do damage. The mechanics are changed to heighten these abilities. An example is the Thief's Backstab which has changed to a sneak attack. The backstab required quite a bit of maneuvering and subterfuge, the sneak attack (basically) only required the target to be in combat with the Rogue's friend
2. Spellcasters have damage dealing cantrips that don't deplete spell slots - and these level up like the Fighter's number of attacks (more or less). E.g a Warlock has 4 beams with his Eldritch Blast at 17th level, each requiring a
3. All classes hit equally well,( with their best mode of attack). Every few levels (4 generally, less for Fighters) you get to increase your abiity scores (or take a Feat if you use them). This means you're able to improve to hit, AC, HP as you level up. Proficiency bonus also levels up so if you are using your best type of attack you ought to get a lot better bonus to the to hit (i.e. deal more damage) at level 9 than at level 1
4. CR (challenge rating) is a guide to level of characters that need to be in play to make it interesting. It's far from perfect and IMHO a well coordinated party can defeat single higher CR monsters
E.g. a 9th lvl Wizard can cast a Firebolt every round without expending a spell slot (it does use an action). This gives 2d10 dam and uses the spell attack modifier on the attack roll. This is calculated by adding the INT modifier and the proficiency bonus (+4 at 9th lvl). At 4th and 8th lvl there were opportunities to increase INT so the modifier could easily be +4 or +5. That gives 45-50% chance to hit AC 20 and deal avg 11 damage each round. On top of that the wizard has three 3rd lvl spell slots (Fireball?), three 4th lvl spell slots and a 5th lvl spell slot, so theoretically in a seven round period could dish out 61d6 Fire damage (DEX save for half) just by keeping the Fireball on repeat
In the same seven round period a Fighter could attack 15 times with his weapon of choice (7x2+1 (Action Surge)) - 30 times if two weapon fighter - and with at least the same to hit chance as calculated above (The Fighter will have had three options to increase his primary stats by 9th lvl)
I'm not sure the combat is slower than previous editions at all - if anything slows combat down in 5e it is the many choices each class has to attack that may slow it down, not the ability to deal damage
Hope this was helpful and you pick up the hobby again!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Nxbz3zlkjY&ab_channel=myPowerLevel
So the thing with monsters in 5e is that as they grow in power the biggest changes will be the consistency with which they hit, their ability to take a hit and extra powers and abilities that they will gain, though that having been said there are low level monsters that can be absolute nightmare fuel for even the most powerful of parties (Inetellect devourers can and will wreck you). Also, due to the fact that AC doesn't go insane like some other editions players can attack and hurt some really powerful monsters, they are likely to be blasted into roll up a new character land in short order.
Personally, I like to implement some of the old mechanics from AD&D into the 5e system and the players seem to enjoy it at the table.
Just depends on how much time you want to spend implementing house rules to enhance the game play.
A couple things wrong with this math. TLDR for the OP, two-weapon fighters do not simply get 2x the number of attacks.
For one, Action Surge would grant 2 extra attacks at 9th level, so the fighter is attacking 16 times. For another, two-weapon fighters just get one additional attack per round (assuming they never use their bonus action for anything else). So at 9 it would be doing (7x3+2) = 23 vs the single-weapon fighter's 16.
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
It may be I have not yet had the time to really look through or play 5e as yet.
I am responding to 4th edition where you could auto heal 25% one in combat and clerics had all the insane healing and monsters had it too. Never played that but I was thinking how does anyone ever die.
3e had a lot of cheese but was fairly will balanced and combat took and hour and a half of game time because to the increased mechanics but even epic combats rarely lasted more than 10 rounds and most less.
1e as we played it was much more tactical and the unbalanced classes meant you had to go in protecting your wizard. The Wizard was useless in combat and quite easy to kill but could lay out devastating spells that would wreck any group unchecked to it was protect your mage while you identified the enemy mage and wiped them out. I guess in a way it was like trying to establish air superiority on the battlefield. It was a completely different game from even second edition. But that is just my take!
Fifth Edition combat tends to be what's known as rocket-tag gameplay: combat tends to be fast and decisive since most characters can dish out a lot more damage per round than they could in Second Edition but aren't significantly tougher. Armor Class isn't as easy to pump up anymore, which means that accuracy tends to be pretty high even at low levels. It's not like back in the day where it was easy to have two or three rounds where nobody on either side dealt any damage at all. Combat rarely lasts beyond three rounds: monsters aren't designed to simply soak up hits while doing little in return and enemies have fewer resistances and immunities than they used to. You still need to do things like protect the wizard, they're somewhat less squishy than they used to be (their hit dice are now d6s instead of d4s) but that largely translates to being able to take one extra poke from a goblin before they go unconscious.
Oh, that's a thing that's changed, too: at 0 HP you go unconscious instead of automatically dying. You stay on the ground bleeding and making Death Saves until someone heals you, you roll a natural 20, or you fail three of them and croak.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Sounds to me like combat is more swingy, more dependent on dice rolls. Since you're rolling fewer, anomalies have greater effect.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
In 5E? No, it's not nearly as swingy as 2E. Not remotely. Also, there aren't remotely as many "save or die instantly" effects in 5E. Second Edition was full of them.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Not to mention, they dont die of 1d4 damage
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat." -Sun Tzu
When compared to how it use to be played, 5e characters pack a punch when compared to an older version of D&D. Have played all of the editions (except 4e where I agree with you on that version). An interesting term that I heard was that in AD&D, you start as a ZERO to become a HERO.
In 5e, a first level character is more powerful when compared to other versions but I will agree that they are more capable of delivering a hit than older editions but to me I prefer the older versions vs 5e but that is just me. Nothing wrong with 5e to be honest, except for the fact that a new player to 5e gets instant gratification vs older versions where you had to put your time in to get to that level. The combat is pretty straight foward....just have to figure in Prof Bonuses, etc., along with your DEX or STR bonuses for damage depending on which weapon they choose to wield.
I personally run an AD&D, Pathfinder 1e and 5e session each month so all of these younger players can appreciate what they have in 5e rather than them just playing 5e thinking that this is how it has always been played.
Yeah, I agree with you about the monsters playing dumb. The way I DM it is certain encounters are just there for flavor, we know the party will prevail because we need to get past them to go to the next chapter of a book so I will attempt to fudge to keep players from dying. After all if you TPK the party then the campaign ends.
The final battles are different, generally I like to see that the party survive so it is best to offer the ability to retreat or run away but these battles the villain should be played smart because they need to be challenging or they are not memorable. This creates an issue though because to weak or too powerful takes away from the game meaning the fights have to be balanced. The best way is to have the villain enter, kick the party's rear end but leave them wounded because they were not his pressing concern and see how well they do and then as a DM you figure out roughly when the fight will be even, but game styles vary.
Even in the most brutal games however this is always an issue because game flow matters and nothing ruins game flow like a TPK. Myself, I will try and allow the carnage to occur and put the party in the position that the dice place them but do things like have the villain take hostages, force the party to accept a deal with the devil, have a calvary force ride in to save the day but only just before the party is about to be eliminated entirely, or pull a villain had an emergency and had to leave the party or even the old classic batman villain ending to a fight where I beat you but don't kill you and instead leave you in an elaborate Rube Goldberg trap to die so that next week we see how the party gets out of it. These are tropes from old serial movies but hey they work so why not if it can be done seriously enough not to lose suspension of disbelief.
I am an old school gamer so I like math in my RPG systems because I like math. I played the Spacemaster RPG and wanted to use the advanced ship0 combat rules which meant on the grid you assigned a marker negative to positive to signify the height above or below the plane of the map and to fire at a person or move to another square you had to use all three dimensions and the Pythagorean Theorem to determine your distance, but most people did not want to go that far. I do not mind the crunchiness of the system because rather than push power gaming I saw it as a way to define character especially skill point systems. I liked the original 3e four points at 1st level because you had extra points to put in useless knowledges or skills you may never use in game but were necessary to flush out your background. To me just writing it up is not as good because the narrative had no connection to your character sheet.
I had an idea for a horror game because as DM I was planning on the monsters killing many people in terrible ways to emphasize the deadly nature of the threat to make players scared of it. As such I used a tiered system and allowed each character to make as many characters as they wanted. They all started out with two characters. A Lead character (Face Card) and a Supporting Character (Number Card). There were three types Face, Number and Blank. A Face Character is a Leading Character representing the player's group, a Number Character was a supporting character either a sidekick or even unrelated but all Face characters have to have a story arc, a reason for being and even if the player did not link their story arcs as a DM I would reserve the right to link them in game myself. This could be through negative challenges to overcome like curses etc. A blank wass free and you could have any number of blanks and I as the DM could instruct you make a blank. I blank had no states, taking the average value for whatever stats are needed. The only thin a blank had was a one paragraph minimum write up describing who the character was which could be as general or specific as the player wanted.
A character could play only one card at a time and when they did the character was On Screen but when the player wanted to bring another character on screen as well they had to bring the other off screen. Off screen and On screen meant the player made decisions for the character and Off Screen meant the DM dictated what happened in downtime since they were last off screen.
The rule was this, Face or Lead characters were protected. They could not be attacked off screen, the player had the right to bring them on screen to deal with anything that was going to happen to their Face Cards in game and the DM would protect the character from dying in game as much as possible with the exception of the player knowingly doing something "STUPID" meaning the character deserved it. The rule is that STUPID is defined by the player not the GM. The GM can warn the player, if you do this it will be considered STUPID and you could die but the player then could back out. Fate would protect the FACE cards.
The Numbers are characters that a player could play with writeups, histories, etc. but the rule is at minimum they have to have a character sheet describing who they are with states before they can come on screen. Number cards have no protection of Fate and while GMs had to be fair in judging what happens if a number character opened the wrong door and got wiped out so be it.
Blanks are open season for the GM, as GM I can force you to bring any blank on screen even if it is not anywhere the other members of a party can see and I can do everything in my power to be cruel and evil to the poor blank. If it is a star trek universe it is wearing a red shirt and we also call them redshirts. One rule though: If a red shirt is attacked by the horror the party is currently fighting or one of its evil minions and through sheer dumb luck of the dice survives they the blank is now a Number card and the player is allotted the 500 XP to convert the blank to a number card because it proved tt mattered and was not a red shirt.
Experience went to the player and not the character, experience points were assigned by the player to their FACE or Number cards in whatever order they like. Everyone starts with one Face and one Number card. A Face cost 5,000 XP just to have a slot (was using rules for d20) and a Number 500XP while a blank was free. A character could promote for free one number card to a Face card if they had no Face left alive. If a Face died then half the value of the XP assigned to the FACE were lost and the remainder returned to the player to be reassigned as they like and yes players could kill off their FACE to get a new one so long as it was a "meaningful" death defined subjectively as aiding the narrative of the game. If a number died then the half XP assigned to the number was returned as well but the slot remained. Any blank, even one just created, could be promoted to a number granted a slot was available or just purchased but the only way to add a new Face other than the first was for a player to complete a season show-ender, this is defined as a set of goals to achieved that completes a story. Then at the GM's approval a player could pay the 5,000 XP to add a FACE card but like a card deck the Face cards are only King, Queen and Jack. ACE stands for a character that is retired (points would go back to player but character is at it peak and there is no more reason to play it) and Joker is for the GM only, so no more than 3 Face cards.
The reason this worked so well for a horror game was because I as the GM could destroy characters in the story as the evil supernatural horror would to most people it came across because that was the dynamic of the story. It would not cost much to the players because they got half the XP back they lost to use as they see fit, so killing off a number for the XP for something else might be something they are OK with and it got the party involved in the horror story because NPC deaths off screen were not the norm. Instead, the players made blanks and made the decisions to fight and were there when the horror made the kill.
I came up with this Red shirt system for playing horror campaigns because player character deaths had to actually happen for the monster to be terrifying and the player worried about losing it but the main characters in the party had to be the ones to be there for the next episode in the TV show as it were. It worked well especially when players started giving my pointers on which of their characters they wanted to see die and how it should happen but maybe for a long campaign this might work in normal D&D. Maybe if the characters are all part of a war or a rebellion or something that would be extended conflicts with similar goals. Who knows!