PDA

View Full Version : DM Series pt 3: Murder Death Kill, Character Deaths in Your Campaign



Human Paragon 3
2010-05-04, 09:28 AM
This is part 3 of a weekly series of DM theory threads.

Juris's DMing Series Master TOC Thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=8392687#post8392687)

This week's conversation will be about character death. Every DM has to deal with this issue inevitably. In general a character death is a bad thing, and sometimes, though not always, signals a mistake by the DM or the player. But after the 5 stages of grief are over, we have to move on... and think about the future.

It seems that each edition of D&D takes a different stance on character death. In 1e (and to a lesser degree, 2e) character death is expected to be common. Characters should be grateful if they get past 1st level, and if they die, tough cookies. In 3e, character deaths are viewed as an intrinsic part of the game, but a smaller part. Character death in 3 and 3.5 is rarer, and resurrection easier to come by. 4e has been the most protective edition yet, making resurrection even more commonly available and "Dead" an unlikely condition status for PCs of all stripes.

Why is this? Because dying's "not fun." D&D seems to be a bit schizofrenic on this topic, though. If dying's not fun, why have it at all? Why keep it as an important part of the game? Presumably, because players need the threat of death and failure to keep the game exciting, but how dangerous is too dangerous? And how safe is too safe? And in the end, what's more important, danger, or the illusion of danger?

How do you treat character death? Do you throw your players to the wolves and delightedly watch them fight for survival? Do your players come to the table with a stack of blank sheets or prefab characters? Or do your players consider themselves immortal?

How common should resurrection be, and does it trivialize death?

And is character death just an inevitable side effect of adventuring, or can it actually be used as a DM tool to make the game more exciting, engaging and meaningful?

DarkEternal
2010-05-04, 09:36 AM
Honestly, unless the characters make a capital mistake I try to keep them from dying. For instance, a few sessions ago the party had a pretty good idea of disguising themselves as the enemy, and bringing a few captives(three of the five players tied with a special knot so they could spring to action quickly if need be). Due to some bad rolls and some good rolls on my part, the enemy saw through the disguise and attacked the wizard in the front(highest Diplomacy skill and quite a few ranks in Bluff) who disguised himself into the leader with two powerful halberd thrusts of which one critted.

I had a really good roll and basically brought the Wizard to -6 immediatelly. Now, I could have slaughtered him the next turn but rather decided to go to different characters with the explanation that he "looked" dead. The rest of the party managed to stabilise him and save him.

It's just one example, but bottom line is usually I won't kill my party members if they have bad luck. If they screw up then yeah, they have to face the consequences.

As for the Ressurection, that depends on the level. Sometimes they could ressurect a character instead of giving the reward for their deeds if the players succeed, though at higher levels, they sort of earned their ressurections and have the money to pay for it, so sure. On lower levels, it's sometimes better to just say goodbye to the character and make a new one unless I see they really got attached to the previous one, in which case there is always some possibility or other to make the character come back to life.

AtwasAwamps
2010-05-04, 09:42 AM
I give every player one out. They don’t know this and I won’t tell them. One moment in which I will fudge the numbers in their favor, without telling them I have. In a party of seven, they’ve all used them…three of them were used in a single random encounter. They know I will not be nice. But they haven’t quite learned what that means.

I WILL kill their characters. Yes, you’re supposed to be heroes, but I feel that DnD does do a good job of illustrating that. 4.0 does it best, but 3.5 past level 5 is still a pretty good indicator, with the addendum that certain creatures will just REAM you.

I am in a situation where I’m about to pit my players against honestly intelligent strong opponents. I have a feeling this may be a TPK because they refuse to play cautious or think carefully, but I am not going to pull my punches on them for that. They make mistakes, they pay for them. Long and short of it.

Human Paragon 3
2010-05-04, 09:42 AM
Except for certain, exceptional circumstances, I don't have my bad guys or monsters attack unconcious PCs either. It stands to reason that they would be more worried about the characters who are still up and fighting, rather than the guy who's just bleeding out anyway.

I would only have a bad guy coup-de-grace or attack a fallen PC if I was really trying to make a point about the bad guy. Even then, I think my players might be pissed at me.

valadil
2010-05-04, 09:52 AM
Honestly I think it varies on the kind of game you're trying to run. I do a lot of story and plot, and I try to take advantage of character backstories. That type of campaign doesn't lend itself to a rotating door of new adventurers. Even if I did kill off PCs, the players would quickly tire of coming up with new backstories for them.

But that doesn't mean I don't appreciate a good dungeon crawl too. It's just another type of game. There's something to be said for having a static set of challenges and coming up with a party that is able to overcome all of them. I like that. It's just not the game I'd run.

I do feel that if a game is going to have combat, death needs to be available. As soon as I know a fight can't kill me I lose interest in it. As soon as I know a GM won't kill me, winning fights becomes meaningless. I don't need to see a PC die. They can live through the whole game. But I need to think the option is there.

subject42
2010-05-04, 09:58 AM
Player death in a campaign isn't a bad thing as long as the DM and the players have the same expectations of danger. Before each campaign, I talk with my players and ask them what levels of deadliness they're comfortable with.

Right now we're playing an "every encounter has a 50/50 chance of somebody ending up unconscious, and a reasonable chance of somebody ending up dead" kind of campaign. Just last weekend our wizard ate a charging critical hit from a raging ogre and dropped in one shot.

If we hadn't all agreed that things like this could happen I think he would have been rightfully angry about an anti-climactic ending like that, but informed consent is a wonderful thing.

WarKitty
2010-05-04, 09:59 AM
And then there's when a character commits suicide...

Not, really, this did actually happen in a game I was playing. Fortunately this particular game operated on the rule of cool far more than actual rules. The DM had him challenge death (he lost). He got resurrected naked in a completely different part of the city.

Oh and somehow he managed to get death trapped with us on an extra-dimensional game. Good times.

Totally Guy
2010-05-04, 10:06 AM
I've not killed off a player character yet. All rolls happen in the open though and our game world lacks magical healing and resurrection so I expect it'll happen eventually.

I don't want it to happen but I still have to provide a situation that can threaten the lives of the party.

Human Paragon 3
2010-05-04, 10:07 AM
How long have you been DMing for, Glug?

Choco
2010-05-04, 10:20 AM
I like Dark Sun the best of all the D&D settings, I think that should give plenty of insight as to my views on character death :smallamused:.

I like to vary the danger a bit. Some areas are relatively safe, while in others one wrong move could result in a TPK. This is the one time I throw the PC's a bone, and tell them it will be deadly even if they did not do any research before diving in. Fighting roaming bandits ouside a fortified city? Fairly safe. Going behind enemy lines to assassinate a commander? Yeah, better watch your back and not do anything stupid.

I rarely fudge rolls to prevent a PC from dying due to bad luck, though I have the PC's roll their own damage so really all I fudge is criticals and hits/misses.

As painful as it is for a PC in a heavy RP game to completely rewrite a backstory, trust me it is MUCH more painful for the DM, who has heavily integrated that PC into some major plotlines. "whoops, looks like <x> is no longer the chosen one that will save the world...". I however am more than willing to put myself through that to see the look of horror on the PC's faces as they realize they are screwed :smallamused:.

Gnaeus
2010-05-04, 10:29 AM
As a player, if it becomes clear that the DM is holding back and not killing PCs on purpose, I feel cheated. The thrill of combat involves overcoming dangers, and dangers mean that sometimes you get hurt.

If the DM chooses to have us fight intelligent enemies, I expect them to fight intelligently. Sometimes that means focusing fire on a soft or dangerous target. Sometimes that means finishing off a disabled foe before an enemy caster can put him back in the fight. Anything else hurts my suspension of disbelief and my enjoyment of the game.

Also, I like the minigame that is making characters, and if PCs never die, I can only do that once per campaign.

Human Paragon 3
2010-05-04, 10:41 AM
As a player, I also hate it when DMs make the game too easy. Occasionally it's fun to annihilate the opponent to show how awesome we are, but if we're breezing through combats on a regular basis without going down or taking damage, that's (and I've used this term before) just lip-syncing.

As a DM I put this to work. Occasionally I let my players destroy stuff to boost their egos and let them use all their wonderful toys, but usually I push them to the limits, and sometimes they die.

I also strictly limit resurrection, and make it as rare as possible. Every now and then I break my own rule, but usually it's when, "Well, the entire plot revolved around this character, so... now what?"

Choco
2010-05-04, 10:53 AM
I also strictly limit resurrection, and make it as rare as possible. Every now and then I break my own rule, but usually it's when, "Well, the entire plot revolved around this character, so... now what?"

Let them die and work with it is what I do :smallbiggrin:

Yeah, the PC's failed to stop the villain's plan to unleash an undead plague throughout the entire material plane because he whooped their asses. All that means is the plot switches from "stop the disaster" to "mitigate the disaster and deal with the consequences as best as possible".

The only time death marks the end of the whole campaign is if they fail in the final BBEG fight and the BBEG was doing something like destroying the mulitverse. And win or lose, the campaign would have ended there anyway.

I like to play with no (or at least very difficult) resurrections most of the time, though if they are as common as in vanilla D&D (3.5-4e) then I make sure to keep track of how much money each char spent on resurrections, and remove that amount from their WBL. Eventually it becomes more cost-effective to just roll up a new character with full WBL. This way those truly attached to the characters can still come back.

Totally Guy
2010-05-04, 11:03 AM
How long have you been DMing for, Glug?

I have run 30 gaming sessions. 18 were D&D 4E and 12 have been Burning Wheel. D&D was pretty much a combat/story/combat/story progression. Our Burning Wheel campaign is a lot less combat focussed but we still have situations where character death is a real possibility.

In the Burning Wheel game we got close a couple of times. One player character cheated death when a dagger hit him in the chest by having it hit and destroy the MacGuffin in his pocket instead.

It's a good little mechanic that allows you to be saved at a cost if you can also pay the Artha (hero-point type) cost.

Noedig
2010-05-04, 11:26 AM
My favorite DM pulls TWO punches. Just two. He runs our 3.5 Undermountain campaign and has a fate point system similar to good karma in SR3. You get 2 points and that is it. You never get them back.

A point doesnt mean that you come off fine and dandy though, you still get the piss beat out of you. You just happen not to die.

He will coup 'd grace a PC if the monster we're fighting is intelligent, like say an abyssal ghoul who always has deathwatch on.

As far as PC's deaths are concerned, he doesnt like to do it, but if the dice say you die, you die.

Aotrs Commander
2010-05-04, 11:58 AM
I have, in my 20-year DMing career, only had seven PCs (and one party NPC) die on my watch. Three of those were due to party in-fighting.

The first (ever) was accidental - a "warning shot" in Rolemaster/Spacemaster with the most powerful handgun available - to the back of the head (lucky crit). (The character's player decided he didn't mind, and even declined the offer of being resurrected afterwards.)

The second two were both taken down in sequence by another character in a pair of duels. Normally, I don't allow party in-fighting, but the two dead characters in question had really gone against the tone of the adventure I'd set (basically using the aquatic-setting as an excusewanting to act like CN/CE pirates and murder and pillage. Despite both players knowing full well I don't allow that sort of behavior - period - in my games). So when the good swashbuckler ended up fighting them I allowed it, and to everyone's great surprise, he won both fights, back to back. I called that karma...

The first two PCs I actively killed was again in RM (actually latrer on in the same quest as the first shooting.) In that group there were three players whose characters got along like matter and anti-matter. I had told them, in and out of character, so freakin' stop it and tone it down. After the usual polite "look guys, cut it out, it's not funny anymore" had failed, even after they nearly killed each other in a previous adventure, they were still at it. So I told them they could either cut it out, or I'd have their souls eaten. They didn't cut it out. And so, when the soul-eating Carach came along, I pulled no punches and managed to eat the souls of two out of the three (and one of the party's NPC supporting cast along with them). The last one to go was rather spectacular though, since I rolled open-ended and the bite that killed him (physically and spiritually) sort of splattered him up the walls...
(Ironically, one of the players involved was involved in both incidents above, and both killer in the first and killee in the second...I think he's kinda learned by now...Kinda...)

The most recent occurance was sort of by accident, running a 3.5 version of Dragon Mountain. The (heavily optimised) Kobold archers let fly a barrage of poisoned arrows (Wyvern poison) and hit several times. Two of the PCs dropped rgiht dead, having failed their saves, along with the NPC guide. To my great amusement. Bearing in my this adventure is set for 14th-Epic in level range, and the PCs are so over-kitted it isn't true, I can really afford to not hld back. As it was, all this meant was a shopping trip to Sigil (via Greater Planeshift) and the PCs selling the loot they'd gained in the last encounter - and having enough money to not only True Res all three (including the NPC GUIDE I remind you!!) but buy some more kit to boot. Oy...

As standard practise, I do not generally kill PCs. Note the word "generally" it's the single most important word in that sentence.

I treat the PCs like the protagonists in a TV series. You can expect that, on balance, most of them will be coming back week-to-week, but that doesn't stop the action from being tense. I work on the level of posing credible threat. As long as the players (and their characters) are feeling concerned, then I'm doing my job. I don't have to actually kill anyone periodically to achieve that (though I'll admit, the fact that it has happended helps give me some credibility). Instead, I'll happily except knocking the odd character to negatives. The important thing is to make the players sweat.

I never say, while I've got my DMing face on, anything about not killing you. Outside of the session maybe (and always with the qualifier of "probably won't"); because it's that tiny sliver of doubt that says "he's really gonna kill us this time!" that keeps the players from getting too complacent. (That and they know if they do get too cocky and say "He won't kill us!" I'm liable to do so to prove them wrong.) Basically, I expect the players to meet me half way. I won't generally kill them (unless they do something mind-splinteringly stupid), so long as they don't take advantage of the fact.
Afterall, generally what you want out of a fight is something dramatic, tense and exciting. If the players are on the edge of their seats, you don't actually need to go and kill them if you can present a credible enough threat that ideally forget (or conciously choose to ignore) that you probably won't kill them.

On the other hand, at relatively low levels, to provide some shield against just bad luck, I often include Fate points of some sort. These can be used soley to make you Not Dead (if you fail a against a SoD for example); spending one puts you to 1 hit point above death and stable. These tend to be awarded as quest rewards only, and when they're gone, they're gone. I also curtail the amount given out at high levels, when the PCs have the means to deal with this sort of thing.

I also generally roll behind my screen, and on the rare occasions that due to bad luck or just gauging the combat wrong, I have been known to fudge the odd dice roll. (Generally only to not kill the PCs.) I much prefer not having to do this (hense the aforementioned Fate points) and I find myself doing it much less as time goes on. Of course, the point being the players (let alone the characters) don't know when I've done it. (And believe me, my luck is skewy enough that I can get away with it!)

And occasionally, if the PCs are in a bit of a pinch, I'll adjust the monster's actions a bit (perhaps to less than optimal). For example, the Dragon Mountain PCs, now at level 16, were fighting off a crowd of high-level NPCs (three 20th level specialist archers, two 15th level clerics and a 12th level sorcerer, having had plenty of buff time). The party was split in two by a portcullis and got a bit banged up. I could, at one point, have had one of the clerics cast Blood to Water on the whole party (Con damage at that point would have really hurt), but instead opted to have him do something else not potentially as TPK-worthy. (And they won in the end, and are now at level 17 and giving me the horrors of 9th level spells...)

So, summation then, I find it best that if you can get your players to believe (in-character and out-of-character) that you might kill them, you may not actually have to.

Jallorn
2010-05-04, 12:27 PM
I'm of the opinion that fudging the rolls slightly to keep players alive during minor dangers is more fun for most. Dying fight the BBEG, yeah sure, that's fair game, but dying to a kobold who gets a lucky shot? Not usually. I would usually just have the player fall unconsious, but I haven't had the opportunity.

Human Paragon 3
2010-05-04, 01:16 PM
"OK, Critical hit. You take 39 damage."

"I'm Dead."

"I mean 30 damage."

valadil
2010-05-04, 01:16 PM
I'm of the opinion that fudging the rolls slightly to keep players alive during minor dangers is more fun for most. Dying fight the BBEG, yeah sure, that's fair game, but dying to a kobold who gets a lucky shot? Not usually. I would usually just have the player fall unconsious, but I haven't had the opportunity.

There's dying and then there's dying. In D&D if the players are of a level where resurrection is available, being killed by a kobold is nearly identical to being unconscious. If the player can come back, I don't see the point in watering it down.

gallagher
2010-05-04, 01:24 PM
i feel that the best games to play, the most fun i have ever had, were ones where death is a constant threat. always being on the run, or hunted, makes you have to constantly be moving, and allows for many encounters.

but the thing is that when death is always a threat, you have to always be thinking, and always have someone trying to plan something. it also unfortunately forces us to bicker about plans, but when you have two or three guys with a gift for planning and one guy who seems to always have everything in his backpack that you need... well, a creative plan can get you out of alot of situations

plus if death isnt a viable threat at all times, players tend to be foolhardy and border-line stupid, trying to see what they can get away with. for instance, challenging a giant to thumb-wrestling

Umael
2010-05-04, 01:41 PM
It depends on the campaign I am running and the players involved in the campaign.

Most of the time, I don't bother with killing the PCs because it is just more fun to torture them.

I blame my first DM (my father) for this one. Biologist, so he didn't have a lot of monsters in his dungeons. Knew a bit about economics, so there wasn't a lot of treasure just laying around. Funny, lots and lots of traps. Toss in a psychological warfare game in sadistic artistry, and those "Resurrection - 200gp" deals were more a lure to scare us than a cause to relax.

Totally Guy
2010-05-04, 01:42 PM
If it's ok for the players to die fighting the BBEG but not ok to die by a lucky shot by that random kobold then why is random kobold fight happening?

It's not death with little meaning that would upset me, it's fighting with little meaning. I'd rather skip ahead to the BBEG fight.

Ack! But then when the party get there we'll have not got the required equipment and experience to do that.

So make the random kobold into something less random. Make him part of the situation.

The only time there can be anything close to a random encounter is as a consequence of a failed dice roll. If I want to track a man to his hideout and fail, I'd be happy to fight the kobold. Because I was taking a risk to get something I wanted it ties the encounter into something that was all about me. Which is what I like.

But then, having gone through the encounter I'd have received more experience than if I'd succeeded the tracking roll...

So could we perhaps put an experience value on the tracking that I'd receive for success (and avoiding the encounter) equal to the experience I'd get from fighting the kobold.

Choco
2010-05-04, 01:54 PM
If it's ok for the players to die fighting the BBEG but not ok to die by a lucky shot by that random kobold then why is random kobold fight happening?

It's not death with little meaning that would upset me, it's fighting with little meaning. I'd rather skip ahead to the BBEG fight.

Amen brother.

If there is no danger of losing/dying, the fight does not need to be there. Unless it is one of those fights meant to be comical or make the PC's feel powerful and noticed how far they have come along (lvl 18 party ambushed by lvl 1 thugs for instance).

Reynard
2010-05-04, 01:54 PM
Well, I my old groups campaigns, death wasn't a problem for most people. We knew what we were doing, and how to do it well, that we only ever faced character death if the DM, whoever it was that campaign, was really pushing hard.

We also had a way of dealing with characters getting out of control: "I'm coming for you". This was sort-of house-rule that was mostly there to spice things up, as the DM would roll a d10 to choose one of the 5 players, then tell them that they were going to die. The DM would then attempt to try and kill that character, and the player would try and stave death off for as long as possible, and both without resorting to cheese. Once/if the DM succeeded, they'd then roll a d8 and chose one of the characters who hadn't been killed yet as the next target.

This may sound horrible and immersion breaking, but it's actually great fun, and we don't use it for serious campaigns. Knowing the DM is out to get you makes you play really well.

mackejn
2010-05-04, 01:57 PM
I think it really all comes down to your players. Especially after seeing all the responses in this thread. Granted I'm still a neophyte to D&D, but some people don't mind it and some people hate it. It can be an effective tool as long as it's not over used. I'm thankful to be playing 4e with my buddies because I think 1e and the like would just make me give up out of frustration. If you want me to get invested in a character, you can't keep killing them off. On the other hand, if you want me to really hate your BBEG then kill that character I have an attachment to. It's a fine balance keeping a player interested rather than frustrated.

valadil
2010-05-04, 02:10 PM
make the PC's feel powerful and noticed how far they have come along (lvl 18 party ambushed by lvl 1 thugs for instance).

Even this can be accomplished without resorting to random encounters. Let them go beat up someone that bullied them when they were lowbies. That illustrates the same point, and they'll give a damn.

Random encounters can be reworked into no-so-random encounters with little effort.

The easy way to do this is to start out random and link it up to something else that's relevant. In my recent game, the players fought trolls on a bridge. The troll tracks led back to their cave where the PCs would have found (had they followed the tracks) a humanoid skeleton with a backpack full of manacles. Down the road, when they start hunting slavers that guy would have made sense.

Another way to do it is to have the random encounters happen to NPCs. Last campaign I was stuck for combat in an early session. Instead of telling the PCs to leave their castle and have bandits attack, I had the bandits attack a messenger who was en route to the castle. The PCs found out about it and had to ransom or rescue the guy. It ended up being the same bandit fight, but had a whole lot more story than if I gave the players the fight right off the bat.

Deathrevived
2010-05-04, 02:36 PM
I have always been a strong proponent of the fact that actions have consequences, and sometimes my players need reminding of this...

Fairly Lengthy Story Example A perfect example of this was a game I recently ran, with the party ranger dying in the second plot encounter, one that was supposed to be a mostly rp encounter.

They had just dispatched a decent sized group of soldiers that they thought to be part of the invading army they were hired to stop, in fact the soldiers were the good guys (the PCs were actually hired by a Black Dragon, masquerading as the mayor- major plot point).

Anyways, when the commander of the forces that the players had just killed appeared, he was a high level Kensai (forget exactly how powerful I made him) who was described as highly intimidating in darn near every way. Well when the commander started to speak the ranger got the bright idea to try and shoot him. I even asked the player if he really wanted to attack the big guy, with an even bigger sword, and looked like a walking talk with his giant armor.

Long story short I tried to stop the inevitable, and I thought I had an out when the ranger ran to the monk, who had a circle of non-violence around him, I forget the feat but its from Book of Exalted Deeds I believe.

I rolled the commanders d 20s in the open, and ended up getting a natural 20 for the will save, another natural 20 for his to hit, a 20 to confirm and rolled about 35 damage more than would be needed to reduce him below -10. His reaction was to first get mad at me for killing his character, and then accused me of cheating, though I rolled right in front of him, and that is where the character death issue gets to the worst, in my opinion.

Sholos
2010-05-04, 02:47 PM
I've had three deaths in my campaign so far. One was against an earth elemental's lucky crit and high damage (I roll in the open). One was the result of taunting the current BBEG (bad idea when you don't have good AC or HP and he's a cleric two levels higher than the party), and the last was when they simply refused to stop fighting two will-o-wisps which were tearing into them pretty badly. I only felt bad about the first one.

DanReiv
2010-05-04, 02:49 PM
Being on both sides of the screen for many years I can safely say that adventures must be challenging and sometimes life-threatening for the PCs.

Where's the fun knowing you will win no matter what, and that you'll probably come back even if you die ?

So in my current d&d campaign (started in 2008) there's no resurection whatsover available. It just doesn't exist.

RP matters a lot since it can easily help or hinder future encounters, which are dangerous at best (I throw some easy encounter at them sometimes, for fluff and stuff, but since they can't loose those they hardly qualify as "encounters" for me)

Hence I take a lot of time designing them, cause I don't want to cause a TPK (they are seasoned enough to recognize overwhelming odds and flee/attempt to bargain) and I almost never fudge dices.

In the end I believe it just help immersion, makes the players more involved and carefull. Once in a while, one of them bites the dust and reroll.

Crowning moments of awesome are more awesome if failure means definitive death.

Flob
2010-05-04, 02:50 PM
As a player, I despise dieing. It's a waste of money (we ALWAYS raise dead/ressurect), it's inconvenient (I'll tell you a story...), and a waste of time.

The story is in Eberron. We are in some sort of submarine, and our party consists of; an elven soulknife, a human artificer, a warforged warmage, and me, the human monk. Our submarine gets trapped in a net, and we have to go cut the lines. I easily swim out and cut one, when I spot a "large dark spoltch heading towards me". Guess what? Dire shark. In three rounds, I've been eaten, and everybody else has escaped into the ship after seeing me being devoured. Our party has to bargain with some sea-folk for like, ALL of our cash to get my body to be thrown up by the shark (or DM never has showed mercy like this before).

Now, this wouldn't have been so bad if I was used to death, but I was not. The last campaign we played, I had a character that was simply a tank. Absolute and true, heavy armor, good manuverability, and crazy damage. Never died once, and we went from nothing to level 19. I was king of the world.

You now see why death can suck, in my opinion. Sorry about the rambling.

KillianHawkeye
2010-05-04, 02:53 PM
Nice Demolition Man reference, btw. :smallamused:

KurtKatze
2010-05-04, 03:13 PM
2 deaths in the last session ^^ honstly why did they think they can take on 25 Yuan Ti ?

If they die, they die ^^ they have enough resources to get resurrection. The only thing they really loose is time. At least i do it like that in my campaign. Usually my BBEG has a plan, so loosing time really sucks and makes following encounters more difficult.
I don't really provoke their deaths but if they take on superior enemies or make stupid mistakes (like the 2nd death in a dragon battle that followed. The druid (PHB II swift wild shape variant) flew up to the dragon in eagle form and attacked it... Grapple from the dragon, after that it dived into it's lake and drowned/grappled the druid to death.

Usually i am not killing them off like flies but if they have a serious encounter and act stupid, then they die.

Lord Loss
2010-05-04, 04:04 PM
Two rules:

1) Newbie protection. Nobody wants to see Kerwyn the rogue die on his first adventure. After the first session or two, however, you're fair game.

2) I don't fudge (much). Unless i accidently pit players against they don't even have a chance to flee from because I was tired, when the dice say dead, it means dead.

3) Very, very limited character res. You die? Make a new character, or take a walk through the Blin Eterneties.

Reynard
2010-05-04, 04:22 PM
It's become somewhat of an in-joke that the rogue will always die first in our games. Because, no matter who's playing it, it always happens. Often 2 rounds into the first encounter.

Choco
2010-05-04, 04:29 PM
As a player, I despise dieing. It's a waste of money (we ALWAYS raise dead/ressurect), it's inconvenient (I'll tell you a story...), and a waste of time.

The story is in Eberron. We are in some sort of submarine, and our party consists of; an elven soulknife, a human artificer, a warforged warmage, and me, the human monk. Our submarine gets trapped in a net, and we have to go cut the lines. I easily swim out and cut one, when I spot a "large dark spoltch heading towards me". Guess what? Dire shark. In three rounds, I've been eaten, and everybody else has escaped into the ship after seeing me being devoured. Our party has to bargain with some sea-folk for like, ALL of our cash to get my body to be thrown up by the shark (or DM never has showed mercy like this before).

Now, this wouldn't have been so bad if I was used to death, but I was not. The last campaign we played, I had a character that was simply a tank. Absolute and true, heavy armor, good manuverability, and crazy damage. Never died once, and we went from nothing to level 19. I was king of the world.

You now see why death can suck, in my opinion. Sorry about the rambling.

That is how it should be, death is SUPPOSED to suck :smallbiggrin:

The fact that death sucks so much makes it all the more important that you do everything in your power to AVOID it.

rubycona
2010-05-04, 04:57 PM
As a DM, I try not to kill my players, unless they do something really stupid. And then, I tend to make it blatantly obvious that they're doing something really stupid. (Like, "are you REALLY sure you want to do that?" or "you DO realize he's an arcane spellcaster with a reputation for destruction, don't you?")

The hilarious thing is, though, I've yet to ever kill a PC (I've gotten then to deep negatives only), but I keep convincing them that I'm about to kill them.

Like, just this last session, they met this NPC who's legendary for being slightly insane, crazy powerful (epic level wizard), with a penchant for destruction. The hilarious thing is, this NPC is their ally XD (A dubious ally, would You trust a slightly insane, epic level spellcaster with a penchant for destruction?) Even so, when they freed this druid, and he used this amulet (a communication / scrying assisting magic item crafted by the epic wizard) to get crazy-mage to teleport to his location, they recognized the NPC's name immediately, and freaked out. The rogue even went and hid underneath a tree!

Which failed, being as crazy-mage has permanancied arcane sight and the rogue had a bunch of magic items, but still. He's their ally XD

Seriously, it's fun to scare the players. At one point, quite some time ago, I had the wizard honestly considering bailing on the party, because the monster had SR, and she thought she'd be unable to hit him, and therefore killed. Which, at one level, I'm pleased with myself, that I handle the roleplay elements well enough to scare them, but on another level, I suck at combat, and they've plenty of reason to believe that I'm not going to kill them. At least, not intentionally. Which makes me wonder why they're so afraid I'm going to kill them.

Though, the fact that I flat out told them, if they make a bad move, they lose their "casual game protection," may have contributed.

TheThan
2010-05-04, 11:09 PM
According to Spiderman everybody gets one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALmQZXza2Rs)

Seriously though, some times things just go bad. One moment the entire party is up and fighting, then the next, the dice land the wrong way and people start to go down. When playing any game involving dice, be prepared to roll a one.

Part of the Dm’s job is to keep the game fun, and a lot of the time that means difficult and challenging encounters. Face it, most of the time the pcs are BDHs (big dang heroes), and they are supposed to be able to overcome adversity, however that doesn’t mean it has to be easy. I do not believe in “putting the fear of god (dm) into them”, by sending things they cannot possibly defeat after them. At least to me that stinks of heavy handedness. However if the pcs choose to do something deadly of their own accord (like raiding an ancient red dragon’s horde while he’s there, and not being powerful enough level to face him), then that is their fault for doing something stupid. I try to steer them clear of such idiocy but if they do something stupid like that then they need to face the repercussions for their in game actions. They may be heroes but they’re not invincible.

But that brings us to another problem, what happens when pcs begin doing “stupid” things in the middle of an otherwise appropriate encounter. Things like “I grapple the balor”, or “I leap off the balcony after him!” and the like happen, the player thinks it’ll be cool to do, and to an extent he’s probably right, but the reality is that they are probably going to die a rather inglorious death. Even though in the off chance they pull it of, leads to a crowning moment of awesome. Imagine the party sitting around the table when one guy says “remember that game I grappled the balor to the ground?! It was awesome wasn’t it!”. It makes players swell with pride and break everyone out in stories and jokes and whatnot about the game.

The trick I believe is to let them know that there is a good chance of player death. Something like “are you sure you want to do that, you might not make that jump, and it’s a long way down.” sort of thing might deter them from making the mistake in the first place. But if they are determined to do that, then let the dice fall where they may, you gave them fair warning the fate of their characters are now in their hands.


Deaths, when handled well can be a great incentive for the party. If it’s done right, it could lead the pcs to realize some grand epiphany, or seek revenge for the death of their friend. Things like that can lead to great moments at the table. but when death is trivialized or too prevalent then players get desensitized to it and begin to not care so much about it. So if you’re going to kill a player, make that death meaningful in some way.

Aotrs Commander
2010-05-05, 05:10 AM
Seriously though, some times things just go bad. One moment the entire party is up and fighting, then the next, the dice land the wrong way and people start to go down. When playing any game involving dice, be prepared to roll a one.
*snip*



I agree with you. I hold no fear of offing the PCs if they do something stupid. And, to my player's credit, they know this and thus when I ask "really", it's usually a good sign that death is iminent. And they stop. (I have yet to actually kill a PC through their own stupidity - mind you, my players are generally very amenable to not being disruptive or random in the first place, so it's not usually a risk).


On the dice-issue, our groups have got collective dice incompetance down to a fine art. I consider dice not to be god, but merely another extension of the rules. They're just a randomiser to give the game a distribution of possible outcomes at the end of the day. Just as I don't let the rules be an iron-clad an inviolate barrier to the world - the rules model the world, the world isn't defined by the rules - I don't let the dice, either. 99.999% of the time, they work as intended without any worry, but when the random number generators infrequently happen to come up to something that's detrimental to the game as a whole, I will quietly do some adjusting behind the screen on my end to compensate. That's not to say I do it often or even every time it crops up, or that you can't ever fail in my games. (Becasue we also play Rolemaster, and the fumbles we've seen are as spectacular and entertaining as the criticals.)

No, I only actually intervene when the possibility of a TPK rears it's ugly head - for a start, there are no off-the-cuff DMS in either group and a TPK could leave us high and dry game-wise. Or, if someone is just having a really, really bad day with the dice, because that's not fun. I've played too many wargames where you can do everything right tactically and still get creamed because of poor dice rolling and that's just not entertaining. So, in the case of a game where I do have some control, I'll be damned if I don't use it.

SuperPanda
2010-05-05, 07:02 AM
I have run several games and I always start by telling the players that I won't actually be seeking their deaths but I will be presenting them with challenges. Basically the deal I make with them is that if they get killed by nothing more than pure bad luck or by me making a mistake then I will go out of my way to make sure they get back with minimal to no loss over all. On the other hand I tell them up front that I offer zero protection for getting themselves killed.

Oddly, this never really came up until somewhat recently and the last full game I ran. On that game I wanted a darker feel to it and so I made the house rules and the encounters more lethal than before.

I should note, I'm not the dungeon crawler DM, I tend to get caught up in story telling and epic plots, that plays a roll in this. The game was in an alternate reality of the Oriental Adventures setting and the various evil factions (there were at least 5 teams of villains all working at cross purposes) were, mostly unwittingly, working towards bringing back to like an evil power that could easily kill the gods and spread the taint throughout both the living world and the spirit world.

So when the first player got killed the great spirit of Death offered her the choice to serve return to the land of the living in exchange for helping him at some later time and told her that he would keep her soul until she had fulfilled her end of the bargain. (Actually, created a really fun side quest later when they went into the afterlife to get it back).

That player handled it well, role played through the issue, and became something of a slave driver to her personal plot of getting her soul back.

The second character to fall (on the way to the gate to the afterlife where they'd be recovering the first's soul anyways) rejected the offer and got pissed at me because I "aloud" him to fall to a monster. While the first had rolled to a fantastically unlucky spell backfire this one managed to get mauled to death by three critical hits in a row during a random encounter (all rolls in the open).

As a general rule I want the player characters to know and react as though death might be around any corner. On the other hand I want the players to know that they are the heroes of the story and that they will come out on top if they work for it. If they're going to be taken out of the game (pun intended) it will because of something they chose to do (charing into a smoke cloud during a Ninja attack you were warned about) and not because of bad luck.

That said, if the dice say bad things happen to you I make sure they happen. There are things more fun than character death which scare the players more. For example, in a previous game a player unknowingly bought an incredibly powerful magical enchantment which would "save his life at the expense of his pride." Player survived by became a woman followed by an in character party wide discussion about when he'd start his cycle and whether or not he could get pregnant. I'm proud of my players in that I didn't need to prompt the discussions.

some guy
2010-05-05, 07:52 AM
In general I'm letting new players off easy. After a while the kid gloves get off. In the beginning of the campaign I sometimes fudged the dice, but now, after a few levels, I'm getting more vicious and roll in the open.
Still, I must admit I'm a bit uncomfortable with character death, but it is exciting both for the players and the DM when such an event happens. But it is different for every player. I ran an one shot dungeon for some hack & slashers last sunday, they found it too hard (two of four characters burned to death in lava and they actually gave up the final monster fight). While when I ran the same dungeon for more experienced players no problems were encountered with the difficulty (one of two characters burned to death). I think expectations are a big factor with character death.

Usually I'm happy with a few characters getting below 0 hp. That is when the other players get worried about survival. In my campaign intelligent opponents are less occupied with coup-de-grace-ing helpless characters and more occupied by the ones still standing on their feet and slinging spells. Undead, however, will kill first. Monsters with swallow whole will digest people.

As a player, I always thought that death should be heroic and memorable. But now, after I have DM'd a lot, I'm okay with my characters dying by trivial things.

I'm still not entirely sure if I did the right thing last session, though. Spoilered for length.

My players were low on spells and hitpoints after surviving an easy encounter and three level appropriate encounters. If they would rest, they would level. Problem was, they were in caverns infested by umberhulks. After two stoneshapes they had a nice safe spot in which they could rest safe from most creatures.
Safe from creatures that cannot tunnel through solid stone. So, after 4 hours, again a umberhulk. Confused 3 out of 5 charachters, sorcerer crits the umberhulk with a ray of enfeeblement thereby lowering it's strength to 11 (which probably saved the party from a TPK). The round after that, everbody is confused. Thanks to it's lower strength the umberhulk has trouble hitting and dealing a lot damage. Over time, randomness causes people hitting the umberhulk. After it dies, confusion still runs amoc and the ranger crits the cleric. The cleric takes 30 damage and gets to -10.
*Silence*
One player: "Wow. I did not think that could actually happen." This, for me is great. This player was completely not worried of her character dying, but now, by witnessing a character death gets a hint. This is a game where your character can die.
After all this rambling, my problem; in the round following the cleric's death I remembered the ranger was using a reach weapon and could not, legally, hit the cleric. I discussed this with the players and used my DM powers to alter time. The ranger had now hit the lifeless corpse of the umberhulk with his glaive and with that powerfull hit, carelessly knocked the cleric on his head. The cleric was not dead, but merely knocked out.
I'm still not sure if I did the right thing.

BadJuJu
2010-05-05, 08:33 AM
I have a DM right now that is being a little to nice to us. I understand why he does it, but it totally kills the fun when you know you wont die no matter what. I also hate being brought back to life. When my guy dies, he dies. I don't bring them back.

Farlion
2010-05-05, 08:47 AM
Just short on my opinion: As a player, I don't like if I can't get killed. All the suspense is lost in combat.

As a DM: I try to give them the feeling, that they can die, but up to now, I haven't killed a player (none of them have done something really stupid, just regular combat), because of the following two questions.

I encourage my players to give me nice backstories. I try to get this backstory into my campaign. Then the character gets unlucky and I kill him. The real loss is the backstory and the whole fuss the player put into it. How do you cope with this?

Second: If I put my players up against other NPC groups and use the same play style they do, it would almost always end up in a 2-3 player kill encounter which is somewhat stupid. How do you go about it, that your NPCs don't fight light stupid beasts, but your players are not wiped out every second encounter, because the five NPCs just focused the squishy looking rogue (just an example)?


Cheers,
Farlion

Rake
2010-05-05, 08:52 AM
I've been DMming for a good while now, and I've had more campaigns end in character death than anything else. The campaigns that make it to completion or 'retirment', though, get talked about and nostalgia'd over for years.

I make my players work hard for their achievemets.

I play by the book, roll in the open, never fudge - ever, and begin all my campaigns at 3rd level. Playing this way does result in a fair number of 'fizzled' campaigns whereupon a plot-critical PC dies too soon or a flat out TPK wipes the adventure, but the sense of accomplishment in our games for completing a difficult goal or beating a high-CR monster is definately prominent.

If it isn't obvious, we play 3.5 (I can't imagine a TPK happening in a by-the-book 4e game... if a character with a competent player dies playing 4e, then his DM is ignoring the CR guidelines something fierce).

Human Paragon 3
2010-05-05, 09:10 AM
One player: "Wow. I did not think that could actually happen." This, for me is great. This player was completely not worried of her character dying, but now, by witnessing a character death gets a hint. This is a game where your character can die.
After all this rambling, my problem; in the round following the cleric's death I remembered the ranger was using a reach weapon and could not, legally, hit the cleric. I discussed this with the players and used my DM powers to alter time. The ranger had now hit the lifeless corpse of the umberhulk with his glaive and with that powerfull hit, carelessly knocked the cleric on his head. The cleric was not dead, but merely knocked out.
I'm still not sure if I did the right thing.


In your place, I would have left the cleric dead. The ranger could have five foot stepped and THEN attacked the cleric. By rules, that's what he would have been compelled to do. You may have inadvertently instilled a sense of immortality in your players by letting this one come back from the dead, though time will tell.

The encounter itself sounds awesome though.

some guy
2010-05-05, 09:40 AM
In your place, I would have left the cleric dead. The ranger could have five foot stepped and THEN attacked the cleric. By rules, that's what he would have been compelled to do. You may have inadvertently instilled a sense of immortality in your players by letting this one come back from the dead, though time will tell.

The encounter itself sounds awesome though.

Thank you!

Well, there was not really any room for the ranger to take a five foot step. Basically, the group was in a 10 by 10 room with 5 players and the exit blocked by a large creature (the rogue tumbled out). The only thing the ranger could have hit was the umberhulk.
continuation:Luckily, after that fight the group really wanted to get out of the cavern. But it had so many corridors and crossroads, they kept getting lost. So, a frightened group, with almost no hitpoints, no spells, dying to get out of an umberhulk infested cavern. Only with smart solutions (there's a reason why there's chalk listed in the PHB) did they find the exit. There was really a feeling of despair, which was nice.
Luckily, I have some other very nasty encounters for them.

Human Paragon 3
2010-05-05, 09:43 AM
Ah, in that case I think you made the right decision. Sounds to me like you have things well in hand and made a good judgement call.

Magikeeper
2010-05-05, 10:25 AM
Just short on my opinion: As a player, I don't like if I can't get killed. All the suspense is lost in combat.

As a DM: I try to give them the feeling, that they can die, but up to now, I haven't killed a player (none of them have done something really stupid, just regular combat), because of the following two questions.

I encourage my players to give me nice backstories. I try to get this backstory into my campaign. Then the character gets unlucky and I kill him. The real loss is the backstory and the whole fuss the player put into it. How do you cope with this?

Second: If I put my players up against other NPC groups and use the same play style they do, it would almost always end up in a 2-3 player kill encounter which is somewhat stupid. How do you go about it, that your NPCs don't fight light stupid beasts, but your players are not wiped out every second encounter, because the five NPCs just focused the squishy looking rogue (just an example)?


Cheers,
Farlion

I prefer being able to lose to being able to be killed, but as DMs we appear to be very similar. My solution:

> Early source of Delay Death or anything else that makes it near impossible for a PC to die unless a TPK occurs. That should last you until the PCs can afford to revive themselves. It worked wonders for me – I would have had 1-2 players dying every combat without it. Also, belts of healing -> belt buckles of healing that turned pretty much everyone into a cleric (So anyone has the option of healing a dying ally). This also gives the party a wider window of retreat as you can kill half of them before they run without wrecking the plot. :D
I also gave them another way of staying alive much later on, but that one is complicated and they are rightfully afraid of abusing it. The only issue I had was this new player gamed the DM the first time the other way was being used and friendly fired a dying ally out of the belief that I totally wasn’t going to let him die. The rest of the party nearly ripped his head off for that so it was okay. The ally didn’t die, but it turned a routine bring-him-back into a monumental challenge that nearly failed (Other way includes cumulative SR against healing magic among other things… demons ftw).

I’m also not sure one of my players really likes the lets-level-every-other-combat view of difficulty so I’m trying to insert an easy…er combat here and there though (Not that I have many combats).

Basically, my players have the feeling that they can die because they constantly had to scramble to save each other at lower levels. And because this allowed me to be as strategic and optimized as I desired (minus dispel magic). At higher levels they will finally be fighting opponents that have the slots free to dispel and counter the delay deaths.

It helps a lot if your players are already survival nuts that prefer challenging combats. Not sure if this tactic would work if your party is mostly charge-in-like-idiots types.

BadJuJu: Have you told the DM this? Surely he could think of a reason why you couldn't be revived. Problem solved. I know my players hate dying so it isn't much of an issue for me.

BlckDv
2010-05-05, 10:37 AM
I want to start with the statement that I do not think there is a "right answer" to this issue; it is deeply tied to what the expectation of the group at the table is.

Having the DM and players work together to make sure that death (and the risk of death) has the place they want it to have in their game is the "best" way, no matter what the answer they come up with.

That said, with my current group:

1. New players get cautionary notes. I like to think of it as the voice of reason before you do something stupid. If a new player declares and action that they may not realize risks death, I'll usually ask if I heard them correctly and repeat the action request to them to let them rethink it.

2. Death happens, and sometimes is not glorious... the way the others react to that death can make any death a good one. PCs can, and do, die falling off a slippery bridge with no enemy in sight, or getting knifed in an alley while looking for a new adventure. It isn't common and usually means someone did something foolish, but it does happen.

3. Resurrection is a complex choice, not an automatic action. Even with the means to raise the dead, in my world the party often knows that doing so may remove the soul from its eternal reward, and place the character back at risk of not attaining their desired afterlife. On rare occasion, the party is even aware of specific work the dead PC is doing in the afterlife that they would remove him from.

4. Bad Luck doesn't scale well. One PC dieing to a nasty string of bad saving throws and good damage from a monster is bad luck and rides, cursing the gods for a senseless death can be an exciting story element... the party facing a TPK after five rounds of not rolling above a 7 and the monsters having rolled four critical hits is a story killer and calls for DM intervention.

If possible the fudge is done in world and not with fake dice rolls (Such as a purple worm could suddenly attack the battle site, hostile to everyone but starting in the enemy's spaces, or a sudden rip current makes a previously tactical body of water an uncrossable barrier leaving the enemy melee folks out of reach, or even having the monsters capture the PCs to take them to a prison/boss, giving them a second encounter to hope for better rolls).

Special note: This is for Bad Luck, not Bad Choices. The Party electing to take a shortcut through DeathPainAgony Pass which no man has crossed alive for fifty years without so much as asking about the suspicious claw marks and bone fragments gets what they deserve.

5. Dead is not the end of the narrative. When PCs die, the color they added to the world does not. Their family will still know and react to the PCs, foes that they had may still confront the party if appropriate, any personal goals they had will still be there to complete... perhaps the surviving PCs go ahead and deal with the corrupt baron who had banished their dead comrade's father, to honor his memory.

TheThan
2010-05-05, 01:01 PM
I want to start with the statement that I do not think there is a "right answer" to this issue; it is deeply tied to what the expectation of the group at the table is.

Having the DM and players work together to make sure that death (and the risk of death) has the place they want it to have in their game is the "best" way, no matter what the answer they come up with.


This pretty much is the "right answer" you're talking about. Every table is different each with their own different dynamic. DMing is all about communication and compromise, he ought to be willing to work with his players and come to a compromise between each of the players (including himself, as he is still a player), as to what is to be expected in the game.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-05-05, 04:25 PM
I think the OP has it (mostly) right regarding character deaths - it depends a lot on the system's and players' expectations.
1st & 2nd were games where the rules focused very little on character advancement and much more on the actual mechanics of going on an adventure. As such, the "story" (as such) was more important than any individual character - if one died then he was still part of the story.

3rd & 4th focus more (if not entirely) on the characters and their advancement. So much material is devoted to various "builds" and character options that it is fair to say that the point of the game is advancing your character - not necessarily any particular narrative.

That said, the risk of failure must be present in a game to make it fun. Otherwise there is little point to rolling dice at all, and that takes away most of the "game" element of a RPG.
Now personally, I have a terrible time letting characters die. Why? Because I almost always feel that their death is my fault; I made an adventure which was outside the expectations/abilities of the PCs and now I'm going to "ruin their fun" because of it. As a result, I almost always find a way to "save" the PCs rather than "punish them" for my mistake.

Admittedly, I feel this way a lot more in mechanics-heavy systems (e.g. D&D, Shadowrun) because I'm not as confident in my mathematical abilities as I am in my storytelling. This is probably one reason that I'm moving towards running more storyteller games

Akal Saris
2010-05-05, 05:49 PM
Eh, in 13 or so years of gaming, I think I've only had 5 PC deaths, or 8 if you count games with some PvP deliberately included. So that's less than 1 death every 2 years - surprisingly little for my DMing style, which is to try hard to challenge the PCs, roll openly and not fudge rolls.

Some campaigns have obviously been deadlier than others - I think every encounter in my last dungeon crawl ended with 1-2 PCs bleeding to death at the end of the encounter, and two PCs died outright in the "room of death" with a half-dozen bodaks hiding in a pile of corpses. One of those deaths was a PC who had literally just rolled up his character and walked into the room, and after everybody had a good laugh his identical twin brother walked in the next round, since it was such a ridiculous fluke of bad luck.

Basically, I think D&D is forgiving enough that you don't really need to fudge rolls to keep a game suspenseful. And if a single PC is so important to the plot that his death shatters the campaign, then I think you have to ask yourself what purpose the other PCs have in the game, and why they aren't as integral.

In one game, I play with a DM who has no resurrection in his campaign world, which normally would make death more suspenseful. However, there's no suspense because I know he doesn't have the heart to kill my PC, even if I make a really stupid decision. Especially because the party has made really dumb decisions and been hand-waved to survive in the past. It's obvious that he doesn't want to kill us, so for me there's no point to the combats, since they're so easy and the spellcasters in the party handle them anyways.

Kirgoth
2010-05-05, 07:06 PM
Ive run and played in games with character deaths can be awesome as long as the character in question can get back into the game reasonably quickly, either with a new character or a reincarnated/resurrected character so they don't have to sit out for too long.

Multiple deaths by the same character however can create some issues with different character levels which can lead to a cascade effect where the now weaker character keeps dying and a loss of fun for the player.

Kaun
2010-05-05, 07:09 PM
I had two PC's deaths in my last session of my 4e camp.

They both got an infection from fighting Slaad (which is basicly 3 bad rolls in a row making one each day and you die.)

They knew what it was and what it could do, both of them had actualy had it befor and had gone to the effort of getting rid of it by potion. They were not overly hampered by time restraints or location, they had the option to do something about it.

For some reason they chose not to and then they both gave me emo looks when there heads exploded after the third bad roll.

They are alive again but there 10k out of pocket.

Private-Prinny
2010-05-05, 07:35 PM
I have no problem with killing players, especially if it's their own fault. I tend to be nice if their untimely death is brought on by my own bad encounter design or a series of bad die rolls, but if they aren't playing it right, then they die.

As an example, the party Druid decided to PrC out and focus on Wildshape (she's basically a Wildshape Ranger with minor casting abilities), so she had an incredibly gimped Animal Companion. Her first thought when confronted by high level Swordsages was to send it rushing into melee. It died. In one hit. I was not forgiving.

Akal Saris
2010-05-05, 07:49 PM
Heh...one of my longtime PCs decided to run his first game, an 8th level campaign focusing heavily on fighting elementals. In the first session my druid's animal companion died, and in the second session it went down to -8, and in a separate fight that session my druid got 2-shotted (with the DM looking more surprised than me). At this rate, he's going to get a rep as a real cutthroat DM =P

(And I am so damned proud of him!)

Flob
2010-05-05, 07:50 PM
That is how it should be, death is SUPPOSED to suck :smallbiggrin:

The fact that death sucks so much makes it all the more important that you do everything in your power to AVOID it.

Step one to death was rolling up a monk. Despite having the stats 16, 16, 16, 15, 14, 11 (SOMEHOW), I still got owned. Damn good stats too... After that short campaign was over, I rolled up a psion and now I destroy.

TheThan
2010-05-05, 10:17 PM
Nice Demolition Man reference, btw. :smallamused:


Stupid me couldn't find where the reference was, now suddenly I realize its in the title. *failed spot check*

balistafreak
2010-05-05, 10:21 PM
I'm personally a fan of the "death flag" system. It needs to run parallel with a sort of action point system.

Basically, you have this thing called a, well, "death flag". By default, it is lowered. As long as it is lowered, you absolutely cannot die. Ever. You are guaranteed to remain part of the game.

You still have the -1 to -9 region of "dying", but instead of actual death you have "crippled". Essentially, your character has been reduced to a coma by the injury. Magical healing is useless - nothing will cure you but a day of bedrest, assuming magical healing is available. You recover at -9 afterwards. (This number has generally been irrelevant for my party; they make sure to have bottomless wells of at-will healing, at least to half condition, such as through a Dragon Shaman's aura or something.)

If your character suffers a case of "nobody could possibly survive that", your character goes missing and mysteriously and serendipitously (did not spell that right) rejoins the adventure at the next convenient moment; perhaps they're found washed down stream in a hamlet, or found rotting in the prison cell. Failing that, you will randomly reappear with the party the next session no matter what. (Nobody likes starting the session with their character still missing, and making the PCs find/rescue/whatever the player just feels like make-work when we're all itching to advance the story.)

Now, how is this tense for the player? Well, first of all, no one likes to get knocked out for the rest of the session, or at least until rest. That's bad, no matter how you slice it.

Secondly, force them to raise their death flag in boss-battle-esque encounters. What's that do? Well, when you raise the death flag, you gain a large amount of actionpoints or some equivalent - usually I rule that you can now undergo rules-bending actions like "I throw my sword across the room into his head" and "I cause a rain of holy water" with regular attack rolls and actions (they generally turn out to be quite badass, as you can imagine). A flat bonus to rolls may also apply, perhaps you can raise the death flag to undertake some feat, or most commonly splurge action points rapidly to change the balance of the encounter. However, while the death flag is up, guess what? You can die. Permanently.

And given that you'll only be raising it when the stakes are high...

However, as of yet I have never had an encounter that has not been successfully reversed by the death flag. And realistically, the first thing that PCs ask after they've finished, bruised and beaten but ultimately victorious, is, "how long until this thing comes down?" Generally, I've had it go down with the end of the encounter, seeing as most of those are high points and the action ends there. However, my relationship and preaching of the mechanic have made the raising of the death flag serious business. No one ever raises it for trivial encounters, as it should be.

And really, it's quite gratifiying to watch one PC after another raise their death flag in a rolling tide of power. Even more gratifiying is when people try to use death-flag actions to protect other PCs. Nothing says "PC bonding" when the wizard (with a negative Constitution modifer and approximately a tenth as much HP as the fighter when at full) wants to raise his death flag to jump in front of a fireball for the downed fighter (who earlier raised his death flag). As in directly offer his own life for the friend's. Really, how often do you see PCs doing that? :smallsmile:

Oracle_Hunter
2010-05-05, 10:33 PM
I'm personally a fan of the "death flag" system. It needs to run parallel with a sort of action point system.
That is an incredibly novel system. Is there some game that uses it, or did you come up with it yourself?

I'm not sure it'd be a good idea for most games - as you noted, you've made it clear that raising the flag is Serious Business to your players even though nobody has actually died. Admittedly you reserve the right to extend the Raised Flag if the PCs abuse the mechanic but I'm not sure I like engaging in a metagame struggle with my players.

Anyhoo, it neatly solves the problem with WotC D&D I mentioned in my post - you place the ultimate fate of the all-important character in the hands of the player, so there's no crying if that character dies.

On second thought, this might be an excellent mechanic to integrate into a storyteller-style game. *scribbles notes*

Adrayll
2010-05-05, 10:48 PM
I don't really prevent death, except early in the campaign (i do 3.5) (i start at lvl 1, where combat is almost a crapshoot anyways).

Recently, my idiot-buffer was letting them find a wand of cure light wounds, and they're good enough about watching their hitpoints, that that keeps them ticking until they level up and get the hang of it (new players)

Also, my campaign is undead-heavy, so i run undead in the encounter on of two ways:
If there is a controlling, intelligent leader of the undead, he will give (generally verbal) orders to them, under his (not my) judgement, which is generally to protect himself.
If not, the undead will have their instructions and will never deviate (ie: kill anyone who disturbs this place, and always attack whoever did the most damage recently)

Calintares
2010-05-06, 03:37 AM
In my campaign world, the only thing capable of bringing someone back is the reincarnate spell, and a group of druids have monopoly on the usage. Thus, if anyone dies then they are going to get a new race and possibly a new gender. The druids are also going to demand payment in the form of a quest

MarvinMartian
2010-05-06, 04:12 AM
First off @Juris: Love the thread!
And now my 2CP:

As a DM I generally liked starting my campaigns at low level (usually lvl 2 or 3) and discuss what kind of game I want to run and what the expectations are of my players during/prior to the first session. This tends to make things more simple in the long-run. Typically I tell the players that the first few levels the gloves will be on. I tell them this is because I want the group to get used to their characters; develop good personal tactics (with their character) and develop team tactics to bond the team more closely together. What I don't tell them (but is probably understood) is that it gives them a chance to work through any "stupid" newness mistakes that a new player might make. It also gave me time to work out what level of CR was appropriate for my group (6 players).

Generally when I feel that the group as a whole is performing close to or above par I tell the group that from now on the gloves are off. This means player deaths now are a realistic part of the game and should be expected/feared in almost all battles. Their opponents will use the best possible tactics that they can think of. This means those opponents that are particularly evil / single minded will coup-de-grace fallen PC's.

To offset stupidity (both of myself, PCs, or unlucky rolling) I introduced the 1 round policy. Any PC who fell in combat during that round (i.e. dropped below -9HP) would remain on the brink of death until the end of that round. If they were healed back to (or above) -9HP they would stay alive. Otherwise death was permanent. In my campaign (Eberron) resurrection was extremely difficult to come by.

The way this worked out in my group was that the group as whole become much more focused on staying close together (i.e. within 1 move from the cleric) and working tactically at all times. This made for some really interesting battles where players would drop like flies left and right and the cleric and the other "living" players running back and forth pouring potions into their fallen comrades. In the action-economy of 3.5 this means their opponents have more time for buffing, healing, moving strategically, focusing on the tougher PC's, etc. making the fight even more difficult for the PC's. When faced with a strong (or over-powered) opponent this can cascade for a few rounds, where players continue to drop into the negatives (and briefly below). From personal experience this happened only a few times (facing Count Strahd) and was the first time that the group was faced with a TPK and ran.

Another tactic that I had (but actually never used) was if something really, really stupid happened (either by PC design, or bad rolling) I would give the PC a "post-pone death" card. Basically the card said that due to unforeseen circumstances the PC just died. This death being fairly pathetic and not at all in tune with the Hero's they are has been postponed. The PC is now on borrowed time. The PC will die either when the DM decides (a more heroic moment) or when the PC deems it would be a particularly dramatic moment.

In theory I think this sounds pretty cool as it lets the PC continue to play in that session, build a new character for the next session, and they start planning on how to kill off their own character in a dramatic way. Basically taking the guilt out of my hands as DM!

Amphetryon
2010-05-06, 04:57 AM
A midnight ambush was planned by my PC's enemies. They weren't especially stealthy, but the two on guard (out of 12) in the party both missed a DC 12 Listen check. Random roll to determine a single target for a bow shot, followed by a confirmed crit. The party's Divine Mind was one-shotted, in his sleep, in the single attack of the surprise round.

Human Paragon 3
2010-05-06, 09:03 AM
The "death hacks" like the death flag and postponement cards are really interesting. Anybody else ever do anything like this?

Saph
2010-05-06, 09:42 AM
The "death hacks" like the death flag and postponement cards are really interesting. Anybody else ever do anything like this?

Nah. I'm a firm believer in a level playing field. Anything the PCs can do, the NPCs can do. Anything that the NPCs can have done to them, the PCs can have done to them. The idea that the PCs slaughtering enemy soldiers by the dozen is "part of the story" while an enemy soldier managing to kill a PC is somehow wrong . . . well, I don't have much interest in that sort of game. Partly it's because there just isn't enough risk: I enjoy the tactical aspect of RPGs, and if there's no real consequence for losing there's not much point in trying.

There's a second reason that I dislike "character shields", though, which took me a while to figure out: it's unequal. If the rules of the game treat PCs as fundamentally different from NPCs to the point where PCs are functionally immortal, then it encourages PCs to look down on everyone else. The PCs are the only "real" people; everyone else is just a pawn. On the other hand, if Random NPC #549 is entirely capable of killing you dead with a dice roll, then the players are more inclined to treat him as if he matters.

The way I see it, you can only win what you're prepared to wager. If you want to fight combats and kill enemies, the ante is your character's life. If you don't want to risk dying, then maybe you shouldn't be fighting duels to the death in the first place!

By the same token, I'm quite happy to run nonlethal games where deaths are rare-to-nonexistent, just as the players understand that it goes both ways. PCs don't generally get killed, and NPCs don't generally get killed either.

Human Paragon 3
2010-05-10, 12:01 PM
Glad to have you on the thread, Saph! You always seem to have something insightful to say. Hope you'll stop by the series threads often.

@Everyone:
This week's thread is going up tomorrow, so anyone who still wants to put their 2cp into this thread should do so today!

Icewraith
2010-05-10, 03:55 PM
If the party is low level, I try to keep them alive. People can still die, but generally only to stupidity or boss-type encounters. However at high level or epic I stop pulling punches. The player who screwed up in my epic campaign not only died, the BBEG (who had lost most of his minions in the previous round) disintegrated the corpse + items and teleported out with his head henchman.

subpar tactics + forgetting to heal self + BBEG has next initiative = 1 po'ed player, but not only did he understand of course the BBEG wizard would take such a course of action, it made the party much more satisfied (and the player in particular, who I allowed to go on a quest to re-forge and recover his signature item) when they finally tracked the wizard down and killed him...

...releasing the wizard's binding of an elemental deity (or was it an elder demon?) and causing all sorts of havoc. Good times!

KainStormhold
2010-05-10, 08:53 PM
Thanks for making this thread, Gaurd, I found the topic interesting enough to make an account just to put my part in. I've had this conversation with some of my friends, mostly the ones that are in the D&D 2e campaign I've been running. They seem to be pretty cool with the concept of dying, though I suppose that will change when they're above level 3.

I have to admit that I'm with Icewraith in that I like to keep characters alive in the early campaign. Nine times out of ten they die because, well, low level D&D combat is basically a simple matter of who hits first, usually with a big ol' game over for the receiver if it's a crit. Once they have some experience and equipment under their belts, I stop spoon feeding them the danger.

In my experience character deaths are usually brought about by their players' bad decisions. If doing something won't OBVIOUSLY end their life I might say something, but I usually make it pretty clear in my environment description as to what probably is and isn't deadly. I do find that players like it when the locale proves to be as dangerous as the enemies that live there.

I don't like my players dying left and right, but I do like them to know that they're mortal. Normally I don't really have to try to remind them of this, they do a pretty good job of getting themselves into tight scrapes. The party's druid is particularly good at letting everyone know that they can die, I think he's gone down in almost every encounter of every session and has earned himself the nickname "Pain Magnet". The party recently gave him a Cloak of Protection +1, on the condition that if he goes down again this adventure he loses it because he clearly isn't using it right.

FerhagoRosewood
2010-05-14, 01:11 AM
I've only ever, in my very short career as a DM, had one death under my watch.

It could have been more, if not a full TPK, if not for a very cinematic stabilization check on behalf the party Ranger/Swordsage. This was after the Sorcerer/Barbarian/Fighter and lone female of the group basically sacrificed herself to save the rest of the party. And the Cleric/Rogue went under 0 saving the Paladin from one last chance to stabilize. Only to have the Pally miss.

The whole BBEG battle was meant to be rough and memorable (it was) but I didn't expect the rough time they had (two could barely contact, for one). Before the death, I actually tried to save the party by having the dying BBEG run. But the whole party argued against it, saying what happens happens.

Ultimately, the player had no problem with the death and even to this day the name "Kaiser" is enough to bring back the fight.

^-^

Somebloke
2010-05-14, 07:21 AM
I haven't had any character deaths in my 4th ed campaign (levels 1-8 so far). But I feel that the threat of death is necessary, and the lack of deaths is not down to any leniency on my part (lack of experience concerning ELs, maybe).

Quirinus_Obsidian
2010-05-14, 11:09 AM
Amen brother.

If there is no danger of losing/dying, the fight does not need to be there. Unless it is one of those fights meant to be comical or make the PC's feel powerful and noticed how far they have come along (lvl 18 party ambushed by lvl 1 thugs for instance).

The "generic kobold encounter" is there not to kill a party member, but to expend party resources. If you have a low-to-mid danger of losing life, then you will expend resources to combat it. The kobold encounter is a bad example; moreso the L13 party fighting a L6 wizard who has decent buffs going; or a mid to high level melee opponent that forces the party wizard|sorcerer|psion|etc. to use power to take him out.

Would the epic leveled lich not have armies of undead in his castle/underground crypt/lingerie store to stop the good guys from destroying him? Would the high level general of evil army not send powerful lieutenants and some scrubs to fight the party?

Against intelligent players, the DM will use other tactics than sending all of the bbegs at them at once; they get spaced out with generic scrubs in between.

Besides, more encounters = more XPs. :smallbiggrin:

Endarire
2010-06-27, 05:12 PM
I generally don't try to kill PCs. Sometimes, the dice happen to say, "Down you go!"

Like the time a razor boar (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/razorBoar.htm) auto-killed the party Paladin. With its tusks. Through his groin.