How often do PCs die?

[Mark Hoover 330]

Recently my highest level campaign, the only one that had continued to meet, stalled due to current events and now none of my games are moving forward. As such, I still haven't gotten a single campaign of my own above 10th level in a decade of running them.

That being said, I've had 4 PCs actually fully die in all of my games over the last 10 years. I have also been lurking on these boards the entire time and since '09 I've been seeing the commentary that death is frequent at "high levels."

Anyone know how often "frequent" is? What qualifies as "high levels?"

The only reason I'm asking is b/c my level 10 campaign is stuck mid adventure with a massive fight coming up that I'd telegraphed for months. The only divine magic in the party is a Druid (Swamp Druid) so there's no Breath of Life spells laying about. This fight is the culmination of the adventure so the resources they DO have a somewhat depleted. In other words, with a bit of bad luck I could seriously see another PC death coming.

I'm trying to figure if this is normal/expected for level 10 and up. Should I encourage my players to start carrying BoL spells around on scrolls that they can UMD? What's the actual baseline rate of loss for PCs in a given campaign?

[gnoams]

In my experience it varies widely between different parties and players. Deaths in the party from games I'm in currently:

Carrion Crown. From 1-11, 2 deaths
Homebrew I'm Gming. From 1-9, 5 deaths (two were the same PC)
Ruins of Azlant. From 1-14, a lot. I think at least 8 (half of those were all one player's PCs)
War for the Crown. From 1-7, 3 deaths (two were the same PC)

Personally, I've played thousands of hours of pf1 including a dozen APs, various homebrews, and most pfs 1 scenarios. I've only ever had 1 PC of mine die. On the other hand, I've played with people whose PCs seem to die at least once every other level.

That aside, if this is the end of your campaign, then going out in a blaze of glory isn't necessarily a bad thing. If some of the PCs die to put a stop to the evil plot, the townsfolk throw them a funeral and honor their heroic sacrifice by erecting a statue of them. That can certainly be a satisfying ending.

[SheepishEidolon]

At my homebrew campaign all deaths happened from level 5 to (roughly) 12, but it might not be a good example (see penultimate paragraph).

At level 5 the cleric got killed by a persistent caster killer dwarf who preferred to pick on him instead of on the frontliners. I inserted a temple for a revival, and the inhabitants of that temple became good friends of the party.

At level 6 the overconfident barbarian rushed into four redcaps - she died even without scythe crits, and was reincarnated as an undine (-2 Str, d'oh). Much later, she evolved into an unique hybrid of half-orc and undine - thanks to the grace of Nethys and her own choice.

Soon after, at level 7, in the same dungeon, party became overconfident. They wandered around in loose formation, and a vampire dropped from the ceiling. He caught the wizard off-guard, gave him a level drain crit and finished him off quickly. Wizard was also reincarnated and became a dhampir (same +2 Dex and -2 Con as before).

Still at level 7 I decided to let the cleric be assassinated for story reasons. The player was not present and the others got the means to bring him back within the session. They would be busy with the assassin guild for a while.

Hrm, afterwards it gets cloudy. I think around level 10 two or three more PCs died, but got revived by the cleric (respective friendly NPCs), so it was much less memorable than a reincarnation.

I handed the cleric (who turned into a warpriest) an ioun stone with fast healing and houseruled it to be actual regeneration. The barbarian who suffered the most damage in many battles got a ring of regeneration, also houseruled to be actual regeneration. The warpriest became quite tanky and did never need this insurance, but the ring saved the barbarian a few times.

Now the group made it to level 20. Out of five PCs, only the samurai never died, and I doubt he will before we are finished.

[Meirril]

Breath of Life isn't a solution to death. If you're group is cautious enough that the cleric can always make it over to whoever dropped, there is a good chance the cleric can provide enough healing that nobody needs BoL in the first place.

And if they aren't that cautious, anyone with a BoL scroll probably can't spend a move action to retrieve it, make it over to the corpse, and cast the spell in the same round. Or are they going to fight every combat with a scroll in hand ready to use?

[Claxon]

Ideally as a GM I don't want to kill any of the PCs, but it does happen sometimes.

It's hard to damage them enough that they feel threatened but not end up killing them.

But this is going to vary group by group and player by player.

[thorin001]

Meirril wrote:

Breath of Life isn't a solution to death. If you're group is cautious enough that the cleric can always make it over to whoever dropped, there is a good chance the cleric can provide enough healing that nobody needs BoL in the first place.

And if they aren't that cautious, anyone with a BoL scroll probably can't spend a move action to retrieve it, make it over to the corpse, and cast the spell in the same round. Or are they going to fight every combat with a scroll in hand ready to use?

First Aid Gloves are a thing. Also, many GMs (even PFS) allow scrolls in spring-loaded wrist sheathes. So you do not need to be walking around with the scroll in hand.

[thorin001]

Claxon wrote:

Ideally as a GM I don't to kill any of the PCs, but it does happen sometimes.

It's hard to damage them enough that they feel threatened but not end up killing them.

But this is going to vary group by group and player by player.

Yeah, the space between good-to-go and dead is very small. On easy fix I have seen used to good effect is adding level to Con to determine how negative you can go before dying.

[Claxon]

thorin001 wrote:

Claxon wrote:

Ideally as a GM I don't to kill any of the PCs, but it does happen sometimes.

It's hard to damage them enough that they feel threatened but not end up killing them.

But this is going to vary group by group and player by player.

Yeah, the space between good-to-go and dead is very small. On easy fix I have seen used to good effect is adding level to Con to determine how negative you can go before dying.

Honestly I tend to just fudge rolls in the players favor if it gets that close. I know that's controversial, but it's the truth.

[Scavion]

Let's see... 5 deaths in Mummy's Mask in Book 1. 1 Death in Book 2 of Ironfang. 1 Death in Book 1 too if you count animal companions. Carrion Crown Book 1 had zero deaths which we were pretty proud of. Book 2 had 3(I think the last fight is kinda bull but whatever).

In our homebrew Elder Scrolls game, we had one person die 3 times.

Mark Hoover wrote:

Anyone know how often "frequent" is? What qualifies as "high levels?"

Levels where Save or Dies become more prevalent. Disintegrate, Icy Prison, Dominate Person, etc. Creatures with Fear auras that cause Frightened can quickly escalate an encounter. Getting Coup de Graced in your sleep. As you ascend in levels, it gets harder and harder to avoid creatures/enemies that would intelligently use this stuff. Like in the low levels, you mainly just have to look out for stuff like Ghouls, Twigjacks(WHAT THE HECK), Color Spray, Witches, etc.

So with high levels(which I would define as 9th level+) comes more frequent usage and eventually they're gonna fail a save.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

As (almost) always when people ask 'what should X be', the only real answer is: it depends on the type of game you want to run. If you want death to be a revolving door, do so. If you want death to be rare and nigh permanent, run your game that way.

When I started my current campaign in 2012 I said death would be a revolving door if the players wanted it (which they did). That means I can throw quite dangerous encounters at them and not worry if someone dies a bit. I'd say once raising came online, death happens fairly frequently in my game; not every combat, not even every adventure, but often enough.

In one fight against Tiamat there were 6 deaths (divided among 4 PCs), and there have been several fights with 2 or 3 fatalities, and many fights with one fatality. I don't think anyone has died more than twice in a single encounter, though. We've been playing high level folks (level 14+) for a few years now so there have been a goodly number of deaths.
BoL sees a lot of use, and so does Raise Dead and the Resurrections.

If you count animal companions, one infamous game saw the druid's animal companion die just about every encounter. There was a running joke about how she wiped out several bands of giant apes by summoning new companions so often. The apes came to live under an evil star, so to speak, and in their limited way knew the Death God would call on them soon.

[Jhaeman]

I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may incriminate me.

[glass]

I have yet to have a PC die in Adventure Paths I have run (which to be fair so far is only Age of Worms and most of RotRL).

I have had two PCs die in PFS scenarios I was running - the PCs had a cleric who kept channelling positive energy at exactly the wrong times (without Selective Channel), so they reduced a couple of low-level enemy warrior types to allmost-but-not-quite down about four times, and then healed them back up again.

By the end, they had done enough damage to take them down about five times over, but they were all still standing, and three of the PCs weren't. So the one PC still standing grabbed the unconcious halfling PC (the one he could carry) and ran for it, leaving the other two PCs to their fate.

Also had a couple of near misses (right around the same time) where we thought the PCs were dead, but it turned out to be an error. One player thought his character had drowned, but that was because he thought his character fell unconcious at zero hp rather than -1.

And there was another case where the last monster in a scenario had a fascinate power that was not ended on an attack, and the PCs managed to reduce him to 1 hp before he managed to fascinate them all at once. Thereby leading to a TPK until, until I realised that I had forgotten to apply the 4-player adjustment. Which was -20 hp, so rather than being on 1 hp the enemy was long dead. Cue swift retcon!

_
glass.

[HighLordNiteshade]

Claxon wrote:

Honestly I tend to just fudge rolls in the players favor if it gets that close. I know that's controversial, but it's the truth.

I always like it to be challenging for the players but dealing with a dead character is a pain, so I tended to fudge more back before we moved to a virtual tabletop. Now the rolls / damage are auto applied, so I tend to fudge a lot less because it is difficult to do so. Also, I am running Rappan Athuk right now so multiple character deaths are in keeping with the theme of the module. The party lost 2 NPCs (folks they had rescued) over the past 2 nights, and nearly lost 2 PCs over the same period (each was down to 1 hp and survived, but not for a lack of trying to get killed). ;-)

[awbattles]

I’ve played several campaigns into mid-levels, and one AP to completion, and it seems to depend substantially on the GM. The completed AP, I never died, but my party had about 7 deaths total. Current AP (Kingmaker) we’ve had about 6 deaths so far, and we’re level 3 (different GM, we voted early on to have a “no punches pulled” game). So it varies wildly. Personally, I don’t enjoy my games as much when there isn’t a real threat of death, so this current campaign is excellent in my mind. Yeah, we lost several characters, but that was largely due to poorly optimized builds (like, below average, not “failing to power game”) and getting a feel for what kinds of things you can pull. I now know that the GM will absolutely allow us to attempt fights that we have no chance of winning and it’s up to us to recognize when we’ve skipped too far ahead and just retreat, something we’ve never done in the past. By level 10, save-or-dies are definitely a thing, so players have to ensure they’re keeping saves high and positioning tactically (a lot of those spells are devastating, but only if the player fails AND is left in an exposed position).

[Mark Hoover 330]

The players in my campaigns are all older adults and vets of TTRPGs and PF1 specifically. They don't have issues with resource management so the few deaths I've had over the years have mainly been due to players not deciding to "nova" when they should have.

The current "high level" (if you can call just hitting level 10 "high level") game however makes me nervous. As I said, deaths in the past have been down to players just holding onto their resources too tightly. The current adventure involves demons.

I'd telegraphed the outsiders' involvement months ago. As the current adventure started I outright warned the players. Their first brush with demonic minions, the PCs had a night's sleep before diving into the real meat of the quest. Unfortunately they decided to push forward with their standard adventuring resources.

These PCs typically rely on melee attacks boosted, in part, with Acid damage and Poison. They also resolve combats through direct damage spells/alchemical attacks that deal energy damage (Acid, Fire). The party is knowingly continuing this trend and has had to grind through minions with Immunity: Poison and Resist Acid and Fire 10.

There have been more than a few grumbles.

Now that they're headed for the final boss they have most of their offensive resources still intact, though these will likely not avail them. Much of their healing resources have been burned through though. The druid still has many spells, a couple of which are healing/condition mitigation spells, so that's fine.

However it occurred to me throughout the course of the current adventure: this group has made it all the way to level 10 without once having a Haste spell on them; rarely using party-wide buffs such as Bless or the "bardbarian's" inspire ability. It is equally rare that anyone puts any force multipliers or buffs on said "bardbarian" so her DPR comes purely from her own Rage, feats and magic items.

In short, I think they're woefully ill-prepared for this fight.

I suppose I started this thread to see if the PCs' continued survival was due to a fluke or if this was common until characters begin facing monsters around CR 11 or higher.

Also, I've counseled my players through email re: dealing with demons. There's not much their characters can do at this point but should they survive this final encounter I need for them to start looking at the spells and resources of their characters and maybe rethink some of their tactics. I want them to have the best chance for success in combat but at the same time I refuse to go easy on them. If I tell you flat out that demons are coming and your characters have the chance to research what this means, and you STILL show up with weak defenses and attacks that do little to defeat your foes... well, have your back up characters ready I guess.

As for death being a revolving door yes; I have no problem with that in my games. I've never expressed it in that way but, for example when the Wizard (Void Specialist) 5 died several months back I turned to the player in-game and asked if he wanted that character to return or if he'd rather make a new one, b/c there was a fey ally his death had earned the party and said fey could get the wizard's body to a nearby temple where an NPC high-cleric could be summoned to cast Raise Dead. The player chose instead to bring in a new character but all my players are aware that with enough money or levels, death is an inconvenience in my campaigns.

[Mark Hoover 330]

awbattles wrote:

I’ve played several campaigns into mid-levels, and one AP to completion, and it seems to depend substantially on the GM. The completed AP, I never died, but my party had about 7 deaths total. Current AP (Kingmaker) we’ve had about 6 deaths so far, and we’re level 3 (different GM, we voted early on to have a “no punches pulled” game). So it varies wildly. Personally, I don’t enjoy my games as much when there isn’t a real threat of death, so this current campaign is excellent in my mind. Yeah, we lost several characters, but that was largely due to poorly optimized builds (like, below average, not “failing to power game”) and getting a feel for what kinds of things you can pull. I now know that the GM will absolutely allow us to attempt fights that we have no chance of winning and it’s up to us to recognize when we’ve skipped too far ahead and just retreat, something we’ve never done in the past. By level 10, save-or-dies are definitely a thing, so players have to ensure they’re keeping saves high and positioning tactically (a lot of those spells are devastating, but only if the player fails AND is left in an exposed position).

My games are homebrew. I generally run everything by RAW with few situations deviating from the standard rules. This also means however that most monsters are straight out of the Bestiaries. Couple that with veteran players, average to powerful builds and decent resource management and the threat of death is actually pretty rare.

One of my campaigns is Lost City of Barakus, the same folks that gave us PF1 Rappan Athuk. Needless to say, their encounter style is much different from mine. Regardless, the PCs have rarely ended up getting in over their heads.

The one time they had to retreat though, and the few times monsters have tried to retreat from PCs in my games however, the mechanics are just brutal. Monsters often have enough move to keep pace with slower PCs, which in turn means PCs chasing monsters can usually catch them. Then if you want a foe to use a spell or SU ability to help them flee you have to make sure the PCs aren't close enough to AoO. Considering in all 3 of my games the players have a good balance of ranged, melee and spell-attacking characters it is often likely that if a foe tries escaping it's defeated before it completes the action.

[yukongil]

heck...I've killed the same character in back to back rounds...

[gnoams]

There are several jumps in power and play that new/inexperienced players are likely unaware of. These shifts are pretty similar (and mostly inherited from) D&d 3e.

Levels 1-5, anything goes. You can make the worst character ever, and still manage to succeed against level appropriate challenges in the low levels. This is largely due to the fact that numbers are low in the early levels. The gap between the good and the bad bonuses aren't as high, and DCs are under 20, so you can always roll a dice and get lucky, even if you don't have any bonus. Healing is decent in these early levels, and can often keep up with damage, or at least mitigate enough to be well worth using in combat.

In the 5-10 range damage spikes as characters are taking multiple attacks. Spells like fly, darkness, black tentacles, improved invisibility, are all coming on line at this point and are game changers that the players need to know exist and be able to counter, or they'll be completely hosed. Healing in this range has a hard time keeping up with damage. Bad builds flounder and have a hard time surviving or contributing.

At level 11, the Heal spell comes online and suddenly healing is useful in combat again. Players have access to breath of life and raise dead as well, so death becomes readily surmountable. Save or die spells like suffocation or flesh to stone are easily available. Martials who focus on AC can easily become hit only on a nat 20. Martials focusing on raw damage are easily dropping enemies in a single full attack. These are the rocket tag levels with combats lasting 1-2 rounds.

There's another shift in the late game somewhere around level 18, where AC reaches a cap, but attack bonuses continue to scale. 9th level spells allow for shenanigans, but spell DCs have capped while enemy saves continue to go up, making anything that allows a save less and less likely to land. Damage is starting to plateau as well, while hp continue going up. Combats start lasting more than 2 rounds again. Modifiers are so large at this point and vary so much that you will auto fail or auto succeed on a lot of rolls. This last bump often gets even veteran players because most people rarely play in this range. Builds that worked extremely well up to this point can cease to function at the end game.

So yes, it's entirely possible that your players can do fine up to a point and suddenly start floundering as the game advanced, but the players didn't change up their tactics, or design their pc builds to handle the new threats.

[Marius Castille]

The last game ran from 1st to 8th level with four PCs (archer ranger, universalist wizard, nature cleric, hungry ghost monk). Monk died twice (got swarmed in melee). There was a fifth player in the early levels whose bard died.

Ballparking it, one PC death every three levels isn't unheard of in my group. We do mostly homebrew and I'll say that a lot of deaths occur because of a combination of low level (1-5) plus bad luck (crits are a thing) and because WBL and the big 6 items aren't always available. These last two things hurts some classes more than others (like our monk).

[Matthew Downie]

Frequency of death depends more on the GM's style than anything else.
If death is more common at high levels, this is probably a consequence of (a) Save or Die effects, and (b) Raise Dead is available, so the GM feels able to stop being so gentle with the PCs.

[TxSam88]

What do you consider to be "death?
Below zero hit points and dying?
Or actually at -Con and dead?
Completely dead and no way to resurrect etc?

This also depends on party build, player experience, homebrew vs Adventure path etc.

My group has played together for almost 30 years, we are highly experienced, and always have a good healer in the party, and we typically have a character get to zero hit points maybe 3-4 times in a campaign, actually get to -CON maybe 2 or 3 times, and actually Die and not be revivable by spells maybe once every other campaign. Once your healer gets high enough level to bring dead people back to life, character death is a non-issue. so most permanent deaths are always low level.

[Matthew Downie]

TxSam88 wrote:

Once your healer gets high enough level to bring dead people back to life, character death is a non-issue.

I suspect you haven't experienced as many TPKs as I have.

[TxSam88]

Matthew Downie wrote:

TxSam88 wrote:

Once your healer gets high enough level to bring dead people back to life, character death is a non-issue.

I suspect you haven't experienced as many TPKs as I have.

never had a TPK, we always have a really good cleric in the party.

[Mark Hoover 330]

TxSam88 wrote:

What do you consider to be "death?

Below zero hit points and dying?
Or actually at -Con and dead?
Completely dead and no way to resurrect etc?

This also depends on party build, player experience, homebrew vs Adventure path etc.

My group has played together for almost 30 years, we are highly experienced, and always have a good healer in the party, and we typically have a character get to zero hit points maybe 3-4 times in a campaign, actually get to -CON maybe 2 or 3 times, and actually Die and not be revivable by spells maybe once every other campaign. Once your healer gets high enough level to bring dead people back to life, character death is a non-issue. so most permanent deaths are always low level.

You're right, I should define my terms. By "death" I mean if a PC hits - Con and is mechanically dead. Hitting 0 or neg. HP happens often to the martial PCs across my 3 campaigns, but generally they stabilize or get enough healing the next round to continue on.

Also I homebrew most of the time. One of my current games is FGG's Lost City of Barakus, another uses that setting, but most of the time I'm creating all my own adventures. My players currently are experienced vets of TTRPGs and specifically PF1, but one death years ago happened with a player new to the game.

I don't want this to sound too "Killer GM" like, but maybe I'm not trying hard enough.

What I mean is that most fights I create are what I consider "average" fights for the PCs. For example in my Barakus campaign, we decided as a group to change the Slow progression to Medium so I'm customizing a lot of fights. The PCs in the last game were close to level 5, hitting that level by the end of the session, and I keep a pretty close watch on WBL so they have the right items for their level.

We have an unchained monk, unchained rogue, a paladin and a wizard (Fire specialist). The paladin was built to choose a Large sized mount with Trample. Finally, they hired an NPC cleric 2 for healing and (eventually) condition mitigation. These are all experienced players (as I mentioned before) and we rolled stats, so the characters are highly optimized. For all of these reasons I'd gauge an "average" fight to be around a CR 5.

Fights I've made though have been things like an ogre accompanying a pair of gnolls, a handful of gnolls led by a gnoll adept 4 and 2 gnoll warrior 1, x2 Dire Weasels, and a band of ghouls, a ghast, and a hobgoblin cleric 4. Most of these were CR 5-6, I tried on most to have a mix of ranged and melee attacks, and used what I thought were good strategies, with minions giving their fellows or leaders Flanking and Aid Another bonuses.

However, and this is where I wonder if I'm not trying hard enough, the bad guys don't do really "bad" things like training all fire on the wizard or NPC, sundering specific items the PCs are carrying, or targeting the wizard's little dragon-like familiar. None of the baddies have been built to exploit a PC's weakness. For example, 2 PCs, the NPC, and the paladin's mount all have pretty lackluster Ref saves. A single enemy arcane caster with 6 levels and access to a Fireball spell could dump an average 21 damage spell on the party, likely to affect at least one of these targets with full damage, and put a major hurt on the PCs.

My players are having fun. That's the important thing. I just wonder if maybe I should be offering more challenge that mostly melee attackers with some ranged backup and rare magic wielders of low-to-average individual power. When I asked how often PCs die in games, it was yet another attempt to pulse-check my own design style and say "am I doing it right?"

[TxSam88]

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

TxSam88 wrote:

What do you consider to be "death?

Below zero hit points and dying?
Or actually at -Con and dead?
Completely dead and no way to resurrect etc?

This also depends on party build, player experience, homebrew vs Adventure path etc.

My group has played together for almost 30 years, we are highly experienced, and always have a good healer in the party, and we typically have a character get to zero hit points maybe 3-4 times in a campaign, actually get to -CON maybe 2 or 3 times, and actually Die and not be revivable by spells maybe once every other campaign. Once your healer gets high enough level to bring dead people back to life, character death is a non-issue. so most permanent deaths are always low level.

You're right, I should define my terms. By "death" I mean if a PC hits - Con and is mechanically dead. Hitting 0 or neg. HP happens often to the martial PCs across my 3 campaigns, but generally they stabilize or get enough healing the next round to continue on.

Also I homebrew most of the time. One of my current games is FGG's Lost City of Barakus, another uses that setting, but most of the time I'm creating all my own adventures. My players currently are experienced vets of TTRPGs and specifically PF1, but one death years ago happened with a player new to the game.

I don't want this to sound too "Killer GM" like, but maybe I'm not trying hard enough.

What I mean is that most fights I create are what I consider "average" fights for the PCs. For example in my Barakus campaign, we decided as a group to change the Slow progression to Medium so I'm customizing a lot of fights. The PCs in the last game were close to level 5, hitting that level by the end of the session, and I keep a pretty close watch on WBL so they have the right items for their level.

We have an unchained monk, unchained rogue, a paladin and a wizard (Fire specialist). The paladin was built to choose a Large sized mount with Trample. Finally, they hired an NPC cleric 2 for healing and...

ok, so 4 level 5 characters, plus a mount and a hired Cleric, all optimized with experienced players. for my players I would need a CR 7-8 encounter to be a challenge for that party.

From my experience, 4 level 5 characters with casual level experienced gamers, which are not optimized, and not optimum mix of characters will be challenged by a CR 5 encounter. Optimizing characters would need CR6, experienced players with optimum party mix would bump to CR7 and since you effectively have 2 extra party members (the mount and cleric), is would push to CR8.

as for targeting the wizard, the familiar, sundering etc. I would advise against that for the most part, unless your party is up against a particular bad guy who knows about them and is actively working against them, a standard encounter would't have the fore knowledge or the training to to do that, especially ogres and gnolls, etc.

[gnoams]

Everyone's having fun, so you're doing it right.

[spacemonkeyDM]

I roll all my dice in the open so no room for fudging.

What I do instead is everyone has one reroll each game. They can use it to cause a re-roll of any players d20 roll or my roll as the GM. This has kept death pretty low.

Before this we would lose about 2 characters per adventure it seemed. A lot of close calls.

[Cevah]

Player: Too often.
GM: Not often enough.

/cevah