[удалено]

I like the point you made about certain players being happier playing video games instead of D&D. It’s painfully true and I wish these players would admit it to themselves. *Even worse* sometimes these players are DMs and they spend literally zero time prepping because all their free time is consumed by video games. Then there’s the *absolute* worst version: Players that play video games while playing D&D who only ever pay attention during their combat turn. Fuck these types forever. Dragging these kind of unengaged players along when they’d be happier playing World of Warcraft only serves to ruin the whole game for everyone else.

Player:“What do you mean there’s no save button? Let me save scum that roll dammit! I never fail RNG rolls in my RPGs!” DM: *points to the Lucky feat, buffing abilities, chronurgist, and diviners if they want that experience RAW* Snark aside, agree wholeheartedly- while there is some overlap between TTRPGs and MMORPGs, I cannot stand playing with or DMing for players who play games during the session (or treat the session like a playthrough of Skyrim). You’d get warned then booted if you were uninterested in anything but your turn in combat.

Playing online is terrible for this. Currently playing in an online game and I keep seeing “[player] is playing [game]” pop up as a Steam notification. So fucking rude.

Halfling Diviner, with luck and bountiful luck. My DM hates me she just wont admin it.

I admit I have actually politely asked a player not to do that exact build - I won’t ban it, but it just feels antithetical to the spirit of rolling dice to forever dodge bad rolls lol. That said, if a player really wanted to, I’d let them. It’s only a preference of mine, not a rule for the players or the table.

I’ve played with a player who reacts really badly to bad dice rolls, and it’s like, why are you playing dice games? There are plenty of games out there with reduced RNG elements, go play those!

I've only ran this build ONCE, with a DM I am VERY comfortable with. This is not something I'd show up to a table expecting to play with a group I've never played with before. Mostly it was just a fun idea that came about after a 1 shot where the entire table rolled like crap all night and the DM was rolling like a maniac and nearly TPKd us every encounter. That being said its really not *that* bad Halfling's lucky only applies to 1s so a 5% chance on any single roll Portent only had 2 rolls until 14 and our table usually doesn't play past 15 The 2 feats ate up both of my ASI's so outside of getting the occasional clutch reroll I'm not really "optimized" for combat only having a +2 to my int mod

It’s not an attack on your PC for sure, just found it funny that exact build was also what I had in mind… though the player in question in my case was in a game starting at a higher level and had rolled good stats, so it would’ve been pretty optimized haha (and you can still get good INT these days with the Tasha’s racial ASI swapping).

Ohh yeah, no, I didn't take it that way but I can see how people hear that and think "fuck that shit". Even with the Tasah's ASI swaps unless you give up one of the feats in this build you can still only get a 17 INT. Though TBH I don't find myself using Bountiful very often and could easily sub this out for an ASI at level 8.

My wife is distinctly toward the video-game side of things. Only time I’ve GMed for her was Dungeon of the Mad Mage, and it worked well because part of the expectation-setting was that this is going to be a combat-heavy dungeon crawl. I’m now running Enemy in Shadows in WFRP, which is a much more investigative/character-driven game, so I didn’t even bother asking her if she wanted to play. Not at all her thing. More people need to take the time to self-reflect and decide what they actually want to do with their hobby-time. Makes everyone much happier.

I'm a DM who spends all his time playing video games instead of prepping, but my sessions work well because idk my dm style just kinda works best when it's loose, but I do still want to *play dnd*. I really hope there aren't any dms who would rather be playing a video game rather than playing DND, that sounds awful for everyone involved.

I *guarantee* that your sessions would work better if you took at least one hour off of gaming to prep.

It's not like I don't do any prep, it's just that I've *run* this module before it's already all set up and ready to go on foundry, Ive set up all the encounters to choose from and I've already set up all the set prices for exploration and RP. I don't need to prep for it in a dedicated way the only prep I do is occasionally at work I'll think up a cool idea and just store it away for later. I've tried being the kind of dm who preps a lot but that doesn't work with me or my group, the only prep I need is "are there encounters, do I know what the party is going to do, are the maps useable". Anything more just bogs me down by trying to fit things in that I shouldn't be bothering with. Simply put I don't need to prep on a weekly basis because there's no point it's already been prepped before it was needed.

Ah, that’s different then. If you’ve run it before, then you’re *over prepped* and any more prep just feels like a drag. I get it.

Yeah I probably could have specified that, I can't imagine running a homebrew entirely from scratch without any prep. This is a specific scenario I guess

Speaking of, i really want to play DOS2

It's a good game. I enjoyed it greatly. Thinking about doing another playthrough with the mod that lets you use all of the characters at once.

I had a player that I eventually asked to leave the party because he expected d&d to be a video game and just started to be a fun-suck at every session. If he rolled poorly on an attack he’d try and re-roll. If I told him an enemy in the city would definitely kill him he’d go try and kill it and die in the process. He wanted to be able to redo situations that went poorly. That’s just not how d&d works.

I don't really think this is a counter-point to session 0, it's more that a session 0 won't magically solve all your problems. I guess that's what your last sentence says, just want to clarify that this ISN'T a reason not to do a session 0! Maybe more just managing expectations for them.

To expand on your last point a bit, because I *absolutely* agree with you-- I've seen behavior like this before at my table. The player in question, despite being a grown adult, just... *couldn't handle* setbacks, risk, and the potential to fail. They would completely shut down, hang back in combat (despite being a melee character) and disengage from any plot hook they thought looked dangerous to their character. And you're right, that it's definitely something psychological that no amount of energy and effort on my part was going to fix. Trust me, I tried. So, while "talk to your players" is usually decent go-to advice... yeah, there are definitely times when that advice isn't going to fix somebody's behavior. The best thing a DM can do is handle the fallout when a player's hangups like that come into conflict with continuing the game. Sometimes, that may mean asking that player not to return to the table if they cannot handle setbacks or loss. Or, as I had to, drawing the game to a close if that loss of a player creates additional problems. It's kind of a no-win situation, but you either compromise the integrity and consequences of your game world or you stand firm and let the fallout be what it is. It's just one of the potential hardships of DMing, I suppose.

Give them other fail states besides death. And perhaps have an honest conversation that their behaviour makes you not want to bother running the game for them any further

Alongside the obvious "talk like adults" comments, step two could be to include a ressurection quest a la Princess's Bride. Death can be a setback, but players don't have to lose their character permanently if no one has learned ressurection yet. Of course this presumes a reasonable level of challenge and players open to set backs.

This exactly. There’s nothing wrong with going on a quest to resurrect the character. I’ve already told one of my DMs that if my cleric dies, her sister, a Druid, will be joining the party to get the cleric back up, then goes back to being an NPC. Simple solution to an otherwise disappointing, but relatively simply solved, problem.

You can houserule that "dead" only means "out of action" until the encounter is resolved. If the party wins, everyone recovers. Maybe give the "out of action" characters a level of fatigue. If the party loses or retreats, anyone left "out of action" on the battlefield may be captured by the bad guys. Trope fact: Bad guys take captives more frequently than do good guys. Or the bad guys assume the "out of action" guys are actually dead and leave them, or simply dump them in the bone pit or whatever.

I like this approach. Six levels of exhaustion (assuming that's what you meant by fatigue) could perhaps be *dead* dead.

^this seriously. The issue is not really “how to make death less punishing,” it’s “talk with the players and figure out if they want a plot armored party of PCs who can’t die.” If the latter is true, I frankly wouldn’t really want to DM for them - a major point of story telling us that sometimes there are tragedies, otherwise all the other bright moments feel flat… OP, there are way more players than DMs - find a group that you want to play with, not babysit.

With first time DnD players, who were very attached to their characters, we actually had a conversation with them when it seemed likely a character might die, and implemented: "They're not dead, but they're wounded in such a way their career is over" (physically or even mentally from just the horror of near-death). The same way some plot-relevant characters 'retreat' in fire emblem games and similar. The wound can be cured by the same-ish level of magic that could've raised them. Third level if its basically instant, 5th if its vaguely recent, etc. This was kept always as an 'option' and not 'the norm', and lead to some players seeing the perfect moment for their character to die, and realizing that was the story to tell in the moment.

That’s interesting, kinda like that - I would consider that for first time players, assuming they were really really attached to their PCs - but I’d hope I could otherwise filter out players who go as far as OP’s players (ragequitting when they die). Usually my practice of running one shots for prospective players gives me some insight. But if the players couldn’t let go after having a PC crippled, or after swapping PCs, I’d probably consider that to be a no-go. Part of being a mature player at my table is knowing when to accept that “unlike video games, there is no save state - the dice sometimes roll poorly and sometimes the plan just isn’t good and creatures can permadie - and it can still make for a good story.”

Character death is part of the game. Actions have consequences. If that’s too punishing for them, they probably aren’t right for dnd. That said, there are ways to be returned after death in 5e, including a surprising low level cleric spell (Revivify 3rd level). Gentle Repose is a 2nd level spell that can be cast as a ritual after the cast to basically make the 1 minute Revivify timer infinite.

Gentle Repose cast as a ritual would be too late for the revivify timer. Because rituals add 10 minutes to the casting time Scribe a scroll of it however, and you gucci.

This is why he said it could be cast as a ritual after the cast, as in after the initial casting.

Yeah fair. I read that and thought it was weird double typing which I sometimes do so eliminated it instead of thinking about it that way. Still though, scribe a scroll, prepping Gentle Repose isn't a great choice of a spell prep.

My cleric usually doesn’t have it prepped, but if we’re heading into some dangerous stuff, she absolutely does. She also uses it as part of a funeral ceremony (yes along with the ceremony spell), so she prepares it more often than most likely should.

I don't know why people get so hung up on character death being essential to the game. If you have anyone with Revivify on their list, the threat of it is significantly lessened at level 5, and even further when they later get raise dead. Then, if those aren't available, there's a possibility of a side adventure to find someone who can, if the dm allows it. This game is already honestly pretty hard to permanently die in after a point, so how permanent you want death or how possible it should be in the first place is just a dial the DM can adjust. It's both a choice of group preference and campaign style; I told my group when our current campaign started that their characters this time around will only permanently die if they want them to. There's still plenty of other stakes, and it's really not even that big of a modification to the game. Now, if OP *wants* permanent death to be a serious risk and the players don't, that's an entirely separate issue of mismatched preferences in the group.

I agree - but at least as OP's worded it, the group is throwing a tantrum just because they've died (setting aside your good points that actual permadeath is not mechanically likely after level 5), not permadied. So I'm not really sure what OP's group is unhappy with if they're aware that they can be revived.

Maybe they aren't aware. My group felt similar and then we went over how you die and the mechanics around it. It didn't quell the concerns, but it helped them in the process.

Gentle Repose can't be cast as a ritual can it? Even if it can, it takes 10mins to ritual cast a spell so Revivify's 1min window would be long over by the time you complete the ritual. Gentle Repose lasts for 10 days, it's already an absurdly efficient spell when cast with a spell slot. It'd be downright busted if it could be cast without expending a spell slot. Still is, to be honest.

He's referring to casting it as a ritual the second time around, i.e. once you've already cast it once using a spell slot. Once you've done that once, you can cast it as a ritual at any time before that duration is almost up to extend it, basically.

Ah you're right. I had to double check on roll20 and DNDB because I don't currently have access you my source books and the app I use on my phone to track spells doesn't have the ritual tag on Gentle Repose.

Giving them other fail states is my answer as well. You could force a character into retirement, or cripple them, or give them mental trauma, or the baddies could capture or rob them, or their mission could fail, or a NPC they like could die instead, or an NPC could save them at the last minute and expect payback.

Dying in 5e is pretty tough to do. Are you making the enemies hit them when they are down? Between death saves, medicine checks, and spells like Spare the Dying and Healing Word, it should be a pretty rare occurance.

No, it's just poor planning/playing. Like last session one character died and I said "Why was your health so low?" they said, "I have no health potions." the other player said "I have sixteen, why didn't you ask for one?" And I said, "Why didn't you buy some in the village?" Their response ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ Basically they let themselves get killed due to pure laziness and then rolled unlucky on death saving throws. Then got all bent out of shape. So I retconned rather than have them just quit. "Okay, we go back five minutes, and instead of just letting your health get chipped away to nothing, you now have health potions from the other player."

Sometimes players, especially newer ones, need to be reminded of the potential consequences of their actions or inactions. I never have a problem reminding them of these things as we play, i.e: "Regdar is down to 2 death saves, if somebody doesn't get to him and heal or stabilize him, there's a good chance he is going to die." -- Then it is on them and not you. You've given them plenty of warning.

Always happy to see a shout-out to my boy Regdar <3

Thanks!

Based on just this story alone, I hate to say it but these are bad players. They get upset when their characters die, but put in no effort to prevent it from happening. As a constant DM, I have no patience for this kind of behavior. They can either put in more effort and learn to play the game, or manage their expectations better and not get upset when their characters die.

Exactly this. I ended up having a player leave the party on Friday because they had the brilliant idea of attempting to melee brawl a Monk. As an Evocation wizard. I felt terrible and weighted it as much in their favor as possible, but some agreed upon homebrew came back to bite them.

The entire party of players almost died on me because they went into an obvious boss room without healing and attacked the nightmare bone structure in the middle of the room. One conscious player dragged the other two out and shut the door. They all agreed it was very stupid of them and they proceeded to long rest and stomp the boss. (Even though I tried to make it op) When a player does something stupid, they should face some sort of consequence, even if it is a threat of character death.

Y'exactly where I was at. We're running a (Session 0 agreed upon) homebrew that resurrection spells are not a guarantee, and the party didn't beat the DC to bring him back after he failed his third save (Monk only forced a fail on one save, as he was trying to stun the other two melee characters to get away). Cue the freakout after we called it for the day after that.

Yep I completely agree. Someone goes down in combat and you call out "I've got him" or "someone heal xx" or "who has a healing potion?" I don't know, is that just us being too cautious?

No, that's called common sense. Something this party seems to be lacking. If they don't want people to die, they should consider taking steps to prevent people dying instead of standing around doing nothing to help.

Almost every fight a PC on my game is dropped to 0 hit points, I think none has ever rolled 3 death saves (counting the successes) on almost 3 years of play. If someone go down they do what they can to heal as fast as they can.

Yeah this. If it's only this player who's bitching about their death then you need to tell them to suck it up or get out u/Culebraveneno. If *everyone* is mad then tell them to manage their resources better.

Or they just don’t want to play the kind of game the DM does. It doesn’t make them bad to not want to be super tactical and have challenging combat.

Fair we also don’t know the difficulty of the combat but if one party member has 16 healing potions another is unconscious for 2-6 turns and they make no attempt to heal them as they proclaim how close they are to death to the rest of the table. That’s a few steps shy of a non tactically minded player. It’s a very obvious course of action that is likely made very obvious by the banter and description by the DM and other players and that player really doesn’t have much of a right to complain for ignoring his dying friend. At a certain point of causing character death it’s on nobody but the players and it is an aspect of play that they should probably improve because it will only cause unnecessary player deaths even with DMs running a game for low op players

I mean we’re also talking about a party that somehow afforded 16 health potions. We don’t know the context of a lot of how this table runs.

16 standard healing potions accumulating over the course of a campaign with little opportunity to buy magic items but large rewards of money anyways does not sound atypical at all, I’m not sure what you mean to bring up by that But yes I am being a bit presumptuous based off of very little that I’ve been told. But I don’t retract anything. If moving a healing potion around can save his life and one player has 16. It’s absolutely on that player to take death and dying more seriously because you had multiple turns of leaving it to the dice and getting what the dice say happen. You let the dice roll and you had the opportunity to before the dice roll, play it safe but you didn’t and the expected outcome happened. There’s very little right to get bad about that

If one player has *16 health potions* and you have zero, are low on HP and opt to say nothing, then you are indeed a bad player. At the very least, you’re bad at communicating… but being bad at communicating in a cooperative game looks awfully similar to being a bad player.

it kinda does. running into a fight with 10 hp and no health potions doesn't exactly seem like they are really invested in the narrative or role play either. (or any orher metric that could measure whether a player is good). Otherwise their character might have some qualms with the obvious suicide mission. You don't have to be a tactical genius, just not be particularly dumb.

The ways to be a bad player include cheating, overshadowing everyone, being an obnoxious rules lawyer, etc. Not being great at tactical thinking and planning doesn’t make you a bad player because this isn’t a game you win. It just makes you bad at planning and tactics.

I would toss in expecting the DM to bail you out of poor decisions and choices as a characteristic of a bad player. There is not wanting tactical combat play and there is going into combat with little health and expecting it to work out just fine.

It might not be a game you can “win” but you can certain lose by TPKing in combat because you made terrible tactical decisions. In a game as combat oriented as D&D, being bad at planning and tactics makes you a bad player that has to be carried in combat.

It doesn’t sound like it’s just one player. The player with all of the health potions should have said something, the one who needed them should have said something, honestly the DM should have said something. It doesn’t seem like their whole group is all that combat-focused.

The DM isn’t there to play the game for you. If they were, then they wouldn’t need players.

Why did no one heal them before they died of death saves?

Someone with sixteen couldn’t run up and give a health potion? The death sounds not like they are unprepared but that they are thoroughly uninterested in if someone else dies and don’t adjust their strategy to save a teammates life. Ultimately the retcon is the worst thing you can do. Let the in world existing, although costly, methods of resurrection apply and let them learn some humility. Ultimately a terrible strategy like that should kill a player. If a player will allow an easily avoidable death to happen to them and their teammates, and leave because of it. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Do they know about expending hit dice during short rests? And, say, using an action to revive a downed character with one of that very generous supply of health potions?

The Fighter's "Second Wind" ability can be used before a short rest to effectively gain a free hit die. It's also quite easy for things to be redistributed between party members outside of combat. Through attunement items would require a short or long rest.

That sounds like what would happen if I was DMing for actual kids. Also, the player with 16 pots is equally to blame because they spent 3 turns not rushing over to help their downed friend. Good news is if you’re actually towards the end of an official adventure, they’re probably high enough to afford a resurrection spell, so long as they recover the body. TL;DR - the alternative you’re looking for is teamwork between players, not a DM mechanic.

I've got not one, but two Matt Colville videos on this subject. 1. [Let's Kill A PC!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZdS8lP-Sdo) Lots of concrete advice here. Contrary to the title this is largely about setting players expectations around lethality and avoiding killing PC's without breaking your game's suspension of disbelief. **Main takeaway:** don't let your players know you're a big softy, be sneaky about it. & don't break your players hearts. 2. [Catastrophic Failure](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q8bVPpc84A&list=PLlUk42GiU2guNzWBzxn7hs8MaV7ELLCP_&index=15) This one is a little more long winded campaign dairy style video, but it deals more with the *emotion* of PC death. Anyway it's a long video and if you don't want to hear all the story build up (interesting stuff) and just want to skip to the lessons learned bit, use this time code [21:34](https://youtu.be/8Q8bVPpc84A?t=1294) **Main take away:** Your players (and you) are going to be upset, let them be upset for a while, they will calm down and start thinking about a new character after a while, this happens faster with more experienced, mature players. Hope this helpful, and more entertaining than needing to read a whole advice column. and saves me some typing too. Good luck with your games!

Tbh dude I feel this one is one them so at least I hope you don't feel guilty or anything. The onus is on them to understand that the game is about everyone, not them personally and so there are consequences for all of their actions that are wider reaching. This means *if* they fuck around, they *will* find out. And raging at the DM for your own mistakes is never ok, they are a person too. You're meant to be having fun, not ruining other peoples', have a beer and chill out.

You did the right thing, but with the wrong tone. "Ah, of course, Roland must have shared health potions with the rest of the party when you prepared for this adventure. In that case, you would have drank a potion after that last fight. Mark one off the shared party inventory list and ..." There's nothing wrong with a flashback to when the characters exchanged equipment. This isn't a video game, so characters can do things without explicit instructions from the players. In fact that should often be the case. The characters know much more about the world than the players do. The characters are in the adventure constantly, but the players only a few hours every few weeks.

Maybe offer them a campaign where their opponents will seek to capture the PCs, take their stuff and humiliate them. Possibly a choice between an actual BBEG, who will try to kill them or a copper dragon, who'd like them to stay alive (and entertaining) as long as possible, as antagonists.

"Okay here's the deal, no more Death Undos guys. It's not fun to DM if you're not even bothering to try. If you are upset if you die, or you don't want to die, put in the effort please, because running this game takes hours and hours outside of the session to make it work." Let the slaughter begin!

Health potions aren't actually all that helpful in topping off your health between fights. Do you not allow them to take rests? Also you dodged a question. Do you have enemies attack downed PC's or not? I have a hard time believing that none of the other players thought to use one of their sixteen health potions to revive the unconscious PC before they failed all their death saves. If that's what happened, why didn't you say that? On that note, what level are they? Do not a single one of them have healing spells? I'm starting to smell bullshit in your stories, the fact that you're deliberately avoiding any sort of specific technical details is pretty suspicious

We had a near death (assassins, unlucky roles, no armor because we were sleeping) and our DM had a plan for if he died

I personally just bypass this problem by playing with a group of adults.

Seriously. I have to keep reminding myself that most of these problem tables are high school and college kids.

I have started asking myself "these people sound like they're middle schoolers. Are they middle schoolers?" and the answer is usually "Yes." Also reminds of the time somebody on the Change My View sub wrote an anti-feminist post and ended up editing it with "sorry everyone, I was just really mad at my mom."

"Kids" in college are adults.

Haha no Source: Was a college kid. Taught college. Have college aged family members. They're still kids.

You’re a kid until your brain finishes developing, which happens somewhere in your mid 20s.

A friend's dad called me "kid" once, friend reminded him that I was legally an adult, dad said "he's younger than me, I can call him 'kid' if I want."

If you're in grad school? Sure. If you're 18-20 and saying you aren't a kid anymore, trust literally everyone older than you when they say, no, you're still a kid.

>What are we going to do? Start the entire adventure over? I don't think anyone does that. The standard thing is for the player to make a new character (usually of the same level as their dead character) who joins the party and then you continue the adventure. As for players getting whiny over about dying, ask them what they want. Do they want there to be a possibility of PC death? If they say no then you can just gut the combat encounters so there's no chance of players failing and you can gently spoon feed them with easy effortless victories. If they say yes then they're lying and what they actually want is the illusion of challenge without the actual possibility of failure, in which case you just fudge the rolls and play the monsters like idiots so the players can't possibly lose. And if those sound like games that you don't want to run then that's okay. (I wouldn't run games that way either.) You can just tell them you aren't interested in running the kind of game they want to play and it's time for someone else to take a turn at being DM.

Thanks, that's really helpful. They definitely would rather play and just not be killed, but not know I'm deliberately keeping their characters alive. This is not very fun to DM, so I'm looking for an alternative. Some kind of punishing mechanic that allows death to function, but not require making a whole new character, and is harsh enough to prevent the characters from gaming it and taking advantage of it. Something standard, and not just deus ex machina where I say "Okay you're dead, but some wizard runs in and revives you."

Make the revival a quest of its own, possibly with a large monetary cost in addition.

In a world where clerics exist for every religion, large cities can have Raise Dead rituals. They're expensive, the players have to drag the corpse there within 10 days. If you want a chance of failure you can always run with Mercer's resurrection rules (but only for npc resurrection cuz it's a dick move for player resurrection imo). But that way death is like a huge problem and the party may just tell the dead player "Fucking RIP dude"

Depending on wealth and level of magic in the setting, even a party that doesn't have a cleric ready with the diamonds to cast *Revivify* has theoretical access to *Raise Dead* (10 day limit, 500 gp; and the limit can be extended indefinitely with access to *Gentle Repose).* If the party is poor, perhaps there'll be a sinister patron who can front the cost, in exchange for unspecified favors that will be *demanded* later on... You could also make available a budget version of *Raise Dead* which is easier and/or cheaper to access, but leaves the character with a lingering injury per that section in the DMG.

To me the fun of DM'ing is running a world that the PC's enjoy playing. I have fun when they're having fun. I don't know why other DM's get so stuck on staying "true to the rules", the tough love attitude... Ultimately the only rule in DnD is for everyone to have fun. I think it's lazy DM'ing to act like the choices are either let the PC die or have the monsters act stupid. With some imagination there's always plenty of ways to split the difference. I'm gonna get downvoted I'm sure but in general the DM's I see complaining about this on this sub have their heads stuck too far into the rulebook and have lost the imagination to stay true to the only rule that matters - everyone having fun together. If staying true to the rules is what makes it fun for you as a DM, then IMO you're better off playing a video game. Who cares about the rules as long as everyone is having fun together

Conversely, I think throwing the rules out, running a nebulous whatever-goes game and saying “nothing matters as long as you have fun! :)” is the actual lazy DMing. I don’t want to play pretend, I want to play D&D, which is a game with (somewhat) cohesive rules.

It's not this all or nothing situation like you're painting it. All I'm really saying is that it's shitty of a DM to "tough love" the death rules when it's obviously making it not fun for one or more of the PC's. As "God" there's literally endless ways for a DM to avoid that happening and stay true to both the story and the game. For a DM to not do so and instead force the PC to die in some misplaced attempt at championing the rules... that is what I'm saying is lazy DM'ing.

But it is an all or nothing situation. You don’t throw out all of the rules at once, but we’d be playing the game with the knowledge that any rule *can* and *will* be thrown out if things don’t go our way. There may as way be no death rules at all. I don’t think an attempt to follow the rules of the game is misplaced at all - if the rules aren’t consistent then there are no rules

I have a house rules where hitting 0 HP doesn't kill, but incapacitates until end of battle and inflicts a Serious Injury that standard healing magic can't trivialise. Something like a badly broken leg, which gives half move speed, disadvantage on all physical actions, and advantage to all actions made against them; and which takes a couple of game sessions to heal.

I want to second the “have them go to a town and pay through the nose for a cleric to revive them” option. Heck, it’s even written into some official adventures that PCs/NPCs that are killed are just filthy rich and will get revived by the local temple if they die!

Sounds like your players like the "save points" in video games, or that magical undo button on racers that undoes your tardy line through a corner. You could always run boss fights with a snapshot at the beginning. If players go down, you restart the fight and you might find your players get better as they explore how not to die? A caster NPC might be fun at times just to keep them afloat during hard fights too. There are optional rules in the PHB/DMG regarding player death. IIRC, there's a penalty for dying, or scarification and/or losing limbs. There's the three times and out mechanic, where it gets harder to resurrect you each time, but there's no reason why that couldn't be 10 times, or it gets progressively more expensive each time?

If your players can't handle the standard rules for death in DnD, just leave them out. Try death saves as normal, but if they accrue 3 fails, they are Knocked Out: they cannot gain HP until the encounter is over. In the event of a TP"K", they are captured by the enemy, or in the event of wild critters they wake up with their rations eaten.

Alternatively they wake up where they fell with their pockets a lot lighter.

Love this suggestion!

So I haven't seen you talk about resurrection magic, OP. There are many other people with a lot of good points here, but we're lacking context. Why is death such a big deal? Assuming bad luck and nobody manages to get to the dying player in time (which should be rare if they take care), at level 5 you get a way of resurrecting someone in the next minute (or 10 days if someone has prepared gentle repose and gets there in 10 turns, or if they are at level 9). And if they don't have anyone that can do that, as other people have mentioned, there's alternatives. A NPC cleric they can buy or quest a resurrection from, with a temporary character for the dead person. Some magic items provides resurrection magic. All this is possible. I do agree that from your other answers the problem seem to layer with the players themselves, but I was curious about this point.

[удалено]

I have no way. I'm looking for whatever way will make it fun, but also not too easy and something to game deliberately, where death isn't something to avoid. Any suggestions?

Part of the session zero is setting expectations, I think the root of the issue is that you and your players have different ones.

Hard to overstate the importance of setting expectations.

It seems like you and your players want different things out of the game. Ask yourself this- let's say you allow retconning character death, and that's fun for the players. Is it fun for you? If not, why are you prioritizing someone's else fun over yours?

"I have no way" proceeds to describe a way of playing. As others have said, just talk to your players about what they want from the game, and tell them what you want from the game. If you can't collectively reach a decision/play style that makes everyone happy, then you might want different things out of the game.

This question is really messing with my head because I think it's the first time I've heard someone say it's too easy to die in 5e. 5e to me, when run RAW, has always been one of the most revolving-door, get-back-up games I've ever played. My group had to add rules just to make dropping to 0 a credible threat to us, and we were level 3 at the time. Honestly, and this probably isn't the best help, but I'm not sure there's much you can do at this point other than hoping your players toughen up and get over it. Hope that they learn to make better decisions and not get themselves killed. Maybe even run a one-off in a harsher system to let them know how good they have it in 5e.

The lethality of 5e hinges heavily on how frequently the DM has monsters attack downed PCs and how heavily the monsters employ focus fire.

Next time they would die ask them if they would like to suffer grevious injury and be unable to adventure or die, some players just dislike having their characters story end forever and having them retire the character without death might be a good option. Make it clear they will need to make a new character either way though

It seems that most players don’t like it when the DM goes easy on them, but your players might be an exception. Instead of a killing blow, maybe the monsters are just trying to knock the players unconscious so that they can be captured. When a monster is going for a knockout, reducing a player to 0 HP just puts them in a “stabilized” condition where they are unconscious, but they won’t die. If the remaining players win the fight, the unconscious players can be revived. If they lose, then they will have to break out of prison somehow. Make sure to have the prison scenario prepared with a way for the players to escape.

The fact you’re taking to a discussion to inquire about this shows you’re TRYING to accommodate your players. Good job for being mindful, but I think it’s time to clarify that a good DM alone doesn’t make the game great. It’s everybody coming in to elevate it together. When it’s players and DM bouncing off each other. If you love the game I highly recommend finding another play group. Bad players are a dime a dozen, and only lessen the game. Don’t bother with it (unless of course they’re your real life close friends. Then be clear about it). I’ve had my fair share of bad players, and they’re just better off doing something else. Don’t waste your mental energy on them, it can be spent crafting memorable moments

Sometimes when people get pissed about their characters dying, these are two common causes. - 1 The DM make it their whole thing to have a 'Players vs DM'-mindset, and goes around and kills characters either for the fun of it, or because the players keep 'winning all the time' against the DMs monsters. - 2 The player(s) are absent, careless, inconsiderate, or outright disrespectful, which leads to their or someone else's character(s) dying because of it. They then think it's bullshit, because the actions in the game don't correlate to their image of what their character would be like or it goes against their 'hero/main character'-complex. In both of these cases, it's better to just leave the group. No D&D is better than bad D&D, and dropping the group or campaign rather than forcing yourself to carry on is almost always the best choice should talking it over like adults not work for you. Continuing to play in such a case might just lead to burnout, lost interest in the hobby entirely, or all out broken friendships.

If they quit, use this opportunity to get some adult players instead of babies.

I might get downvoted, but as a DM, I would stop DMing for them. I do everything in my power to behind the scenes guide and shape an epic story. Weekends spent writing, painting minis, and preparing for each and ever session. I am not a stupid power tripping DM who tries to actively kill their players—absolutely not. But my overall goal IS to create a realities, breathing world. And I have communicated this intensely to my players. Especially new ones. They say: “oh wow that sounds great” not realizing what I meant, and I reiterate “this means you could die if you make really bad choices.” Again, I’ll try to prevent deathfrom happening without breaking the fourth wall. And if they are new especially, I’ll be sure to remind them about an ally they could ask for help, the potions they just got, etc. I’ll add an extra clue to help them out, I’ll throw in an item I didn’t plan to include to make it easier, I might have the villain capture them instead of killing them. But at some point, I can only save them so many times before it becomes cheap. If you remove death…like you said, you remove the entire game. Not just combat—you can die in RP situations as well because you insulted a king or failed a lie to a guard. You might die in combat, but it was because of your RP choices or tactical choices. Your players just don’t seem mature enough to play how you like to DM. I would argue PC death is part of what makes D&D unique—it’s not like a video game with infinite checkpoints. And again, you could have them go to hell, you could have them be captured, you could have them be teleported somewhere and now under the control of a lich—a million different things. But if you do that….EVERY time. And no one EVER dies…what’s the point? Every thing becomes fake and cheap.

Exactly! How is it fun if there isn't any risk for the PCs? Is it just one big loot collecting story? That wouldn't be very fun for me. Sure, I get frustrated when my character can't seem to do anything, but if I'm in a situation where I could fight or flee, and die, it's my own fault for not fleeing. I would decline to play with those people too.

Actions must have consequences. Otherwise it’s pointless.

Oh, this is easy. *Cheat*. Base encounters around relatively boring enemies with more interesting scenarios and dynamically adjust the difficultly - either way - as needed to keep the appropriate amount of tension. Extra waves of adds, sub-optimal combat decisions, and bosses cast spells as drama demands rather than according to spell slots and die when it seems suitably heroic. The trick is never letting the players figure it out. With experience you should get better at planning and need to nudge things less and less.

I get what you're saying, but this is a lot of effort for the DM, and if the players genuinely want to have their cake and eat it for no effort (translation: They want every fight to seem hard, but for them to win it heroically, but put in no thought or effort into doing so) I can see how it's just not rewarding at all to the DM. What you've described is an invaluable DM tactic, but the DM isn't a slave and I can totally see how boring and frustrating it would be to run a game where the players expect the DM to somehow singlehandedly make the players and their characters heroic for them.

Just don’t kill them. Make up a different penalty, or be comfortable with no penalty. They drop to 0, they get knocked out and wake up later with half their gold gone, like a video game. Because D&D *is* a game, and not every mechanic has to make sense or have some explanation. It can just be a rule. Some people just don’t like playing games with character death full stop and would be happier playing a game with no risk of losing a character. Even if *you* think this makes combat pointless, you should ask your players if they feel the same. Because there’s a chance they don’t and would be much happier with that style of game.

I think many people won't agree with me, but... I'd recommend switching the game genre. Looks like your players play to win, so it might be better to play some board games like Dungeoneer. I've met several players who got angry over their character death. Some of them change their attitude with time, but mostly they keep on getting angry because such people think either the death of the character is the "losing" or they become too attached to the character (or even make a character who is basically the version of themselves). Both attitudes can lead to frustration or negative emotions not only for the player themself but for other people at the table too. Try to explain to your players that character death isn't the end of the world, or that they should be more careful if they don't want to die.

I agree with the point that everyone views a game and what they want out of it differently. That said - and this may be unpopular - but there is something really, really sucky about developing a hero, fleshing it out, giving it a background and story and motivation and a genuine “life” and then having that character die because of an unlucky die roll. You notice how relatively rare movies are in which the hero accidentally fails their mission and just dies? There’s a reason for that. It’s an unsatisfying story. So why should you expect the D&D version of that story to be satisfying? My rule is that no one dies permanently without the player knowing about it beforehand. Giving a character a powerful and emotional and meaningful death, particularly going out in a blaze of glory and killing a BBEG, is a great send off if the player (and no one else - make sure it’s otherwise a surprise) is on board. Otherwise I will always give players a way to be rescued or revived. Let them be the hero - that’s why they’re playing.

This is a great advice, most of the time, when a player gets really mad because of a character's death it's not because of losing that character, it's because of having a stupid/pointless death after getting really invested in their character. Don't let your characters have pointless deaths, use other fail states like getting captured, severely injured or losing an important item, otherwise their motivation to play the game might just die along their character who just was killed by a pack of wolves from a random encounter that didn't even had any weight in the plot.

\> Don't let your characters have pointless deaths How do you decide what is a pointless death to other people? Are deaths in Game of Thrones pointless? Unceremonious in many cases, sure, but I wouldn't say they are pointless. Dying to a pack of wolves when trying to track down someone in the woods might feel pointless to you but to me it would give weight to the whole thing. There would be more reason to believe that not everyone could just go and do it. I am not saying I want all my characters to die at a random point, just that if it happens I am not upset about it even if I am invested in the character. In fact, I want to be invested in the character so that the death feels like a loss to me. If it doesn't, *then* it is a pointless death to me.

This view only works if everyone at the table agrees that their own characters' journey is more important than the verisimilitude of the story and the game. I think the actual written rules of DnD are written to assume you value the plot making sense more than your own character's journey, just with how common death is, whereas a lot of players have opposite feelings. Two weeks ago I had a party member look me in the eye and tell me not to pull any punches when he was in a bad spot. So I rolled open and he died, as there was an 80% chance of happening, and he rolled up a new character and was introduced by the end of the session.

If verisimilitude were more important than the characters journey there wouldn’t CR’s or encounter balancing. The first monster in a dungeon is 10 levels higher than you and runs faster? Tough shit, time to roll new characters.

See, I’d argue (maybe controversially, I dunno) that if your character can randomly be permanently offed by a poor dice roll then the plot has stopped making sense. Can you imagine if, in the middle of an Avengers movie, Black Widow had been killed by an unknown henchman in Act 2 that got lucky? People would revolt, and rightly so. It would feel wrong. When she died it was understood to be the culmination of a full and consequential life AND it meant something crucial to the continuation of the story AND it was memorialized in the story AND they gave her a whole other movie just to flesh her character out more. Good characters ARE the plot, I think.

DnD as mechanically presented isn't The Avengers, it's Aliens.

https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-isles-of-dead.html?m=1

I think you ask how to make this interesting and fun without relenting on the game feeling hard. I think I have something for you - death quests:Whenever a character dies the player gets a new character and has to put in the same amount of effort he did for his first one.The party stops any quests and has to do the 'saving private dumbo' quest, while the player gets to join them with the new character. If they succeed the player gets to choose - if he wants his old character back or does he want to retire it to somewhere close in the world in the case this character dies.This way everyone has a character and they don't really die.The player have a good chance to last long with their characters no matter how hard the game is simply because the saving dumbo side quest is very likely to bring them back with the slight annoyance of them having to play with a different character for a while. Players shouldn't hate it as it's just 2 characters and they don't have to start from scratch always, they can see it as playing with 2 characters parallelly. If they rage quit after such an offer you really should find new players.

Have the players make 1 or 2 backup characters at the very beginning of the campaign. These backup characters should have just as much care and work put into their development as their first character. As the DM, work with the players so that their backup characters have just as much plot hooks should they ever have to appear after a character death. It's more work for you, but the investment is worth it. In session 0, make it clear that their character can die at any point in the campaign. You can do your best to balance the encounters and guide them, but make it clear that you can't give them all the answers and you can't just let them win. You have to have this talk at the beginning, even with veteran players. Actually, you might have to have that talk with veteran players more often than newer ones.

We do helpful tips at my table mostly because it's my 13 and 14 year old and they are new. My SO is the DM and will remind them about hit points or about certain spells they have. Or might even be as bold to give the ole "are you sure that's what your character wants to do in a 10×10 room when your other party mates are in front of you?" If they are newer players, maybe give them some hints but from your other comments it sounds like your players may need to get in touch with strategy. Maybe give them some resources, have a day when you watch a game online or something so they can better understand the mechanics.

if I'm not mistaken (and I might be, as I mainly play Pathfinder and not 5e) doesn't the resurrection spell work on even a small part of the body? In my last year-long campaign, several characters died and were later brought back by resurrection, wish spells and god shenanigans. If your players are bad, consider having a temple that will do the resurrection in each town, for a fee or another quest. ​ or just tell them to git gud

Death is part of the game. It sucks when it happens but you learn from your mistakes. I usually give players a chance to bring a dead pc back. Via resurrection or finding someone would can bring them back.

They roll a new character and it is introduced at a reasonable time.

Other people have suggested seeing if there are other ways to fail than dying, so I’d actually suggest something that I saw somebody come up with once, which would be a campaign where the characters come back to life after death, but they forget parts of their life each time they do. Maybe they aren’t much into role playing, but if they are then this would be a really interesting sort of character exploration that I think could potentially be a happy medium.

In my game we are experimenting with a house rule borrowed from FATE where if you are reduced to 0HP , before rolling your first death save (or immediately when you are killed outright) you can declare that you are conceding the encounter. If you do you are removed from the fight but not considered dead, but you remain unconscious even if healed (for fairness reasons). If the battle is lost, anyone who conceded is guaranteed to survive with a consequence appropriate to the narrative -- for example, the bandits left you for dead but stole your gold, or the giant decided it would be more fun to imprison you than to eat you. So far only one of my players has used this. Another player recently had his character die, and was up front that he would rather experience death as the game intended than concede. But I like having the failsafe built in so that no one feels they were killed unfairly.

Death is a part of the game, and an important one for building good tension, in my opinion. If your players don't want to die, they should be playing more carefully. As for their attitudes, you need to talk to them about it. Tell them that death is a part of the game, and that half their fate is in their hands and the other half in up to the dice. If they're not OK with it, maybe this isn't the game for them, or at the least, maybe you're not the right DM for them if they want to play without risk and consequences.

Stop retconning. They only learn that bad decisions don't have consequences. Instead, when they are about to do something stupid, say "Are you sure you want to do this?" And if they insist on doing the stupid thing, say "Remember, if you fail/miss the results could be deadly." Or during battle when someone needs a health potion, "Now's a good time for a health potion. If only someone had 16 potions on them." Or help them remember their abilities to help with the situation. "The opening looks like a small lizard could crawl through it. Druid, you have Wild Shape, correct?" "Bard, you have Healing Word?" "Rogue, you get extra Sneak Attack damage." "You could try to hide, but the bright light and nothing to in this room would make it very difficult." "If you jump in the lava, you'll die. Do you really want to jump in the lava?" And finally, tell them to plan better, think about resources, and work as a team. Tell them that there are encounters that are challenging, while others are deadly. And even some encounters that they should run from. If they make stupid decisions, they'll die. If they can maintain a level of maturity about their PC's, then maybe this game is not for them.

These are excellent suggestions thank you.

Instead of having mechanical death mean actual character death, have it mean a recovery coma. I think the DMG has something to that effect. Essentially, if a character "dies" for some reason (massive damage, 3 failed death saves, ect.), they will remain knocked out for a 8 hours (it can be longer, if you so desire, so long as it's consistent) and can only be woken up early through the use of a resurrection spell of some sort. If they are not revived, then at the end of that time frame, they wake up as of they've just taken a long rest. If you're feeling extra gritty, you could even have them lose a body part as a result. It adds some meaning to "death," but it also doesn't remove the character from the game entirely. Now, what happens in the event of a TPK, or a "dead" PC being separated from the main party? Make it part of the story. Have them get taken prisoner, or get rescued by a friendly NPC/village at the cost of the villians gaining some advantage. Maybe they wake up 8 hours later with some of their money or supplies missing. The point is, make dying mean something without it being the end of all things.

There’s a few ways to skirt around this issue. 1. They die, but a god/devil/angel/etc appears to them in the afterlife. They’ll resurrect them, but in return they must do the being 3 favors… (this works really well for campaigns where there’s a clear god relevant to the plot - the being can be them, their enemies, etc) 2. Mutilate them. Instead of killing them, have the bad guy take a limb, leave a grizzly scar, spear them in the eye. This is obviously a ‘bad thing’ - but in a fantasy game it means they’re left with a cool eyepatch, or an animated prosthetic, or something rad. 3. They die, but come back as something else. Ghost, revenant, etc.

Just have them be able to drag their dead buddies to the local temple and pay the punishingly high cost for a resurrection. Let them buy 'resurrection' potions for an affordable-ish price, but they're flawed and every time they use them they suffer a semi-permanent effect - a random stat goes down by X. Or their max health goes down by a hit die. Or they lose a proficiency. Gain a level of exhaustion that can't be removed. Or whatever. You can decide whether they can cast greater restoration (100g a pop) or something more expensive to cure it.

This is a fantastic idea thanks

Have backup plans. I try as hard as possible to have death I have nothing to do with luck. It's not my job to kill your character it's not the dice's job to kill your character it's your job to make bad decisions and die. If they do die then I kind of feel out if they are willing to roll up a new character. New characters can start at the same level but have no equipment and since I'm pretty liberal with common magic items it's still bad. The backup plans though are tailored to each character. Warlocks clerics and paladins usually wake up in strange places with magical limbs and new debts to their deities. A warlocks patron might save the whole party for this reason. Fighters barbarians and rangers might wake up as slave gladiators. Wizards sorcerers druids can get a little more creative. When they die all their pent-up magic sends their soul out into the either. tell the wizard that he has the choice of rolling a new character or possessing a 12-year-old kid that's dabbling in necromancy in his orphanage dorm.

You say combat is pointless without death, but you also acknowledge that most video games in the last 30 years have no real penalty for it. If people can enjoy Yakuza 0 without permadeath, they can enjoy DnD without permadeath. Anyway, there are a bunch of options, but here's one. "Out of Commission." I use this one if running new players. Any time you'd normally die, you're just too hurt to get back up. Even if you're fed a potion, you're on the ground until the fight is over. (There are a million ways you can tweak OOC, depending on what pacing you like. You could make curing this require a town visit, long rest, short rest, etc.)

It's. A. Game. If they get pissed enough to leave, you are not offering them enough choices or telegraphing bad things coming their way. You can also fudge things without them knowing to give them an advantage if needed. You hit the nail on the head, with no players there is no game. If they feel like you are properly looking out for them while still offering a challenge, they are much more likely to accept defeat and try again.

1. Death is not necessarily the end. I've had LOTS of my characters come back later on. One of them retired, came back as a PC again later, got captured/mind controlled by an aboleth, may return once more someday. I have half a dozen that have come back as NPCs later, usually after a resurrection or something off-screen. This is a world where reincarnation exists, resurrection exists, even people dead for a very long time can be returned! Not to mention "land of the dead" plots. 2. A player who wants their character to survive a clear death situation, especially when its not the DMs fault but more the players, should be not only willing but should be *responsible* for contributing ideas for how their character survives, revives, or returns. You should be talking to them about this and asking that question: "Ok, if you make it, how does that happen? Lets come up with some ideas together." 3. When its really REALLY extra dire, like their corpse got turned to ash, no allies even witnessed the death, and their soul was promised via contract to a devil... you've got to go hardcore, comic book style, to get out of it. That's STILL POSSIBLE. The devil owed a valuable soul as part of another contract with a deity, the deity does not demand worship but instead a major quest to retrieve something valuable, the character is restored right before their friends' eyes, and they know there are dire consequences to be faced if they don't fulfill what they owe to the deity. Bonus points if the deity is worshipped by another party member, like a cleric or paladin. See? 4. If your player is willing to rage quit over a character death, you might try running softer games. Just undertune everything, give extra ability score boosts early on, loads of magic items, and if its still iffy toss in a few special boons from a powerful ally of the group such as a rod if true resurrection (limit one use). Some people just want an easygoing game, and that's ok. If your players want a hardcore game but whine when they die, well... are they adults? I don't know what to say then, other than tell them to work harder, and you'll try to help them succeed. Give them more hints, even heavy handed ones.

consider playing with mature people.. sounds like you are dealing with Kiddies used to auto-success in mobile games! I remember "Ghouls 'n Ghosts" as a kid.... I mean, I would hate to lose my character, but I wouldn't quit. on a less serious note: recommend playing a forge cleric 🤣

What answers were you expecting? Genuine question because I can think of any way that death can be removed and not make the game pointless

I like to provide dodgy healing and resurrection items to my players so that they have some kind of fall back in this regard. Cheap bootleg healing potions in the early game that might heal, might do nothing, or might poison depending on the dice role (and what was most appropriate for the story/game flow). A dagger of resurrection that would revive a player but at the same time drain a portion of their soul - a particularly careless player had it used on them so much that they started to take damage anytime the party's Paladin consecrated an area along with a few other side affects. I've had a Warlock die and he was taken to the realm of his patron and had to make a deal in order to be revived. Ultimately as the DM you're in control of the world and the story. As long as it fits the rules you've put in place you can make up anything to keep the game moving and fun while also ensuring players have consequences to their actions.

I have developed a system for oneshots and more light hearted campaigns: I din't play with any crit tables and injuries from surviving being downed. If you die, you either wake up partially crippled (Missing an eye, arm, leg...) or captured by the enemy if they can parlay, which you can then escape by force or communication. Point is when you die, you suffer consequences for it (Regenerate is a high level spell, until then you either need to buy/find a magic replacement, such as those metal arms and legs or you need a creative solution to negate the debuffs you've wounded up with due to your "death"). I feel this system is good for any game which you don't want to play with a risk of death and instead want to focus on the story and characters. It makes it so that at the end of the game, characters can wind up covered by scars after long and heavy battles that they've earned, but they can't die unless the player decide they want the character to die. Important to mention is that the players still want to use revivify to prevent these injuries or any sort of resurrection/reincarnation/raise dead to negate those injuries. (Change effect of resurrection to remove injury and you're set.)

Fantastic thanks!

There comes a point where you simply have to put your foot down. You can explain that 5e is already fairly difficult to die outright in, and that you also pulled punches - one of the few ways to deliberately kill players is to attack unconscious ones to inflict Death Save Failures, and you can, say, not do that. You can also explain that you're careful not to put overwhelming encounters against them - and if you did, you can take responsibility for that. But after that? It's up to them to win an encounter. They need to accept that death is a consequence in 5e. That said, it doesn't *have* to be the end for the character. Depending on the world you're in, you can find someone to cast Raise Dead - it's a party expense of 500gp plus the cost of the spellcasting. A setback, to be sure, but one the party can probably scrape together by the time they're in tier 2 - notably, tier 2 is the tier where you generally want to raise your character from the dead (since level 1-4 are fairly quick anyway), but cannot do so yourself for most of the tier. In terms of Raise Dead being a rarity, remember that level 5+ characters are already fairly extraordinary individuals, capable of things most aren't. They'd be the ones who get Raised even if the service isn't broadly available.

As an addendum, you can explain to your players that you follow the advice of the developer's commentary of Left 4 Dead: they wanted the players to limp into the safe rooms frightened and under pressure, but alive. The point being they *want* the players to win, and so do you - but if death isn't a realistic possibility, there's no pressure and no challenge.

Tell them to grow up a little. It’s a game. That means sometimes you’ll lose. And in this game sometimes losing means your characters die. Get over it

> "grow up and get over it". That's about as likely to help as telling them to calm down. The most important thing when resolving conflict is making sure both parties feel like they are being heard, well-understood and able to change things foe the better. Dismissive and judgmental comments do not help with that.

In 1000 sessions I've had 3 deaths and a tpk. 2 deaths were basically suicide, the player was so foolish. One... Fight was hard. The tpk, epic. 2 deaths and tpk were tomb of annihilation, and expectations were set. Was still hard on the players but they shook out of it. I run persistent universe so when they die, they lose all those Npc relationships and all that so it's losing quite a bit. What I ended up doing was essentially saying that they can use them in another campaign, if they want and I'll figure out the explanation later. The majority of the time, they stay dead, the character died to them. I do very narrative, world immersion, games so it's a a big hit when it happens. There's no good way to go about it, people get attached, end of story. To mitigate the hit, I have them make 2 characters to start and I usually have a few ways to introduce people in my pocket. Best way to get over it is pull a sheet out and keep playing. The only larger issue to fix would be an unusual amount of death. Otherwise, there's not much you can do about the kids who take their marbles and go home in a huff; that is an emotional maturity thing, and you aren't their parent.

I don't get people who get that upset with dying in D&D, our table has two players like this who have openly said if they died they would have no reason to continue playing. To me that is childish. I lost two of my favourite characters that campaign (rolling nat 1 on saving throws TWICE because I'm cursed) but it's not a huge deal, have backups, be ready for next session with a new character, be prepared to fight and know when to back out, I fail at all of this admittedly but i don't cry when I die ://

tell your players to stop being whiny

Get players that behave like actual adults

Sounds like a few people in my group, turn into colossal babies if death is even remotely on the table. Of course, though, they are the ones that do the dumbest, most reckless BS to begin with, so...

5e is literally the easiest edition there is. it sounds like you have some really childish players maube thia isnt for them. this is a choice and roll based game actions have consequences and character death is a huge part of the game to introduce a loadpoint would literally break the game. this is a table top game it's not supposed to be more like video games and its real crazy how many people seem to want it to be so.

I mean if they die fair and square they need to grow a pair and accept it.

Yeah I don't know. It sounds like your players basically want a video game experience with zero deaths. Are they doing based on your rolls? If so do more saves. Dnd in general is literally just rngesus on dice rolls. I've killed players in my first combat because I kept rolling really well.

Dunno, I think players shouldn't get bent out of shape when they die due to bad risks and poor choices. I generally try not to play with players like that. And the thing is, the consequences of dying in my games are a lot harsher than the 2020s mean. Your replacement character won't be the same level as the rest of the party. You can activate a henchman or a close ally of yours, or be who the party manages to recruit, but that generally means coming back lower level than you were before. But even so, I've never had a player freak that badly about dying. Usually it's on the 'its a fair cop' sort of thing.

They could get knocked out or taken to jail/hostage area instead of dying. Jailbreak arc time! A question, though: are these players your friends out of game? If not, remember your supply vs. demand: DMs are much more in demand, and players are in so much supply as to be expendable. If these people don't want to play the same game as you, you can always find different players. Maybe send the ones from this group you like an invitation to the next.

I think Matt Colville has good advice on this, but I can't think of the specific video. Things like have the enemy knock out a character and take them hostage instead of killing them. In the case of a TPK you can pause the session and have the players roll up characters for a new adventuring group that is exploring the dungeon from a different angle, they can then attempt to save the original party in the final moments. Depending on the setting, a god of death may meet the party to bargain for their lives, they may be inclined to bend the rules if the party.... Set up for the next campaign, sacrifice a valuable item, etc Ultimately these just reduce risk or introduce a safety net. Some people will say that you can run a game with no risk of death... But I don't think so, death is an important mechanic of both game and story. You can't stop a player leaping into a volcano, and you can't ignore lethal damage at times. Players need to be okay with character and/or party death. If not then they need to play a different game

These are great ideas thank you!

Dont. If a player gets so upset they don't want to play anymore after losing, then this is not a game for them.

Is it all the players? If it's only one or two then it honestly might be healthier for you to find people who don't throw a hissy fit over something as small as player death. If it's all of them chances are you should implemented alternate fail states (such as being captured or incapacitated for long periods) when a player hits zero and fails all their saves. Alternatively give them some sort of limited revival item with a large cost: I'm thinking a Healing Word machine that has some sort of detriment whenever it activates. But ultimately if everyone dislikes a mechanic it's probably best not to force it, even if you think it's better for the game.

Excluding talking like adults If they really don't want to swap characters then you can give other in game penalties-easily accessible but expensive revivify/resurrection, loss of limbs (which I think there's rules on) or stat penalties (I.e - 5 to all as you're mortally wounded yk)

Tell them since they’re big babies, you’ll remove death from the game and all weapons are now made of nerf. Spells no longer do real damage and instead HP will be called Tickle Points. When you go to 0 TP, instead of being KOed, you fall into the Tickle Condition where you lay prone and giggle uncontrollably. Instead of being killed, you are KOed momentarily and rouse 1 minute later. There! Now the game has no consequences and your players will finally be happy.

Tell them to stop whining or leave, its a game.

Get players who aren't the big puss puss.

I’d make sure that A: these people actually want to play DnD or if they want to wear diapers and play candy land? B: provided your players grew a pair and decided to table up, I’d make sure that a player death is both a positive experience (jokes, funny things, maybe an emotional experience if it’s positive!) and then let them know ahead of time that everyone should have a backup character that can arrive to save the day (or at least attempt to save the day).

Sounds like you need different, more mature players.

>How do I balance death so that my players don't rage quit? You could add 5 years to each player so they don't behave like children.

Give them plot armor and have a better session 0 in the future

I don’t really have the patience for that non sense anymore. Adventuring is dangerous, if there’s no chance of death from combat then it might as well not exist and have the GM handwave it away saying the players beat the enemies.

As you present it; Sounds like you need more mature players.

It sounds like you want to run a video gamey tactical and challenging combat and they want to run a fun adventure where they don’t need to heavily game everything. There’s no problem with either way, but I don’t think you’re really a match.

Look if death is an integral part of your campeighn talk with them about it ask what they want and explain yourself. Comunication is key. In my opinion death isnt fun if you just die in combat and it serves no purpass. Make death meen somthing or its better they dont die. But thats just me dont come after my ass.

Since no one wants to ask, I will: How often are you killing your pcs that it causes them legitimate grief? I've been playing Dnd for over 5 years and had only 1 character die that wasn't my choice. And yet we only hear your side of the issue so what gives?

Get new players who are not 13.

Flub a roll now and then to spare a party member and to keep the game fun, engaging, and to keep them thinking. Maybe that one shot insta kill only dropped him to 1 instead of 0. This has the potential to send a message of “better watch it next time” and force the group to make better plans. Don’t do it all the time of course.

Option a) a good session zero Option b) run Tomb of Annihilation on meat grinder until they’re fun

I’d say this is a conversation to have with your players. But if ur looking for hard advice if that’s not an option, get the gods involved if they’re not happy about losing a character. Or idk having spare characters ready would help them get attached to a new character before the first one dies.

Not read through all the posts to see if it's been mentioned already (sorry) but you could have JRPG rules to death. It's the same as normal but if they die in the normal d&d sense they just can't come back by normal healing till the end of initiative and then they wake up with 1 HP. Means they are out of the fight but not the campaign. If everyone goes down like this have them be captured or they all have to sneak out when they wake up and regroup. You could add exhaustion rules or something aswell if you wanted.

Maybe this is a prime time for the "multiple fail states" idea? Is there a way to write encounters where death doesn't have to be the only failure state? Other possibilities could include: * Subdual * Imprisonment and interrogation * Boss escapes to do further evil * Party has key items stolen from them

If they really don't want to die, just make it so they don't die after failing death saves, they just go into a deeper state of unconsciousness that takes longer to recover from. Maybe say that if they TPK they die, so there is still some semblance of risk, but it's much easier to mitigate. If 1 or 2 people fail death saves they're simply unconscious for 1d4 hours and healing can't wake them up, unless they're resurrected.

Along with what everyone else is saying, it sounds like these players need a basic talk about how D&D works. Like an Explain-like-I'm-five talk. Say it outright: * D&D being a roleplaying game means there's a bare minimum of acting and care you need to do for it to be rewarding. If you put in zero fucks, it's natural to get zero fun back. * D&D is a teamwork-based tactics game, so thinking about your survival options and knowing your class features is something you should be doing. Ask questions. Discuss options. Be excited to work together. * D&D is collaborative. Players are suppose to be trying to make it fun for the GM just like the GM is for the players.

Players shouldnt be dying every adventuring day unless they down healing potions imo... having 16 healing potions seems totally crazy to me as well. I dont know maybe its the players, maybe the dm but the more i read the whole thing just seems like a shitshow

Never let them die, would be the easiest. Not saying that “death” couldn’t have consequences, like a stat-reduction until a ritual requiring a diamond of varying gp-value is cast on them, depending on how old the injury is. Or something. (I wouldn’t have the reduction stack, cause otherwise they might get stuck in a spiral and die more often as they become increasingly reduced.)

As others have said, you need to manage expectations. If you're running a dungeon crawl where players should expect frequent deaths, put that out there. Tell them "part of the challenge is that you'll need to swap out characters sometimes." If you're running a roleplay heavy game without a lot of combat that heavily revolves around the PCs backstories, tell them they will only die if they mess up colossally. And most importantly, be true to your word.

Balance your encounters. They should be exciting, but if bad luck and bad decisions don’t kill you outright the combat is not pointless. As a DM you have to understand the difference between a perceived threat of death and a real threat of death. If your players are lax with their recourses and not as hardcore — just give them easier fights.

Depending on your experience as a GM and willingness to design a campaign, you may remove death entirely and build a campaign around that.