So I've been running a 5th ed D&D game, and I have trouble killing characters.

At least, I had the idea originally that this would be a fairly deadly game. And it has often been tough for the PCs. They each took two PCs in a sort of mini-funnel with the idea that they might die. However, thus far, only one has died.

Compared to early editions, it's hard for a single PC to die without the whole party dying. There are a lot of options to keep a PC alive. And if it looks like the whole party might die, I'm usually a little lenient and give them a chance at something that will save them - like a last-minute negotiation, or a chance that a severely damaged enemy will retreat. Thus far, they've been lucky in those.

It's not like it's a critical problem, but it is something I'm pondering - and I'm wondering what other people's experience is with this.

Yeah pretty much. Unless you go deliberately out of your way to finish someone off, which doesn't happen a lot in my cases, if I play the creatures realistically.

Like if an Owlbear downs a PC and gets them to 0, sure, if left alone it's going to bite into him and finish him off. But he's not alone; there's an entire party still attacking it. So the Owlbear will likely leave that PC alone and focus on the others, and while that's happening it's easy for someone to run in there and use a medicine kit or heal them.

I ran Tomb of Horrors for my group with four 10th level PCs. In that onslaught, I had two characters die and two others in the middle of the dungeon with almost certain death awaiting them. Now obviously this was a pretty difficult dungeon and it's definitely known for being lethal, still some of their decisions combined with rolls caused death.

In standard play with 1st level characters, I haven't seen any PC deaths yet but we've only played a few sessions of the Hoard of the Dragon Queen supplement.

We lost an NPC last session--ghouls paralyzed him, then tore him to bits right in front of his comrades.

My son lost the first character he ever made to wolves--4 wolves, 4 of us... he died.

In both cases, the party Cleric ignored their fallen comrade, the former, because the Cleric's deity isn't especially devoted to life, the latter because he had his own problems fighting off the wolves.

It's more lethal than I thought...

It was similar in 4e too. Essentially, its either TPK or everyone alive. On saying that, being taken down is easier so there feeling of risk remains high. I personally think this is a good balance to achieve.

Wolves and anything with multi-attack can be real terrors in 5e.

Wolves because of the knock prone ability. Once they get you down things tend to go to heck ASAP of you cant get up or be saved.

Multi-Attack capable creatures can take you to the threshold of death without even trying. The creature directs its attacks on a PC. First one takes down the character and the followup if it hits, and it has advantage right there, counts as two failed death saves.

Just because the first attack downed the character I do not have the monster up and decide to redirect the second to someone else unless they are in reach and the creature wasnt focused on that downed character.

IE: I do not like changing targets once I have committed a monster to a task. There are times when changing targets is appropriate. Like monsters that want prisoners or have some trait that makes them rampage off after new targets once one is down.

You'll find that the maths behind 5E work much better if you play your monsters like players use their characters.

The secret here isn't numbers or even multiple attacks, but having your creatures gang up on one of the player characters. Don't divvy them up; have them run up and surround the weakest character.

Quote from: ZWEIHÄNDER;876813The secret here isn't numbers or even multiple attacks, but having your creatures gang up on one of the player characters. Don't divvy them up; have them run up and surround the weakest character.

Yerp. I've noted in other threads just how lethal groups can be to a PC. Had a bunch of kobold slingers wittling away at the dwarf wizard early in the 5e campaign. If theyd dropped him theyd have likely pelted him to death. Or my oft mentioned encounter with the pack of wolves. Allways damn wolves! heh.

Three kobolds focused on one character can be a death sentence in a single round.

Circumstance is a big factor too for intelligent foes. Is whaling on this downed adventurer worth more than turning and smaking the still standing adventurer who is going to turn me into gibblets if I dont drop him too? Or. This downed adventurer killed my buddy and Im going to make sure hes not getting up!

Quote from: Skywalker;876789It was similar in 4e too. Essentially, its either TPK or everyone alive. On saying that, being taken down is easier so there feeling of risk remains high. I personally think this is a good balance to achieve.

Just to counterpoint

I've had more characters die in 4e than I've had in 3.PF or 5e. I'm not entirely sure why, though I suspect it was a combination of dumb heroics (I have my second wind and two dailies left....CHARGE!!) or just poor rolls.

Quote from: ZWEIHÄNDER;876813You'll find that the maths behind 5E work much better if you play your monsters like players use their characters.

The secret here isn't numbers or even multiple attacks, but having your creatures gang up on one of the player characters. Don't divvy them up; have them run up and surround the weakest character.

Yes, I always have them surround the weakest character, but I haven't had them keep hitting opponents after they're down.

That's a little weird on the rules part. The rules say that "most DMs" have a monster die when it hits zero hit points, and that's how we played it in previous campaigns. So it's not clear that monsters should have tactics to keep hitting things after they are down. However, I don't like rules that apply only to PCs, so I'm thinking of changing that.

RAW characters can easily die at 1-2 level, becomes near impossible after that.  The only time a character died after the first couple levels, it was a long enough fight that they died due to three strikes rule.  Get a life cleric in there and a second character with some first aid and it's ridiculous.  Not quite Fantasy Supers/Wuxia like 4e but pretty bad.

Quote from: jhkim;876833Yes, I always have them surround the weakest character, but I haven't had them keep hitting opponents after they're down.

That's a little weird on the rules part. The rules say that "most DMs" have a monster die when it hits zero hit points, and that's how we played it in previous campaigns. So it's not clear that monsters should have tactics to keep hitting things after they are down. However, I don't like rules that apply only to PCs, so I'm thinking of changing that.

It's not like the monsters in-game necessarily know the creature is dead. They just saw it hit the ground.

Imagine if you're in a fight with someone and you knock them down. You're probably going to keep hitting them a few more times before you realize they're dead.

Quote from: jhkim;876833Yes, I always have them surround the weakest character, but I haven't had them keep hitting opponents after they're down.

That's a little weird on the rules part. The rules say that "most DMs" have a monster die when it hits zero hit points, and that's how we played it in previous campaigns. So it's not clear that monsters should have tactics to keep hitting things after they are down. However, I don't like rules that apply only to PCs, so I'm thinking of changing that.

You totally need to have monsters hit characters that are down...there's plenty of healing in the game world, and I'm *sure* even semi-intelligent monsters know that just because something lays down, doesn't mean it's dead.

Hit 'em when they're down...monsters are evil, after all.

I'm running two 5e games, and a PC dies at least every other session in both. Heck, I had a player lose 2 characters in the same night.

Deaths are common enough that I tell players to have a back-up character ready, to minimize down time.

Do you guys think doing that kind of thing detracts from a "heroic" game? Some of my players like games like Critical Role (good stuff) where it's the DM's job to make the players be heroic. But I think if I just went at every downed PC with the long knives they would think it's not giving them the chance to be heroic.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;876863Do you guys think doing that kind of thing detracts from a "heroic" game? Some of my players like games like Critical Role (good stuff) where it's the DM's job to make the players be heroic. But I think if I just went at every downed PC with the long knives they would think it's not giving them the chance to be heroic.

I wasn't wild about it at first, the whole "hit 'em when they're down" is a bit alien to an old school player, where healing spells were limited, close range and could be countered.

But now healing is plentiful, long range, and unstoppable. The rules affect my game world...when a king dies, there's no succession until it's certain he's not getting raised. Assassination attempts are not about "poisoned wine" or "sniper arrows"...because everyone knows that such attempts are laughably stupid in a world where a raise dead is just around the corner.

Most fights only involve the players against half a dozen monsters or so. When a PC goes down, that means there will usually be two or so player actions before the monsters can hit the guy who's down. Yes, there are exceptions (multi-attack monsters), but it takes 2 hits on a downed character to kill hiim...a player with few hit points should be pretty wary about going toe-to-toe against the rare monster with 3 attacks a round.

In short: yea, it seems odd at first. But you have to adapt the rules. If "heroic" to you means PCs bouncing up and down like Weebles (and I had players exploit the system like that, before monsters started getting more vicious), then play that way.

I think it's more heroic when heroes are taking actual risks in combat.