Suicidal PCs?

[Jon_Dahl]

What do you usually do if you notice that a PC and the way the player plays the PC are more or less suidical? I'm having this in my game at the moment. The PC is bound to die. Please note that everyone is having fun, there's no problem with that. It's just there's an unusually high chances that the PC will die within the next three sessions.

[Necroticplague]

If everyone's havign fun, and O.k. with dying, I don't see a problem. If they cared about dying, they'd play less suicidally.

[nedz]

I had a guy like this. Played a Glass Canon but never did like bugging out, even when everyone else was long gone, leading to focus fire. He died, quite a bit.

As to what to do ? Well, I kept pointing out his mistake but he never learned. I took the view that this falls into the player's area of responsibility and left him to it.

[Toilet Cobra]

If the player's preparing to die, prepare yourself for a kickass death scene where appropriate. Take advantage of the fact that you have some warning and take the time to get something ready.

Don't just go "Okay, that's 86 points of damage. You are now dead. Ok, whose turn is next?" Amp it up a bit and go into detail, especially if resurrection isn't likely. If the character has a story, work in bits from their history if you can. Try to make it good enough that your player gets this urge out of his system.

And personally, I like to do a little spiel on the afterlife. This is unique to each table of course, but I like to talk about the players' actions and the god(s) they followed, if any, and whether those gods are satisfied enough with the character to welcome them into their divine domain. A little speech like this, especially if it includes a chance for the player to decide their destination in the afterlife, can really take the sting out of character death-- though if your player is planning on dying I don't imagine they'll be too upset when it happens.

One last thing: if it's an open secret that his character will soon die, have him start in on making a new one "just in case." In addition to saving time, this will help your player either commit to death (so he can start his new character) or try harder to live (if he prefers his current one).

[Jack_Simth]

What do you usually do if you notice that a PC and the way the player plays the PC are more or less suidical? I'm having this in my game at the moment. The PC is bound to die. Please note that everyone is having fun, there's no problem with that. It's just there's an unusually high chances that the PC will die within the next three sessions.Well, the fundamental purpose of a D&D game is to have harmless fun. If everyone is having harmless fun, then the purpose of the game is met, and everyone involved wins. So a character dies. It happens, suicidal play-style or not. If everyone is having harmless fun, then everyone's winning. There is no problem here, unless you expect that the player of the suicidal PC won't be able to handle the PC's death. Even at that, the problem isn't going to be the PC dying, but the player's reaction, and as it'll happen sooner or later anyway, the player will need to get used to it at some point regardless.

So really, there is no problem here.

[Telonius]

I came up with a template (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=11845719&postcount=26)for just this sort of situation a while ago.

[Kelb_Panthera]

has it occurred to you that he might be getting his kicks out of high risk playing? If that's the case, there's nothing you can do except roll with it.

[Âmesang]

I've seen others play high-risk style, not caring if the character died or not; my problem is when they have no qualms about taking other players characters with 'em. "What, we can just roll-up new ones." :smalltongue: If it's a one-off game, fine, but when it's a long campaign with lots of time spent on an individual character, it can get annoying.

Granted, I guess it's the "creator" in me. It's frustrating spending time working on something, anything, only to have another carelessly ruin it; be it an illustration, program, D&D character, or what have you. :smallconfused:

[Kelb_Panthera]

If the other players don't like it then they can say something or leave him to his fate when he refuses to withdraw. A DM should always be prepared for a TPK due to poor tactics or bad luck from the party.

[Randomthom]

Depends a lot on the player & the character as to how to respond appropriately.

I once played a noble fighter with nothing left to live for who threw himself into every fight like it was his last, until it was. He met an epic end and went to join his family in the afterlife.

I also once played a Paladin who, through circumstances, gave her life by staying to fight the shadow dragon solo so the rest of the group could escape and seal the tunnel, trapping both paladin and dragon inside.

I have also killed a suicidal barbarian character as a DM. The player thought that every fight should be winnable by charging in without a thought and splatting everything. It worked until it didn't then he got very upset.

There's in-character suicidal (which deserves to be treated with respect and given the right moment to die) and there's stupid player suicidal. The latter generally ends one way.

[Gnaeus]

The only problem I see (if player is ok with PC death) is WBL. As long as looting the fallen PC for gear then making a new fully equipped PC isn't a thing, should be ok.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I have ruled in the past that the second and subsequent times a player gets his character killed in such a way as to have his body be lootable (which is rare IME) that his new character comes in at half WBL in addition to the level lost. This means that, between that and the profits from selling his old gear put him about right. If the other PC's only give him a single share of the value of his looted gear then that's just the cost of either being too reckless or trying to game the system, whichever he's doing.

[nedz]

The only problem I see (if player is ok with PC death) is WBL. As long as looting the fallen PC for gear then making a new fully equipped PC isn't a thing, should be ok.

WBL issues are easy to fix and looting dead PCs is less of an issue then guest DMs who drop monty hauls (long story).

Slight WBL breaking isn't important so long as your players still have aspirations about stuff they'd like to acquire.