Killing PCs: When, where, and How

[Kurdy]

Hello! Relatively new DM here. I've got a monster campaign going. The ECLs are relatively high (13) to compensate for the various kinds of monsters everyone wanted to be. My issue with this is the creeps my PCs are fighting have a high CR also (usually a little higher or lower than 13), sometimes they kick the PCs ass. My question is.... How should PC death happen?
I worry about never killing them (spoiled child) and killing being too harsh (abused child). When I was a player before, I had an EXTREMELY nice DM, who didn't really kill or punish the PCs much.
Furthermore, would planning on killing a PC be better than someone randomly getting offed in a battle?
Anyone else with this kind of issue? Any and all feedback about killing PCs is helpful. Thanks!

[fishyfishyfishy]

My perspective on this matter is that the DM should never intentionally set out with the goal of killing a party member.Instead you should build the encounters to challenge the players. And once the encounter begins you use every ability at the creatures dismissal to complete its goal. If that means killing the players then they are going to try their hardest to do that. Balanced encounters will make it so that any PC deaths that may occur will be their own fault for not being prepared or making bad decisions. It is a balance you must figure out over time.

[Kurdy]

That's sort what I figured. If anyone has PC death stories they wanna share, I would appreciate that also. Just trying to get a feel for it happening.

[fishyfishyfishy]

I can share some of my own experiences with killing PCs.

In the first circumstance my group was around ecl 5 or 6. They had recently taken a spy of the enemy captive and were going to begin interrogation soon. Once they locked her up and left her with a pair of low level guards to watch her, she used a previously cast message spell to communicate with her pet/friend/protector, a grey render with the dark template (or maybe it was shadow? I don't remember very well, it was a long time ago). The creature showed up and killed the guards and helped her break out. The two fled into a connecting cavern system which she knew another way out of. As soon as one of the PCs returned for the questioning he saw the situation and attempted to follow their trail. He did not go alone, but only went with a NPC. He nearly got lost a few times because he did not invest in those skills, and only managed to catch up on their trail because they intentionally led any followers into a cavern where the grey render stayed behind for ambush and the spy proceeded too flee. The ambush went off perfectly and the player and npc were torn to shreds. If the player had gone back for the party they could have caught up easily because they had a tracking expert and the resulting combat would have been much easier. Instead he tried to do it on his own and ended up dead.

In the second circumstance the players were slightly higher level. They just reached level 7. They were attempting to gain information on an enemy stronghold, which had a green dragon in charge. They split up and attempted to take out scouting parties. One of the players was disguised as a hobgoblin, the primary race of the enemy army. One of the scouts was a manticore, and once she saw it flying overhead she flagged it down and tried to have a talk with it. It was suspicious of her due to some poorly rolled bluff checks, and once she realized it wasn't completely buying her story, and wanted to escort her to the fort to talk with the commander, she decided to attack it. The creature butchered her.

In both circumstances I felt the players made mistake of biting off more than they could chew, and neither player harbors resentment.

[Regissoma]

In the online group I DM for the party was in a dungeon with some relatively new players in the group (2 out of the 8 in the group) and they found a secret door. They were extremely paranoid of said door and decide to take the trap filled hallway (discovered by the rogues) instead. They made it through the hallway and went into the next room where they found another door leading to another area. they searched for traps and I said "Yes, you disabled the trap on the door," but the door itself was a trap. At that moment the barbarian got tired of doing nothing and tried to open said door, but instead was slammed in the face by the door dropping his health by half. Shortly after the barbarian entered his frenzy from Frenzied Berserker and commenced to TPK everyone after failing his will saves. The party hesitates now at every door there is even in towns, because the very next session one of the new players had the smart idea to stand where the door opening was despite being warned "Are you sure you want to stand there?" by nearly everyone in the group and even by me, and crushed by the 500 pound stone door since he said "Ya I am sure I want to move here".

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

It's not the PCs fighting the monsters, it's one individual fighting another individual. If the individual who wins the fight would want to kill their opponent for whatever reason, then they should try to kill them.

Say the party is fighting a bunch of Grells (MM2) and one of them sneaks up on a PC who was trying to stay back out of melee, and it manages to paralyze him. The rest of the party keeps doing their thing and leaves him alone with that Grell for a round. On that Grell's next turn it's going to stick its beak in his head with a coup de grace, and he's going to have to make a DC 26 Fort save or die. In that situation, that's what the Grell would do. It takes a full round action to CDG and it provokes an AoO, so it takes a defenseless opponent plus nobody threatening it plus starting its round adjacent to that defenseless opponent for that to be what it would do.

Say the party is fighting a bunch of 1st level Kobold Warriors with a 1st level Kobold Sorcerer, and that Sorcerer hits them with a Color Spray and several PCs are knocked unconscious. Any of those Kobold Warriors who begin their turn adjacent to an unconscious PC with nobody threatening them will use their pick to deliver a CDG. With their Str 9 they'll deal 12 damage at 1d4-1 x4, so it will be a DC 22 Fort save vs death. Just one PC moving in to threaten all the squares near those unconscious PCs is enough to prevent that from even happening, though if multiple PCs are unconscious then he may need a reach weapon to sufficiently cover all the squares adjacent to them.

Granted you could just not put your PCs in those situations, but fair fights often aren't what their opponents would be doing. Having to face situations like those every session will lead to a lot of dead PCs, so use it sparingly, but don't pull all your punches.

[fishyfishyfishy]

In the online group I DM for the party was in a dungeon with some relatively new players in the group (2 out of the 8 in the group) and they found a secret door. They were extremely paranoid of said door and decide to take the trap filled hallway (discovered by the rogues) instead. They made it through the hallway and went into the next room where they found another door leading to another area. they searched for traps and I said "Yes, you disabled the trap on the door," but the door itself was a trap. At that moment the barbarian got tired of doing nothing and tried to open said door, but instead was slammed in the face by the door dropping his health by half. Shortly after the barbarian entered his frenzy from Frenzied Berserker and commenced to TPK everyone after failing his will saves. The party hesitates now at every door there is even in towns, because the very next session one of the new players had the smart idea to stand where the door opening was despite being warned "Are you sure you want to stand there?" by nearly everyone in the group and even by me, and crushed by the 500 pound stone door since he said "Ya I am sure I want to move here".

This sounds suspicious to me. Did the players get the opportunity to find out the door itself was trapped? When they succeed on the search DC you should be telling then how they think the door is trapped. If there are two traps the search check should reveal both.

[Red Fel]

A few general guidelines from my own experience:

Never deliberately intend to kill a PC. The NPCs may want the PC dead, but your goal should not be to kill them. Corollary: The PCs should almost always be able to find a way out of a bad situation, if they use their heads. Virtually no situation should be unsalvageable. Exception: If you and a player have arranged in advance for that player's PC to die, deliberately attempting to kill a PC is acceptable. Never deliberately save the PCs. Their actions have consequences; let them bear those consequences. Corollary: As stated above, they should always have the opportunity to think their way out. However, it is not your obligation to make this apparent; never hand them salvation on a silver platter. Exception: Their ways out should be reasonable. If they murder a whole bunch of Orcs, kill the women and children, burn down several houses and desecrate the corpses, then, upon being surrounded, attempt diplomacy, that's not the time for the Orcs to drop their weapons and say, "Of course, we're always open to peaceful resolution." Once they've dug deep enough, they shouldn't get off scot free. Exception to the exception: That doesn't always mean you have to employ a TPK, of course. There are always... Other options. Don't be afraid to employ the "are you sure" method with habitually suicidal PCs. Basically, when they decide to do something patently stupid and self-destructive, simply ask "Are you sure you want to do that?" Corollary: If they say yes, let them do it anyway. Just as their own creativity should be allowed to get them out of a bad situation, their own stupidity should be allowed to get them into one. Save-or-die spells and effects stink. It's one thing to die fighting, even if it was a stupid fight to begin with. It's another to die suddenly because you rolled a 1. Critical fumble rules stink, for the same reason. If you do decide to fudge, (and many DMs refuse to do so) never do it to benefit an NPC. Only PCs, if anyone, should benefit from an alteration or manipulation of the rules. Corollary: You may feel compelled to fudge when a major baddie goes down in one hit to a lucky crit. Don't do that. If the PCs realize you did, there'll be a certain sense of futility in any fight - what if the DM saves this one, too? Even if they don't, there may be some suspicion. So just don't. Corollary: Never, under any circumstances, tell the players if you fudged in their favor. No, not even then. There is no justification for telling them this; it only lessens the feeling of player agency. (This is also why some DMs don't fudge in the first place.)
Basically, when a PC dies, they need to feel like they earned/deserved it. When they survive, same. If they feel it was given to them, or unfairly dumped on them, it stings, but if they can look at it and say, "You're right, assaulting a dragon with only a toothpick was a bad idea," or, "You know, bluffing that Necromancer with a whole lot of bones and an awesome Disguise check was a pretty wicked trick," then you're doing an awesome job.

One story from my own experience that I love rolling out involves a Dragonlance campaign. Two of our PCs were a CG Gnome tinkerer and an LN divine construct of Reorx. Some Black Knights were attacking the city - a much larger contingent than we could handle on our own. We knew engaging them was futile, but we couldn't just let them march in. So our party engaged in creativity and compromise. The gnome and the robot build a parabolic laser out of mirrors. The knights were marching through the desert in dark, metal armor - not the wisest choice. About half of them went down from heat stroke as a result of the laser, and that bought us the time to make a swift escape.

If we had engaged them, we would have died. We probably could have made the clean getaway, but the DM rewarded the players' creativity by allowing them to take out some of the attackers before we made our escape. This is what I mean - give the characters the leeway to get out of dangerous situations by using their brains, but don't protect them if they decide to engage in something suicidal. In this case, we (wisely) avoided suicide-by-Knight, and got an awesome story out out of the bargain. Win-win.

Another story, I had a DM once who decided to dump Wail of the Banshee on a mid-level party. Seriously. That's a ninth-level, save-or-die spell. What the crud, DM. Half the party went south with that. Thanks. It felt completely senseless. Don't do that.

[Harlot]

I agree that you should not intentionally try to kill players and absolutely NEVER plot to do so.
Dying randomly in combat is better than dying because the DM is targeting your character.Which should not happen. Remember it's not DM vs. PC's. It's the DM challenging AND helping the PCs enjoying a great adventure. It should be fun. Killing PCs is not fun for the players. Some of us have a lot of ourselves invested in a PC and and very much want to keep the character alive for a loooong time.

So PC death should happen through bad decisions, poor rolls or very hard encounters. But randomly, not planned. And on that note, do keep the game balanced. Having a DM not letting you die by either keeping encounters to easy or having an NPC saving you all of the time is boring, (your spoiled child) So balance is key.
Use an encounter calculator RIGHT: calculating encounters is all well, but few DMs remember to also balance out the encounters over time, keeping track of the encounters. I.e., if the calculator says only 5% of battles should be this-and-this hard, that means you should make 19 easier encounters before an encounter like that would happen upon them again. So keep track.

Now, on the dying part: It seem to me that PCs mostly die because of stupidity or stubbornness. Examples:
My friend the paladin flatly refused to put down his weapon surrounded by an overwhelming group of guards. He was warned, warned again - then slaughtered.
Another friend, a draconian got shot down over an abyss, nothing/noone to catch him - his wing was badly injured. (this was Rolemaster - very specific damage) - so he fell to his death. He had no ring of feather fall and had not thought of handling neither ranged weapons nor falling. At all.
My own character, a swordsage, had the choice between retreating and going ranged or making an awesome and cool-looking maneuver when facing a a group of ents. Chose coolness, stayed melee. Died.

So if you absolutely must kill a PC, which I must advice against, use that. Make a challenge which the PC just cant resist, and which is too hard for them. Like a Ranger Favorite Enemy or a Wizard Battle or them refusing to hand over an item. Stuff like that.

But really: don't.

[Kazudo]

If I need to establish a BBEG's dominance, I normally will do so by creating first a lovable, powerful DMPC who works with the group allowing them to accomplish great feats of prowess (making the players responsible for the whole thing of course like a responsible person), then when the BBEG shows up I apply the Worf Effect to the DMPC and use that to instill the feeling I want.

If I feel as though party balance is being borked significantly and bringing up the rear isn't helping (it happens. I'm not proud of it, but it does happen) then I'll normally pull that player aside and see if they'd like to play a different character, explaining what's up. Maybe they'll change their tactics, maybe we can retrain their character a bit, but sometimes they just kinda "WELL ACTUALLY I HAVE THIS OTHER BUILD I'VE BEEN WANTING TO TEST" and suddenly we've engineered a way for his character to die well. Sometimes ambiguously to where it could return later when party balance is more or less restored.

If I need a player to die for WHATEVER REASON, be it storyline integrity, intrigue, plot, punishment for previous acts (in character, I don't hold grudges) or whatever, I will usually ask for volunteers in secret. Whoever wants it will be brought up as the target for death, and they'll be killed in a predetermined fashion.

I hate springing character death on a character when it's obvious that it's intentional. If a character falls in battle due to legitimate game rules, I normally provide a means to recover the character. The group just HAPPENS to find in the hoard of the heinous monster who slew the character enough cumulative wealth to afford a resurrection spell of some fashion, the character will just lose a level. Or maybe, since they're losing a level anyway, they decide that they'd like to go Necropolitan and the group pays for that instead. Or whatever. If the group or the player decide that the character should probably go on and a new one should be rolled up, I provide a method of entry for the character.

It's not that I'm a failure as a DM for having characters die. Sometimes bad luck just happens. It's just that if it's done intentionally I'll find a way to have a player willing to participate or I won't do it at all. My story is NOT worth the fun of someone else.

[Kurdy]

Thanks guys! This has all been extremely helpful! I also just enjoy hearing about other campaigns so keep the stories coming! Y'all are wonderful.

[jedipotter]

Well, I'm an official Killer DM. I kill characters all the time. I like to keep it about ''your character has a 50/50 chance to survive the adventure.''

I like random death the best. At any time, when doing something dangerous, a character might die. No one knows when it will happen. It can be as simple as walking across a ledge, or as complicated as a fight with a dragon. As every roll of the dice matters, everyone pays attention to all rolls.

Now, as others have said, you never set out to kill the players. You don't want to say ''ha, this trap is undetectable and does 100d100 damage''. That is just pointless.

And you, mostly, want to give an out. A lot of death in my game comes from things like this: DM:The Black Towers main gate is guarded by two black dragons and 30 half black dragon warriors. The secret gate you discovered is guarded by seven kobolds. Where do you want to attack? Players: "The main gate! Hurrzzaa!''

[Regissoma]

This sounds suspicious to me. Did the players get the opportunity to find out the door itself was trapped? When they succeed on the search DC you should be telling then how they think the door is trapped. If there are two traps the search check should reveal both.
Yes they got the oppurtunity to check the door, and despite there being 3 trapfinders (two of them rogues the other a factorum) they only succeeded in finding the ball point trap which caused a poisonous cloud to fill the room. Their rolls that game were all horrible including mine, and I did advise them that the trap hallway path looked tricker and seemed to be more dangerous than the secret door. The actual door that was trapped was a 2 way trap made in the premade dungeon I found and being moderately new as a DM I just went with it as is. Each trap had a different search DC and a different disable device DC as one was magical and the other was a mechanical trap.

[Angelalex242]

Usually, let the dice fall where they may. If the bad guy crits with his scythe...well, them's the breaks. If they roll a 1 on save or die or save or lose, well, them's the breaks. Maybe next time they'll bother casting Death Ward and wearing a ring of free action.

[Haluesen]

You have a very interesting question here. :smallsmile: I'd like to try to input a bit to, if I may. As far as PC's dying, nothing is wrong with it in general. It happens sometimes, that's how it goes. Others here have already made the good points that you should not coddle the PC's, nor should you aim for their demise specifically. In the games I have played with a couple of my friends we tend to push the difficulty of the challenges somewhat, but I have never deliberately thrown something far too powerful at them and expected them to deal with it, though I have had a couple other situations. Like one adventure involving them searching an old vault for a piece of an artifact hidden by the gods, there was a very powerful guardian that would pop up randomly in there. I made it clear (in-game naturally) that the thing was not to be trifled with. So they avoided it, led it to dead ends, generally kept away using their heads. And they found it interesting to have a threat they had to work around in a way other than combat.

Another thing I have tended to do since PC death is a little more likely is waived the level loss for resurrection. They still need to pay for it but they have plenty of ways to afford the needed resurrections, and we don't mind dying against a hard challenge as long as it doesn't bog the game down. Sometimes there is just an unlucky roll, and we work from there. Maybe thinking to come at the challenge from another angle.

I do have a couple stories of character death to share here. The first is one of my own characters, a fairly high level bard/chameleon. Him and the rest of our group were dealing with a bunch of traitorous members of another PC's race (being a pretty tight-nit people generally) and had made our way in with little incident. However one was able to keep the jump on my bard when he wasn't at full strength with a sneak attack and some fire attack that took him down. We played it up a bit, with my character having a nice-sized hole burned in him that needed fixing, and ended up with a sub-plot coming from that death. So PC death can even further a story! Also the DM kinda had my permission to kill my character as a little joke we wanted to run, I just didn't quite expect it that way and no one saw the little development that spawned from it.

Another time was actually in epic-level of the same game, where another of the players ran a little adventure this time. The place was monsterously hard and all of us died quite a bit. It wasn't intentional, she just wasn't great at balancing encounters yet. So a lot of death happened there. The noteworthy deaths were against the final boss, who let loose a Wail of the Banshee that killed 2 of us when he knew that it was likely the last thing he would do. After earlier things in the fight, this brought us to 2 last people to finish him off, then collect the bodies. It was fair though because the save wasn't impossible to make, we just had unlucky rolls. And we knew he was a very powerful necromancer, yet we didn't think to prepare for that. Our own mistake. :smallredface:

So death can be done, and can even be an opportunity sometimes. Just don't aim to murder them constantly for lolz.
Unless you are running the Tomb of Horrors.
Then aim to kill everyone. :smallamused:

[WeaselGuy]

That's sort what I figured. If anyone has PC death stories they wanna share, I would appreciate that also. Just trying to get a feel for it happening.

From a Player's perspective, in my first campaign, I was killed a grand total of 3 times. As the same character >.>
I was playing a Tiefling Monk, so maybe I deserved to die, but oh well :smallamused: Here we go...

1) The first time I died, I was trying to melee the crap out of an Umber Hulk. He turned around, looked at me, grinned and stepped on me. We had made friends with some sort of critters earlier that rezzed my squished bum.

2) Some time later, my DM got annoyed at my preferred method of trap/secret door detection. I had taken to using my Adamantite Fist feat to punch the walls and floor in front of me, in order to trigger arrow traps and the such into pegging the barbarian who hovered over me all the time. DM didn't appreciate it much, and triggered a floor-drop trap that sent us both tumbling into some lava. Druid reincarnated us both, turning the barbarian into a Bugbear and me into a Wild Elf. We called it a win.

3) Apparently, I should have points into either Jump, Climb, or Swim, because when we did some random pillar hopscotch room, not only did I fail my jump check and land in the water, I also failed the climb check to get back up and the swim check to get across the room. I drowned and the Wizard Wished me back into being as a blue furred Tiefling.

More recently, this past Sunday we started our mostly-martial large scale war campaign, with me playing my much anticipated OA Samurai. About 15 minutes into actual gameplay, I got double spirited charged for 14 and 16 damage, taking him down to -15 hp.

[BWR]

It's perfectly acceptable to have encounters where the PCs have no chance of winning so long as the PCs and players have plenty of time and opporunity to realize this and can avoid combat. If they then insist on combat, any deaths are on their heads.
It's also acceptable to target PCs for death through dishonorable means. If the players piss off the wrong someone enough, there should be consequences. Assassins with a knife in the dark, scry and die wizards, ambushes, etc. All fair game. Don't do it just because or too often, but it can be used very well. We spent nearly a year of game time on the run from a task force dedicated to removing our party from the path to the BBEG's goals. It was harrowing and frustrating and required lots of planning and we failed a lot and had many narrow escapes until we managed to keep everyone protected from scrying most of the time. But once we succeeded, man did we feel we had accomplished something.

I'm going to have to disagree with Red Fel on the subject of Save or Die effects. I like them and they are have long been a part of D&D. You might want to be careful to not overuse them, but I think they belong in the game.

[fishyfishyfishy]

Yes they got the oppurtunity to check the door, and despite there being 3 trapfinders (two of them rogues the other a factorum) they only succeeded in finding the ball point trap which caused a poisonous cloud to fill the room. Their rolls that game were all horrible including mine, and I did advise them that the trap hallway path looked tricker and seemed to be more dangerous than the secret door. The actual door that was trapped was a 2 way trap made in the premade dungeon I found and being moderately new as a DM I just went with it as is. Each trap had a different search DC and a different disable device DC as one was magical and the other was a mechanical trap.

Well so long as you gave them an opportunity to find them and didn't just pull a "muahahaha gotcha! Now you have to make new characters!"

[Starchild7309]

I have been running the Savage Tide adventure with a group of friends. Never have we had an adventure go anywhere near the water, maybe a river, but never open water. I warned them all at character creation that this would involve open water and it was on them to use skills or items that would assist them with swimming or running a boat. As per the usual, all skills went to other things....flash forward a few months.

The boat is hit by a big storm, one of my players decides to Lt. Dan it and ride the storm out on the deck of the ship. Said player gets washed over board, missing all saves and then failing all swim checks and drowns.

Usually I would feel bad about killing a player, but when one avoids all the warnings and proceeds to do stupid things, they deserve to get smacked down.

[RogueDM]

As a DM I try to make it my goal to at least nearly kill a PC on a fairly regular basis. I've only killed a few (that weren't arranged deaths for "new character time"). So far it has only been three, and here are there stories:

1- The DM who taught me to play was in town for a day and spent three hours rolling up a cleric to travel along with my usual party for a level of their current dungeon. He had cast Nimbus of Light, for illumination purposes, and set off on his merry way. The party encountered a Gibbering Mouther, most of them failed their Will Saves and went some form of bonkers. My former DM charged the monster and got swallowed whole (the monster targeted him for consistently dealing the most damage to it). Having no means to carve his way out he could only wait to be digested. The rest of the party managed to kill the Mouther the turn after the cleric ran out of time. Sad realization, he still hadn't discharged the Nimbus which could have saved his bacon.

2- One player wanted to play a Duergar Monk and be a crude [redacted] to the other party members. As a result their cleric "forgot" to heal him after one encounter. Next encounter that player's second character (party rogue) agitated a Forge Beast (fire breathing frog golem). The barbarian charged it and everyone else moved into a straight line in front of the fire breathing monster (which they'd seen breath fire already) to make ranged attacks with the monk at the rear with a sling. I couldn't justify sparing the fire breath so... barbecue time. Everyone made their reflex saves to halve or negate the damage, except for the monk who died spectacularly. His corpse was never collected, no discussion of his resurrection ever took place. They later spent their combined wealth to reincarnate a friendly half-orc beguiler who'd helped them with learning the ropes of adventuring (first time players).

3- Ran a firearms campaign, one of my pirate-party decided it was a good strategy to break cover and rush into the enemy's cover to try gunning them down. He was injured when he left cover, missed his shot, and was subsequently gunned down. Had he made the shot he'd have looked BA, killed one of the mooks, and probably survived the encounter. Thankfully we were in the Eternal Battlefields of Ysgard, however the player requested to stay dead because he had a new character idea; as he was playing a Hellbred I went with it.

Highly threatening, rarely lethal to the reasonably intelligent or well prepared. The way to be.

[Azraile]

Again I agree with red here

You shouldn't try and kill a pc but if they do something dumb then thats there own cult.

With dnd death isnt a game over so let them die when they poke the hornets nest or gk diving in the shallow end...

In other systems where there is no resurrection you might lighten up. But dnd you can take the kiddy gloves off some. However live or die rolls suck.... no one wants to die because they fail a dc save

[Kazyan]

At low-mid levels, I avoided killing PCs, though I didn't always succeed. First time DMing; gotta learn this stuff. Turns out Lesser Cranium Rat swarms are near-TPK machines.

At my party's current high-level state, someone dies every combat where they don't instagib the encounter. The party uses a Quintessence + Soul Crystal of Psionic Revivify trick, and they handle encounters so far above their party level that they get ludicrous amounts of XP, so death is cheap.

[BWR]

At low-mid levels, I avoided killing PCs, though I didn't always succeed. First time DMing; gotta learn this stuff. Turns out Lesser Cranium Rat swarms are near-TPK machines.

At my party's current high-level state, someone dies every combat where they don't instagib the encounter. The party uses a Quintessence + Soul Crystal of Psionic Revivify trick, and they handle encounters so far above their party level that they get ludicrous amounts of XP, so death is cheap.

Yes, when you get to the point where death is cheaply and easily rectified, you can up your game and regularly kill PCs. In Pathfinder we have a paladin with Ultimate Mercy (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/ultimate-mercy), so it's even cheaper to bring people back. I don't usually try to kill PCs but encounters can be a bit more deadly than they would be otherwise.

There should almost always be a risk of dying. (un)lucky rolls, good/bad tactics or plain stupidity should have consequences. If you do nothing but throw encounters at your players where it would take a miracle for them to fail, the game isn't going to be that fun. Actually, there are people who like that sort of game and that's fine, but in general if there's little to no chance of dying or failure there's little reason to get emotionally involved in the game or the characters.
The other side of the coin is if you continually throw encounters that the PCs have little to no chance of winning, people will get frustrated, especially if this regularly results in PC deaths. I remember one game where it felt as though all we did the first 4-5 levels was run away from one encounter to the next. Obviously we didn't since we managed to level a few times under a DM who only gives xp for successful combat, but what we felt then and feel now is that we spent nearly all the time getting are arses kicked.

[Graypairofsocks]

I drowned and the Wizard Wished me back into being as a blue furred Tiefling.

Was your character originally a Blue furred tiefling, if not what was his original appearance?

[Spore]

What about the infamous "The party inexpectedly ran into the murderhouse" scenario. Where they challenge the Archduke of the city only equipped with pitchforks.

[Vogonjeltz]

Hello! Relatively new DM here. I've got a monster campaign going. The ECLs are relatively high (13) to compensate for the various kinds of monsters everyone wanted to be. My issue with this is the creeps my PCs are fighting have a high CR also (usually a little higher or lower than 13), sometimes they kick the PCs ass. My question is.... How should PC death happen?
I worry about never killing them (spoiled child) and killing being too harsh (abused child). When I was a player before, I had an EXTREMELY nice DM, who didn't really kill or punish the PCs much.
Furthermore, would planning on killing a PC be better than someone randomly getting offed in a battle?
Anyone else with this kind of issue? Any and all feedback about killing PCs is helpful. Thanks!

If a player wants to arrange their death so they can play a new character, it's ok to specifically plan their killing. Otherwise it should happen organically.

Some fights are meant to be overwhelming according to the DMG, and it is up to the players to know when they are outclassed. So make an area and put at least one fight they should flee from. If they are wise that is.

You can reinforce that these are enemies not to be trifled with by providing foreshadowing, for example let them see a monster just annihilate another adventuring party, or have the area around its lair littered with the remains of the fallen.

If they still choose to engage, it's their funeral.

*I also wouldn't pull any punches. If it makes sense for the enemy to do something, do it. A fight near a cliff and there's a bruiser involved? Bull rush the weaker looking guys right off the side!