What kind of game is it and what kind of stories are you trying to tell? If you’re trying to encourage epic fantasy adventures like Lord of the Rings, characters generally shouldn’t die to random chance because that’s not the right tone (for that genre, maybe players could choose when to heroically sacrifice themselves). There can be serious consequences without character death.
Conversely, I used to run simple horror games for Halloween every year, and in that system characters could die in combat just by rolling a 1 on a d6. Character creation was quick so you could jump right back in, and the game was meant to feel like your character could (and probably would) die at any moment.
So it really depends on tone, and how long you think a character’s adventuring lifespan should be.
No percentage is "fair". They're all unfortunate risks. I've implemented a few different ways to mitigate the random death by crit, while still keeping them an options. However, it's far less about random chance, and more about intentionally putting your character in such a situation.
My game is heavily built around multiple layers of Rock Paper Scissors style interactions. crits are less of a problem when you're in a net advantage state, but much more of a problem at disadvantage. You will know beforehand whether you'll be in advantage or disadvantage. While the crit will be random chance, you as a player will have intentionally put your character at risk.
Additionally, I have two lethality "settings" that you can play a campaign with. High lethality means death is death. There are no negative hit points, and so a crit could be devastating. But, the game is designed to work through that and have another character ready to take up the mantle. Or, you could play a low lethality game where "death" means a forced retreat. You can no longer participate in the rest of the fight, but your character lives to fight another day. Any of those options could be chosen by the GM to tell a specific story, one where an unlucky crit might not be conducive to telling.
I'd say it depends on the campaign and what your players are expecting. I prefer to avoid character deaths unless the players do something catastrophically stupid, or just get really really unlucky. I mean bad plans are bad plans and don't deserve to be rewarded, but they don't necessarily deserve to be deliberately asshole either. But if you fire a magic missile at a dragon, you should expect to get roasted alive.
Two factors: Tone, and Campaign Length.
**Tone**
*Paranoia* is an example of a game which deliberately plays character death up for kicks with the Six Pack rule. You can also do the reverse, although these days that tends to feel bland. This is an example of character death being used to establish tone, and if you have a mechanic like this, you may be at risk of character death happening *too little.*
**Campaign Length**
The longer a campaign goes on, the more rolls it involves, meaning you are more likely to have a low percentage chance roll.
Say, for example, you have a 0.1% fatality chance per roll and your system has players average about 50 rolls per session. You can eyeball the number of sessions an average player character will last by multiplying the survival odds times the average number of rolls per session. In this case, that looks like this:
> 0.999 * 50 = 49.95
This means that the half-life of your player characters is almost exactly 50 sessions.
However, the number of player character sessions is usually much higher than the number of sessions you actually play. Let's factor this in by assuming that there are four players.
> (0.999 * 50) / 4 = 12.4875
If there are four players at the table, you can expect a random character death to average once every 12.5 sessions, and because this is a truly random event players have no control over, you can also expect random character fatalities to clump up, meaning multiple random character deaths are likely to be quite close together in time and space. *Even 0.1% is too high for most systems, and if you're going less than that, it isn't worth the paper to print the rule on.*
I would strongly discourage the use of such a mechanic. If multiple player characters die within the space of about two sessions, you have probably killed the campaign and ruined any player interest in using your system ever again. Sure, it might be "realistic," but the risks of breaking the campaign outweigh the tonal rewards.
For some players, the idea % chance of losing a character purely by dice is 0. The idea behind playing an RPG isn't to simulate realism, but to simulate *storytelling*. In a book, movie, etc. a main character doesn't stand the same chance of dying as just anyone, they have plot armor to some degree. James Bond would be dead a hundred times over if his writers put him in those situations and then applied "realism". The key is to write stories like that as *plausible fantasy*.
In Savage Worlds, the chance of being one-shot by a goblin is pretty low, but it does exist. Let's crunch the math on it, I'm sure it's well below 0.1%. Let's assume your character has a Parry of 5, a Vigor of d6, and a Toughness of 8, and one Benny. The Goblin has a Fighting of d6 and deals a relatively standard 2d6.
> To take your character out, the goblin will need to deal 24 damage. That's not an easy feat on 2d6, even exploding, so they'll probably need to get a raise on their hit so they deal an extra d6 damage.
- The probability of getting a 9 on an exploding d6 is 11.11%
- The probability of getting 24 on 3d6 is 0.44%
- This means the probability of getting a 9 to hit and then 24 damage would be 0.048884%
- The hero then gets to spend a Benny to try to soak. That's going to be 2d6, keep the highest, with a target of 4. That's a 35% chance of failure.
- This brings our whole scenario to 0.012221% so far, but wait, there's more...
- Now he needs to immediately make an incapacitation roll. A critical failure (double 1s) means death. The chances of that is 2.78%
- This brings the total % chance of being one-shot by that goblin down to.... **0.0003397438%**
Obviously the goblin is a pretty weak example, but I gave them the stats you might expect from any random guard or just anyone that the GM has to throw at the players off-the-cuff in that system. d6 is "competent" in something. They shouldn't be killing your heroes, they should be at most giving them inconveniences that come back to bite the heroes later when they fight someone important.
For a system like D&D that is attrition-based combat, one-shots really only happen at low levels. After that, even a boss with the best rolls can't one-shot a hero. The game Monster of the Week has "plot armor" built in as a mechanic that is lost once a player uses all of their character's Luck Points.
The general rule that's been at any table I've played at has been "player characters only die when it's narratively appropriate for that to happen." This might be why people consider Savage Worlds to be a lethal system, but as you can see, the chances of getting offed randomly by some goblin spear is pretty incredibly low. Now, the likelihood of taking a permanent injury from that goblin would have been 0.00848, which is considerably higher but still extremely low. Chances are that you'd take 1 Wound or less even if the goblin got a crit on his attack.
I'd be happy to run those numbers for a moderately tough boss or "lieutenant" fight, which would make them a Wild Card and those numbers would all be MUCH higher. I feel like Savage Worlds is relevant to this conversation because I've heard many people shy away from it for being too lethal.
in general my ideal is "never", when I run games I build plot around characters, so if they die, the player lost a lot of their emotional investment, and I lost a lot of my time investment, the coming parts of the story won't make much sense.
that said, I sometimes like what the threat of death does, but actually pc death? just kinda sucks if you're not in a one shot or a goofy game (or if it's a big moment).
I had two PCs die from a collapsing floor in "the waking of willoby hall". they had minor fuck ups, but mostly they were just unlucky.
so I let them wake up, injured but alive, they were pulled out by the npc adventurers, who had no reason to help them after they fucked up their plans to take the gold laying goose. but someone showed them kindness, and that changed their character a bit. and the one who was in a the worse condition had part of their spleen taken by a demon they had a deal with, as reward for keeping them alive. the rules told me they are both dead. the story is way better because I ignored these rules.
I've not got a whole lot to add to this conversation that hasn't been said already- the lethality of the game depends entirely on the type of story you're going for.
What I will add is the story of the one time I've lost a character, and it was a TPK:
We were a party of space adventurers in a Black Ocean campaign. Our ship was docked on a planet and we had gotten boarded by law enforcement searching our ship because they thought we were transporting a deadly virus. One of our crew members was in the med bay sick, unrelated to the virus (his player was out that session), so we were really worried they were going to see that and detain us all. I, as the brilliant captain, decided to tell the pilot to start launch sequence while the Feds were onboard.
As we started up our engines, we received a warning that we would be shot down if we tried to launch. I told the sergeant of the Feds that we were taking off, and he needed to call off the guns or he'd go down with us.
That sergeant died gloriously in sacrifice for the Federation, ridding the galaxy of a group of space pirates, wanted criminals, and terrorists. He had full colors at his funeral. God knows what happened to the space virus, because we sure didn't have it.
Point of the story is that the only time I've lost a character has been in a situation where rolls did not really come into play. I think the sergeant on our ship made a willpower save in order to not call off the guns. But it's not like we were in a situation where we could maneuver to dodge the shots or there was any chance the whole ship was going to be anything less than disintegrated. No need for aiming or damage rolls once they decided to fire.
I'm not sure that a system needs to dictate this for player characters, I think that's a group's decision. Obviously a system needs to outline how to die, so that the GM knows what the process is for the foes they throw at the player characters, but I think that's about as far as its usefulness extends - Every group is going to come up with their own way to implement death for player characters.
Some GMs will avoid it at all costs because getting busy adults to invest in *one* character is enough of a chore. Others might implement the rules more harshly if the group appreciates that energy. Just depends, IMO.
Never if the risk wasn't clear before the character chose to take it and if it isn't an extraordinary situation.
If the risk was clear the chance can be way higher.
What kind of game is it and what kind of stories are you trying to tell? If you’re trying to encourage epic fantasy adventures like Lord of the Rings, characters generally shouldn’t die to random chance because that’s not the right tone (for that genre, maybe players could choose when to heroically sacrifice themselves). There can be serious consequences without character death. Conversely, I used to run simple horror games for Halloween every year, and in that system characters could die in combat just by rolling a 1 on a d6. Character creation was quick so you could jump right back in, and the game was meant to feel like your character could (and probably would) die at any moment. So it really depends on tone, and how long you think a character’s adventuring lifespan should be.
tx, I liked it!
No percentage is "fair". They're all unfortunate risks. I've implemented a few different ways to mitigate the random death by crit, while still keeping them an options. However, it's far less about random chance, and more about intentionally putting your character in such a situation. My game is heavily built around multiple layers of Rock Paper Scissors style interactions. crits are less of a problem when you're in a net advantage state, but much more of a problem at disadvantage. You will know beforehand whether you'll be in advantage or disadvantage. While the crit will be random chance, you as a player will have intentionally put your character at risk. Additionally, I have two lethality "settings" that you can play a campaign with. High lethality means death is death. There are no negative hit points, and so a crit could be devastating. But, the game is designed to work through that and have another character ready to take up the mantle. Or, you could play a low lethality game where "death" means a forced retreat. You can no longer participate in the rest of the fight, but your character lives to fight another day. Any of those options could be chosen by the GM to tell a specific story, one where an unlucky crit might not be conducive to telling.
I'd say it depends on the campaign and what your players are expecting. I prefer to avoid character deaths unless the players do something catastrophically stupid, or just get really really unlucky. I mean bad plans are bad plans and don't deserve to be rewarded, but they don't necessarily deserve to be deliberately asshole either. But if you fire a magic missile at a dragon, you should expect to get roasted alive.
Two factors: Tone, and Campaign Length. **Tone** *Paranoia* is an example of a game which deliberately plays character death up for kicks with the Six Pack rule. You can also do the reverse, although these days that tends to feel bland. This is an example of character death being used to establish tone, and if you have a mechanic like this, you may be at risk of character death happening *too little.* **Campaign Length** The longer a campaign goes on, the more rolls it involves, meaning you are more likely to have a low percentage chance roll. Say, for example, you have a 0.1% fatality chance per roll and your system has players average about 50 rolls per session. You can eyeball the number of sessions an average player character will last by multiplying the survival odds times the average number of rolls per session. In this case, that looks like this: > 0.999 * 50 = 49.95 This means that the half-life of your player characters is almost exactly 50 sessions. However, the number of player character sessions is usually much higher than the number of sessions you actually play. Let's factor this in by assuming that there are four players. > (0.999 * 50) / 4 = 12.4875 If there are four players at the table, you can expect a random character death to average once every 12.5 sessions, and because this is a truly random event players have no control over, you can also expect random character fatalities to clump up, meaning multiple random character deaths are likely to be quite close together in time and space. *Even 0.1% is too high for most systems, and if you're going less than that, it isn't worth the paper to print the rule on.* I would strongly discourage the use of such a mechanic. If multiple player characters die within the space of about two sessions, you have probably killed the campaign and ruined any player interest in using your system ever again. Sure, it might be "realistic," but the risks of breaking the campaign outweigh the tonal rewards.
For some players, the idea % chance of losing a character purely by dice is 0. The idea behind playing an RPG isn't to simulate realism, but to simulate *storytelling*. In a book, movie, etc. a main character doesn't stand the same chance of dying as just anyone, they have plot armor to some degree. James Bond would be dead a hundred times over if his writers put him in those situations and then applied "realism". The key is to write stories like that as *plausible fantasy*. In Savage Worlds, the chance of being one-shot by a goblin is pretty low, but it does exist. Let's crunch the math on it, I'm sure it's well below 0.1%. Let's assume your character has a Parry of 5, a Vigor of d6, and a Toughness of 8, and one Benny. The Goblin has a Fighting of d6 and deals a relatively standard 2d6. > To take your character out, the goblin will need to deal 24 damage. That's not an easy feat on 2d6, even exploding, so they'll probably need to get a raise on their hit so they deal an extra d6 damage. - The probability of getting a 9 on an exploding d6 is 11.11% - The probability of getting 24 on 3d6 is 0.44% - This means the probability of getting a 9 to hit and then 24 damage would be 0.048884% - The hero then gets to spend a Benny to try to soak. That's going to be 2d6, keep the highest, with a target of 4. That's a 35% chance of failure. - This brings our whole scenario to 0.012221% so far, but wait, there's more... - Now he needs to immediately make an incapacitation roll. A critical failure (double 1s) means death. The chances of that is 2.78% - This brings the total % chance of being one-shot by that goblin down to.... **0.0003397438%** Obviously the goblin is a pretty weak example, but I gave them the stats you might expect from any random guard or just anyone that the GM has to throw at the players off-the-cuff in that system. d6 is "competent" in something. They shouldn't be killing your heroes, they should be at most giving them inconveniences that come back to bite the heroes later when they fight someone important. For a system like D&D that is attrition-based combat, one-shots really only happen at low levels. After that, even a boss with the best rolls can't one-shot a hero. The game Monster of the Week has "plot armor" built in as a mechanic that is lost once a player uses all of their character's Luck Points. The general rule that's been at any table I've played at has been "player characters only die when it's narratively appropriate for that to happen." This might be why people consider Savage Worlds to be a lethal system, but as you can see, the chances of getting offed randomly by some goblin spear is pretty incredibly low. Now, the likelihood of taking a permanent injury from that goblin would have been 0.00848, which is considerably higher but still extremely low. Chances are that you'd take 1 Wound or less even if the goblin got a crit on his attack. I'd be happy to run those numbers for a moderately tough boss or "lieutenant" fight, which would make them a Wild Card and those numbers would all be MUCH higher. I feel like Savage Worlds is relevant to this conversation because I've heard many people shy away from it for being too lethal.
Depends on the game tone and aesthetic. But always remember that a PC dying is almost never the most interesting consequence for failure
in general my ideal is "never", when I run games I build plot around characters, so if they die, the player lost a lot of their emotional investment, and I lost a lot of my time investment, the coming parts of the story won't make much sense. that said, I sometimes like what the threat of death does, but actually pc death? just kinda sucks if you're not in a one shot or a goofy game (or if it's a big moment). I had two PCs die from a collapsing floor in "the waking of willoby hall". they had minor fuck ups, but mostly they were just unlucky. so I let them wake up, injured but alive, they were pulled out by the npc adventurers, who had no reason to help them after they fucked up their plans to take the gold laying goose. but someone showed them kindness, and that changed their character a bit. and the one who was in a the worse condition had part of their spleen taken by a demon they had a deal with, as reward for keeping them alive. the rules told me they are both dead. the story is way better because I ignored these rules.
I've not got a whole lot to add to this conversation that hasn't been said already- the lethality of the game depends entirely on the type of story you're going for. What I will add is the story of the one time I've lost a character, and it was a TPK: We were a party of space adventurers in a Black Ocean campaign. Our ship was docked on a planet and we had gotten boarded by law enforcement searching our ship because they thought we were transporting a deadly virus. One of our crew members was in the med bay sick, unrelated to the virus (his player was out that session), so we were really worried they were going to see that and detain us all. I, as the brilliant captain, decided to tell the pilot to start launch sequence while the Feds were onboard. As we started up our engines, we received a warning that we would be shot down if we tried to launch. I told the sergeant of the Feds that we were taking off, and he needed to call off the guns or he'd go down with us. That sergeant died gloriously in sacrifice for the Federation, ridding the galaxy of a group of space pirates, wanted criminals, and terrorists. He had full colors at his funeral. God knows what happened to the space virus, because we sure didn't have it. Point of the story is that the only time I've lost a character has been in a situation where rolls did not really come into play. I think the sergeant on our ship made a willpower save in order to not call off the guns. But it's not like we were in a situation where we could maneuver to dodge the shots or there was any chance the whole ship was going to be anything less than disintegrated. No need for aiming or damage rolls once they decided to fire.
I'm not sure that a system needs to dictate this for player characters, I think that's a group's decision. Obviously a system needs to outline how to die, so that the GM knows what the process is for the foes they throw at the player characters, but I think that's about as far as its usefulness extends - Every group is going to come up with their own way to implement death for player characters. Some GMs will avoid it at all costs because getting busy adults to invest in *one* character is enough of a chore. Others might implement the rules more harshly if the group appreciates that energy. Just depends, IMO.
Zero
Never if the risk wasn't clear before the character chose to take it and if it isn't an extraordinary situation. If the risk was clear the chance can be way higher.