Forum

How often do PC deaths occur in your games? If not a lot, did you make a conscious effort to make the game less lethal? Or is it such that you're finding a hard time to make the game more lethal?

Also, as a player, do you find that deaths due to random rolls or traps feel unfair to you? Or are you ok with such deaths since this is an OSR themed game?

It happens...

Short campaigns (2-5 sessions) :
2 sessions => 0 death (The Hollows)
5 sessions => 1 death (Haggler's House and some other stuff), saved by the use of a artefact (hourglass) then magic mishap 66 (yes, the same character)
4 sessions => 1 death (Weatherstone + some other stuff). Still one session to go, maybe another one bites the dust... ?
2 sessions => 0 death (weatherstone)

1 Long campaign (10+ sessions) : 1 death => bring back from the death by the druid. Only 1 empathy left now. First and last raise dead for this goblin...
They are very very cautious, and first shoot with bows before going to melee when they must.

We played around 40 sessions if I recall corectly with not a single fatality.

1 out of 4 characters had luck 3 for most of it, which probably helped a lot (though interestingly enough he was often in mortal danger despite of this). I think one or two others got luck 1 after 25-30 sessions or so.

We did loose two NPC followers though, due to critical injury rolls.

This is despite doing a lot of fighting.

I don't think the game is actually that lethal. While it is really easy to become broken that usually doesn't result in death. There certainly is a real risk of dying but it doesn't actually happen all that often. In my campaign, after 9 sessions, we haven't had a single PC death yet. There have been multiple critical injuries and the last session almost ended in a TPK but so far everyone is still alive.

The game is very non lethal and it is very rare a character die.

The most common result for us is the Magic mishap. And when players do something really stupid.

I’ve had one PC death in about 15 sessions. A handful of close ones too. Last week a wolfkin PC was swallowed by a drakewyrm, got broken but rescued. I ruled he lost his fur.

I've got a total party kill after in the 10th session, and no deaths in the 27 sessions afterwards (so far).