Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Manchine Sep 30, 2014 15:17:23	It seems like every encounter that happens one person get KOed.  Not the same person as I seem to spread the love around.  Of course on the very first fight my very first attack with goblins I KOed the Cleric.  At first I was did I make this to rough it was only 4 goblins.  The players started calling me Killer DM even though no one actually died.  I just laugh.   Needless to say how often do you KO 1st, 2nd, and 3rd level characters per encounter?
#2 gregsc Sep 30, 2014 16:02:52	We've played through the first two big set pieces in Lost Mine. A character has dropped to zero hp twice. So, a lot less than every encounter. This is a party that actively avoids combat. There's a lot of sneaking and trickery going on.
(Reply to #2) Manchine	gregsc wrote:
#4 iserith Sep 30, 2014 16:13:49	I knocked out both groups that played in LMoP in the Redbrands hideout. I also knocked out PCs in my adventure "Barrow of the Evensong" (see my signature). I've been knocked out in HotDQ and I think I'm the only one who was taken down in the first chapter.   In all cases, the PCs simply bit off more than they could chew and tried to duke it out rather than try some other tact.
#5 woif Sep 30, 2014 17:42:50	I've only KO'd two players in my game (not using a module). My players are overly cautious and run both a paladin and cleric in heavy armor so there are plenty of hitpoints and healing up front. There has been more than one fight that would have ended up in a TPK if the party only had one healer.
#6 Shiftkitty Sep 30, 2014 18:31:02	Manchine wrote:
#7 Rhenny Sep 30, 2014 19:11:03	In about 8 hours (3 sessions) of HoDQ each of our 5 PC party has been ko'd 1 time .  We've had about 8 or so encounters.  The last encounter knocked out 2 of us, but three other encounters knocked down only 1 PC each.   In Phandelver, one PC went down before getting to the Goblin Cave.  Then we lost 1 PC (dead on 1 hit from the bugbear) in the Goblin Cave.   I think since we've leveled to 2, we've been ok (Trebor trail, Agatha the Banshee, Orcs and Ogre in the hills).    In my own campaign, adapted Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle, one PC died, another 2 went down at different times, but now they are 4th level and mostly pretty stable.   Overall, I like the fear that any given combat can take someone down.  It is encouraging non-combat solutions and getting players to think before starting a fight.
#8 AaronOfBarbaria Sep 30, 2014 19:12:39	Generally speaking, players in my campaigns get knocked out as often as they are acting in a way that suggests that they have forgotten that combat is dangerous.   Usually, that means they have made poor tactical choices, like moving into open terrain alone to make ranged attacks while the rest of the party has taken cover because a) ranged weapons exist, and b) the bad guys probably have some.   Other times it means that a player has outright refused to pay attention to the not-at-all subtle hints I have given (such as: "Bugbears typically value proven strength over anything else, and as such don't like to negotiate unless they have been beaten into submission" - and then the player trying to lead the encounter with walking up and chatting politely) and put themself in a rough position.   The interesting thing, to me, is that I ran a group through Lost Mines of Phandelver, and there was only a single instance of a character being knocked out - and that only happened because the player didn't use his Second Wind even though he knew that one more hit from the wolf he was fighting would definitely knock him out (he was, unintelligently in my opinion, waiting to use Second Wind until he had taken at least the maximum possible healing of it in damage, because he "didn't want to waste any healing.")
#9 Manchine Sep 30, 2014 21:18:07	In the first encounter.  I had half the party attack and the other half try to scare the goblin in a BOOMING voice (SPELL).   If they would of went first and not attacked it might of worked.  =)
#10 Tony_Vargas Sep 30, 2014 23:06:30	Manchine wrote:
#11 Noon Sep 30, 2014 23:56:14	First level seem to have one person go down to zero every two or three combats.   The players started calling me Killer DM even though no one actually died.
#12 Keendk Oct 01, 2014 2:38:47	We play 6-8 players, and our frontliners have been amazingly good at tactical positioning to funnel all foes (and there's quite a few for that many players) towards them, so that our back liners can lay the smack down. This has of course meant that there's not a single fight where  our frontliners haven't taken massive damage and gone down, but that's ok as they feel they've done their part very well to promote victory, and we always get them back on their feet afterwards anyway.   5e combats are so quick so even if you spend a round or two down, or won't mean too long real time waiting. Besides it's also good fun just observing other peoples description of their actions.
#13 Furion_Thamior Oct 02, 2014 16:56:14	If you're looking for some hard-and-fast guidelines on encounter difficulty, there are some guidelines in the D&D basic rules that you can map onto as follows.   Easy encounters. I wouldn't expect to see a KO in an easy encounter barring some extremely (un)lucky die rolls or grave misplays on the part of the players. In typically play, I try to find situations that allow easy encounters to snowball out of control into more difficult encounters -- for instance, a barracks of hobgoblin troopers that are easily isloated from on another and taken out by a quick and silent group, but who rapidly mobilize if the alarm is sounded.   Medium encounters. A single KO is possible in a medium encounter, but death is rare.   Hard encounters. A hard encounters tetters on the brink, and will almost always have a KO or two -- possibily even a death. KOs are easily avoided with smart play and good rolls, however.   Deadly encounters. As the name implies, a deadly encounter will most certainly have KOs, even when the dice go well for the players and they use smart tactics. Without smart play, there will probably a death -- and misplays will probably lead to a TPK.   I usually run Hard encounters, with a smattering of easy ones. This results in a few KOs each game session.
#14 Manchine Oct 02, 2014 21:59:14	Noon wrote:
#15 Splurch1 Oct 02, 2014 22:43:20	I ran my group on LMoP and had only a couple of ko'd. However I'm now running HotDQ and I had the same character get ko'd twice and it was the groups cleric, and the second time he died (rolled a 1 on his first save and failed his second save). I think that it's because of the smaller math, my dice got hot (& even with good AC's I hit by 1 or 2) and they took a lot of damage. I like that the game actually puts a little fear of death into the players that I haven't seen in a game in a while and my players like it too.
#16 Theros Oct 03, 2014 4:29:18	AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
(Reply to #16) AaronOfBarbaria	Theros wrote:
#18 MarcCCTx Oct 03, 2014 10:59:59	I really had to cheat the last encounter for any of the heroes to survive, the roper got everyone but it was down to 2 HP so I had the Warlock's sprite?pixie familiar take a final shot before returning to wherever familiar go when the companion dies. I scored a crit so I said it did 2 points of damage, killing the roper. The characters who made their death saves eventually wake up (with 1 HP) in a nasty mess of dead roper and blood to the sounds of cracking dragon eggs.
#19 Elothan Oct 06, 2014 12:20:50	I have had quite a few knockouts, but no deaths yet, but then again, my part of 3 chars have very little magic healing bewtween them, and the cleric is temoest with focus on damaging spells,  but they are learning to stock up on healing potions, so its rarely a large problem. I run LMotP a bit reduced when it comes to number of enemies and such, due to the small party size, but crits from the big hitters can and will be a bit scary ;)
#20 Jimmifett Oct 08, 2014 7:46:15	Had a wizard in the party get KOed. Miracously, he rolled a nat 20 on his save and was back on his feet.   Then, Ifni, fickle goddess of chance that she is, corrected this oversight with a crit to the wizard the very next turn. He then failed his death save and should have died. I felt really bad and gave him inspiration for a re-roll. He was eventually stabilized.
#21 GrrHero Oct 08, 2014 17:04:20	In LMoP, I ran the book with 7 groups, most of which were new players. Save one group(my veteran players' group), I killed at least one character in the opening each time I ran the adventure, while one group had a TPK. Once everyone got to level 3 it become almost impossible to kill the characters, and I only knocked-out a handful.   In HotDQ, I am a player(first time this year playing), and no one has been KOed or killed. We do have a large group(7-8) with multiple healers. While we are still only level 2, I don't think our DM is vicious enough to actively try to kill us.   Perhaps I'm an evil DM, but I want to kill my players' characters everytime we sit down at the table(though I have never killed a character that was not able to get raised). Without failure there are no heroes.