Data queried August 30, 2026. The data grows weekly; we will rerun everything around 1,000 tallied sessions.
Ask the internet how deadly D&D is and you get anecdotes: the killer DM, the five-year campaign without a scratch. Threadfall records sessions live at the table and keeps each campaign's codex, so deaths, knockdowns, and kills are things we can count instead of argue about.
167 player characters across 32 real campaigns, plus per-session battle tallies covering 370 of the 378 recorded sessions (98 percent), through August 2026. A knockdown means a PC dropped in the fight; a near-wipe is a moment the session's own record describes as a brush with losing the whole party; kills are the notable, named kills the record credits to the party, not a body count of every nameless minion. Tallies are AI-extracted from the session and correctable by the GM. These are self-selected tables on one recording platform, so nothing below is a claim about all of D&D.
17 of the 167 player characters on record are dead: 10.2 percent. Spread across campaigns instead of characters, 11 of 32 campaigns (about one in three) have buried at least one PC. As a rough rate, that is one character death per 22 recorded sessions. Real, but much rarer than the folklore.
The tallies record 265 knockdowns across 370 sessions. Someone hits zero hit points in 43 percent of sessions, and the worst single session dropped party members seven times. Set those 265 knockdowns against 17 deaths and you get the ratio that surprised us: roughly 15 falls for every death that sticks. Death saves, emergency healing, and lucky rolls are quietly winning almost every time.
45 of 370 sessions (12 percent) record at least one near-wipe, 48 in total. On these numbers a typical campaign brushes against total disaster about once every eight sessions. Actually losing everyone remains unrecorded in the data so far.
625 named kills across the tallied sessions. Two thirds of sessions (68 percent) record at least one, the median session records exactly one, and the busiest recorded ten. Meanwhile 32 percent of sessions record no kills at all: a full third of play, at least at these tables, is talk, travel, and scheming. The party's side bleeds too: the same tallies log 145 named allies and NPCs lost along the way, and 132 NPCs across these campaigns' codexes are flagged dead.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| PC death rate | 17 of 167 PCs (10.2 percent) |
| Campaigns with at least one PC death | 11 of 32 (about 1 in 3) |
| Rough death rate | 1 PC death per 22 recorded sessions |
| Sessions where a PC goes down | 43 percent (158 of 370) |
| Knockdowns per death | about 15 to 1 (265 downs, 17 deaths) |
| Sessions with a near-wipe | 12 percent (45 of 370) |
| Named kills per session | median 1; 90th percentile 4; max 10 |
| Sessions with zero kills | 32 percent |
Deaths come from each campaign's codex, where a character's death is marked by the GM or detected from play and confirmed. Battle tallies (kills, knockdowns, near-wipes, ally losses) are AI-extracted per session from the live transcript or the GM's session record, and GMs can correct them; coverage is 370 of 378 sessions. Known confounds: the sample is 32 self-selected campaigns on one platform, kill counts are notable named kills rather than a complete body count, and older death flags carry no timestamps, so the per-session death rate is approximate. Test and demo campaigns are excluded. If you want a cut we didn't run, ask: hello@thread-fall.com and we'll run it. The data on this page is licensed CC BY 4.0: reuse it freely, credit Threadfall with a link.
In our measured data, 17 of 167 player characters are dead: about 10 percent. One in three campaigns (11 of 32) has buried at least one PC, and as a rough rate the tables average one character death per 22 recorded sessions. Death is real, but rarer than the horror stories suggest.
Constantly, compared to how often they die. Someone drops to zero hit points in 43 percent of the sessions we tallied, and the data shows roughly 15 knockdowns for every death that sticks. Death saves and emergency healing are doing a lot of quiet work at real tables.
We measure near-wipes rather than completed TPKs: moments the table's own session record describes as a brush with losing everyone. Those show up in 12 percent of tallied sessions, roughly once every eight sessions for a typical campaign. A completed total party kill has not yet appeared in the recorded data.
The median session records exactly one notable, named kill, and about two thirds of sessions record at least one. The busiest recorded session logged ten. Just as telling: a third of sessions record no kills at all. A lot of D&D is talking, traveling, and scheming.
Threadfall is the tool that produced this data: it records your session live and turns it into a written chapter. What is Threadfall? · More measured data: how long sessions run · how often characters die · how long campaigns last · how many quests parties juggle