Hello Cartman.

I mean, you can just say that at 0 HP they actually took a dagger to the chest or something, making the hits more lethal on your narrative

@@raulsantandertirado4400 I know that, I was just making a joke

The problem with this is that certain modes of damage do things that don't harm your heroism...like...all elemental damage. And how does a resistance work? This is why D&D, especially 5E has a hard coded genre and it shouldn't be used for everything. You can't be almost poisoned and take poison damage, after all.

@@Amrylin1337 Toxins have threshold doses. A glancing blow from a poisoned dagger could cause pain and numbness at the point of injury, even if the poison didn't take hold. That's poison damage.

That's wonderful!

Awesome, but dangerous. I've seen parties go into mob mode when something like that happens, and attack to back up the foolhardy one, rather than run.

this is smart. saving for future use.

@@edlaprade I mean the good thing is the lich literally did the power word kill instakill method so had they followed him in he would just be dead and they would all look at him, look at the lich and go yeah... fuck this lol

I'm gonna have to use that

If you play monsters intelligently, there are all kinds of benefits. For humanoids like goblins, if half their number are cut down I will typically have them attempt to retreat, though one or two might stay behind because they're bolder or full of murderous rage.

This is how my current DM runs combat. I'm a wizard and we have some heavy armoured melee combatants, the foe ignored the frontliners to try and take me out, saying " the dragon attacks you, because you just did 40 damage to it with one spell and recognises that you are currently the biggest threat"

This is a good solution anyway. A) "pulling aggro" works in a lot of computer games and is a critical, tactical move. Resulting from it are tank classes who's job is exactly that. B) every intelligent monster or enemy group WILL attack the most dangerous opponent first. For example the old tactic of "kill the mage first!"... PCs do it all the time. Why wouldn't npcs do it?

That is so smart.

"That is not weakness, that is life"

I fully expected that snippet as he was saying it.

Psiclone philosophy Matt enters the ring

I bet Data would be good at 'in character' RPing.

Picard

You beat me to it 3 years early lol

Oh...darn, I wish you had said that three days ago.

Post of tbe day!!! Lmao!

So... What do you advise if this was done wrong? Asking for a friend.

nor a computer.

So that's why nobody wants to play with me after my first tpk.

This would actually make the traditional healer classes not into actual healers as in magic doctors, but rather inspiring individuals (possibly through being a "man/woman of God"), that inspire their fellow adventurers to fight on longer than they normally would. They don't close wounds and stop bleeding with their spells, but reinvigorate people to have the energy to dodge more attacks

So, a bard?

If you are doing crazy stunts that are wearing you out and making you slow down and get sore, healing magic can fix that

That statement is a major reason why I interpret HP as pure physical resilience

scepta101 looking back at this though it doesn’t really sound any more strange than “be still fighter, i must heal your hit points”

Now I want to run Samurai Jack basically

That is a dope ass way to work that outcome. Good thinking.

Cool!

So dope!

YanzoFTW I nearly died laughing after reading that. So savage, but so true

This.... Right here....👀👀👀😆

"What could I have done differently?" "Have you tried investing in a dice prison?"

This is always true. For me, the players rarely make REALLY dumb decisions, so everyone just rolls like TRASH all the time.

well one session the party's cleric fell in a hole. He couldn't come out because he kept rolling 1s and 2s. meanwhile my pc died because a useless undead decided to crit and tried to paralyze me. Rolled horribly for the saving throw. He executed me next turn. One turn later the cleric rolled decently, got out, and ended the encounter with a single "channel positive energy". Yea we rolled like trash.

Hope yall want to do an all evil campaign now!

@@intothekey he'll yes!

Our DM just did this us. The dragonborn got off the worst with getting a human hand.

Kill all the PCs, combine them into a giant Flesh Golem, and have the new PCs fight their previous incarnations. Macabre.

on a slab, a Etho-slab...no that's not happening

Man, that is epic.

This is why healers are the best role in D&D, period. Literally keep your party from death.

He jumped on the grenade as it were.

I've never played much pen&paper/tabletop rpgs, but I've done quite a bit of group content in mmorpgs. Healers and tanks are generally really forgiving of death if the party stays alive. My buddy played a Paladin in FFXI and he'd die and lose XP/levels, but keeping us alive through the content was his reward. I'd never see him complain unless someone did something so dumb that they wiped the party and he had no chance of saving us.

I just imagine at the end the party erecting a statue in the home town of the character (at the very least).

THEY KILLED OUR SCHMUPS, send in Papa!

It's really satisfying when a DM finds his players interacting with NPCs in a meaningful way.

This is my favorite tools. A lot of the time, my npcs and monsters are very quirky/have personalities, and my players love/hate because how much it blurs the line between just mindless murder and interaction. x3

Yes Yes this! Goblins are people!

Can someone tell my players *trying the sleep with everything* is not "interacting with NPCs in a meaningful way" Maybe one or two, but not the entire cast and back catalogue... _(certainly not the monster manual)_

Jesus wants you to fail... Jesus hates you!

@The Empty Water Tower He didn't get right with the Lord... now this Easter, HE. WILL. PAY.

Halflings are extremely lucky. Not all luck is good.

I just realized I have been using inspiration wrong this whole time. How I use it: You can have multiple inspirations to reroll any D20 roll RAW: You can have one inspiration to give yourself and advantage to a D20 roll Was gonna talk about having advantage and using inspiration to reroll to get 1, 1, 1 and 1 But I was gonna also say that is a problem only when we talk about Attack rolls or Death saving roll counting as 2. On ability check or saving throw rolling a 1 can still lead you to succeed the roll ...

@@xezzee You could have elven accuracy and roll 3 d20s, or use halfling to reroll the 1 on regular advantage, then use lucky to roll an additional die, giving you 4 rolls total.

Smart monsters target the obvious clerics/spellcasters first

Nicholas Smith “We’re gods!”

"Its an explosive arrow"

Nice critter memes guys. Well played

Keyleth is i c o n i c

This happened to one of my players. He honestly didn't do anything stupid, and I couldn't justify any way he could have reasonably survived the circumstance, and the accompanying dice rolls.

@@sk8rdman Even so, making a dice roll for a decision means you have to take into account the success and failure of those rolls. The act of making the player roll means a chance of utter failure is possible. Along with unbelieveable success. I think it can be helpful to not have a binary success/failure state with an important roll. It's good to have degrees of success or failure. Having allies around to help add advantage to a dice roll is also powerful. Maybe the player only just fails a dex save to avoid falling over. In the binary scenario the player just falls over and goes prone. In a more degree based success/failure the player might just lose some feet of movement, given how close they were to succeeding they don't deserve the full punishment. And likewise if there's a really difficult lock to pick, that could be life or death for the party it doesn't necessarily have to be decided on one dice roll. You could get them to roll perception/history check first for a potential advantage, say they see not only the lock but they also recognise the lock from another one similar to it, which can give them advantage or a +X amount on the dice roll.Or simply prevents a critical failure breaking the lock. It doesn't disrupt the flow of play and it gives the players another chance at succeeding where otherwise a binary success/failure state could decide the fate of the whole encounter. The more dice rolls you allow the players to have and more ways you can enable them to gain advantage in unique fashion allows them more chances of success but also more chances of roleplaying the encounter. It's not for everyone, and sometimes a binary state is the only option if you're a little short on time or just not used to the game but just remember there are tools you can use to push the players to suceed where they otherwise thought they wouldn't. Or give them a scrap of info that their character would likely know to help them push through a difficult moment. Even just flat out giving then inspiration dice at key moments for good roleplay gives the players a tool they can use if they feel like they need it. And not once here did I mention fudging dice. So long as you're consistent with how you play and how you interpret the rules your players should be able to understand where you're coming from. Just so long as they know in advance what kind of game they're playing. Not everyone wants to randomly fall off a cliff and die, and not everyone wants a miraculous intervention rob their character of a glorious death in battle. My 2 pennies

It was unlikely that the player would die. It was largely due to a critical hit and a failed initiative. He got unlucky. Maybe he shouldn't have walked off at night alone with the doppelganger, but that's how it played out. He thought she was just a harmless wood elf.

Why are wizards less heroic than rangers?

@@FlatOnHisFace Because a Ranger doesn't crumple into a heap and cry for mommy when a big, mean kobold kicks them in the shin.

@@PaxTorumin That's circular logic. The only reason a wizard does that is because they have fewer hit points. If hit points represent heroism, then that is saying the reason they are less heroic is because they have been given less heroism. But why? Because they have fewer hit points. Sorry, it doesn't work.

​@@FlatOnHisFace Actually I was being sarcastic, not logical, in an attempt to politely dismiss you with humor. Colville is the one asserting HP = Heroism and he _explains his reasoning in the first three minutes_ of the video. I happen to like his explanation and agree with it. If his explanation is insufficient for your needs, that's _tough shit._

@@PaxTorumin Ooh, I guess my perfectly valid rebuttal to someone's misinterpretation of the meaning of something doesn't matter because some guy that I'll never meet said "tough shit." How will my group ever cope with playing hit points as stamina vs. injury again? I've been dismissed with humor that isn't funny! NOOOOooooo!

Our group works hard to get pcs back up (healing wording them), and with those mechanics it may be very sensible to murder the pc first to avoid him getting back up. If you know that downed players are down for the rest of the fight, I'd definitely agree.

Given how fast combat is and how dangerous 3-5 opponents are to a single defender (the bandit) every attack would seem to be ideally aimed at incapacitating any active threat. I think a lot depends on the prevalence of magical healing in your campaign though.

The problem is, with present mechanics, basically the way that players can stand up for free, and the fact that healing word is a bonus action, an unconscious PC is no less threatening than a PC at 1 hp. If a bandit knocks someone unconscious he is acting in a tactically disadvantageous way by not immediately stabbing the downed character, unless he just downed the cleric or something and can be reasonably assured that the player isn't just going to stand back up. If you really want to be evil, give the enemies death save mechanics and a healer and watch the party squirm until they realize they have to cu de gras the guys they knock down. Then they'll understand when the DM does it.

If we use a bandit as an example then what you say makes sense, but if it's an animal or a monster of some kind, or a villain who gains powers from killing, then it's more easy to justify making sure the pc is dead. Also if the unconscious PC is a character of high importance, like a cleric or wizard, it would be smarter for the bandit to execute them then run away from the rest of the party to fight another day. Of course the important lesson of players having proper expectations applies. "I am going to fucking kill you because you have spells" is something you want to warn someone about in advance.

Way I see it, the first time the bandit downs a PC, they'll naturally switch targets. If they're around long enough for a downed PC to get back up, next time they down a PC they're going to stay on them. The typical bandits certainly haven't gone their whole pillaging career double tapping every person they mug, so that's not going to be their first instinct if they have no prior knowledge of the party.

cool story please fix your spelling

You. I like you.

* laughs in French *

I expected it to look like violently regurgitated pea soup.

Anokaclips David how many of those have you watched ??

That comment made me actually laugh out loud

Not gonna lie.. I seriously thought it was one of those and he was just making an analogy before moving on to the test. I just came over here from the suggested videos list.

@@Flickstro ditto but I like D&D so I stayed anyway

Same here. I watch a lot of dnd and computer videos so it wasn't unreasonable, especially since it was just recommended.

I had a player say "Well I wanna run this other type of character, so my character plunges off a cliff." "Bro, she can just live a peaceful life as a retired adventurer..." "Nah, plunges off a cliff." True story. That was a weird player tbh.

​@@theramendutchman I swear people will just construct the stupidest mental prisons.

gotta love how wildly organised the PHB is.

So by this logic, and character who is at 0 hit points and gets hit with an attack within 5 feet, they suffer 2 failed death saves, not 1. Interesting. I'd have to think about it, but I might roll with it. Would anyone else? If not, how would you modify the rules the not do this?

@@SomeTomfoolery just rule out the double failure on crits, if you really want to avoid this.

@@SomeTomfoolery Lots of ways to solve this: increase the number of death saving throws before you die to 3 + CONmod; introduce healing surges PC can do if they hit 0 HP; dole out rings of regeneration with limited charges per day; allow clerics or paladins the ability to cast a heal as a reaction if an ally falls, simply rule any hit while unconscious is only 1 DST, etc. Totally depends on how much you want PC death to play a role in your game

@@SomeTomfoolery I would roll with it. But I'd probably discuss with players first the idea of hitting downed PCs - some players might be okay with it, some others dramatically against it. It depends - if the group is out of sync with what I want to do, maybe it's not the group for me as DM.

i'm playing a sentient droid on a star wars rpg. our mj is a big fan of the call of cthulhu and even though he's not as lethal in other rpg, he's still very harsh on the PCs. the fun part with that character is that i can take slightly reckless actions for my team, get my body out of order, then my team pick up my chip and my next body will be up to a dice. in the past, i took a grenade for one of my team mates (who's kind of posing as my owner), i rolled a few time on my dex stat to catch a blaster shot with my hand (and loose my hand), and i once played the passive medical droid as some imperial soldier were storming in a bar waiting for them to ignore me, just to stab their commander with my needle and walk the fuck away (since that medical droid was not meant to run) as they chased and caught me, while my partners had all the room they needed to fight back.

Which is why this notion that Star Wars is a fairytale in which no one ever should die is nonsense.

@@intergalactic92 for a lot of people, star wars is a saga from their youth, but it's still far from a fairy tail. in the original trilogy, countless people die cruel deaths, vador is not just a bad ill-willed villain, he's that harsh and unforgiving character who kill his own subordinate because of mistakes. regarding the prelogy, i guess the order 66 alone is enough...

Well, Wars is in the title. :-)

A wild Captain Shack has appeared!

I was thinking that the necromancer could have "revived" the party to 1 hp locked in a cell. After a moment they realize some one is missing. During the escape they find the missing party member who uses twisted versions of his abilities to stop them. This former party member is now an intelligent captain of the undead hordes and the party themselves find they themselves may in fact be undead as well.

@CommandoDude that's why its important to discuss resurrection with your party. If you dm a game and get rid of resurection magic, or change it in some way you should tell your players.

I’m on the side of not telling them about resurrection magic unless their CHARACTERS would know. It keeps the meta gaming down to a minimum. There’s nothing wrong with saying, “You character would have zero idea about this” or even have them roll for that knowledge.

@@ironman21389 That's... really shitty. Like this is information that should be disclosed before the game starts. Hell, before characters are made. Have some faith in your players to play reasonably instead of trying to trick and misinform them because 'they wouldn't know'. The player should, even if their character doesn't.

EviIPaladin it depends on the group. Mine didn’t ask about it and I’m playing with two serious veteran players, one of which is playing the Paladin, and the other is playing a Druid. They discovered how frequent that magic is when they found a Revivify scroll early in the game and when they went to buy another one they realized it’ll cost them quite a bit of gold. Same with trying to get a magical curse removed. They’ve also had a healing wand made and even buy potions. I like letting my players discover the world through the eyes of their characters. Letting them be intuitive and make precautions when going out and adventuring. My players learned after almost being wiped out at level 5 that they need to be prepared for when things go bad. It works for my table and it may not work at yours.

I feel the same way. One of the best feelings this game can give you is standing victorious after a tough battle, knowing that you won because you earned it. If you find out that you were never intended to lose, and the DM will go out of his way to make sure noone dies, then that feeling is gone. You're not winning because you earned it, you are winning because the DM wants you to. And that makes the game boring.

Good english, and very well said.

I do on occasion do some of the subtle things Matt suggests in this video, like finding a way to justify spreading out attacks rather than focusing everything on one PC. At the end of the day, I DO want my players to win, and I tell them this as I'm rolling 12d6 poison damage against the lot of them. I don't kill PCs, but that doesn't mean PCs can't die.

It depends on the circumstances and how much the DM knows about their players. Matt in this video references Phil a long time friend and dnd player, so he clearly knows what phil expects from the game with a given character. So you have more leeway in interpreting when phils character gets into trouble you don't have to worry as much about him feeling bad about dying. For most folks this isn't a realistic option, not everyone has a friend of decades sitting in their game. Which is why a lesson zero is important. Ask your players beforehand "are you okay with your character dying? do you want a hint if/when it's going to happen or are you willing to play the odds and bet everything on a single dice roll?" "are you okay with divine intervention to protect your character or otherwise some unknown plot element saving them or would you rather die?" "would your character want to come back to life if the players found a way to res them?" "do you want to do an underworld/otherworldly setting when your character dies as a means of escaping death and coming back to life via a small set of trials or roleplaying moments with some diety/devil/divine creature?" "are you okay with falling out of a window and being instantly killed?". And sometimes just simply outlining to the players as Matt points out "this is the world, life is cheap" or "this is the world there is an afterlife, death is not the end" and as the DM it's their job to decide how far they want to push that campaign toward which extreme they want things to go. Sometimes if your group is roleplayers you can get away with more dice roll fudging and otherwise "pull punches" because the players expect a story, and killing a character ruins that story. Sometimes the players want a more mechanical experience true to that world, where dice roll fudging is harder to do and you don't pull punches because the players expect a challenge to help highlight and bring realism to that world. Neither option is bad, but you do need to know which the players prefer. And sometimes if you have a mix of players you just have to upset one of them with doing something they didn't expect. While it's not their world, the world wouldn't exist without their characters bringing life to it, so there's definitely a bit of collaboration that has to occur. Matt's resolution here by having the players roll up new characters and bring them in as reinforcements to come in at a dramatic moment could work, but that's a lot of extra work the DM has to do and they can't do it all the time. An alternative is just doing things like mentally altering the number of NPC's the players have to deal with as allies or enemies depending on how well the players are doing, to help the action economy or hinder it if the players need more of a challenge. or altering the amount of HP the boss has. Keeping tabs on how much health players have is different to keeping tabs on how much health monsters have. The DM controls the information about the monsters, but the player information is known to everyone. So there's an implicit bias in favour of the players that the DM has to constantly dance around. I can also guarantee you that you don't notice when the DM pulls their punches for real because the DM wants an epic story just as much as the player. And arguably witholding groups of monsters could qualify as pulling punches. Or even giving the group extra magic items or some other random boon the players happen upon. And when you do notice it's not because the DM schemed against you or robbed you of a fine death. but because they either forgot about an ability in combat or didn't know off-hand exactly how you wanted the game to be played. I suppose there are a few DM's who are just assholes. But That's just life, sometimes you just have to call it quits and admit you lost a lot of time dealing with someone who was an asshole.

jeans jesus christ you have time

Lex Smithee I hope you meant you killed a *character*, rather than a *player*, because otherwise, that’s called murder...😳

It wouldn't be exactley murder if the player himself ate 300g of pure cocaine without anyone forcing him into doing it :'D

LOL Nice

@@simontmn My kinda guy

@@simontmn I'd start with Dominate Person on the party melee fighter (Barbarian first, Fighter if a barbarian isn't present), then Disintegrate. If the Dominate Person goes off, either the party can waste spells to break the enchantment, or they have to contend with a party member maiming them in addition to dealing with the lich. Follow up with Disintegrate spells to the Cleric, then the Wizard. Don't forget the buff the lich with Greater Invisibility, Mirror Image, Displacement, and True Seeing. Also, any treasure items you roll for him that are useful to him, equip them to him and have him utilize them.

For the folks at home, we survived. But oh god at what cost???

@@arcurusplays6899 I buffed her with mislead (for smug monologuing) and foresight instead. I had swapped a lot of her instakills out for things that would be more interesting and interactive. Gave her a shield guardian that cast fly on her. Put the fight in a lava pit with pillars of stone she could fly away to. They almost didn't make it. And now the party's killed her once, she's even more pissed with them.

@@daiedalous An angry opponent makes simple mistakes. I wonder if you considered just how angry she was...

That's very cool, I like this idea a lot. I'm starting my very first campain as a DM soon and I might try that, because I'm way too afraid of a TPK haha !

Doesn't a barbarian in 5e have some kind of death save? Like, he comes back with 1hp if he succeeds?

right!! so nice when it does especially when it brings happy videos.

me too lol but im a bit late

I love giving GMs advice on how to avoid killing PCs other than just taking it and saying whatever. Having the told how to manage the game game both ahead if time and on the fly is a true skill GM's need to learn.

The first time I killed a PC it was a TPK with 15 characters. XD And yes the players had fun with it.

I have a player who enjoys a good, meaningful death, too. He loves TPKs even... LOL

I know what you mean. My friends character died in such an inane way I was worried it would turn him off from DnD and my crew forever. Had the direct opposite effect and it turned out i was more devastated for him than HE was. That and I felt cheated my first PC kill was so....lack luster.(Most DM's imagine that a BBEG would slay a PC in an epic showdown rather than a random encounter with bandits on a bridge....)

I killed my first PC in the first encounter of the first adventure I ever ran. I had five L15 PCs entering a dungeon, and the first door they opened had a wail of the banshee trap on it...three of the five PCs failed their saves and died. That's when I learned I'm a sociopathic GM, because I didn't feel bad for the PCs at all. :-) That adventure was a one-off I was running to introduce some new players to D&D. A couple of weeks later we started the Forgotten Realms campaign I'd been planning for 8 months, and in the first round of the first encounter, I killed the party cleric. That was 13 years ago, and the only time I've ever used deus ex machina by having the 24th level cleric I'd run in an earlier FR campaign and who had actually sent the PCs on their quest. Nothing like a bunch of new players seeing true resurrection used in the first 30 minutes of a low-level campaign...

@@frocat5163 I killed my level 5 pc with a swarm of spiders that rolled well. It was 3v2, with 3 PCs against a swarm of spiders, and a giant spider. Long story short, the spiders rolled well. The PC went unconscious, he rolled a 1 on both his death saves, and that was the end.

BensRandomness magical reinvigoration of the body.

Ego stroking.

The resolve to keep going. Whether physical, magical, or psychological.

Healers are basically cheerleaders.

DETERMINATION

I remember too, that moment made my blood boil.

That was completely justified by game rules and was actually hilarious in hindsight.

To be fair, resurrection is a thing.

​@@williamwall3403 it actually wasn't justified at all by the rules - fall damage maxes out at 20d6, an average of 70 damage, which wouldn't have killed marisha. matt rolled something like 90 or 100d6. marisha was right, they were essentially gods, and that fall wouldn't have killed keyleth and probably wouldn't have even knocked her down if the correct rule was used.

@@nitewalker11 Yeah but that rule is completely ridiculous, ignoring it is the only thing that makes any sense. The damage cap is way way way way way way way way too low (I got bored of typing "way").

Yes one of our best DM's Brad let it be known at the start that he WOULD let the dice-roll-as-they-may which was especially funny one fight where a HUGE Hill Giant we was struggling against Crit Fumbled a swing with it's Great Club and took itself out... :P

@AeonReign Actually once when I was splitting Locust Tree base root wood with a maul, the twist of the wood angled that full power swing out to the side and into my leg shin. Thankfully I ALWAYS wore some old Catcher's legguards just in case of 'situations' such as that... :)

@AeonReign This actually reminds me of one particularly interesting & freaky combat related injury also leading to death... kzfaq.info/get/bejne/rdtnhdmI09fSZ2g.html

@AeonReign They also don't exist. Nowhere in the PHB or DMG are they mentioned, because WotC already knows they suck. (Or if you *really* want to do it, just... leave someone's weapon jammed in the ground and give them disadvantage on their next roll or something.)

I agree, I do the same. It makes sense that a ghoul that's hungry for flesh to keep attacking (eating) the character. Or when an intelligent enemy sees that whenever he knocks someone down the other pc's heal him and he has to deal with him again, he will off course try to end his life.

This is also how I DM and I find that beyond the luck of the dice it's the main factor in the lethality of the game (assuming you are sticking to CR recommendations and number of combats per day). 90% of DM's I have when I'm a player never attack a downed player and it really makes almost any situation non-lethal. If you want your game to be more lethal, use more ravenous or intelligent enemies that purposefully go for downed players.

I have zombies and unintelligent Golems in the category of "won't attack." Simple automatons too, unless specifically commmanded to do otherwise.. Their target is down, no longer a threat, move on to threats.

Most creatures will try to survive the fight. Wasting time on an unconscious is in most cases an idea that goes against fight or flight instincts. Even a hungry ghoul would (in most cases) remove the threats before feasting on the body. Most creatures have a hard time enjoying their dinner while getting blasted with fire. For intelligent foes, their agenda is (usually) the same. Survive the fight is first priority, and only if this is impossible for them, they would go for an unconscious PC just out of spite. An exception to this is an enemy that knows the party has a healer (knows before the fight, or learns it during it), and unless they kill a member, they will keep getting up again and again. An enemy that has an escape plan will, however, try to inflict as much damage as possible if winning straight up is no longer an option, and would (almost) always try to kill. Just think about it: If you were pulled into a street fight with friends, and you knock someone to the ground and they don't move. There has to be some kind of extreme circumstance for you to keep punching that one downed guy, while your friends are being hit by other foes. So, unless you fulfill the _extreme_ criteria, both intelligent and dumb creatures will not go for kills before they are safe.

I expect my friends to hold their own... I want that guy I took down to remember me for weeks afterwards.

RidersOfRohan you would think that, but often that isn’t available. My players are at lvl 9. We have lost 2 players. Now at high levels yeah it becomes more trivial. But at that level in a magic setting it kinda makes sense. But high risk settings are super fun too

Been playing dnd for years, like Matt said who knows what the real statistics behind it is. Every table can be different. But what I do know is, for the over 40ish players I’ve had maybe more. Each one is shocked or surprised when someone dies and the typical answer is. Wow never had a character die before or saw one. If streamed games are any incentive, seems like either plot armor or lethality is removed entirely.

@@falconforgefantasy9496 There also Matthew Mercer's homebrew'd rules on resurrecting where it becomes more and more difficult each time you 're resurrected and it actually requires some rolls. I wouldn't mind playing or dm'ing a game without any resurrecting, I just believe that it adds to the narrative if an option is available, but it's not exploitable like it is by raw in the 5e. Sometimes I even give my character one narrative resurrection (depending on their backstories and lore, for example as a reverant of the Raven Queen etc.)

Are you ever going to give it a try?

Get it done man! Grab your friends/strangers and go!

SAME

i did the same before i started playing, i needed some DM advise and it really helped

Watch that first video again; "You are going to run D&D tonight, for free..." Do it!

60 metre drop. Roll 20d6.

Sledgehammer. Most effective way to wipe a memory system

rm -rf /

10,000 volts

windows 10.

That's just a general rule of all game design, make the player feel like the odds are stacked against them even when you actually stack them in their favor. It makes the game more engaging while minimizing the risk of turning people away when things go wrong. If you shoot for a 70% win rate, then either it was just a couple really unlucky dice rolls (in which case the next time they play it will probably be fine) or the player did something wrong (and they should probably be able to figure that out and learn from it). The thing you want to avoid is the player constantly replaying your game but not getting any further because they aren't either perfectly optimized or very lucky. There are games that can push that boundary, but you need to do a lot to set the player's expectations for that and not spring it on them.

Arelak some people are trash

Also, could you do interviews with the players so that we can get to know them and be more connected with the characters. Just an idea. like if you agree =-)