That's not meta-gaming. That's strategy.

Quote from: KrakaJak;293050It's much much harder, at least to do it "fair" in 4e. They only way I've seen it done is for DM's to metagame and concentrate artillery fire on a single PC.

How is it metagame? Isn't exactly what the pcs does? isn't it a common tactics even in the real world, too?
I'd call it playing it smart, not metagaming.

Quote from: jgants;293051So has anyone else experienced the phenomena where the players don't necessarily mind if they get killed because there's at least two or three alternate characters they want to try out (because there are so many new things)?

Yes. We typically have multiple chars controlled by a single player running around though, which prevents that from getting ridiculous.

In a session that somewhat led to one of the players getting kicked out, we almost had a TPK. (I say somewhat because it was the first of three sessions that led me to believe that player was an utter idiot and did not belong in the group).

Three characters in the party:

Dragonborn Cleric
Dwarf Wizard
Gnome Warlock

I sent them after a Goblin Hexer and his minions. They were doing really, really well, until our Dragonborn Cleric began to believe that his healing duties were unnecessary and began taking the minions one by one until he was overwhelmed, practically surrounded.

Several bad rolls on everyone's part, the insistence of the cleric's new role and lucky rolls on the goblin's part were enough to drop the Cleric to 0hp. Being surrounded as he was, the Dwarf Wizard took care of the minions but it was too late. He himself died (again, bad rolls).

The Gnome Warlock left, swearing to avenge his comrades.

I made allowances for the oddness of the party and they still perished due to one character acting outside of his duties. It was kind of odd.

Quote from: mrk;293045So the million dollar question: is it  harder to Kill PC's in 4e  compared to previous editions or is it the same?

Well, in my experience, it's harder to kill a PC in 4e D&D than earlier versions.  As others have already said, in 4e D&D, you really have to concentrate fire and gang up on a single PC to kill him.

Quote from: Drohem;292982The fight kind of breaks off into two fights:

This is how many TPKs happen.  

Quote from: Drohem;292982Have you had a character die in 4e D&D?  
What were the circumstances?
Have you had a character come real close to dying like Plix?

Lost one in the D&D Delves we did for promote 4e at the cons, but we were all noobs and just getting used to our powers.   I was playing the Eladrin Ranger and I teleported into the trouble zone instead of saving that power for escape.   The beasties rushed me and pinned me in a corner and the other melee PC were busy with their own foes.   As I had not played before, I did not know that my Ranger would be crappy with a sword and got chewed up.

Lost my Ogre Wizard too.  He was bloodied and got hit with two crits that took him to negative bloodied in one round!  But he got raised with a tear of Moradin so he's cool.  

Quote from: mrk;293045So the million dollar question: is it  harder to Kill PC's in 4e  compared to previous editions or is it the same?

Nope.  As DM, I have TPK'd several groups.

But I have seen players get cocky at low levels because they see 20-30 HP and forget that damage dealing has been inflated and monsters are packing powers too.

Quote from: obryn;293046Also, I have to say, the Death Save mechanic creates a lot of tension.  Once you hit 0, it's quite possible to die in 3 rounds without medical or magical attention.  And if that stretches to 4 or 5 rounds, the odds get higher and higher.

Yup.  I love the Death Save.

Quote from: Drohem;293119Well, in my experience, it's harder to kill a PC in 4e D&D than earlier versions.  As others have already said, in 4e D&D, you really have to concentrate fire and gang up on a single PC to kill him.

Here's how I've killed them:

1) Whole group drops to zero in melee versus meat eating monsters.  Nom nom nom!

2) Single PC gets hammered with ongoing effects and sadly, cannot roll over 9 on any round.   Taking 5 or 10 per round is ugly when you are down.  You can reach negative bloodied pretty fast.

My 3E deaths were more shocking than my 4E deaths. It *is* harder to kill a 4e character in one round, especially on a lucky roll.

There was a monster in 3.5 called a Redcap. It was a gnome-sized dude with an oversized scythe, and high strength.

Ok, well, a crit from one of those guys- just a lucky roll, is going to be a lot of damage x4. That could take a character from uninjured to negative 11 very quickly. As a 3.5 DM I can count 3 PC deaths due to redcap encounters alone. Often on the first round. I actually backed off of the redcap encounters for a while until players were higher level, then when I brought a group back, I had a redcap crit one guy twice and kill him. Haha, sorry Joel.

My character deaths in 4e - 3 out of 4 occurred in the earliest few months when I was running it --either it had to do with terrible rolls OR a shirking party member letting the team down through inaction, or running out of resources like healing surges (overextension). One trend at my local shop that we started advising against is "give the new guy the cleric". If the new guy didn't know how to play the cleric, party members could really suffer.

In the game this afternoon, one of the PCs got hit and poisoned by a wyvern, and she nearly died- she made her save at the last possible moment when she would have dropped. Wyvern posion is ongoing 10, so that would have done her in.

I had an eladrin swordmage die, but that's because the halfling spent a round ... in the bushes.