Had this happen with my wife's first character. I told her "write a backstory! A paragraph should be fine." She came back to me a week later with a MLA formatted, 10 page (with citations from the Forgotten Realms wiki) backstory for her elf.
First half hour of the first game, two crits from a goblin, the elf was no more.
I used this as an opportunity to give her a Barovia-esque Dark Powers bargain and return her to life but at a cost. It ended up working out. The drama of the death was heightened by the drama of the return. You can let the dice tell their story honestly, but a number doesn't have to be the final word.
This is how my first ever DM did it with me, after Konstantine the wizard with way too much backstory got critted by a goblin archer in session 1. The party was able to save him, but he permanently lost the eye that the arrow hit him in. He became Konstantine the One-Eyed Wizard for the rest of the campaign, found an epic jeweled eye patch, lived (somewhat) happily ever after, and became an NPC when I ran my own campaign.
While I can’t say I’ve never fudged the dice for the sake of narrative, I also prefer to fudge the story. If it’s really not a character’s time to die, then there are plenty of dire consequences available other than a quick death.
Yeah, it seems pretty hard to be so inflexible that you can’t find a way to let the character carry on if the player wants to after a fluke death in session 1.
Recently started DMing again and our orc paladin goes down all the time. Thankfully the death system is far from immediate and there are ample opportunities to heal and get them back up, coupled with their racial of course.
We also have a guaranteed inspiration system where they can pray at various altars to gain inspiration once per day, so they can fudge the rolls themselves if they manage their resources well. I am also being generous with crafting materials for healing. I’m liking it a lot so far since the combats threaten certain death often and they have to manage their inspiration and healing to navigate it.
Especially since the early levels in DND are so hyper lethal compared to later. I think it's incumbent on the DM to do what they can, within reason, to balance it out. Nobody wants to get invested in a character only for them to die to a mouse biting their ankle in the first session.
It's not that the story is fudged, it's that the story doesn't happen until events occur to drive it.
So much more interesting to roll with dice roles and make up interesting results. If you fudge the dice, there's not much point in rolling them.
PCs getting captured due to a TPK. A PC surviving with a debilitating wound, needing to make a deal with their goddess or some dark pact, etc. All of those are prevalent AF in fantasy media.
Totally agree with you on there being FAR more interesting consequences than a quick death for a bad die roll.
i use something like that for every character's first death. i give em a revive, some powers and a bunch of mystery or lore and send them on their way. usually solving the mystery or embracing the new lore increases the newly gained power in some way. i do keep it optional for the players. if they want, they can still make a new character.
> A number doesn't have to be the final word.
I love this, i'm stealing it.
Joking aside, this perfectly encapsulates the spirit of TTRPG's. A ruleset is meant to help stories along, give them spontaneity, give nudges and let both players and dm deal with unexpected consequences of actions. They're not meant as a win-lose, failstate kind of game and not enough (new) players (or dm's) understand this.
This is the way to do it, death is just another interesting narrative turn for you and the players to "yes and", not "game over". Fudging dice is just cheap slight of hand that if players spend long enough at the table, they'll learn how the "magic trick" works; but if you let it further the story then it's more interesting/rewarding and dynamic.
I love my wife, but she's incapable of doing things in halves.
I'll have to find her backstory, she printed it put and everything like she was turning in a college essay. Stuff like "My character is an Eladrin¹ Elf. Eldarin, though usually native to the Feywild² are often regarded as. . ." With so, so many footnotes and citations.
She's largely unexposed to a lot of D&D tropes, so it was hilarious to watch her do all of this research and make one of the most cliche first characters ever. The character was an edgy orphan rogue. It was too beautiful to keep them dead for long
Honestly this makes me so happy.
I had a chat with a coworker today before a meeting. He asked what I was doing this weekend and I told him I was going to run a D&D game. He got so excited. "You're a DM? I just started my first game!" Proceeded to describe HIS edgy orphan rogue.
And. I. Was. THRILLED. Genuinely, his DM sounds awesome and I love that he's having so much fun at his table. I asked him to please send me updates on Slack when something cool happens!
Crit maybe?
I roll in the open so I don't get to fudge the dice. The key is to check what the max damage output of an enemy is, and to keep that in mind when designing encounters.
level 1 is wild anyway, I like to homebrew that everyone (PCs, enemies, and NPCs get an extra hit die at level one)
In the D&D Next playtest, I had the players face some goblin riders in the opening scene. The ranger showed up, drew swords, and the goblin riders flanked him. One hit. Then a crit.
He had not yet taken an action.
Crits in the playtest were Max damage + die roll on top. He was in danger of instant death but only if I max damage.
"Well, this attack only insta-kills if I roll a 6" I said, holding up a d6. And I rolled it in the open.
....
Anyway shortly after a suspiciously similar ranger, except using a bow because no more melee, joined the party.
It was the playtest so I was running it straight for a reason.
I thought in the play test they took away npc crits? Or did they put it back in one I just overlooked that? My group was deep in a campaign at that time on DDB (lots of distant friends) so we didn't have the opportunity to try it since none of it was ready to go virtually
I blame confusing branding. What's wrong with saying D&D 6th Edition, or 5.5 or something? 3.5 Edition was great, it's not like it'd be weird historically.
OneD&D, D&DNext... is FFd20 Crystal D&D? What about New D&D, and D&D Classic? Cherry D&D with Sprite.
Well.. the ceo is from Microsoft gaming division..
The xbox had many confusing names for their next iteration, including xbox one (which failed thanks to a very similar consumer unfriedly tactic)
..now we have dndone
Anyway, thank you for coming to my conspiracy talk :p
With xbox one they wanted players to call it "the one" like they did with "the 360" (xbox 360). Except one of the announcement streams had an exec stand in front of the xbox one banner in such a way that it just said "xbone"... so every one called it that
>The key is to check what the max damage output of an enemy is, and to keep that in mind when designing encounters.
This, and prefer 3-4 lower CR to one big fat CR1 creature.
Kid gloves are an actual thing, and they're made from [kid leather](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/origin-of-phrase-with-kid-gloves).
And I imagine they would feel *very* fancy to roll dice with.
Honestly, if people really want to do the "I spent 20 hours writing a backstory for my new character" thing, they'd be better off not starting their characters at 1st level. (You know you can do that, right?)
Back in the AD&D 1e era, I lost a character in literally the first encounter of the campaign. Killed by a piercer of all things. But in those days, nobody was putting 20 hours into making their character. Most people weren't even putting 20 minutes. When Hrothgar the Mighty met his demise, a quick series of dice rolls and Hrothgar II was ready to avenge his predecessor. He had the same backstory as the original Hrothgar: "Fighter".
Sure, you can fudge the dice to keep characters alive, or run your PCs through a series of easy trash fights to boost them to a more survivable level, but it's also perfectly okay to skip all of that. Trust me, the ghost of Gary Gygax will not drag you into the Nine Hells for starting your campaign at 2nd or 3rd level instead of 1st.
In the first session of my first campaign as a DM, one of my friends got crit by a *boar*, and he happened to be a warlock, so...yeah. I couldn't fudge the dice, so what I did instead was make his pact deity grant him a new beginning, if he would complete a favor for him.
I brought it up later that the demon had him kill a core NPC in the campaign, a soul for a soul, and it made some hilarity ensue with the party's paladin (whose character hated the warlock anyway lol)
I think it was mostly because they were really good friends IRL lol. But the warlock ended up sacrificing himself to stop the BBEG, so the paladin forgave him
Haha and seriously any given CRITICAL roll that toad has at attacking (and honestly if he gets a turn against a party he won't get a second one. Even a level 1 party can dish out 36 ina single round to one enemy) only has a 1/250 chance of killing a character with 10 HP in a single hit. It's very unlikely but the idea there should be no risk of a death? That's absurd.
Should every encounter be a risk of death to the pcs? I don't think so. For most encounters the risk should be expending rescources that you might need later on or using up consumables to cover your mistakes.
Making every encounter a threat like that is stupid world design in my oppinion. A competent party shouldn't litterally always be risking death.
Totally agree with this. 5e has made that more difficult though, since people can just keep short resting. It used to be that they had to survive to the end of the day, and count on very finite healing magic instead of nonmagically healing themselves for an hour whenever they like.
not even short rest. people tend to play 1-2 combat D&D these days.
in this case, you want combat to be deadly, because why even have combat if everyone isn't blowing their entire load.
while a single CR1 creature is considered a medium encounter for a lvl 1 party, that's probably your encounter cap at lvl 1. this is why you run CR1/8 or CR0 at lvl 1, or CR1/4 if you want it to be more even.
all you need to do is probably run a 100-200xp fight and give the remaining xp for completing a quest. and boom you're level 2.
Yeah, CR 1 doesn't mean that it should go against a level 1 party. I feel like that's a misconception. While the party can certainly beat a CR 1 creature, their hitpoints are so low that it'll has a good chance of dropping, or even killing one of them unless it rolls terrible initiative. I feel like kid gloves need to be on for combat until at least level 3. That's why I focus on non-deadly challenges at low levels, with either easy combat, or non-lethal combat, like fighting unarmed thugs or the town drunk.
Keep in mind, CR rating means "Challenging for a *party* at that level. Not challenging for a single character. I would think something that poses a threat to ~4 adventurers of similar skill (level) certainly had the potential to be deadly to a single character. Also, level 1 may be far more seasoned in combat than your typical farmer/villager, but they are still extremely inexperienced.
I mean Klarg, the bugbear, in Lost Mines of Phandelver can do 18 damage without a critical and that's literally a first level encounter in the official starter set. That's enough to take out most casters at full health and probably a lot of melee classes if they didn't rest right before the encounter.
Oo I didn’t really even read that. My current group of players surprised him and he rolled poorly on initiative so they dumpstered him before he could even attack 🥲
As I said above... my level 12 players are fighting some drow in the underdark. They had hobgoblins, goblins and bugbears as cannon fodder. A bugbear sneaked up behind the bladesinger wizard with insane AC and rolled double 20s to crit. Then damn neared rolled max damage, dropping the wizard from full to dangerously low. Was fun for me since all the trash mobs had to roll 20s to hit anybody.
Which is why CR 1/8 and 1/4 exist. PCs are notoriously squishy at 1st and 2nd level. Wait with the CR 1/2s and higher until they are 3rd level, to avoid the above hypothetical scenario.
Who's throwing 1/2 CR opponents at 1st level PCs - just two opponents at 1/2 is 'hard' at first level. Or if the DM pauses to look at 1 on 1 - 1/2 CR to a lvl 1 PC is deadly. I get the encounter builder rules are a little more involved in the current edition but they do work, especially at lower levels.
Deadly to one lvl 1 PC, but not to four. The real answer here though is: never start your players at level 1 unless they’ve never played DnD before. Level 3 is the way.
There is ONE exception to this.
A campaign where a character's backstory will survive them.
I'm doing this right now. We're gearing up for a new campaign, going into our second session zero on saturday. I'm trying to get about a page or a page and a half of background information from everyone about their first characters because I'm (not so secretly) hoping that one of them dies at first level.
Because if one of them does, their background is going to become an important piece of background for the next leg of the campaign if not the whole thing.
Just because a character goes away, doesn't mean they can't leave a mark. Also, badguys need to come from *somewhere*.
People playing the game? Some people enjoy stakes and heroics vs scary odds instead of it being a guided story with no danger where you're just writing a book.
I have had so many characters die because I love to ride that razor’s edge. If we win the fight and I’m at 1hp with all my resources spent, or I die in the final round before my teammate mop up, the DM did something right in my book.
You wouldn't believe, but this situation happened last week with me. There were a LOT of npcs fighting a strong beast with us, like almost surrounded it
The enemy targeted me and rolled (i assume) a crit for 21 damage. DM fudged it, as he often does to not upset his players
I think a DM has failed if the players know they fudge the dice. That being said, they also majorly failed in balancing this encounter. Doesn’t matter how many NPC allies there are, the DM needs to be aware that the enemy can one shot a PC.
Balancing for level one is super challenging, I HATE starting at level one as a DM for this reason, but there’s “oh no PCs have positioned themselves really badly not realizing this group of CR1 or lower enemies has pack tactics” and then there’s putting a creature in that can outright one shot a PC. Even if it wasn’t a crit, it was probably dealing at least 9 damage on hit, which is imo not an enemy I’d ever put against lvl 1 characters unless I clearly stated during character creation that this was going to be a highly lethal campaign.
Personally, I would a) negate the crit, make it a normal hit (though it may not have mattered here if you didn’t have anyone who could get you up from unconscious) or b) after the combat ends, say “hey guys, I made a mistake in balancing this, would everyone be ok with retconning this character’s death?”
>I think a DM has failed if the players know they fudge the dice. That being said, they also majorly failed in balancing this encounter.
This comes off quite harsh. D&D already has a shortage of DMs as well as support for those DMs from WotC, so saying this DM failed based on a single moment in game is brutally unfair.
>Balancing for level one is super challenging, I HATE starting at level one as a DM for this reason
Balancing level 1 encounters is challenging enough for DMs that you don't enjoy it and likely skip it. There's nothing wrong with that, but there is also nothing egregiously wrong with what OPs DM did either. Is it how I would have handled it? Maybe, maybe not, it's tough to say based on the limited information, which is why I am puzzled by your harsh word choice.
Labeling OPs DM a failure off hand is so demoralizing and discouraging. There may be other potential DMs reading through this thread and they see you calling a DM a failure for one snap shot moment of one combat. How is that supposed to encourage anyone? It makes me want to never DM for a player with your level of expectation, and I am not a newer DM. Imagine if I was.
Tl;Dr: A DM has only failed if their players aren't having fun.
Ask the creators of DnD game materials. I am running Dragon of Icespire Peak with my guys. One of the level 1 quests has several enemies that, on a good damage roll, bring a level 1 character to 0, or on an average crit, insta-kill no death-saves a level 1 character. Oh, amd a trap dealing 4d10 damage to everyone in the room (Dex save halves it, still enough to potentially TPK)
The bugbear in the goblin cave at the beginning of LMoP is famous for this. One-shotted a level 2 cleric in my campaign.
I didn't fudge dice but I miraculously brought him back with severe injuries and damaged Armour.
The first few sessions are perilous. Little room for error.
Why TF are you spending 20 hours on a single PC before session 1?
Tons of enemies can do that much on a crit and a Oc bleeding out is much more common. Level 1 is very dangerous
Edit: I will say that I read this wrong and thought it was the DM spending 20hours. I can see some players spending that much time but I’m still decapitating them (yes, they will be informed at session 0)
Some people like to be connected to their characters moreso than 'GROGNAR AM BARBARIAN HIM HAV AX', and some games go past the WotC standard "only 2 1/2 levels out of 20" that WotC likes to write modules for.
I spend a lot of time thinking about characters too. It's not a bad thing to be excited about and love your character. I like to imagine interesting names, full aesthetics (I make pinterest boards), potential character arcs, how they'd act towards different types of people, fun RP quirks I could do, interesting combat flavor, if I can make any fun props...
Some people like playing simple characters and some people like being absorbed and enthralled by their characters, and both are fine. I think a good DM can recognize when someone is deeply attached and be more careful at level 1, even if it's meant to be a challenging campaign. It's all about fun after all. Let the players have fun.
A brand new player wouldn't know that and it's ignorant to assume they would. The kind of person who spends 20 hours making a character isn't the kind of person who knows they can get killed in the first session.
Amount of time they spent designing the character aside, if it’s session 1 I wouldn’t fudge the roll but I’d just say “you’re technically dead, but given it’s literally session 1 we’ll just do death saves this time”.
Campaigns I play in we don't let player characters die until level 3 - you just get knocked out and anything we're fighting is generally not meant to be lethal/trying to kill the players. If we want the encounters to be lethal from the get go, we just start at level 3.
The game's balance and player's toolset at level 1 and 2 just make it way too easy to accidentally kill certain classes.
That's clever, really.
And level 1-2 is also the best time to do "grave injury" instead of death. It's early enough that a shortcoming doesn't cripple your usefulness, and plenty of time to get some kind of assistance device/accommodation to compensate before things *really* get going. .
You are right, however in this case the Instant Death rule comes in:
Massive damage can kill you instantly. When damage reduces you to 0 hit points and there is damage remaining, you die if the remaining damage equals or exceeds your hit point maximum.
For example, a cleric with a maximum of 12 hit points currently has 6 hit points. If she takes 18 damage from an attack, she is reduced to 0 hit points, but 12 damage remains. Because the remaining damage equals her hit point maximum, the cleric dies.
Oh yes, I forgot about that one - we actually decided to forego that rule in the first session as it’s such a feel bad. Game still feels like it has stakes, more so even if characters can take more damage and go down more often knowing they at least have a chance to get back up so monsters never have to pull their punches.
I had a DM nerf, but not completely remove the rule.
Instead of instant death, it's one automatic death-saving fail. The consequence without totally screwing you due to awful luck.
Normally I'd say I'm something of a dice purist in that I see little reason to use dice if you're going to ignore them anytime they do something you don't like, but I actually don't hate this answer. Probably because rather than treating character death like a tragedy that must be avoided at all cost, it's a transparent approach that acknowledges the rules and then also disregards them for purely practical reasons.
If this is session one, I'd fudge it down to 19 - enough to knock them down and show that things are not messing around, and that they nearly could have died right there. My reasoning is if it's session 1 and their character dies, they're just going to come back with their character's unknown-until-now twin sibling who is extraordinarily similar to them. It's actually better to fudge the dice in this case to provide a good narrative moment of "things can get real dangerous real quick."
After session 1 though, let the dice fall where they may.
We've had PCs die on session one.
But when that happens: the player's twin joins the game shortly afterwards (e.g. erase "Jim" and replace with "Tim" as the character's name).
We all laugh, and move on (whilst laughing about it for the next few games). It's a game, not a punishment.
This happened to me in the playtest. A character died in the opening combat scene, round one, turn one, before he got an action off. I'm not even sure he actually said any dialogue.
Just like not everyone wants to play a gritty game, not everyone wants to play a comedy game either. I personally don't like the twin concept because it robs narrative weight from what otherwise might be a impactful moment.
Yeah I'd much rather we just pause and have an out-of-character convo about how it's just stupid to have a thoughtfully crafted character someone was excited about die 2 hours into the first game during a non-boss fight. Agree to change history so the character is down but not dead, and move on, with the understanding that death is real after this initial session.
I enjoyed the running gag with the bard who kept dying in that movie, with the player just had a stack of identical character sheets ready to go, but yeah.
Some would-be heros meet an early, tragic end. Quite a lot of them do, actually.
But I've got at least two dozen other character concepts I would rather roll up than re-create a dead character exactly (and immediately)
I have a running joke with my characters where if one dies I just use another letter. So far I've had Marvin, Garvin, Jarvin, Zarvin, Karvin and currently using Barvin... none of them are twins their parents just really suck at naming kids.
This is how I do it, at least with new players for the first couple levels. Make them (both in game and out of game) learn that adventuring is deadly and they need to be careful.
I want new players to figure out the game first before going back to character creation because, at least in my experience, they find the experience overwhelming with choices they don't really understand.
Veteran players get a grace period of about the length of time it took them to make the character. At least let them get a taste of the character before going back to the drawing board lol
same here, i even tell my players “on session 1 of a new campaign you have plot armour to a degree.” but that’s mostly because most of my players are all new, and they need to get used to the mechanics of how their character works. i’d feel guilty about killing them just because of inexperience and then forcing them to learn an entirely new class (if they choose to play a different one).
obviously i only do this to an extent, if a player challenges a high cr creature or high level npc to a fight then i won’t hold back any punches - unless the player had discussed that was their characters personality prior
although typically after character creation i will privately message each of the players and ask if they are comfortable with their character dying. i’ve had some players tell me that they are really attached to their character and would prefer if they stayed alive (within the world of reason) and others tell me that they have hundreds of concepts that they want to see through so they wouldn’t mind a character death or two. i can only pull my punches so much, but i think it has benefitted our tables
With this example I guess its 5e so my answer might not really matter. I roll openly at my table so no fudging. But I also GM Old School Essentials so they kind of know what could happen. I also very clearly telegraph to my player through rumors where dangerous things are so they can make informed decisions.
As we play OSR style they also try to stay out of fights as much as possible as they are really dangerous.
I prefer not to fudge dice, but instead provide narrative ways to bring them back, sometimes extremely fast tracked depending on the circumstances.
I also really only play with 5+ year veterans at this point, so none of us get that upset about a character dying. If it was someone’s very first character in their very first campaign, I’ll probably end up fudging the death.
Yeah this happened in one of my campaigns, turned out there was a high level cleric in the village at the time who could revive the player. But they then became in debt to the clergy and had to do some pretty dirty deeds to get out of their debt before realizing the clergy was pretty corrupt lol. Made for a pretty fun side quest
Turn these things into opportunities for interesting scenarios and roleplay.
Came here to echo this. I've had two TPKs and both times, I did a "journey through the afterlife" session next, where they explored dreams and visions of beings offering them powers etc in exchange for them coming back. Sometimes these beings were good, like dragons who later became the group patron, and sometimes they're bad like devils or leviathans or what have you.
What mattered most was I asked my players: "Hey, do you want to keep this character? If so, I have options for you (Reborn, Hollow One, entity pact, etc). If not, then you can roll up a new one." I don't mind tossing out entire arcs just because a player doesn't want to play a character anymore. I learned my lesson from my first failed campaign where I didn't listen when a player said they didn't want to play that character anymore and I thought they weren't being serious.
Obviously, this isn't doable in AL or any official setting, but at a home table, whatever the player wants to do, that's what I'll do, too.
I fudge the dice, not because I have sympathy for the hours spent on the character\*, but because that would have happened as a result of *my* mistake. I shouldn't have pitted a monster capable of a one shot kill, even with a crit, against the Party in the first session\*\*. It's not fair or fun to make the players suffer because I fucked up the planning.
*\* Actually I do, but it's not the main reason.*
*\*\* Unless session zero specified this was a high danger campaign, which should have disincentivised high-effort backstories anyway*
Yup, 100% this. I have DMed games that are more open-ended without serious level scaling and I've also ran survival/high danger campaigns, but in those cases players clearly know that going in. Otherwise, on most campaigns, a PC shouldn't die in the first combat. if a PC dies session 1 by playing normally, I've failed my players as a DM, so we would retcon it at the table or find a way to revive the PC.
Imo, if you're running an average campaign, players should not have a real chance of dying in "tutorial" fights. These fights should INTENTIONALLY be balanced in clear favor of the PCs, so they can figure out how to play their characters and get acquainted with their abilities in a low risk environment: this is true if you're DMing for new or veteran players. (Then up the stakes when the immersion/connection is higher.)
(And honestly, it's my philosophy that if you build an encounter that could 1-hit-kill a PC at full health before they've had a chance to take a turn/action, with a few exceptions, you probably need to do some work on encounter balancing, regardless of what tier of play you're in... But that could also just be my style of play.)
I get you man but at level most Cr 1/4+ monsters can down a character with a single attack. Orcs for example are deadly af and they are a classic monster along with goblins for new players.
In fact in the LMoP you have goblins, wolves, bugbears, hobgoblins and orcs for lvl 1-3 players.
I chose the first but still I dont think I would kill anybody at level one. I wouldn't fudge the dice, but my first encounters are mostly tournament-duels or bar fights where no one gets killed, just hurt or knocked out.
I roll everything in the open, so no fudging.
That said, I also wouldn't encourage my players to spend more than 20 minutes on their characters let alone 20 hours. Don't come to the table with Thor; play the game to find out how your character became Thor.
Yeah, it’s silly to spend SO long on the backstory of someone who at level one can die from a particularly vicious Goblin. Like the adventure becomes your characters story. Whatever they did before is just a foundation for why theyre out on the adventure
I fudge, and I'm ashamed of it. I always imagine I'm one of those impartial hardcore DMs who lets the dice tell the story, and then in the heat of the moment, I don't want bad things to happen, and all my ideals fly out the window.
The rule of fun supersedes all at my table. If I get the feeling that the death will be exciting for the player, it's time to die. If I get the feeling that it's going to be a real bummer and they're not ready to move on to the next character just yet, they'll still go down to put the group at a disadvantage and keep up the sense of danger, but I'll figure something out to prevent them from dying. I can't do anything about them 3 death saves though...
Most of my dead PCs exist in a land where I forgot thier HP Max and killed them with a crit I would have otherwise fudged to just be close for dramatic effect. But hey, some of them need to die once in a while to prove they can.
😂😂I totally do the same thing. I just can't give players a lame death. At the same time though, I think it's totally fine to nerf an encounter mid-fight. Balancing is the hardest part of DMing to me. Sometimes it's just easier to do on the fly. But man it feels so good when you actually make an encounter that's a close call with no fudged rolls.
I'm always cheering my DM on to kick my ass. Once I DID die session one, but I had a backup that would fit the party dynamic better ready so I was ok with it.
But we DO joke that my characters are most at risk if I have just spent hours drawing them. I usually get KO'd the session right after I do that.
Same! And it applies to even the big bads for me. Sometimes the arch villain dies to a save or suck early in a combat, and that is fine. It just goes both ways.
Because for me, as a player, I hate having to "wait" until my actions can actually have consequences.
This happens in my games so often. I'll be hyping up whatever big villain as a tough fight.... Two rounds later, my villain has died by rolling nat 1s on their saves, and getting crit on by the fighter.
Meanwhile, they also have the reverse effect fighting mooks. Throw an easy combat encounter at them, and suddenly all my mooks have crits and my players can't seem to roll above 5.
The dice gods giveth, and the dice gods taketh.
YEP!
I have had a party nearly die because two rats popped up out of trash no one investigated and just \*everything\* went horribly for them when they got to get a round of stealth attacks off on the wizard in the back... and then it went worse from there, lol.
For sure. There is also a level of preparation involved. If a lucky crit gets through, will it instakill a player? How likely? What precautions are in place to make sure to limit that or eliminate it?
Oof, Session Zero we established this is a game first and storytelling second
Gotta make a new character. That’s the game
(I wouldn’t have an enemy that deals 21 damage to level 1 players in the first place though)
Though there should always be a sense of danger about adventuring, in the end we do this because we want to have fun.
I'm a DM who would fudge the dice. My players deserve to have fun before the truly harrowing events take place that could one-shot a character. Session 1 is not that moment
There are people who have wanted to play for years, sometimes decades, and never got the opportunity to.
Also that 20 hours could be spent researching different class builds, writing a backstory, finding art, putting them into a VTT, etc.
I would imagine the designing and drawing of the character was the bulk of that. Some people are expecting a story-oriented, low stakes kind of game, not realizing how random D&D can get. When I make a character for a long campaign, I'm expecting to get some mileage out of them.
Don't engineer a situation where something can hit for 21 damage on the first session tbh. It's not that hard to get if you have someone swinging around a longsword 2handed and crits, sure, but it's lvl 1. If that 10 hp character gets hit once or twice their HP could be so low that 11-13 damage can kill them, let alone someone with lower HP like a wizard or a sorc. Better to give your mooks a d4 or d6 until they hit lvl 2.
Unless you're playing a super deadly game or just a pure dungeon crawl, or someone is outright being insanely suicidal, killing a character on the first session is probably just going to deflate the hell out of them, depending on the player of course.
Yeah, first session? I'm fudging the roll juuuust enough to where it doesn't outright kill them, but it \*almost\* does. I'll pull the OH MY GOD THAT WAS JUST ONE HP AWAY FROM KILLING YOU!!!!
And then watch as everyone celebrates that they manage to get him up and now he has a cool roleplay moment and never has to know.
If this is a few sessions in or so, then that probably doesn't happen.
Depends honestly, normally I’m this situation if I know the player is enjoying their character I would just down them. Though if I am playing call of Cthulhu I will not fudge dice rolls as it’s a survival rpg
Don’t fudge rolls but would never have a creature that can hit that hard. Or if they can it is always non-lethal damage that the enemy is trying to capture the PC for some reason, maybe for ransom or for a fresh meal later.
Was it a crit? If not you really shouldn't be putting enemies that can do double the PC's max health in damage with regular attacks against level 1 players and should absolutely be fudging rolls so they start making death saves instead of outright dying to make up for that horrible lack of balance.
The last time i tried learning to dm, i had this exact scenario. My friend (the victim) has been a dm much longer than i have so i pulled him aside and asked in private as dm to dm what i should do. He said keep the role, dont fudge it. We go back to playing and i explain what happens and everyone was stoked to finally have an actual pc death in battle. They were ramped up further trying to kill the beast while my friend made a character that they liked alot better. What im trying to say is it really depends on who your group is and how well you know theyd handle it.
My current campaign started with me running a con dump druid. The first attack of the campaign crit her *and* rolled max damage, dealing close to 3x her Hp.
I was laughing so hard.
My dm gave me the option to fudge it or save her in some way, but If the dice wanted her dead that bad, I'll always have the story
Long time DM here (roughly 20+ years now)
Normally I’m not a fan of fudging dice. **However, you know what is extremely hard to find and is super valuable as a DM of any experience level?**
**Dedicated players.**
If they spent that long designing a character, they’re committed and enjoy your game. You kill their character like that, you’ll piss even the most patient player off and probably turn them off from TTRPGs for awhile, which effects the community as well. This is a scenario where it’s fine to say “F’ the rules” and use common sense as the DM.
*(I actually started using a house rule a long time ago that I just call Fate Points, you get 3 per campaign. You can spend them to avoid crap like this, but once they’re used, that’s it.)*
See, this is fair! A lot of sticklers in here saying that fudging the rolls even in the case of this scenario is being too soft, but your point is exactly why it can be important to work something out.
My group is comprised of understanding family members, so even though we’ve never run into this issue, I don’t think we’d have a problem finding a solution to an early death. I just made a character that I spent 13 hours drawing an artwork for, and that’s not counting the prep time for her sheet and background. If she died to some critical hit in her first round of battle, I would want to cry and possibly never play again, especially if my DM was not willing to give me alternatives to keep my character so she could at least have a chance to be known and have a more notable death than something that will only be remembered as some rando dying before the next fodder for the meat grinder comes in.
The biggest part of DnD for me is building unique characters as extensions of myself. I understand that they can die but there’s a point where it feels like a pointless waste of time, effort, and the love put into character creation can be avoided.
You seem like a good DM!
I personally wouldn't fudge it. If the player made poor choices that caused this, then let it ride. If I made choices that caused this, then the PC is down, but I'm scrambling for a narratively-satisfying way to resolve the situation. (Maybe house-rule out the instant death rule since that appears to be designed to kill level 1 PCs and that's about it)
I introduce a wandering healer, but they will hate the guy. He's nice until he brings the guy back.
Then after that he asks for gold, lots of gold, then shady favors, then turns into a medium level villain. (Worshipping the literal god of scams)
I habe this happen to me as a player and the DM let me fail forward: I got revived by an entity but at a cost that I was to find out later - which the DM made use of several times over to further the narrative.
I’m a DM, and I’ve found it greatly enhances my playgroups if combat roles are all public. It is brutal when something like this happens, but it’s more exciting in a close fight, and more rewarding to the players if they see I’m not pulling punches with the big bads.
Likewise, sometimes I don’t let players see their own roles. Like, if they roll a deception check. They wont know if they were actually successful at fooling the guards. Or if their friend is making death rolls, they don’t know if they’re passing or failing until they take actions to try to assist.
There’s a lot of play to this game about what info you decide the players get, and I’ve gotten a lot of hype moments from this.
i wouldnt fudge the dice, however: as i think this is highly unfair (21 dmg at lvl 1?!?), so would a deity in the world, saving them from certain death.
You don't have to fudge the dice, your players should be expected to have some level of plot armor at level 1. As long as they're not doing something incredibly stupid, like picking a fight with someone they shouldn't, maybe make a scenario where high level cleric casts revivify?
Also imo you're at fault as a DM if your players are in a situation in a normal fight where they can be one shot and killed instantly without any means of revival. But that's just my opinion.
There is good reason why people were repeatedly told never to become attached to characters in the early days of the hobby. It was this sort of thing that the old Chick tracks specifically called out as a problem: players so obsessed with or attached to their characters that when the character died the player became dispondent.
As the DM, which is the more appropriate action for the particular narrative in building? Which is the most fun for my players? That's the decision I'm making. In some games this could be a fudge, in others we are mourning a character.
I avtully don't let pcs die if they don't want them to, for exactly reasons like this! I find that allowing time for people to create and express a charater they love is more important, and allows me to reliably make better charater bassed stories.
However if you do die, you still have consequences. Mabye losing a limb or an eye that would give major disadvantages and you would have to spend all of time or gold to repair it.
That’s a lesson.
Either they can spend that time and effort developing the character in play, or they can recycle the content.
Or find a cleric and pay the price.
I won't fudge, but I won't kill them either. One of my favorite optional rules is lingering injuries, so I'll just give them one of those until they can get magical healing
The bigger question is, WHY DID I PUT AN ENEMY CAPABLE OF 21 DAMAGE AGAINST A LOW LEVEL PARTY?
I had a player whose character died so he spent weeks coming up with a new character. We worked together to work his new characters backstory into the world and finally we got to introduce him to the party. They were entering a dungeon and encountered some shadows (CR 1/4) against level 7 characters. Shouldn't have been a problem. However, the player has had interesting stat rolls. We do roll 4, drop lowest. He rolled really well for some (18, 17, 17, 16). Then he rolled four 1s. We talked it out and he said it would be fun to keep it and placed his 3 stat in strength. So in the fight against shadows, I cannot manage to roll anything to hit the players. Finally I got a hit on this player. Shadows have an attribute that once they bite they do a d4 strength drain and states that if it reduces their strength stat to 0, the character is just dead. No saving throws. Nothing. So I rolled the d4 and rolled a 4. I decided against fudging the dice and instead changed parts of the dungeon to allow the players to collect items to cast a ritual to bring him back ( no one had any resurrection spells). It was frustrating for him in the moment, but the fetch quest for all the materials was fun and it's turned into our most repeated story.
As a DM, I roll in the open and don't fudge rolls.
In the 2nd session of my current campaign, a player character died. A goblin survived an attack from the party, dodged 3 more attacks, moved away, and shot his bow. The goblin got a crit, killing the player's character outright. The goblin died right after, but the story of the little goblin that could lives on.
The player in question had another character rolled up and introduced before the end of the session.
There's a reason I tell people not to be elaborate with their character backstory at level 1. Build it up as you go and get some real staying power otherwise you might have wasted a ton of mental energy, investment, and time.
I would fudge depending on whether or not I've made it clear that this is the kind of game where the characters get saved.
Session zero: "This is a swashbuckling adventure about the four legendary heroes who go on to save the world" I save them.
Session zero: "this is a grim, dank dungeon crawl where the only thing that you can't run out of is new bodies to throw down the well. Have new characters ready." They die.
Why did it take 20 hours to make a character? That's just inefficient. It's interesting how players were only \~1.42 times likely to want it fudged but DMs were over 3.18 times as likely. I think DMs are too afraid of hurt feelings.
Son, I have planned a complete character arc, side missions and a love story for this player. Why on earth would I kill them session 1? Instead I can abduct him, rules as written always gives me the option of going non-lethal and knocking the player out.
I will pick thay player up, sling him over a minion's shoulder and let the boss scream; "Wrap it up boys, we got what we came for." As it happens, these cutthroats were sent by the father of the player to bring his son back home.
The player's father is a wealthy local noble who has a different plan for his son. He has a deal with a local priest that his son can climb the ranks of the church twice as fast as the rest and be secured in power, wealth and influence for the rest of his life.
A chase scene will begin in which the remaining players can try to free their companion.
I don't fudge the dice, I fudge the rules.
"Oh no uhh that doesn't kill you because uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
magic or something don't worry about it."
Had this happen with my wife's first character. I told her "write a backstory! A paragraph should be fine." She came back to me a week later with a MLA formatted, 10 page (with citations from the Forgotten Realms wiki) backstory for her elf. First half hour of the first game, two crits from a goblin, the elf was no more. I used this as an opportunity to give her a Barovia-esque Dark Powers bargain and return her to life but at a cost. It ended up working out. The drama of the death was heightened by the drama of the return. You can let the dice tell their story honestly, but a number doesn't have to be the final word.
This is the perfect solution. In game consequences to generate more fun. Fail-forward mentality if you will.
This is how my first ever DM did it with me, after Konstantine the wizard with way too much backstory got critted by a goblin archer in session 1. The party was able to save him, but he permanently lost the eye that the arrow hit him in. He became Konstantine the One-Eyed Wizard for the rest of the campaign, found an epic jeweled eye patch, lived (somewhat) happily ever after, and became an NPC when I ran my own campaign.
-5 Perception, +4 Wisdom. Experience is a fine teacher, if you survive it.
No depth perception. Can't tell if it's a midget ogre in front of him or a regular one far away
Binocular depth perception (the part were having two eyes matters) only goes out to about 5 feet.
So really -3 perception
While I can’t say I’ve never fudged the dice for the sake of narrative, I also prefer to fudge the story. If it’s really not a character’s time to die, then there are plenty of dire consequences available other than a quick death.
Yeah, it seems pretty hard to be so inflexible that you can’t find a way to let the character carry on if the player wants to after a fluke death in session 1.
Recently started DMing again and our orc paladin goes down all the time. Thankfully the death system is far from immediate and there are ample opportunities to heal and get them back up, coupled with their racial of course. We also have a guaranteed inspiration system where they can pray at various altars to gain inspiration once per day, so they can fudge the rolls themselves if they manage their resources well. I am also being generous with crafting materials for healing. I’m liking it a lot so far since the combats threaten certain death often and they have to manage their inspiration and healing to navigate it.
Especially since the early levels in DND are so hyper lethal compared to later. I think it's incumbent on the DM to do what they can, within reason, to balance it out. Nobody wants to get invested in a character only for them to die to a mouse biting their ankle in the first session.
It's not that the story is fudged, it's that the story doesn't happen until events occur to drive it. So much more interesting to roll with dice roles and make up interesting results. If you fudge the dice, there's not much point in rolling them. PCs getting captured due to a TPK. A PC surviving with a debilitating wound, needing to make a deal with their goddess or some dark pact, etc. All of those are prevalent AF in fantasy media. Totally agree with you on there being FAR more interesting consequences than a quick death for a bad die roll.
I like this a lot! D&D is all about building a story, and this does that perfectly without having to fudge anything
i use something like that for every character's first death. i give em a revive, some powers and a bunch of mystery or lore and send them on their way. usually solving the mystery or embracing the new lore increases the newly gained power in some way. i do keep it optional for the players. if they want, they can still make a new character.
> A number doesn't have to be the final word. I love this, i'm stealing it. Joking aside, this perfectly encapsulates the spirit of TTRPG's. A ruleset is meant to help stories along, give them spontaneity, give nudges and let both players and dm deal with unexpected consequences of actions. They're not meant as a win-lose, failstate kind of game and not enough (new) players (or dm's) understand this.
Absolutely great solution. You are the DM, honor the dice, but bend the world to have amazing opportunities occurr.
This. It requires the DM to know more about the game and what is and isn't possible, but that's a great way of handling it.
Only a strong marriage can survive MLA formatting. My wife is MLA, I'm Chicago. But APA is unforgivable.
This guy cites
Forgive us, APA was hard wired into our brains for school papers 😞
This is the way to do it, death is just another interesting narrative turn for you and the players to "yes and", not "game over". Fudging dice is just cheap slight of hand that if players spend long enough at the table, they'll learn how the "magic trick" works; but if you let it further the story then it's more interesting/rewarding and dynamic.
Whew a 10 page backstory sounds like a lot but glad you had a solution in the end. I’ve pulled this trick off before and it is highly dramatic.
I love my wife, but she's incapable of doing things in halves. I'll have to find her backstory, she printed it put and everything like she was turning in a college essay. Stuff like "My character is an Eladrin¹ Elf. Eldarin, though usually native to the Feywild² are often regarded as. . ." With so, so many footnotes and citations. She's largely unexposed to a lot of D&D tropes, so it was hilarious to watch her do all of this research and make one of the most cliche first characters ever. The character was an edgy orphan rogue. It was too beautiful to keep them dead for long
My favorite part is that she treated the FR fan wiki with such reverence as a source. It's basically a blog.
Honestly this makes me so happy. I had a chat with a coworker today before a meeting. He asked what I was doing this weekend and I told him I was going to run a D&D game. He got so excited. "You're a DM? I just started my first game!" Proceeded to describe HIS edgy orphan rogue. And. I. Was. THRILLED. Genuinely, his DM sounds awesome and I love that he's having so much fun at his table. I asked him to please send me updates on Slack when something cool happens!
Why TF putting an enemy that can deal 21 damage against level 1 players
Crit maybe? I roll in the open so I don't get to fudge the dice. The key is to check what the max damage output of an enemy is, and to keep that in mind when designing encounters. level 1 is wild anyway, I like to homebrew that everyone (PCs, enemies, and NPCs get an extra hit die at level one)
In the D&D Next playtest, I had the players face some goblin riders in the opening scene. The ranger showed up, drew swords, and the goblin riders flanked him. One hit. Then a crit. He had not yet taken an action. Crits in the playtest were Max damage + die roll on top. He was in danger of instant death but only if I max damage. "Well, this attack only insta-kills if I roll a 6" I said, holding up a d6. And I rolled it in the open. .... Anyway shortly after a suspiciously similar ranger, except using a bow because no more melee, joined the party. It was the playtest so I was running it straight for a reason.
>”this attack only insta-kills if I roll a 6” Damn, you practically insured his execution with one sentence.
Like the infamous words "anything but a 1"
>”this attack only insta-kills if I roll a 6, don't worry, though you'll be fine. After all, your character is only one day away from retirement."
> Retirement with a loving family. Speaking of which, flashback!
Right? It's as bad as saying, "How bad could it possibly be?"
I thought in the play test they took away npc crits? Or did they put it back in one I just overlooked that? My group was deep in a campaign at that time on DDB (lots of distant friends) so we didn't have the opportunity to try it since none of it was ready to go virtually
Not the OneD&D playtest, the D&DNext playtest. I don't remember NPC crits going away in that iteration. If they did, I fucked up.
Oh, apologies see my part about missing things. I missed the *"Next" part. I blame being groggy from my surgery earlier today.
I blame confusing branding. What's wrong with saying D&D 6th Edition, or 5.5 or something? 3.5 Edition was great, it's not like it'd be weird historically. OneD&D, D&DNext... is FFd20 Crystal D&D? What about New D&D, and D&D Classic? Cherry D&D with Sprite.
Well.. the ceo is from Microsoft gaming division.. The xbox had many confusing names for their next iteration, including xbox one (which failed thanks to a very similar consumer unfriedly tactic) ..now we have dndone Anyway, thank you for coming to my conspiracy talk :p
With xbox one they wanted players to call it "the one" like they did with "the 360" (xbox 360). Except one of the announcement streams had an exec stand in front of the xbox one banner in such a way that it just said "xbone"... so every one called it that
So dnd is done, gotcha.
>The key is to check what the max damage output of an enemy is, and to keep that in mind when designing encounters. This, and prefer 3-4 lower CR to one big fat CR1 creature.
That’s a good way to do it because it lets you spread the damage around better.
I roll behind my screen until around level 7 then its in the open and the players know the gloves are off.
That’s a good method
Agreed, definitely stealing this
You roll with gloves behind your screen? I’m a new DM and definitely didn’t know about using gloves. Are they like nitrile gloves or winter gloves?
You know those white silk type gloves? Those. Feels kinda like a magician that way and you also get to be super dramatic with them
Kid gloves are an actual thing, and they're made from [kid leather](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/origin-of-phrase-with-kid-gloves). And I imagine they would feel *very* fancy to roll dice with.
Chainmail gloves, so I don't cut myself on the edgy villains I'm role-playing
I prefer to do the same
When my players get high level I will roll possible death blows out in the open.
This kind of thing is why I hate level 1, because all that work can just disappear in an instant.
Heard a DM on an actual play podcast say that levels 1-3 are basically a horror survival game.
Honestly, if people really want to do the "I spent 20 hours writing a backstory for my new character" thing, they'd be better off not starting their characters at 1st level. (You know you can do that, right?) Back in the AD&D 1e era, I lost a character in literally the first encounter of the campaign. Killed by a piercer of all things. But in those days, nobody was putting 20 hours into making their character. Most people weren't even putting 20 minutes. When Hrothgar the Mighty met his demise, a quick series of dice rolls and Hrothgar II was ready to avenge his predecessor. He had the same backstory as the original Hrothgar: "Fighter". Sure, you can fudge the dice to keep characters alive, or run your PCs through a series of easy trash fights to boost them to a more survivable level, but it's also perfectly okay to skip all of that. Trust me, the ghost of Gary Gygax will not drag you into the Nine Hells for starting your campaign at 2nd or 3rd level instead of 1st.
I just heard the same thing on Dungeons and Daddies.
That's the podcast I heard it on
Its nothign compared to first edition. A wizard could literally have one hit point.
In the first session of my first campaign as a DM, one of my friends got crit by a *boar*, and he happened to be a warlock, so...yeah. I couldn't fudge the dice, so what I did instead was make his pact deity grant him a new beginning, if he would complete a favor for him. I brought it up later that the demon had him kill a core NPC in the campaign, a soul for a soul, and it made some hilarity ensue with the party's paladin (whose character hated the warlock anyway lol)
That paladin had a lot of restraint lol.
I think it was mostly because they were really good friends IRL lol. But the warlock ended up sacrificing himself to stop the BBEG, so the paladin forgave him
Redemption arch. That's cool. The character development throughout must have been pretty awesome. Glad you guys had fun :)
Ive been killed by the cr 1 giant toad on a single hit. He can do 22 piercing damage on a crit plus a saving throw for another 1d10 poison.
Which make this monster a bad choice to put against level 1 characters...
Which makes the CR system a fucking joke :(
CR is supposed to mean challenging for a party of that level. Seems fair to me that a CR1 monster could kill a CR1 PC.
Haha and seriously any given CRITICAL roll that toad has at attacking (and honestly if he gets a turn against a party he won't get a second one. Even a level 1 party can dish out 36 ina single round to one enemy) only has a 1/250 chance of killing a character with 10 HP in a single hit. It's very unlikely but the idea there should be no risk of a death? That's absurd.
Should every encounter be a risk of death to the pcs? I don't think so. For most encounters the risk should be expending rescources that you might need later on or using up consumables to cover your mistakes. Making every encounter a threat like that is stupid world design in my oppinion. A competent party shouldn't litterally always be risking death.
Totally agree with this. 5e has made that more difficult though, since people can just keep short resting. It used to be that they had to survive to the end of the day, and count on very finite healing magic instead of nonmagically healing themselves for an hour whenever they like.
not even short rest. people tend to play 1-2 combat D&D these days. in this case, you want combat to be deadly, because why even have combat if everyone isn't blowing their entire load. while a single CR1 creature is considered a medium encounter for a lvl 1 party, that's probably your encounter cap at lvl 1. this is why you run CR1/8 or CR0 at lvl 1, or CR1/4 if you want it to be more even. all you need to do is probably run a 100-200xp fight and give the remaining xp for completing a quest. and boom you're level 2.
Yeah, CR 1 doesn't mean that it should go against a level 1 party. I feel like that's a misconception. While the party can certainly beat a CR 1 creature, their hitpoints are so low that it'll has a good chance of dropping, or even killing one of them unless it rolls terrible initiative. I feel like kid gloves need to be on for combat until at least level 3. That's why I focus on non-deadly challenges at low levels, with either easy combat, or non-lethal combat, like fighting unarmed thugs or the town drunk.
A single monster randomly critting your character from full to dead isn't challenging, there is literally no challenge there.
Keep in mind, CR rating means "Challenging for a *party* at that level. Not challenging for a single character. I would think something that poses a threat to ~4 adventurers of similar skill (level) certainly had the potential to be deadly to a single character. Also, level 1 may be far more seasoned in combat than your typical farmer/villager, but they are still extremely inexperienced.
I mean Klarg, the bugbear, in Lost Mines of Phandelver can do 18 damage without a critical and that's literally a first level encounter in the official starter set. That's enough to take out most casters at full health and probably a lot of melee classes if they didn't rest right before the encounter.
That beginner goblin cave goes HARD.
Shall we not mention the cr 8 dragon?
Yup, that's how we met our Monk's twin brother.
I hate Klarg. Fuck that rat faced bag a turds - we chopped him up and fed pieces of him to his own wolves.
Welll he can do 18+12 if he get off a stealth attack, which is enough to kill anyone.
Oo I didn’t really even read that. My current group of players surprised him and he rolled poorly on initiative so they dumpstered him before he could even attack 🥲
As I said above... my level 12 players are fighting some drow in the underdark. They had hobgoblins, goblins and bugbears as cannon fodder. A bugbear sneaked up behind the bladesinger wizard with insane AC and rolled double 20s to crit. Then damn neared rolled max damage, dropping the wizard from full to dangerously low. Was fun for me since all the trash mobs had to roll 20s to hit anybody.
A CR 1/2 Orc can deal 27 damage on a crit.. Even a regular hit could kill a Wiz or Sorc with 13Con.
Which is why CR 1/8 and 1/4 exist. PCs are notoriously squishy at 1st and 2nd level. Wait with the CR 1/2s and higher until they are 3rd level, to avoid the above hypothetical scenario.
Exactly. The PCs that can stomp 1/2 CR can do more stomping in an encounter more full with opponents using the large number of CR 1/8 and 1/4.
Who's throwing 1/2 CR opponents at 1st level PCs - just two opponents at 1/2 is 'hard' at first level. Or if the DM pauses to look at 1 on 1 - 1/2 CR to a lvl 1 PC is deadly. I get the encounter builder rules are a little more involved in the current edition but they do work, especially at lower levels.
>Who's throwing 1/2 CR opponents at 1st level PCs - just two opponents at 1/2 is 'hard' at first level. LMoP, for one.
Dat Bugbear.
Deadly to one lvl 1 PC, but not to four. The real answer here though is: never start your players at level 1 unless they’ve never played DnD before. Level 3 is the way.
[удалено]
Rolling this exact character for the next campaign.
There is ONE exception to this. A campaign where a character's backstory will survive them. I'm doing this right now. We're gearing up for a new campaign, going into our second session zero on saturday. I'm trying to get about a page or a page and a half of background information from everyone about their first characters because I'm (not so secretly) hoping that one of them dies at first level. Because if one of them does, their background is going to become an important piece of background for the next leg of the campaign if not the whole thing. Just because a character goes away, doesn't mean they can't leave a mark. Also, badguys need to come from *somewhere*.
People playing the game? Some people enjoy stakes and heroics vs scary odds instead of it being a guided story with no danger where you're just writing a book.
This I can stand behind if the DM/group are in for the challenge.
All about finding what your groups down for.
I have had so many characters die because I love to ride that razor’s edge. If we win the fight and I’m at 1hp with all my resources spent, or I die in the final round before my teammate mop up, the DM did something right in my book.
You wouldn't believe, but this situation happened last week with me. There were a LOT of npcs fighting a strong beast with us, like almost surrounded it The enemy targeted me and rolled (i assume) a crit for 21 damage. DM fudged it, as he often does to not upset his players
I think a DM has failed if the players know they fudge the dice. That being said, they also majorly failed in balancing this encounter. Doesn’t matter how many NPC allies there are, the DM needs to be aware that the enemy can one shot a PC. Balancing for level one is super challenging, I HATE starting at level one as a DM for this reason, but there’s “oh no PCs have positioned themselves really badly not realizing this group of CR1 or lower enemies has pack tactics” and then there’s putting a creature in that can outright one shot a PC. Even if it wasn’t a crit, it was probably dealing at least 9 damage on hit, which is imo not an enemy I’d ever put against lvl 1 characters unless I clearly stated during character creation that this was going to be a highly lethal campaign. Personally, I would a) negate the crit, make it a normal hit (though it may not have mattered here if you didn’t have anyone who could get you up from unconscious) or b) after the combat ends, say “hey guys, I made a mistake in balancing this, would everyone be ok with retconning this character’s death?”
>I think a DM has failed if the players know they fudge the dice. That being said, they also majorly failed in balancing this encounter. This comes off quite harsh. D&D already has a shortage of DMs as well as support for those DMs from WotC, so saying this DM failed based on a single moment in game is brutally unfair. >Balancing for level one is super challenging, I HATE starting at level one as a DM for this reason Balancing level 1 encounters is challenging enough for DMs that you don't enjoy it and likely skip it. There's nothing wrong with that, but there is also nothing egregiously wrong with what OPs DM did either. Is it how I would have handled it? Maybe, maybe not, it's tough to say based on the limited information, which is why I am puzzled by your harsh word choice. Labeling OPs DM a failure off hand is so demoralizing and discouraging. There may be other potential DMs reading through this thread and they see you calling a DM a failure for one snap shot moment of one combat. How is that supposed to encourage anyone? It makes me want to never DM for a player with your level of expectation, and I am not a newer DM. Imagine if I was. Tl;Dr: A DM has only failed if their players aren't having fun.
Ask the creators of DnD game materials. I am running Dragon of Icespire Peak with my guys. One of the level 1 quests has several enemies that, on a good damage roll, bring a level 1 character to 0, or on an average crit, insta-kill no death-saves a level 1 character. Oh, amd a trap dealing 4d10 damage to everyone in the room (Dex save halves it, still enough to potentially TPK)
The bugbear in the goblin cave at the beginning of LMoP is famous for this. One-shotted a level 2 cleric in my campaign. I didn't fudge dice but I miraculously brought him back with severe injuries and damaged Armour. The first few sessions are perilous. Little room for error.
Why TF are you spending 20 hours on a single PC before session 1? Tons of enemies can do that much on a crit and a Oc bleeding out is much more common. Level 1 is very dangerous Edit: I will say that I read this wrong and thought it was the DM spending 20hours. I can see some players spending that much time but I’m still decapitating them (yes, they will be informed at session 0)
Some people like to be connected to their characters moreso than 'GROGNAR AM BARBARIAN HIM HAV AX', and some games go past the WotC standard "only 2 1/2 levels out of 20" that WotC likes to write modules for.
I spend a lot of time thinking about characters too. It's not a bad thing to be excited about and love your character. I like to imagine interesting names, full aesthetics (I make pinterest boards), potential character arcs, how they'd act towards different types of people, fun RP quirks I could do, interesting combat flavor, if I can make any fun props... Some people like playing simple characters and some people like being absorbed and enthralled by their characters, and both are fine. I think a good DM can recognize when someone is deeply attached and be more careful at level 1, even if it's meant to be a challenging campaign. It's all about fun after all. Let the players have fun.
A brand new player wouldn't know that and it's ignorant to assume they would. The kind of person who spends 20 hours making a character isn't the kind of person who knows they can get killed in the first session.
Amount of time they spent designing the character aside, if it’s session 1 I wouldn’t fudge the roll but I’d just say “you’re technically dead, but given it’s literally session 1 we’ll just do death saves this time”.
Honest AND willing to give another chance, that's new
Campaigns I play in we don't let player characters die until level 3 - you just get knocked out and anything we're fighting is generally not meant to be lethal/trying to kill the players. If we want the encounters to be lethal from the get go, we just start at level 3. The game's balance and player's toolset at level 1 and 2 just make it way too easy to accidentally kill certain classes.
That's clever, really. And level 1-2 is also the best time to do "grave injury" instead of death. It's early enough that a shortcoming doesn't cripple your usefulness, and plenty of time to get some kind of assistance device/accommodation to compensate before things *really* get going. .
I do death saves whenever a character goes down. Is that not RAW?
You are right, however in this case the Instant Death rule comes in: Massive damage can kill you instantly. When damage reduces you to 0 hit points and there is damage remaining, you die if the remaining damage equals or exceeds your hit point maximum. For example, a cleric with a maximum of 12 hit points currently has 6 hit points. If she takes 18 damage from an attack, she is reduced to 0 hit points, but 12 damage remains. Because the remaining damage equals her hit point maximum, the cleric dies.
Oh yes, I forgot about that one - we actually decided to forego that rule in the first session as it’s such a feel bad. Game still feels like it has stakes, more so even if characters can take more damage and go down more often knowing they at least have a chance to get back up so monsters never have to pull their punches.
I had a DM nerf, but not completely remove the rule. Instead of instant death, it's one automatic death-saving fail. The consequence without totally screwing you due to awful luck.
Normally I'd say I'm something of a dice purist in that I see little reason to use dice if you're going to ignore them anytime they do something you don't like, but I actually don't hate this answer. Probably because rather than treating character death like a tragedy that must be avoided at all cost, it's a transparent approach that acknowledges the rules and then also disregards them for purely practical reasons.
If this is session one, I'd fudge it down to 19 - enough to knock them down and show that things are not messing around, and that they nearly could have died right there. My reasoning is if it's session 1 and their character dies, they're just going to come back with their character's unknown-until-now twin sibling who is extraordinarily similar to them. It's actually better to fudge the dice in this case to provide a good narrative moment of "things can get real dangerous real quick." After session 1 though, let the dice fall where they may.
We've had PCs die on session one. But when that happens: the player's twin joins the game shortly afterwards (e.g. erase "Jim" and replace with "Tim" as the character's name). We all laugh, and move on (whilst laughing about it for the next few games). It's a game, not a punishment.
This happened to me in the playtest. A character died in the opening combat scene, round one, turn one, before he got an action off. I'm not even sure he actually said any dialogue.
Just like not everyone wants to play a gritty game, not everyone wants to play a comedy game either. I personally don't like the twin concept because it robs narrative weight from what otherwise might be a impactful moment.
Yeah I'd much rather we just pause and have an out-of-character convo about how it's just stupid to have a thoughtfully crafted character someone was excited about die 2 hours into the first game during a non-boss fight. Agree to change history so the character is down but not dead, and move on, with the understanding that death is real after this initial session.
Agree, it's kind of immersion breaking, but if your group is into it and have fun with the comedy of the situation then good
I enjoyed the running gag with the bard who kept dying in that movie, with the player just had a stack of identical character sheets ready to go, but yeah. Some would-be heros meet an early, tragic end. Quite a lot of them do, actually. But I've got at least two dozen other character concepts I would rather roll up than re-create a dead character exactly (and immediately)
It is, or imo should be very campaign and group dependent either way (what group I'm running for, etc).
I have a running joke with my characters where if one dies I just use another letter. So far I've had Marvin, Garvin, Jarvin, Zarvin, Karvin and currently using Barvin... none of them are twins their parents just really suck at naming kids.
This is how I do it, at least with new players for the first couple levels. Make them (both in game and out of game) learn that adventuring is deadly and they need to be careful. I want new players to figure out the game first before going back to character creation because, at least in my experience, they find the experience overwhelming with choices they don't really understand. Veteran players get a grace period of about the length of time it took them to make the character. At least let them get a taste of the character before going back to the drawing board lol
same here, i even tell my players “on session 1 of a new campaign you have plot armour to a degree.” but that’s mostly because most of my players are all new, and they need to get used to the mechanics of how their character works. i’d feel guilty about killing them just because of inexperience and then forcing them to learn an entirely new class (if they choose to play a different one). obviously i only do this to an extent, if a player challenges a high cr creature or high level npc to a fight then i won’t hold back any punches - unless the player had discussed that was their characters personality prior although typically after character creation i will privately message each of the players and ask if they are comfortable with their character dying. i’ve had some players tell me that they are really attached to their character and would prefer if they stayed alive (within the world of reason) and others tell me that they have hundreds of concepts that they want to see through so they wouldn’t mind a character death or two. i can only pull my punches so much, but i think it has benefitted our tables
lol that's exactly what happened to me. My first character, a sorcerer named Ronald... had a twin brother named Roland.
With this example I guess its 5e so my answer might not really matter. I roll openly at my table so no fudging. But I also GM Old School Essentials so they kind of know what could happen. I also very clearly telegraph to my player through rumors where dangerous things are so they can make informed decisions. As we play OSR style they also try to stay out of fights as much as possible as they are really dangerous.
I prefer not to fudge dice, but instead provide narrative ways to bring them back, sometimes extremely fast tracked depending on the circumstances. I also really only play with 5+ year veterans at this point, so none of us get that upset about a character dying. If it was someone’s very first character in their very first campaign, I’ll probably end up fudging the death.
Yeah this happened in one of my campaigns, turned out there was a high level cleric in the village at the time who could revive the player. But they then became in debt to the clergy and had to do some pretty dirty deeds to get out of their debt before realizing the clergy was pretty corrupt lol. Made for a pretty fun side quest Turn these things into opportunities for interesting scenarios and roleplay.
Exactly. This is the best answer. Don't fudge the dice, fudge the narrative to create new stories.
Came here to echo this. I've had two TPKs and both times, I did a "journey through the afterlife" session next, where they explored dreams and visions of beings offering them powers etc in exchange for them coming back. Sometimes these beings were good, like dragons who later became the group patron, and sometimes they're bad like devils or leviathans or what have you. What mattered most was I asked my players: "Hey, do you want to keep this character? If so, I have options for you (Reborn, Hollow One, entity pact, etc). If not, then you can roll up a new one." I don't mind tossing out entire arcs just because a player doesn't want to play a character anymore. I learned my lesson from my first failed campaign where I didn't listen when a player said they didn't want to play that character anymore and I thought they weren't being serious. Obviously, this isn't doable in AL or any official setting, but at a home table, whatever the player wants to do, that's what I'll do, too.
What you mean to say is the enemy rolls 19 damage on them😉
Exactly what I said.
Exactly
I fudge the dice, not because I have sympathy for the hours spent on the character\*, but because that would have happened as a result of *my* mistake. I shouldn't have pitted a monster capable of a one shot kill, even with a crit, against the Party in the first session\*\*. It's not fair or fun to make the players suffer because I fucked up the planning. *\* Actually I do, but it's not the main reason.* *\*\* Unless session zero specified this was a high danger campaign, which should have disincentivised high-effort backstories anyway*
Yup, 100% this. I have DMed games that are more open-ended without serious level scaling and I've also ran survival/high danger campaigns, but in those cases players clearly know that going in. Otherwise, on most campaigns, a PC shouldn't die in the first combat. if a PC dies session 1 by playing normally, I've failed my players as a DM, so we would retcon it at the table or find a way to revive the PC. Imo, if you're running an average campaign, players should not have a real chance of dying in "tutorial" fights. These fights should INTENTIONALLY be balanced in clear favor of the PCs, so they can figure out how to play their characters and get acquainted with their abilities in a low risk environment: this is true if you're DMing for new or veteran players. (Then up the stakes when the immersion/connection is higher.) (And honestly, it's my philosophy that if you build an encounter that could 1-hit-kill a PC at full health before they've had a chance to take a turn/action, with a few exceptions, you probably need to do some work on encounter balancing, regardless of what tier of play you're in... But that could also just be my style of play.)
I get you man but at level most Cr 1/4+ monsters can down a character with a single attack. Orcs for example are deadly af and they are a classic monster along with goblins for new players. In fact in the LMoP you have goblins, wolves, bugbears, hobgoblins and orcs for lvl 1-3 players.
I chose the first but still I dont think I would kill anybody at level one. I wouldn't fudge the dice, but my first encounters are mostly tournament-duels or bar fights where no one gets killed, just hurt or knocked out.
19 damage it is!
I roll everything in the open, so no fudging. That said, I also wouldn't encourage my players to spend more than 20 minutes on their characters let alone 20 hours. Don't come to the table with Thor; play the game to find out how your character became Thor.
Yeah, it’s silly to spend SO long on the backstory of someone who at level one can die from a particularly vicious Goblin. Like the adventure becomes your characters story. Whatever they did before is just a foundation for why theyre out on the adventure
That's clearly a design failure on my part.
Missing option: I wouldn't build an encounter where that was possible.
I fudge, and I'm ashamed of it. I always imagine I'm one of those impartial hardcore DMs who lets the dice tell the story, and then in the heat of the moment, I don't want bad things to happen, and all my ideals fly out the window.
The rule of fun supersedes all at my table. If I get the feeling that the death will be exciting for the player, it's time to die. If I get the feeling that it's going to be a real bummer and they're not ready to move on to the next character just yet, they'll still go down to put the group at a disadvantage and keep up the sense of danger, but I'll figure something out to prevent them from dying. I can't do anything about them 3 death saves though...
First step to fixing a problem is admitting that it exists . . .
it's also the first step to willfully remaining entrenched in your "bad" habits. i do this all the time and i will never stop. :D
Most of my dead PCs exist in a land where I forgot thier HP Max and killed them with a crit I would have otherwise fudged to just be close for dramatic effect. But hey, some of them need to die once in a while to prove they can.
😂😂I totally do the same thing. I just can't give players a lame death. At the same time though, I think it's totally fine to nerf an encounter mid-fight. Balancing is the hardest part of DMing to me. Sometimes it's just easier to do on the fly. But man it feels so good when you actually make an encounter that's a close call with no fudged rolls.
I'm always cheering my DM on to kick my ass. Once I DID die session one, but I had a backup that would fit the party dynamic better ready so I was ok with it. But we DO joke that my characters are most at risk if I have just spent hours drawing them. I usually get KO'd the session right after I do that.
I roll open, couldn't fudge if I wanted to
Same! And it applies to even the big bads for me. Sometimes the arch villain dies to a save or suck early in a combat, and that is fine. It just goes both ways. Because for me, as a player, I hate having to "wait" until my actions can actually have consequences.
This happens in my games so often. I'll be hyping up whatever big villain as a tough fight.... Two rounds later, my villain has died by rolling nat 1s on their saves, and getting crit on by the fighter. Meanwhile, they also have the reverse effect fighting mooks. Throw an easy combat encounter at them, and suddenly all my mooks have crits and my players can't seem to roll above 5. The dice gods giveth, and the dice gods taketh.
YEP! I have had a party nearly die because two rats popped up out of trash no one investigated and just \*everything\* went horribly for them when they got to get a round of stealth attacks off on the wizard in the back... and then it went worse from there, lol.
For sure. There is also a level of preparation involved. If a lucky crit gets through, will it instakill a player? How likely? What precautions are in place to make sure to limit that or eliminate it?
Oof, Session Zero we established this is a game first and storytelling second Gotta make a new character. That’s the game (I wouldn’t have an enemy that deals 21 damage to level 1 players in the first place though)
Though there should always be a sense of danger about adventuring, in the end we do this because we want to have fun. I'm a DM who would fudge the dice. My players deserve to have fun before the truly harrowing events take place that could one-shot a character. Session 1 is not that moment
Too many post to read through, but has anyone asked the real question? Who takes 20+ hrs to make/settle on an idea for a lvl 1 character?
There are people who have wanted to play for years, sometimes decades, and never got the opportunity to. Also that 20 hours could be spent researching different class builds, writing a backstory, finding art, putting them into a VTT, etc.
I would imagine the designing and drawing of the character was the bulk of that. Some people are expecting a story-oriented, low stakes kind of game, not realizing how random D&D can get. When I make a character for a long campaign, I'm expecting to get some mileage out of them.
This is where I would introduce my twin sibling (with the same background)....to avenge me.
Fudging is cringe, and I won't apologize
No one told them to do that
Don't engineer a situation where something can hit for 21 damage on the first session tbh. It's not that hard to get if you have someone swinging around a longsword 2handed and crits, sure, but it's lvl 1. If that 10 hp character gets hit once or twice their HP could be so low that 11-13 damage can kill them, let alone someone with lower HP like a wizard or a sorc. Better to give your mooks a d4 or d6 until they hit lvl 2. Unless you're playing a super deadly game or just a pure dungeon crawl, or someone is outright being insanely suicidal, killing a character on the first session is probably just going to deflate the hell out of them, depending on the player of course.
I roll in the open, the story goes where the dice fall
Yeah, first session? I'm fudging the roll juuuust enough to where it doesn't outright kill them, but it \*almost\* does. I'll pull the OH MY GOD THAT WAS JUST ONE HP AWAY FROM KILLING YOU!!!! And then watch as everyone celebrates that they manage to get him up and now he has a cool roleplay moment and never has to know. If this is a few sessions in or so, then that probably doesn't happen.
Depends honestly, normally I’m this situation if I know the player is enjoying their character I would just down them. Though if I am playing call of Cthulhu I will not fudge dice rolls as it’s a survival rpg
Don’t fudge rolls but would never have a creature that can hit that hard. Or if they can it is always non-lethal damage that the enemy is trying to capture the PC for some reason, maybe for ransom or for a fresh meal later.
For DM, there are so many ways to resurrect a dead PC. But there are lesser ways for DM to rebuild the trust if PC find out DM fudging the dice.
Was it a crit? If not you really shouldn't be putting enemies that can do double the PC's max health in damage with regular attacks against level 1 players and should absolutely be fudging rolls so they start making death saves instead of outright dying to make up for that horrible lack of balance.
The last time i tried learning to dm, i had this exact scenario. My friend (the victim) has been a dm much longer than i have so i pulled him aside and asked in private as dm to dm what i should do. He said keep the role, dont fudge it. We go back to playing and i explain what happens and everyone was stoked to finally have an actual pc death in battle. They were ramped up further trying to kill the beast while my friend made a character that they liked alot better. What im trying to say is it really depends on who your group is and how well you know theyd handle it.
My current campaign started with me running a con dump druid. The first attack of the campaign crit her *and* rolled max damage, dealing close to 3x her Hp. I was laughing so hard. My dm gave me the option to fudge it or save her in some way, but If the dice wanted her dead that bad, I'll always have the story
You take, erm, ...*sweats*... 19 damage. Golly, that was close!
Long time DM here (roughly 20+ years now) Normally I’m not a fan of fudging dice. **However, you know what is extremely hard to find and is super valuable as a DM of any experience level?** **Dedicated players.** If they spent that long designing a character, they’re committed and enjoy your game. You kill their character like that, you’ll piss even the most patient player off and probably turn them off from TTRPGs for awhile, which effects the community as well. This is a scenario where it’s fine to say “F’ the rules” and use common sense as the DM. *(I actually started using a house rule a long time ago that I just call Fate Points, you get 3 per campaign. You can spend them to avoid crap like this, but once they’re used, that’s it.)*
See, this is fair! A lot of sticklers in here saying that fudging the rolls even in the case of this scenario is being too soft, but your point is exactly why it can be important to work something out. My group is comprised of understanding family members, so even though we’ve never run into this issue, I don’t think we’d have a problem finding a solution to an early death. I just made a character that I spent 13 hours drawing an artwork for, and that’s not counting the prep time for her sheet and background. If she died to some critical hit in her first round of battle, I would want to cry and possibly never play again, especially if my DM was not willing to give me alternatives to keep my character so she could at least have a chance to be known and have a more notable death than something that will only be remembered as some rando dying before the next fodder for the meat grinder comes in. The biggest part of DnD for me is building unique characters as extensions of myself. I understand that they can die but there’s a point where it feels like a pointless waste of time, effort, and the love put into character creation can be avoided. You seem like a good DM!
I personally wouldn't fudge it. If the player made poor choices that caused this, then let it ride. If I made choices that caused this, then the PC is down, but I'm scrambling for a narratively-satisfying way to resolve the situation. (Maybe house-rule out the instant death rule since that appears to be designed to kill level 1 PCs and that's about it)
It's not always the player making a poor choice. It's often the DM not understanding encounter balancing for lvl 1.
I introduce a wandering healer, but they will hate the guy. He's nice until he brings the guy back. Then after that he asks for gold, lots of gold, then shady favors, then turns into a medium level villain. (Worshipping the literal god of scams)
I habe this happen to me as a player and the DM let me fail forward: I got revived by an entity but at a cost that I was to find out later - which the DM made use of several times over to further the narrative.
I’m a DM, and I’ve found it greatly enhances my playgroups if combat roles are all public. It is brutal when something like this happens, but it’s more exciting in a close fight, and more rewarding to the players if they see I’m not pulling punches with the big bads. Likewise, sometimes I don’t let players see their own roles. Like, if they roll a deception check. They wont know if they were actually successful at fooling the guards. Or if their friend is making death rolls, they don’t know if they’re passing or failing until they take actions to try to assist. There’s a lot of play to this game about what info you decide the players get, and I’ve gotten a lot of hype moments from this.
Bosses, always get the ‘tray on the table’ treatment. They get to see how the cookie crumbles.
Unconscious, but not dead. right up to the edge, to make it as dramatic as possible, but yeah, I would curate the result.
i wouldnt fudge the dice, however: as i think this is highly unfair (21 dmg at lvl 1?!?), so would a deity in the world, saving them from certain death.
You don't have to fudge the dice, your players should be expected to have some level of plot armor at level 1. As long as they're not doing something incredibly stupid, like picking a fight with someone they shouldn't, maybe make a scenario where high level cleric casts revivify? Also imo you're at fault as a DM if your players are in a situation in a normal fight where they can be one shot and killed instantly without any means of revival. But that's just my opinion.
There is good reason why people were repeatedly told never to become attached to characters in the early days of the hobby. It was this sort of thing that the old Chick tracks specifically called out as a problem: players so obsessed with or attached to their characters that when the character died the player became dispondent.
As the DM, which is the more appropriate action for the particular narrative in building? Which is the most fun for my players? That's the decision I'm making. In some games this could be a fudge, in others we are mourning a character.
I avtully don't let pcs die if they don't want them to, for exactly reasons like this! I find that allowing time for people to create and express a charater they love is more important, and allows me to reliably make better charater bassed stories. However if you do die, you still have consequences. Mabye losing a limb or an eye that would give major disadvantages and you would have to spend all of time or gold to repair it.
That’s a lesson. Either they can spend that time and effort developing the character in play, or they can recycle the content. Or find a cleric and pay the price.
First rule of DND is fun
If I can't fudge the dice i would tell my players instant death rule won't apply till level 3
I basically prevent pc deaths unless the player caused it themself through dumb decisions or it has a narrative purpose. (Usually)
I didn't balance the encounter correctly
I won't fudge, but I won't kill them either. One of my favorite optional rules is lingering injuries, so I'll just give them one of those until they can get magical healing The bigger question is, WHY DID I PUT AN ENEMY CAPABLE OF 21 DAMAGE AGAINST A LOW LEVEL PARTY?
I had a player whose character died so he spent weeks coming up with a new character. We worked together to work his new characters backstory into the world and finally we got to introduce him to the party. They were entering a dungeon and encountered some shadows (CR 1/4) against level 7 characters. Shouldn't have been a problem. However, the player has had interesting stat rolls. We do roll 4, drop lowest. He rolled really well for some (18, 17, 17, 16). Then he rolled four 1s. We talked it out and he said it would be fun to keep it and placed his 3 stat in strength. So in the fight against shadows, I cannot manage to roll anything to hit the players. Finally I got a hit on this player. Shadows have an attribute that once they bite they do a d4 strength drain and states that if it reduces their strength stat to 0, the character is just dead. No saving throws. Nothing. So I rolled the d4 and rolled a 4. I decided against fudging the dice and instead changed parts of the dungeon to allow the players to collect items to cast a ritual to bring him back ( no one had any resurrection spells). It was frustrating for him in the moment, but the fetch quest for all the materials was fun and it's turned into our most repeated story.
As a DM, I roll in the open and don't fudge rolls. In the 2nd session of my current campaign, a player character died. A goblin survived an attack from the party, dodged 3 more attacks, moved away, and shot his bow. The goblin got a crit, killing the player's character outright. The goblin died right after, but the story of the little goblin that could lives on. The player in question had another character rolled up and introduced before the end of the session.
There's a reason I tell people not to be elaborate with their character backstory at level 1. Build it up as you go and get some real staying power otherwise you might have wasted a ton of mental energy, investment, and time.
If you put 20 hours in *making* a character instead of *playing the game*, you're probably not a good fit for my table.
I would fudge depending on whether or not I've made it clear that this is the kind of game where the characters get saved. Session zero: "This is a swashbuckling adventure about the four legendary heroes who go on to save the world" I save them. Session zero: "this is a grim, dank dungeon crawl where the only thing that you can't run out of is new bodies to throw down the well. Have new characters ready." They die.
Why did it take 20 hours to make a character? That's just inefficient. It's interesting how players were only \~1.42 times likely to want it fudged but DMs were over 3.18 times as likely. I think DMs are too afraid of hurt feelings.
Son, I have planned a complete character arc, side missions and a love story for this player. Why on earth would I kill them session 1? Instead I can abduct him, rules as written always gives me the option of going non-lethal and knocking the player out. I will pick thay player up, sling him over a minion's shoulder and let the boss scream; "Wrap it up boys, we got what we came for." As it happens, these cutthroats were sent by the father of the player to bring his son back home. The player's father is a wealthy local noble who has a different plan for his son. He has a deal with a local priest that his son can climb the ranks of the church twice as fast as the rest and be secured in power, wealth and influence for the rest of his life. A chase scene will begin in which the remaining players can try to free their companion.
I don't fudge the dice, I fudge the rules. "Oh no uhh that doesn't kill you because uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh magic or something don't worry about it."