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Over ten levels, I have had one character die from a phantasmal killer spell, and later be turned to stone. A second character has also died from dragon breath.
In my previous campaign, over 15 levels, I had two characters die due to flaming arrows, and later TPKed the party (4, maybe 5 characters) via rogue's guild and burning warehouse.
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Confirming criticals on characters running on Ferocity or just about when they're going to do some sort of tactical withdrawal really ruins the day.
I don't actively pursue to kill players, ever. I've had campaigns/adventures with 0 deaths tho the difficulty(combat-wise) was quite high.
And I had players run into obvious traps, tho they were warned by clues, party members, NPCs, etc: "that mysterious chick that only goes out at night is smoking hot, I'm gonna sneak out and pay her a visit" said the player to himself. While he was investigating some strange murders.
I might throw in some cheese NPCs if the players are pushing it with the 'I auto-win' tactics to prove their superior builds to the "stupid NPCs" (while slowly drifting to the evil side).
I don't try to keep them alive just run encounters as normal.
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I rarely kill a PC on purpose. I will usually see the PCs are having issues or getting their tail wipped and I will either change tactics or if feasible throw them help from allies. Well that is if the following is true.
A. They are in trouble not due to poor planing or stupid tactics on thier part, but because I threw them against something they couldnt handle.
B. They didnt go looking for trouble in the first place. Or if its a single party member I make sure he didnt jump ahead or whatever.
As a DM sometimes you misjudge a fight. You throw the party at something that you think is fine but when its actually in practice its just too affective against your players. I have been guilty of this before. What I think will be a cool chalenge turns out to be a deadly mix. Thats not my players fault. Thats my bad. So I will take steps to fix said fight on the fly.
As to the chance deaths... a failed save at the wrong time, or several crits in a row... those deaths happen. I and the group I run with have used the 3 strike rule for years. The first 2 times you die you really just fell to -1 and are stable. The enemies and PCs think your dead and ignore you mostly untill combat is over. On your 3rd death... well get out a fresh character sheet and start rolling stats.
Its worked quite well for my groups.
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From some of the campaigns I'm currently playing in ...
Age of Worms (level 7): One death, with at least two other deaths averted by use of hero points.
Savage Tide (level 8): No deaths.
Rise of the Runelords (level 3): No deaths.
Legacy of Fire (level 5): One death, with at least one averted by use of hero points.
Council of Thieves (level 4): No deaths (I think).
Kingmaker (level 2): No deaths.
Serpent's Skull (level 2): No deaths.
So it's rare, but there have been plenty of close calls. Personally, I like the idea of using hero points to avoid death; it's more palatable to me than repeated Raise Dead spells or having a revolving door party.
In the recent game I've played in I've lost two characters to lucky criticals. A x3 multiplier at 3rd and 4th level is still a big threat.
I merged the threads on this topic.
Exactly what the title says. It was brought up in the "bloat" thread how common a pc death was and I wondered what a gm should generally aim for?
PC deaths will occur on their own. You don't need to aim for any kind of quota.
Actual PC Deaths not too common in our group, near deaths however (ie characters brought into negative hps) fairly common once every couple of sessions.
My current group seems to think I have one of the more lethal games they have run in. I am just running Carrion Crown straight. I had to back out one TPK and have had two other deaths... they are now in the beginning of the second adventure.
My previous experience running has been about 1 death per adventure (this was in the Shackled City Adventure Path).
I never try to kill characters but I don't really mind if I do... things should be tough, but acheivable.
I do try to avoid TPKs... I feel if I have one, that either the player or I have made a HUGE mistake.
Sean
Current party of 6 PC's (level 8 about to ding 9)...
1 of the PC's has died 0 times (monk)
2 of the PC's has died 1 time (fighter, bard)
3 of the PC's have died 2 times (barbarian, rogue, cleric)
So, 8 deaths in 36 sessions played over 19 months. Fairly lethal for my campaigns. The big encounter that was nearly a TPK was a dragon combat. In it I killed 4 of the 6 PC's (largely due to the monk getting entangled and missing out on the whole combat so it was 5 vs. 1 instead of 6 vs. 1).
None of my players has switched characters yet. They are all still playing their original characters.
Previous game I played in we didn't have any deaths that I recall. That game lasted nearly 1 year. The game before that (I was a player) we had very powerful characters and two of us died once each iirc. The DM struggled to challenge us in that game and once or twice he overdid it and we had some deaths due to failed saves.
One TPK in my current campaign at level 3.
No deaths other than that one and it was their own damn fault, they got greedy.
We've had 1 death in our current campaign and we're at level 9. Our healer is doing a great job keeping us alive though, or we might have had more.
The one death was from save or die spell.
Edited for cause of death.
PC death in my games are pretty rare but dropping players into the negatives happens a fair amount, the odd time resulting in death.
We have a character death approximately once every three game sessions (roughly every six encounters).
We TPK or near-TPK every ten sessions or so.
Outside of the newby, who dies about once/session, we played for 3 months, in a very tough campaign, with only 1 death. The player in question died to massive damage.
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Well since my institutiing of 'hero points' where you can user a limited resource to save yourself from death I have had no character deaths in my campain. However in the last campaign there would have been i think 4 or 5 character deaths (playing through most of a modified council of thieves adventure) and I would have had 2 character deaths in the opening of my slumbering tsar adventure without them.
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With regards to character deaths, I’m in the middle of book 5 of Council of thieves and so far I have a kill total of 14ish. They have reached level 9, but there is not a single character who have avoided a raise or a reincarnate (wow that spell is ridicules, for some reason I have only experienced character buffs from dying once they started using this spell). I never try to kill my players, but I rarely fight to keep them alive either unless it would be game disturbing to have players die. It is about 1 kill per session. During the first levels I had few deaths (first one being at level 3) but as they reached levels 7-8 casualties where at least 2 per session. The campaign has been 9 months, and now people have a quite casual relationship to casualties.
With regards to what number of casualties to aim for, you should try to get just enough that the players fear death. Too much and they expect it, and it loses impact, too little and they find themselves not challenged and not fearing enemies. Both are not, for me at least, the ideal game, so find the middle ground you feel comfortable with.
I generally see the same players losing characters over and over. Usually it's player X that can't seem to keep his character alive.
I'm running Age of Worms and the party just hit level 20. One player is on his 3rd character and this one has died three times. Everyone else has died only once or twice, with a couple of near TPKs in there. Strangely enough, the guy who loses the most characters is also the one who saved the party from the TPKs.
I've been running this campaign for 2 years.
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Real Time Elapsed in Current Campaign = 2yrs 7mos
In-Game Time Elapsed in Current Campaign = 171 Days or approximately 5.6mos
# of PCs to have entered campaign = 55
# of PCs retired or otherwise disengaged from adventuring = 8
# of PCs Killed, Petrified or otherwise rendered unplayable = 42
# of TPKs = 0
We have a player in our group that tends to get most the deaths. It's mostly because he tries for harder builds, has help getting them where they need to be and then leaves off a critical piece that opens the gates wide for his death. The rest of the time it's due to experimentation with ideas by him (which is cool -- we don't mind that since it means seeing more stuff in action).
I've had a PC die once in an AP due to crummy luck (disintegrated, took full damage, didn't die from that but the massive damage save came out a 1 -- GM allowed a breath of life to save me with a hero point).
I've had two close calls other than that (Wizard took it on the face from a giant in RotRL and Witch got an AoO that was unexpected in LoF).
Generally We'll have 5~10 PC deaths in a campaign but most of those can be attributed to specific repeating weaknesses in builds from players at the table (same players same weaknesses in each character), and over the course of a campaign that specific weakness finally coming up again.
I'm starting to see more character death now that we're achieving higher levels in our Serpent's Skull campaign. Have reached book five with characters that have just achieved 14th level. I think we've had three character deaths in the last month of actual game time (we took December off): one from ground zero fireball spell cast by a creature immune to fire, and two from some heavy blows rained down on them by powerful creatures critting for somewhere in the range of 50-70 damage a pop.
Character death didn't come into play for my group until near the end of book four and one in book five. At lower and mid-range levels (1-11 specifically) we didn't have any real deaths at all, but did have a few close calls, which is to be expected.
Like others have stated, I don't ever actively seek to kill anyone. My players really get into character development with their stories, and I've found that with my group character death that requires new characters be brought in interrupts the flow something awful. However, I don't pull back too often either, as I don't want to cheapen their experience.
To the best of my knowledge, we have only had two encounters that almost resulted in a TPK.
Also, for the other question, my group is roughly 75% finished with book five of Serpent's Skull, and we've been playing for just over 14 months. On average, we play once a week for about four hours a sit-down.
Good lord. I can't keep track.
On average, there's a PC death every game we play. Last game there was two.
Of course, for the table I'm talking about, PC "death" is equivalent to "sitting out the rest of the combat" except for certain rare exceptions; it's a 3.5e epic game where death means one of three things:
1. breath of life if one of the casters can get to you within a round.
2. reincarnation if one of the casters can't get to you and the druid is annoyed at you.
3. true resurrection if one of the casters can't get to you within a round but the druid is not annoyed at you.
So really, death is not much of a hindrance to these guys; it just makes the current battle a little more difficult.
They still do approach TPKs every once in a rare while, but then they just grab the bodies and teleport the hell away. Not really a huge issue for them.
Maybe 1 PC per campaign? Death isn't common in our group, but it does happen.
I'm actually against gratuitous PC death, where possible, as if PC's only die occasionally, the death is often far more poignant when it happens.
I tend to kill a pc or two early on, before level 3. After that, it gets more rare.
And people call me names for refusing to start a game lower than level 3.
In the RotRL game I'm in we've had 6 deaths, four of them were me. I think my GM is out to get me.
Now in the games I run, death can happen every now and then or it can happen fairly often, I had one game where over the course of 3 sessions we had 6 character deaths, and during the entire Carrion Crown AP I recently finished running the only deaths were one against the mi-go in wake of the watcher and one against the big bad in the final part. Both of those deaths were the same character though.
Like most people, I don't kill PCs on purpose as well. But if you make it a habit of keeping them alive, they stop caring about lethality all together. So when it does happen that they die... I let them die.
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I don't aim to kill any players, but rather aim for every combat encounter to be a close-run thing with plenty of tension. Most of the encounters I set up result in one or two players going into negatives with a lot of heavy wounds all around. So we've had only one absolutely final death in several years of play.
playing RotRL for about 2 years (just finished hook mountain) party reached lvl 10
me(cleric/ranger) 2 times
monk :3 times
barbarian: 1 death
and our GM does not try to kill us, though he doesnt make things easier either
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I don't aim to kill any players, but rather aim for every combat encounter to be a close-run thing with plenty of tension. Most of the encounters I set up result in one or two players going into negatives with a lot of heavy wounds all around. So we've had only one absolutely final death in several years of play.
I understand your point of view, but I don't think every encounter is supposed to be very tense and dangerous. Every once in a while, I think the PCs deserve an easy fight. That's when they notice how much more powerful they have become and when they get to try weird stuff that they wouldn't try in other situations.
I don't aim to kill any players, but rather aim for every combat encounter to be a close-run thing with plenty of tension. Most of the encounters I set up result in one or two players going into negatives with a lot of heavy wounds all around. So we've had only one absolutely final death in several years of play.
That's how tough fights (especially boss fights) should be ran.
First book of kingmaker we had eight deaths saved by hero points, two unsaved deaths in which the players rerolled. Also in the graveyard are three guides, a teamster, four horses, a cavaliers mount and an animal companion. I've also had one character incapacitated by poison and then in a later encounter almost incapacitated by a different kind of poison, one character incapacitated for over a week in game by disease and almost starve to death, the entire group franticly rolling survival to survive tornado strength winds and a blizzard on seperate occasions, three charcaters nearly drown on one occasion and one almost drown on another. All in all i would think the entire party would be heavily scarred grizzled veterans by the time they hit level 4 from the damage they have taken in the year they have been playing in game, they often drop to negative hit points. Needless to say its relatively lethal when you don't pull punches.
In the homebrew game (not an ap) we've had one death saved by hero points, i think our other gm is nicer than me. But then he uses a screen and i roll my dice open so i never fluff rolls and he might.
It's not uncommon for campaigns I run to result in multiple character deaths, at low levels and higher levels. Add in that spells that bring characters back are HEAVILY restricted in my games to the point of being the relics from ages past when magic was considerably more powerful.
I think it has more to do with players not taking death seriously until it happens. Sure, the extra xp help, but I find players that have earned a level or two start trying harder.I tend to kill a pc or two early on, before level 3. After that, it gets more rare.And people call me names for refusing to start a game lower than level 3.
I really don't get this, is it something automatic that a PC has no sense of self-preservation or something? Your characters are supposed to be really competent (what with having real classes and everything) presumably you survived some sort of conflict, this should give your character the idea that "This stuff is trying to kill you and you should respond accordingly." I've been called a metagamer, a rollplayer, and a min-maxer, because I had my character refuse to take suicidal actions.
I don't get it, what am I missing that a lot of other people seem to get?
My main group has about one character death every tenth session or so. In real life that comes out to about two character deaths per year. In game terms that usually means about one character death per campaign.
I have only had two characters die in combat in 30 years of playing the game though. But then again, I probably play somewhat like Blue Star above. My characters play as if they actually intend to survive and retire some day.
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Deaths are rare in the games I run. Most of my players are experienced, they play their characters well, they work together and they seek to avoid dying as best they can.
Since they're also roleplayers over roll-players, and typically fond of the character and its history, I will tend to avert random or bad luck deaths that aren't the result of anything other than really poor rolls at the wrong time.
But, if it's the big boss fight, or through sheer player stupidity, then if they die, they die.
We don't play with raise dead or any way to return dead characters, we all agreed it was too likely to eliminate the fear of death. So, while I may intercede on their behalf on those very rare occasions, death is always possible--and very permanent.
Which overall, suits our play style better than dying and rezzing every other session.
But, like the two posts above from Blue & Ada, no one wants to die, and they all play as if their character will retire.