Balancing storyline vs PC death

[ALOR]

So when i DM i like to tell stories. I want the characters to be heros and i generally want them to be succesful. I have always found it difficult to kill a PC, even when thier doing something dumb that should result in thier death. I really don't want to screw up my plot because of plot specific PC dieing horribly. Recently however, mostly from reading these fourms, i've come to the realization that PC death is an important part of the story. The pc's appreciate thier characters more if they know they can die. This isn't to say that i want to whole heartidly slaughter my PC's.
My question is how do you tell your stories and kill your PC's. What do you do when an important character dies and it runins your plot? How do other DM's handle this?
thanks in advance and happy gaming

[Arbitrarity]

I've moved to not making a "story" per se, merely having a series of characters interact with specific consequences, and specific natural events occur. If a PC dies when he was involved in some key interaction (completing a mission?) appropriate consequences occur to those involved.

Instead of having a directed plot which relies on PC's to take specific actions, there is an overview of characters and motivations, and a current situation. The PC's alter this with their actions in some way.

[Quietus]

You don't necessarily have to KILL the players to create the illusion of risk. Having a tough fight where they need to pull themselves together, and are left at the end with one person standing alive, his friends fallen but stable laying around him as he gasps for breath, with the Big Scary Thing (tm) laying defeated on the floor..

It takes practice to get this right, however, as well as a minor bit of luck ensuring your players stabilize.

[banjo1985]

I'm a big story-teller GM too, and I'm not really fond of killing off my players either. I have a big over-arching storyline in my campaigns which I want to tell, so it's important that the bulk of PC's survive so that they're attached to the plot rather than being hangers-on.

However I don't have much of a problem killing PC's if they've done something truely dumb (thankfully my group rarely does) or if they are willing to do so to further the plot. For example - A player may want to actively move against the rest of the party, and may even want to join with the antagonist. I would accept this, and have that character work against the party in secret. However I would make it clear that they will eventually be found out and that the party may well kill them , but I'll make sure it's one hell of an impressive fight!

In short PC death is okay in a story-telling game, if you can use that death to add to or further the plot that your developing.

[Thinker]

Your story isn't ruined just because someone dies. They can always be replaced by a new PC and that gives another story arc or side-quest. If they're on a quest to defeat a BBEG named Tim and Tim kills a melee tank named Bob, who wanted Tim dead for murdering his father, the story doesn't end. There are other people who still wants Tim to go down. The problem with gaining power is you have to step on a lot of people's toes to do it.

[rollfrenzy]

You don't necessarily have to KILL the players to create the illusion of risk. Having a tough fight where they need to pull themselves together, and are left at the end with one person standing alive, his friends fallen but stable laying around him as he gasps for breath, with the Big Scary Thing (tm) laying defeated on the floor..

It takes practice to get this right, however, as well as a minor bit of luck ensuring your players stabilize.

Problem with this is, that dozens of years of gaming with the same group and constant Deus Ex Machina to save Pc's lives has bred, in our group, an assumption that the worst that can happen is the above.

[Winterwind]

I follow the rule that if characters die they either did something evidently suicidal (either by stupidity or because the player wants the character to die, or at least finds that the action is worth a high chance of death), or got very unlucky with their dice rolls (I'd be happy to go without this possibility, but my players explicitly demand to be truly in danger when doing dangerous things). I do not use PC death as pre-planned element of the story, because the PCs are off limits. That's strictly player territory.

This said, I just attempt to estimate how much something I want to put into the story will endanger the PCs, and try to not include anything the PCs should not be able to overcome probably (but not necessarily), save for situations where character death would indeed be fitting storywise (like the encounter with the BBEG). So, the minions are always weaker than the PCs (but not as much as to not pose a threat anymore), and the BBEG is either of comparable power (he may be as strong as the PCs, or weaker but have some circumstancial advantage), or is superior, but there are some circumstances putting the PCs on the same level again.

So far, it's worked perfectly - there was not a single character death in the last seven years of me DMing, though occasionally it got awfully close.

[Quietus]

Problem with this is, that dozens of years of gaming with the same group and constant Deus Ex Machina to save Pc's lives has bred, in our group, an assumption that the worst that can happen is the above.

Who said anything about Deus Ex Machina? I never said to stop them from bleeding out if they got there, did I?

It's equal parts practice, instinct, and psychology. My players' biggest problem right now is that lack of attendance has slowed the game obscenely, I refuse to play with less than majority attendance - because *my games are that lethal*. I've rarely had complaints about my DMing, and the few I've had, I've addressed. That said, when my players find something unexpected - or worse, something they knew was coming - they're AFRAID of me, because they know I won't pull punches.

True, I tend to play things up, and frequently talk about murdering the players, walking the sarcastic line between actual intent and teasing. And it wouldn't be the first time I'd mitigated a crit... "Hmm.. 54 damage from a trap to the elven ranger with 22 HP... no, I won't confirm that. 18 it is!", but the players don't generally know I do that. I did mention that one particular instance, obtusely, and one of my players does read these forums and will likely see this - the guy who would've been a grease stain, actually. But that same player is extremely well aware that doing stupid things can get you killed, because when we do play, he goes into negative HP at least once a session. He just happens to have obscene luck with stabilization rolls.

[hewhosaysfish]

This thread seems like a ggod place to tell you about a little system that the GM of one of my regular groups has come up with: The DM Dice of Doom (or possibly DOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!).

The idea started when we spotted, in a fellow gamer's dice-bage, a large yellow d6 with "yes", "yes", "no", "no", "maybe" and "maybe" printed on it, although we have evolved a bit since then: The DM Dice of Doom has 6 symbols on it, supposedly representing Yes, No, Death, Divine Intervention, Chaos and Time.
Players can spend xp (level squared x 10)to ask a boon from the Dice. The Dice is rolled and -depending on the result- the DM makes up something appropriate.

9 times out of 10 the boon is something like "Can <<miraculaous event>> suddenly happen and save my character from the thing what just killed him." Actually, more than 9 in 10... I can only think of one time when it wasn't like that...

It's quite a nice solution as it gives us something of a saftey net but doesn't let us feel completely safe and there is still a price for mistakes (but the price is less than that of getting Raised, even if that's available).

[hewhosaysfish]

True, I tend to play things up, and frequently talk about murdering the players, walking the sarcastic line between actual intent and teasing.

... You're not the same DM I was talking about, are you? :smallwink:

[rollfrenzy]

Quietus, I wasn't referring to your games, it's just been in our games. Like that. A character will go down and somehow, someway, he will be saved. I have actually in the past, (Earmuffs, Alor) tested this by not healing my pc and letting him fall then fudging stabilising rolls. Lo and behold, he lived despite my best effort.

[AdversusVeritas]

If you are really wanting to tell a good story, then you should let character choices impact the plot. If the decisions and actions of the PCs have made do not end up changing the plot from the way I had originally planned it, I'm not only a bad DM, but a bad storyteller.

From a player perspective, I'd much rather lose a PC then have a DM save him.

[blue_fenix]

My first DM had 2 particular policies in his games. One was that he removed a lot of the negative aspects of resurrection (no level loss, rez with full HP, no massive GP cost, etc.), which made it easier for him to throw really challenging stuff at us where half the party would die and be rezed at least every other session. The value of that decision can be debated.
His other policy was that every campaign ends with a spectacular TPK, and any player leaving the campaign for real life reasons would receive some sort of glorious death. One guy in particular, a human barbarian, died holding of the BBEG so the rest of us could escape. We later defeated that BBEG, only to find that the BBEG's cloak of resistance was an enchanted piece of skin...human skin... a particular human's skin that our characters would recognize...

[ALOR]

If you are really wanting to tell a good story, then you should let character choices impact the plot. If the decisions and actions of the PCs have made do not end up changing the plot from the way I had originally planned it, I'm not only a bad DM, but a bad storyteller.

From a player perspective, I'd much rather lose a PC then have a DM save him.

I absolutly do let the players change my plot. PC's always do what you least suspect at the weirdest times so you have to adapt. I guess my problem is i make some aspects of the plot to character specific, so it's hard to change things if that PC dies. I'm getting better and from what rollfrenzy just revealed (glares angerly) I will have no problem killing his character. :smallamused:

[rollfrenzy]

Honestly, that was a long time ago and was to test/prove a point. (although it worked, that Pc was immortal I think he may have been a highlander :smallsmile: ) And to be fair, you did just kill one of my PCs last week.

My advice to you is to let it roll. if somebody is too plot important,change the plot when they die. Refocus it, or give us alternate reasons to continue. remember That we don't know what's coming, or what you have planned. So we'll never even know that we destroyed your plot. (other than the defeated look and bouts of crying :smallbiggrin: )

[magicwalker]

I would say that, you shouldn't let your story hinge on the survival of one particular PC. You might let it hinge on the entire party, so if and when they fail you can say something like ".. and as your vision fades into darkness, you hear the thunderous march of the goblin army as it advances towards the elven stronghold." blah blah blah.

Being able to come up with stuff that is consistently interesting on the fly is the best quality to have in a DM, imho.

[valadil]

I have the same problem. It also doesn't help that I request that my players write a lot of backstory. If someone spends all weekend writing up an awesome background, I'd feel like a jerk killing that character and making all that background go to waste, unless the player had already gotten a lot of fun out of the character. I don't mind damaging my own stories though. Usually you can work around someone going missing from a plot, and even if the plot doesn't advance as intended it can react to the new development.

[Tormsskull]

I think that PC death is very important in an RPG. If the character's don't feel like they have any chance of dieing, the game loses a lot of its prowess IMO.

If you think of any books or movies or whatnot, it is often very easy to predict what is going to happen in a general sense. Good guys going to win, bad guys going to lose, etc.

But in D&D, that isn't always the case, and those times are what I think great stories are made of. Maybe the destined heroes to save the day actually turns evil and begins a reign of terror (a la Kain from Legacy of Kain), or one of the main characters suddenly meets his demise (a la A Song of Ice and Fire), or the dark and evil guy turns on his dark and evil master in order to save his son and redeem himself (a la Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi).

To me, that's what a great story is made of. And you can't script great stories. So to paraphrase Stifler, "Relax, sit back, and let the good times roll."

[tainsouvra]

You know, it's not like death is really permanent for adventurers in the D&D universe anyway. Go with the natural flow of actions and consequences, and if someone dies, don't worry about it. They'll recover.

[Quietus]

... You're not the same DM I was talking about, are you? :smallwink:

I don't recognize your name, so probably not. Plus I've never used the Dice of Doom.

Interesting idea, though.. I'd probably have a little more death on there, I think.. :smallamused:

[ALOR]

You know, it's not like death is really permanent for adventurers in the D&D universe anyway. Go with the natural flow of actions and consequences, and if someone dies, don't worry about it. They'll recover.

I don't like the concept of raise dead or ressurection. If your gonna die, you should die. I do like the ocasional divine miracle or some ressurection that results from the story. But again this is just another way to save PC's and not have any real downfall to dieing (even level loss isn't that huge a loss imho)

[tainsouvra]

I don't like the concept of raise dead or ressurection. If your gonna die, you should die. I do like the ocasional divine miracle or some ressurection that results from the story. But again this is just another way to save PC's and not have any real downfall to dieing (even level loss isn't that huge a loss imho) That's a valid approach, just make sure your players know you've houseruled that...they might be in for an unpleasant surprise otherwise.

[Isomenes]

One notion I haven't seen in this thread is the idea of taking the opportunity to explore the after-life options available to a player in your universe. You may not have thought of it before this point, but you can make it part of the campaign--death doesn't have to be a roll-up-a-new-one event, even barring resurrection. A character can still be quite effective, either from a roleplaying perspective (with access to deities which the living PCs might not have) or from a mechanical perspective as an incorporeal entity. Or both.

[ALOR]

One notion I haven't seen in this thread is the idea of taking the opportunity to explore the after-life options available to a player in your universe. You may not have thought of it before this point, but you can make it part of the campaign--death doesn't have to be a roll-up-a-new-one event, even barring resurrection. A character can still be quite effective, either from a roleplaying perspective (with access to deities which the living PCs might not have) or from a mechanical perspective as an incorporeal entity. Or both.

this sounds pretty cool, but how would you handle the split party, one character in the great beyond while the rest reside on the material plane. Being a ghost might be an interesting way to solve this as you suggested, i'll have to think on this

[Golthur]

I don't like the concept of raise dead or ressurection. If your gonna die, you should die. I do like the ocasional divine miracle or some ressurection that results from the story. But again this is just another way to save PC's and not have any real downfall to dieing (even level loss isn't that huge a loss imho)

It also makes a high level game a lot more dangerous with various save-or-dies, death due to massive damage, etc., etc.

Not that I'm in disagreement at all - quite the contrary, I usually remove "easy" raising/resurrection from the picture in all of my campaigns. One should just make sure that one has all the bases covered :smile:

[valadil]

If you don't like raise dead because it trivializes death, I'm with ya on that. But removing death makes combat far less dangerous too. And I think high level combat expects player death. It's almost like death is a mechanic for removing someone from combat and it only matters when the whole group dies.

I've always liked the option of making the whole raise dead process a quest in its own right. Like the other players would have to find someone willing to perform the res and appeal to them. It seems like an interesting way to handle a character's religion, where normally religion is either ignored or preached.

Yet another option is to reduce death. Say that at -10 HP you're not dead, just comatose or something. For mechanics reasons, you could say that -MAX_HP is real death. Whatever coma effect happens, the spells formerly known as raise dead and resurrection can fix it. Whether save or die spells remain save or die or just become save or coma is up to you and should probably vary with the level of the spell. I like this option because it hardly changes mechanics but fixes things flavorwise. It's always bothered me that regicide doesn't make for a good plot since the king can always get a rez. Now if someone really wants him dead it can happen.

[nerulean]

I also don't like PC death: not so much because I don't want to kill off a character, but because it's often very difficult to find a plausible way to bring in a new character so that player can keep going.

Say your only healer gets killed while you're in a remote cave under the sea in the middle of nowhere where no one has ever gone before. The old tropes of "he's the only survivor of a group that passed through here before you" or "he's running away from the grue" don't work to bring in a new character, and even in situations where they do a certain amount of fudging is required to ignore the strange coincidence of someone turning up who is funnily enough able to plug the gap in the party left by that recent death.

It's by no means impossible to do it well, but it's much more difficult than just carrying on with the same party, not to mention the fact that you now have to work to motivate a new character who doesn't share the background of the rest of the party to put him on the course the group's currently on.

[Irreverent Fool]

I have the same problem. It also doesn't help that I request that my players write a lot of backstory. If someone spends all weekend writing up an awesome background, I'd feel like a jerk killing that character and making all that background go to waste, unless the player had already gotten a lot of fun out of the character. I don't mind damaging my own stories though. Usually you can work around someone going missing from a plot, and even if the plot doesn't advance as intended it can react to the new development.

This is quite true. Since -- as was mentioned -- the characters have no idea what's planned, there is no reason you can't alter your plans slightly and have things work out in a way that still allows you to use all the material you've prepared (I'm actually kind of upset when my PCs grab the hook right off the bat).

In a a group I've been in for roughly two years (time flies), our first few sessions involved trying to get some madman from running off with an orb of power that allowed him to ignore the normal control limit on undead created via ainimate dead/etc. So we're talking artifact here. The guy us fairly powerful at the start but due to group size and ability we ended up killing said BBEG before he managed to get away with it. Our powerful wizard ally who the DM had intended to have help us throughout the story ended up getting his hands on it, was corrupted, and teleported off.

This was far worse than a character death! Our BBEG is now in the land of Epic Spellcasting because we killed the one we were supposed to have dealt with!

DM adaptation is key.

[Glyphic]

I'm surprised no one has suggested letting players take death into their own hands- via introducing Fate and or action points. You can be as generous or as stingy as you want with giving them away. It gives the players a little more leeway in being heroic/stupid, and you don't have to fudge as much.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/actionPoints.htm

[ALOR]

I'm surprised no one has suggested letting players take death into their own hands- via introducing Fate and or action points. You can be as generous or as stingy as you want with giving them away. It gives the players a little more leeway in being heroic/stupid, and you don't have to fudge as much.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/actionPoints.htm

we had luck points for years, which basicly you rolled a d4 at the begining of a game and you got that many rerolls. But after so long using them, it just came to be that the PC's could never fail.
i do like action points though, of course i love eberron i just don't get to play/run in it :smallfrown:

[ArmorArmadillo]

we had luck points for years, which basicly you rolled a d4 at the begining of a game and you got that many rerolls. But after so long using them, it just came to be that the PC's could never fail.
i do like action points though, of course i love eberron i just don't get to play/run in it :smallfrown:
Unfortunately, no amount of action points will save you from a natural 1 against a Bodak.

The problem with D&D is that it's like playing an RPG with no save points, in which all the characters are important and dying screws you over.

Unfortunately, any game system that allows death for players creates these problems.

The answer? Make death less easy, by changing rules (I have a variant on Save or Death in my sig if you're interested) and fudging rolls. Remove save or death and save or suck when possible.

Or...have a complete variant where death is part of the story.

Consider an extraplanar "respawn zone" in somewhere like Sigil where, if a character dies, he's a relatively short distance away. Not somewhere where you can just skip to in an off round, but somewhere you can return to after major adventures. It makes it so death's not a death sentence. ::PUN'D::

[BardicDuelist]

As a DM, I make it painfully clear that their party needs to be balanced, or have a way around a missing element (spending gold on hirelings, UMD, etc), and that their choices will affect the plot considerably. If they don't follow some stupid sidequest, there may be consequences for it. They know that I will not put them up against anything that they cannot defeat, unless I give them a reasonable escape route that they should take. They also know that if they die, they die. This will affect the plot as well, but I never make it somthing that will probably happen. I then generally let them get their character's raised, or have annother character to play. The thing is to never make a character so important to what you have planned that annother character cannot take his place in the event of that character no longer existing again.

[JaxGaret]

I have a variant on Save or Death in my sig if you're interested

I'm interested, but I don't see it.

[ArmorArmadillo]

I'm interested, but I don't see it.

That's because I removed it earlier and forgot.:smallbiggrin:
It boils down to: Save or death effects reduce a character to -9 and dying. They have a 1 in 10 chance of surviving by stabilizing, and quick action by the cleric can save them, but they're out of the fight. If special effects happen, they aesthetically "start" to happen (Start looking more like a Bodak) and finish if you don't stabilize or receive healing.

It seems weird, although it means that one bad save doesn't turn into a 5000 gold and 1 level headache.

Given, the save or death/suck system is flawed to begin with, but you work with what you have.

[ALOR]

The thing is to never make a character so important to what you have planned that annother character cannot take his place in the event of that character no longer existing again.

yeah i think this is what i'm going to have to learn to do honestly. I just need to adjust my plots so that pc dieing can't break it.
thanks for the advice so far everyone:smallsmile:

[Fishy]

Secretly, I want to start a game with a glorious, fast paced and completely inexplicable action sequence, kill the entire party, and then have the 'real' plot start when all the characters wake up in Gehenna or somewhere.

[Damionte]

I have to admit this is also my biggest stumbling block. As i am currently gearing up to run a new campaign I've coem up with a couple ideas that I think may work for my players.

1st I've increased thier power for the early levels. I've given them max HP's @ level 1 plus thier total or +6 HP whichever is greater. So a cleric with a +2 con adjustment will start with 20 HP's a wizard with a -1 con adjustment will start with 9 HP's.

We're also using the damage reduction variant rules from UA. This variant is useful at low levels. I've also included custom rules to allow them to rig thier armor to either use or not use that variant. Once again helping them chose thier own method of survivability.

I've included a story element that will have a limited number of raise dead spells avauable for thier use. This supply can't be replenished. I imagine they'll burn through most of those by the time they're high enough level to cast the spell themselves. At which point I don't have to worry about it anymore.

I'm thinking of also going a bit ironman on the characters for this game. I have a couepl of players who sometimes get alt o holic with thier PC's. About 3 sessions in they'll suddenly be inspired to play something else. This is usually due to them not putting enough time into making thier first character.

To solfe this we're doing character generation as a group. (We don't normally do this. Normally everyone just goes home makes thier character then we start the campaign with whatever shows up.)

I'm giving them a number of boons to start the game with. These boons are built onto thier character backgrounds and intricate to the story. To discourage PC swaps thier new characters won't be granted any of these boons. They're kinda competitive even if they won't admit it.

[Damionte]

Here's another thing. I don't roll on the table. Our current GM likes to do it because it clears him of any calls of cheating. Personally I feel it gives to much away. I don't want the PC's to tell from the dice rolls how close they came or didn't come to victory or defeat. I'd rather use discriptive language to discribe the situation.

I know this is the case becasue it's what I do when I'm sitting at the table. if I see the bad guy hit me on a roll of 3 I'm suddenly worried.

Rolling behind the screen though let's me cheat when it's really really important to cheat.

[Matthew]

Yeah, death is an important part of RPGs and there's no reason it shouldn't be permanent. As far as making Player Characters irreplacable elements in the story, the answer is simple - don't do it! Look at Babylon 5 and note how the disappearance of the first lead actor was handled.
A couple of suggestions:

1) Remove the slow death mechanic. The gradual decline from -1 to -10 can be quite a pain. Instead, just have the Character stay at whatever negative he was brought to until healed or further injured.

2) Use larger parties. Have everyone build two or more Characters. Use the spares as replacements and as potential NPC adventuring companions or Henchmen/Cohorts.

[Flaming_Wombat]

I run a heavily modified game in an attempt to combat player death but even when I didn't three strategies worked well for me.
First laying out the story in a way that had checkpoints or signifigant moments that you could plan but the way they approached it was up to the player. I believe that the first rule of Dungeon Mastering is that what ever you spend the most time on will be the thing the players spend the least amount of time exploring. So creating a world for them to interact will cause them to think in larger terms so they feel less backed into a wall and less likely to do stupid things.
Second I have incorporated action dice into the game pretty much straight. It is a d20 mechanic and there is no reason it can't work in DnD. Remember the DM also gets a number of action dice equal to the groups total and it always is a d12 where the players at 20th level only get a d10. Action dice do change the crit rules and I love the old rules that are based on chance and skill but st the same time it reduces the number of critical hits I make and allows the players to have a chance to live through some pretty crazy stuff. I will say that in most of my games including the campaign I just finished with 20th level characters not a single player leaves with more than half of their action die each session.
Lastly I never try to find out what a characters hit points are. If I know I find myself making decisions using that information. Sometimes it is good to know but usually it just taints how I am running an encounter. If the character is about to die the player should know what the character should do. The system gives players options on how to extract themselves in combat as well as talking/yelling is a free action so they can ask their buddies for help. Then is when the rescue means more and does more for party unity than anything else you can do. Really an uncaring dm that refuses to fudge here and there is an extreme but finding a balance that allows for characters to die (and stay dead) is really a wonderful thing. Just don't go out of your way to kill them and tell them up front that mistakes can have deadly results and the players take it to heart. especially after the first character dies.

As to reintroducing players to a campaign I have heard of a number of ways but a story based method is best. If the character dies in a dungeon then the player may have to wait until the party leaves. Or you somehow introduce the character as part of the dungeon, either a fellow hunter or a victim. Regardless of how you reintroduce a character you have to figure out a system for experience. Starting a player back at 1st when the rest of the party is at 5th is wrong but also the character starting back where the last one left off doesn't include enough penalty for dieing. I usually remove the difference in experience from the pervious level to the players last characters current level and subtract that from the last characters existing experience.

new characters xp= old characters xp - (old characters level xp - old characters level-1 xp)

so one player had a 3rd level character with 2850 xp and dies so his new characters exp is this = 2850 - ( 3000 (xp for 4th level) - 2000(xp for 3rd level)) => 2850-1000 = 1850 a second level character but close to 3rd level. at lower levels is means less than when you are 8th level or higher. I use a similar system when introducing new players as well. I just use the player with the highest xp as the model and usually it is not higher than the character with the lowest xp. otherwise I make it up as I go just like so many of us.

I apologize to all for the long post