Killing your PCs and the motives behind it

[Moses]

Ok, so i have been DMing now for just over a year now for the same four people/players and i have noticed that i treat some of them differently when it comes to them "dieing". For example, in my last session two of them dropped below 0 (one -8 (cleric/monk) and the other -1(Rogue/Wis), as i rolled stabilization for the first guy (he dropped about two rounds before the other guy) i told my self ill just roll and have him end at -9 unless another player gets to him first. For the second guy I did all i could to try and kill him even focusing the goblins they were facing at the time on his dieing body. While i was DMing it made sense to me but as i look back at it i think i played it that was more because of the time the first person puts into their characters and the lack of effort that the second person seems to have toward his characters.

So i guess i looking for ideas to prevent this from happening and or rules you DMs have about killing your players in general.

[Assassinfox]

"Rocks fall from the sky. Everyone dies."

[That Lanky Bugger]

I generally don't kill my PCs unless they're behaving in a reckless or otherwise stupid manner. If they refuse to retreat because a fight isn't going their way, I do treat this as reckless and/or stupid, but I never focus on dying PCs when there are living PCs up. That's just cruel.

There aren't any rules, really. Either let your PCs know that your villains will take the time to finish them when they drop (which will make combat more lethal), or just don't do it and apply that to all PCs.

[EvilElitest]

I don't as the DM attempt to kill my players. My characters aim for people who then would normally. I just let my characters get themselves killed though dumb ideas.
from,
EE

[ElHugo]

Overall, I'd say that when characters go into negative hitpoints, they're effectively "neutralized" from a monsters PoV, so they'll go for the still-up and dangerous other PCs first.

Of course this might not fly if the enemies they are facing aren't capable of or interested in rational thought, but overall, I'd say that you don't go out of your way to save or kill them, but act what would be 'logical' from the enemies' PoV

[Jerthanis]

Sometimes it's easy to desire the death of one of the campaign's disposable characters in order to allow for more dramatic tension, or perhaps because that character was getting on your or everyone's nerves. You may find the desire to focus monsters on the hard-bitten loner/mercenary who never does anything for the benefit of others and has a mean streak a mile wide, terrorizing average citizens and going into long scenes of a theft of a house when the plot could be being furthered. Meanwhile you may "miscount" the damage dealt to the spunky and lovable rogue who has helped to glue the party together and has really taken the time to become involved in the lives of NPCs, allowing them to become more fleshed out and allowing the world at large to become a more complete experience. You may prioritize character deaths looking to improve party dynamic perhaps by making the one guy make a new character and letting the one that works stick with it.

Personally, I know to keep one of my players alive in games I run because I know for sure his second character will be even crazier and more violent and so on.

[Closet_Skeleton]

PCs die when they die. That's why there are combat rules. To do stuff you don't want to happen.

[Fax Celestis]

PCs die when they die. That's why there are combat rules. To do stuff you don't want to happen.

Yup.

Of course, I've also had players kill their characters because "this is where their story ends."

Which is rather poetic, but still kinda maddening as a DM.

[darkzucchini]

Idiocy kills. I tend to have my NPCs focus on the living. A smart NPC villain might take a PC hostage and threaten to kill them but thats just another way of killing a PC if they act stupidly. Obviously, its harder to justify keeping a PC alive, like when they have been swallowed whole.

I would act towards all PCs equally in regard to death. If you want a campaign with a high mortality rait, I would tell your PCs before hand or you might get a lot of complaints.

[Deus Mortus]

My DM keeps a secret karma list, players can't see it, but if a char does a lot of heroic deeds, good rp'ing or simply having fun and then when you need, you can ask if you can burn your karma (much like edge with shadowrun) for some aid. Also enemy's tend to make sure we are dead when unconscious, it adds a bit of risk we like.

[valadil]

My players have an uncanny ability to get knocked down to single digits, and then play smart after that. Clearly my NPCs need to stock up on melf's acid arrows.

I don't set out to kill anyone, nor do I hold back unless it's just dumb luck. As a player who rolls a lot of natural ones, I have sympathy for anyone who doesn't want to lose their character to faulty dice combined with death attacks. My players know that I don't hold back, so I don't have to kill anyone to prove that I'm willing to. With a different group of players I might have to, just to remind them that combat is real and there are consequences to it.

[Gamebird]

PCs die when they die. That's why there are combat rules. To do stuff you don't want to happen.

That's where I am. Honestly if someone goes down, then a lot of the intelligent monsters will hit them again to make sure they stay there. They know how the world works. If you don't kill a downed opponent, then he'll be healed up good as new in seconds, perhaps while you're still fighting. Better to take him out of the fight for good while you have the chance. It's that many enemies the rest of your people don't have to face.

I've gone so far as to have the NPCs grab the body of a dead halfling PC as they retreated, figuring (correctly) that it was loaded with loot. Besides, halflings are ridiculously lightweight.

As for the favoritism problem - that's going to rear its head whenever you game. You're human. The best way to minimize it is to adopt a hard and fast rule to let the dice fall where they may. If you can't decide what the monster will do, or who it will focus on, then roll randomly. Say you have an orc warrior who has just dropped the party fighter and has the party rogue next to him. The party wizard is just a 5' step ahead and looks squishy, but I know he's well protected with spells. On the other hand, the orc's been wounded and most of his allies are dead. I'll make up a random roll and roll it in front of everyone: 1=attack fighter, 2-3=attack rogue, 4-6=attack wizard, 7=withdraw, 8=run away and accept AoO. Then if I get a 1 and the fighter bites it, I feel it was the dice that killed him, not me.

It's when you're inconsistent in how you do it that people get pissed off. I'm STILL angry about how my first character died in the campaign before my current one. My first character to the current campaign died two weeks ago and the DM was like "What? You don't seem to really care she's dead?" And I didn't. It was all fair and aboveboard. I was sorry she was dead, but them's the breaks. Here's the difference:

Unfair Death
Three of us were adventuring in the woods. There was me (a monk), a ranger, and an elf druid with his wolf companion. We came across an owlbear. We were all 1st level. When the DM asked what we did in the surprise round (we surprised it), I said I ran, which is only 30' in the surprise round. The other two shot arrows at it. Next round, it gets initiative and goes first. The DM rolled a d4 to see who it attacked, which I thought was odd. It had an equal chance to attack me, running away, as it did the two people who had attacked it. Of course he targets me. It charged and puts me negative. The other two PCs shoot at it. The DM says it spends the round continuing to attack my body, killing me.

I wasn't mad at this point, just a little bothered that it had the same chance to attack me as the others. Maybe the fast movement set it off. :shrug:

So then it attacks them. Another random roll and it targets the wolf. The wolf goes down. And this is where I got mad, because then the owlbear switched targets to the ranger, leaving the wolf in negative hit points, but not dead. The owlbear put the ranger down too, but the druid finally killed it and healed the wolf and ranger back up.

I was infuriated. If the owlbear had a tactic of continuing to maul downed bodies until they were clearly dead, then why didn't it finish off the wolf as well? The DM told me (dumb of him to do) that he killed my character to give the others more time to hurt it, then when the wolf went down he didn't want to piss off the druid's player by killing his pet. So yeah, I was mad. Really mad. Pissing me off was okay, but not the guy playing the druid?

I'm still mad about it.

Fair Death
More first level characters, different campaign. I'm a barbarian and the other guy is a gnome bard. We're going down the road and see a dragon newt eating a small deer. A dragon newt is a very tiny, very toned down dragon-like monster. This one's three feet long, so it's like a decent-sized iguana. I charge it and do a little damage. That's good. The gnome gets his sling out and moves a bit. Next round I fumble. There's a reroll and I hurt myself. I knew up front the DM used fumble rules. The dragon goes and hurts me. The gnome misses it with his sling. Next round I miss, dragon hits and hurts me, gnome misses. I'm real low on hp, so I rage next round and fumble AGAIN, this time critically (two ones in a row followed by a miss, which means double damage to self). Since I'm raging, I get my extra STR to myself and then I roll high on damage. So she's gone. The gnome barely killed it.

That's how it goes. Fight monster, get hurt, die. I can deal with that. Now if the gnome had fumbled and the DM used different rules for the gnome, I'd have been angry and rightfully so.

As it is, the DM bought me new dice, convinced that my old ones were malfunctional after several more 1s.

[Tengu]

I kill my players only when they do stupid things, not because they were unlucky - which means I haven't killed any in the campaign I'm running now, and maybe would've killed one or two in the previous one if it hadn't ended due to people dropping off. If I were a player, I'd be seriously annoyed if my GM killed my character only because it was hitted critically by an enemy, or to somehow introduce "tension" into the session's atmosphere. If I were into these sort of thing, I'd play CoC.

Especially when we're playing a game where death really means it - there is no ressurection spells, Life and Phoenix Down can return you to live only if you've died very recently and your whole body is more or less intanct.

[TSGames]

My campaigns are tuff, but I generally don'y allow PC's to die(although there are exceptions). I find it's easier to fake the stabilization roll or some other thing, and it generally makes everyone get more into the action and be less... angry? as opposed to their character dying. Then again, maybe I'm just too nice...

[TOAOMT]

I personally hate killing my PCs... especially by whim of the dice. For this reason, my NPCs never use insta-kill spells or vorpal weapons. Scythes don't even find use until higher levels. However, I've seen the following motivations for killing PCs (sometimes mine, sometimes not mine).

You Didn't Powergame enough: When a group a four level five guys took on a level seven twinked out vampire who ambushed us with an army of soldiers on either side of the valley we were in. This was a DM who liked to win.

The Dice Say So: From a DM who, within reason, lets the dice make decisions for the NPC. As such, a bad guy deciding "Do I hit the guys attacking me or make sure this guy is finished" gets summed up in odds/evens. This was a DM who preferred more realistic play.

I Don't Like you: It was in Vampire, not D&D, but an entire situation where my social-spec character was trying to bluff his way out of a fight ended up going through without rolls and my character ended up cornered by multple gun toting vamps and a werewolf (without the opportunity for an action I should add) who were bent on killing me. This was from a DM who wanted to sleep with my ex-girlfriend but couldn't because she still wanted me back.

You Were an Idiot: The PC dropped into an angry mob on the philosophy of "I've got Hit Points to spare." This was a DM who couldn't save a PC from his player.

There are others, but these are all that come to mind immediately. Some of them I think are things a DM should never do, but not all of them. I personally think my reluctance to let a PC die is a weakness I have as a DM, but it's just how I am.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

I usually only try to kill characters when their player's being a moron, or a number of other less diserable tendencies.

[Zincorium]

I don't like meaningless or uncool character deaths when I'm DMing. Minor encounters are intended to use up resources and not PCs, but when they're facing big creatures and the BBEG, then the possibility comes to the fore.

Monsters don't attack downed characters for the same reason players don't stop to coup de gras all their downed foes: if your enemy looks to be out of the fight, and you have several more who still present a lethal threat, you are simply not going to want to spend the time 'making sure' because that threatens your survival.

Mooks in my games generally do not have high critical weaponry or instant kill abilities, there's no glory in a lucky orc with a scythe scoring a critical and killing you outright five seconds into a supposedly easy encounter. Again, resources, not players. If you can get the cleric to waste healing spells, so much the better, but until the cleric has resurrections for all party members, it's got to factor into your adventure design.

BBEGs and just in general very high difficulty encounters are fair game. The pc's know that they can't expect to get rescued, and that what they're facing has a reputation for being lethal. It's no shame to go down to a superior opponent, and that last epic battle tends to have significant opportunities for the 'blaze of glory' style death.

[its_all_ogre]

players generally get killed by stupid actions, however i tend to find that player a does a stupid thing, player b come to help them and then dies for player a's stupid action.
so the dice rule. but most enemies will not hit downed characters unless they have a damn good reason.

[Gamebird]

Monsters don't attack downed characters for the same reason players don't stop to coup de gras all their downed foes: if your enemy looks to be out of the fight, and you have several more who still present a lethal threat, you are simply not going to want to spend the time 'making sure' because that threatens your survival.

I'm not saying that your way of running it has any problems whatsoever. But I'd like to point out there's a couple things influencing whether a "smart" monster will attack a downed PC or not. PCs are usually winning in most encounters. They tend to kill their enemies. Movement rate, Spot checks (being a free action to attempt), Hide checks (taking an action to perform), withdraw action limiting you to a double move, Run checks requiring you to move in a straight line, and so on all affect whether a monster can escape from an encounter with PCs. Although the monster doesn't know the rules, he would have an idea about the feasibility of getting away, just like most people confronted with a snarling, biting dog realize that it can outrun them if they try to get away from it by using their feet instead of their brains. We don't know dogs move 40' and we move 30', but we have an idea of how reality works.

PCs are also usually the attackers and they don't have strong and intimate ties to the community any counter attack is likely to hit. Sure, the PCs would be upset if a band of surviving orcs who were out hunting while the PCs took out the rest of the village, then attacked a nearby human community, but they wouldn't be absolutely devastated like they would if their wife and small son lived there.

On the other hand, the orc who is fighting knows that he's the only thing standing between the PCs and his family. If he's going to die anyway and he can figure this out, then it seems to me reasonable that he'd "take someone with him".

I think that were the situation reversed, we'd see the same thing. Sacrificing yourself to save your loved ones or your community or way of life is something common to intelligent life as we know it. PCs aren't put in this situation because their loved ones/community/way of life isn't on the line.

[Piccamo]

Yup.

Of course, I've also had players kill their characters because "this is where their story ends."

Which is rather poetic, but still kinda maddening as a DM.

I had a player ask ahead of time if it was ok for his character to leave. He felt the story was over for it and so he left the group. It gave me a pretty well fleshed out NPC to work with, too.

[Clementx]

On the topic of enemies finishing off unconscious foes- you have to consider the creature. Normally, you wouldn't do something stupid like CdGing a dropped foe when it would provoke an AoO. You would confront the rest of the party, because they are greater threats. If the party is inconsiderate enough not to engage the monster hovering over their fallen ally's helpless body, well, the dead PC has something to be angry about. The opponent would act differently if its mission was to kill someone, no matter the cost. As above, hopeless revenge that luckily turned out to be a little less hopeless, a berserk wolverine that has to attack until the victim is dead, an assassin that is going to flee immediately after so one more hit won't bother it, etc. Of course, the encounter by definition has meaning, so while the death will hurt, it won't be without purpose. The party learns that slaughtering savage humanoids without reason is bad, or desire revenge against the BBEG that killed their friend. Dying to a wolverine...well, sometimes sh!t happens :smallconfused:

[Viscount Einstrauss]

My players die, but I have a depthy system for self-ressurection, so no player ends up removed from the game due to dying. They just have to convince a couple outsiders/deities to let them come back.

[Deepblue706]

I very rarely kill PCs - I just threaten to do so at every 5 minute interval. I don't reroll attacks, damage, or say 'that doesn't count' when they're low on hp, or I just plain feel bad. The PCs are made aware of the level of the threat, though. If I say there's a Red Dragon a couple of miles away, and the characters are low-level, they know not to go near it. If they do, it'll just slaughter them as if it was the appropriate CR. I don't make things 'not exist' when they can't fight them - however, they will usually be meant to be there as background flavor, or to chase the PCs into a location I want them to be at, or something.

I also give hints if the players aren't doing well: "As the fight rages on, the (insert monster here) continues to attack ferociously, seemingly unphased by any blows." - a cue to run, or to make a change in battle plans.

But, I never plan out an encounter that can drop a PC in a single hit without getting a critical (and a well-rolled one at that). A PC in my games really only eats the dirt when they consistently fail to adjust.

[The_Blue_Sorceress]

I have, in the past, been too careful about making sure my players don't get their characters killed by being dumb, which has led to some complaints on the part of the players (who thought my mercy was railroading and were indignant about the participation of some NPCs in svaing their lives) and the eventual end of an otherwise acceptable game. I've also gotten irritated with the sort of players who think the best solution to a problem is to charge at it head on and kill something. I allowed two players to get two characters killed each in one session because I'd already given them enough second chances to choke a horse. The other two players in that game were more circumspect in their play and their original characters survived to the end of the campaign because of it.

-Blue

[Jerthanis]

I think that some of you who have more strict death rules might have a more mature group than I do. Still, I'm sure there are plenty of people who dodge character death as much as possible because of the possibly disastrous effects it can have on the makeup of the game or the party. If you're playing a really tight-knit party of lifelong friends, sometimes it's nice not to have irreparable damage done to the story by random rolls of the dice. D20 can be a terribly random system at times, and sometimes people want to tell stories about the lives of heroes, and not their sudden, tragic and pointless deaths.

[Gamebird]

Group maturity has a lot to do with it, yes. In the end, you're playing a game to have fun as a social exercise. If my gaming group consisted of a bunch of young teenage boys, it would be far different in structure and rules. As it is, I figure I have an average player age around 25 with a minimum of 18. That alters the expectations people have when they come to the table. I'm also willing to change how I run the game depending on the group. For the last two years I ran two online games in the same campaign world, but subtly different in flavor. One was gritty realism and the other was heroic fantasy - neither very extreme, but it was how I ran things. The first game was more 3-dimensional than the latter one. NPCs were just automatically more cooperative and friendly to the heroic PCs in the second group. An orc warrior wouldn't hesitate to coup de gras someone in the gritty group, but in the heroic I gave the PCs all manner of opportunities to prevent a coup de gras.

[ravenkith]

I've DM'd for a while now, and I've come to the following conclusions:

1) Play the NPC as he should be played.

2) Let the Dice fall where they may.

Sentient creatures:
If an NPC is a thug, whos not very bright, and has orders to engage the party, and take them out, as soon as a party member is down, he'll move on to the next one. They tend to fight whoever's closest, unless given specific orders otherwise.

OTOH, if an NPC is a smart NPC, (10+) he'll know that finishing an opponent makes it much harder to get that person back into a fight, and will act accordingly unless stopped by another member of the party (i.e., someone attacks him).

In addition, if an NPC is exceptionally smart (has a positive int mod), it will actively target the biggest threats that are easiest to kill first, in order of priority:
Arcane casters, Divine casters, Melee Rogues, melee tanks, ranged tanks, ranged rogues.

Animals:
Animals only ever care about one target: the one that's bleeding the most, and happens to be the easiest kill, which when dropped, they will then either try to drag away, or begin feeding on immediately.

Herbivores do not attack unless attacked or provoked first. Straying too near the young counts.

Carrying around copious amounts of jerky in your pack will make you a priority target for any carnivore with the scent ability.

Fate deciding:
Any time you intervene for your players, it devalues their victory. Plus, if the players figure out you are protecting them, they'll do stupid, time-wasting stuff to 'see what happens'.

[Counterpower]

Group maturity has a lot to do with it, yes. In the end, you're playing a game to have fun as a social exercise. If my gaming group consisted of a bunch of young teenage boys, it would be far different in structure and rules. As it is, I figure I have an average player age around 25 with a minimum of 18. That alters the expectations people have when they come to the table. I'm also willing to change how I run the game depending on the group. For the last two years I ran two online games in the same campaign world, but subtly different in flavor. One was gritty realism and the other was heroic fantasy - neither very extreme, but it was how I ran things. The first game was more 3-dimensional than the latter one. NPCs were just automatically more cooperative and friendly to the heroic PCs in the second group. An orc warrior wouldn't hesitate to coup de gras someone in the gritty group, but in the heroic I gave the PCs all manner of opportunities to prevent a coup de gras.

I suspect my players would have a problem with character death. My group has a average age of probably 17 with a maximum of 18. And that includes me, the DM. Actually, I suspect I'm too nice to them. I don't want to see any of their characters killed, but I haven't even had the chance to kill them yet, except by DM fiat. And that definitely counts as an unfair death. Oh well........... the upcoming encounters might give me a chance to kill them. Memo to my players on this board: Be very careful.......... if you do somthing stupid in the upcoming encounters, you may not live to regret it.

Ravenkith: I agree with you. A monster's tactical decisions, including target priorities and actions taken, should depend on its intelligence and personality. An orc warrior, even one with low Int, would probably CdG a downed PC, with his CE personality.

And there is a limit to letting the dice fall where they may, for me. I would prefer not to kill a PC unless (s)he made a mistake that was more than just luck. Not that I won't kill a PC at all unless they screw up, though....... luck is a part of any endeavor, and sometimes luck just isn't with you.

[PnP Fan]

I generally don't kill my players unless they're doing things to tempt fate.
You might make a few rules on how to determine npc actions. Here's what we do at my table, maybe it helps, maybe it doesn't. . .
1. everyone makes their own stabilization checks. No opportunity for cheating or favoritism.
2. Why are the villains attacking? For food? They might take the time to off one specific character, so they can drag him away for food. Probably the weakest in the "herd" of PC's. At that point, the fight should be over for the monsters, and they should be trying to reatreat with their prize.
3. If the fight is between intelligent creatures, then typically if a character goes down, the villains move on to a dangerous target that could continue to hurt them, not the guy that is unconscious. Unconscious enemies can be healed, but only if the healer is still up.
4. If there is a race-war going on, where the villains are legitimately concerned about the survival of their own tribe/race/etc. . . I might say that the villains would take a round to make sure that one of the PC's can't come back.

[RandomNPC]

i don't shoot for the stupid things gets you killed idea, sometimes people feel the need to drop all mental processes and do what they need to, and sometimes its more fun.

i kill players who need a good killing. ya know, when you get in a krakens face and try to hit it with a holy warhammer, followed by the TWF unholly warhammer (neutral character) then the kraken goes *bite - hit *tentacle - hit *tentacle - hit *arm - hit *arm - hit *tentacle - kill *tentacle -rip the body up *tentacle -scatter the pieces.
well he was the only one it could reach and it was a full attack action.....

i did stop a tpk once, i was doing a test on a role play point system, when you got points the DM (me) would spend them on you at needy times. so someone lost all points and ability to get more ever again for an aspect of hextor to come teach a paladin how to die. that was... silly