Scarier 5e?

 Originally Posted by Libramarian 

@S'mon based on your experience, what do you think of 0 HP = dead in the 2nd tier, with no revivify and new PCs coming in at level 5?

I'm a big fan of taking PCs out without killing them; 0 hp = dead would have deprived me of several cool scenes where Hakeem the barbarian survived being KO'd by sleeping gas and chewed on by a wight, or the time he held off the orc horde & their sorcerer leader long enough for his friends to escape, was KO'd by a cone of cold and put in a wagon for transport back to their dark tower, only to wake up, break his bonds and escape, returning to his beloved... 

What I do in my online Wilderlands game is use negative hp, you die at hp = negative max. This makes death rare (rarer than 3 death save fails = dead) but also makes popping dying PCs back up again during the fight is unlikely. After an hour if a PC makes a death save they can short rest, spend hd and potentially wake up & be active again.

Not using revivify seems fine, it's never been used IMC. I would probably rather keep revivify and lose raise dead/resurrection/true res though, I think that would keep the fear of death more strongly while reducing in-game lethality. There was no raising IMC until late in the heroic tier, and only 
a couple NPCs (cute, female companion NPCs)  have ever been raised, never any of the dead PCs. 
The 5e game would work fine with no raising (including revifify) at all - rare, permanent 
death works well. 

Start at level 5 - I do that, new PCs start at the bottom of the Tier or with half the XP of the dead PC, whichever is better. Sometimes I have different starter points, eg in my 5e Varisia game 
the current start level is 4th. 5 works well for PCs in the 5-8 range, for level 8-10 PCs I start them at 8th. Currently in my Wilderlands game the active PCs are 12-14 and start level is 11. 
Eventually I'll raise the start level to 14, then 17.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?482389-Finding-5th-edition-too-quot-safe-quot/page13#ixzz44kPPLmP0