killing a party member.

[Shinizak]

as a DM, I hate killing party members. I hate HATE HATE it and will do my absolute best to avoid such a senerio, but sometimes the players are unintentionally squeezed into a situation where it is a very real chance.

How do you guys view and handle player death?

[Psyx]

I ask them if they have 4d6 to hand.

Killing PCs is something that shouldn't be relished, but neither should it be shied away from. You're a referee: You need to be honest about it. If it happens, it happens.

Just try not to grind their dirt in it, or at least describe it in a positive light. Nothing sucks more than *roll* "You're dead."

[Tengu_temp]

Knock them out, or make them dying but not dead yet. This way they still survive if the party wins the fight and rescues them.

[Psyx]

^Which completely destroys the risk/reward thing. PC death needs to be there and present in order for players to fully enjoy the game in most genres.

If you aren't going to ever kill PCs, you might as well get rid of the dice and make up what you want to happen.

Fudging doesn't help, either. Not unless you are a champion poker player.

[Tengu_temp]

PC death needs to be there and present in order for players to fully enjoy the game in most genres.

This goes completely against my experiences. I only killed a PC once, because the player had to leave the game anyway, and I don't think if any of my players ever minded. On the other hand, dying is often frustrating and very lethal games discourage roleplaying, because it's hard to get attached to a character or participate in an overarching storyline if you can die at any moment.

I don't care about risk/reward. I'm playing roleplaying games, not wargames.

[Sipex]

It's something that happens, you can make it easier by making it cooler though and then maybe giving the rest of the party a quest to revive the fallen PC when they hit the next town if they're so inclined.

So yeah, when a PC dies, try to make it Epic somehow.

[Ernir]

I assume you're talking about D&D? 3.5?

Risk of death is what defines "living the dangerous life of an adventurer", IMO. If you're not at risk of dying, you're not adventuring, you're just doing a job.

So yeah, as a player, I tend to get kind of bored when DMs refuse to kill characters, and as a DM, I make sure that if the dice fall wrong and/or the players do something they shouldn't have done, characters die.

[Gnaeus]

I mostly agree with Psyx. As a DM I will fudge encounters if they are overpowered through my error or otherwise overpowered through no fault of the party. But if the encounter is balanced OK and the dice say someone dies, they die.

I feel even more strongly about this as a player. If I know the DM won't kill me, the game loses all excitement. You may as well have a cutscene where the DM goes: "you enter the cave. You kill 5 ogres, a minotaur and a young blue dragon. You find a +x sword and 10,000 gp and you return to town uneventfully."

[Tengu_temp]

I assume you're talking about D&D? 3.5?

Risk of death is what defines "living the dangerous life of an adventurer", IMO. If you're not at risk of dying, you're not adventuring, you're just doing a job.

Except that in DND, there's pretty much no risk of permanently dying ever at levels 10+, at worst you get raised and feel frustrated from the loss of cash and experience. Which cheapens death tremendously and does not keep you on the edge of your seat at all.

I feel even more strongly about this as a player. If I know the DM won't kill me, the game loses all excitement. You may as well have a cutscene where the DM goes: "you enter the cave. You kill 5 ogres, a minotaur and a young blue dragon. You find a +x sword and 10,000 gp and you return to town uneventfully."

If the game consists only of crawling through dungeons and killing monsters then I'd rather just have the cutscene too.

[Kyuu Himura]

I use "Fate Points", every character gets 3 of them, if someone dies, they can spend a fate point to be let at 0 hit points (AKA: left for dead). Fate points have other uses, but they don't come to case. Why fate points?? because I banned all resurrection magic, I just feel it makes death trivial.

Just my 2 cents.

[some guy]

In my beginning stages of a DM, i went easy on my PC's. Mostly without thinking,I fudged a die or two.
Now that my player's are experienced and their characters have gained experience; I have noticed it's fun* too make them work. Combat gets intense instead something to breeze through. They need to think to survive, use smart moves. Surprise me.
When a character dies, it gives a kick, a jolt of electricity. And I don't mean to me. It gives the other players something to fight for. Things get personal. Those gnolls? They aren't just a collection of CR1 monsters anymore. Now they are the brutal killers of your comrade in arms. And by the nine hells, you're gonna get revenge. You're gonna make them pay.
When the DM takes off the kid gloves, the characters do the same and then things start to get interesting. The involvement in a game increases. The stakes are higher.

*fun for all involved

[Typewriter]

I'm also on the side of deaths not being a constant necessary threat.

I encourage my players to come up with their goals for their characters, and if they fail to stop a baddie from doing something chances are that's going to hamper their goals.

Death happens, but usually only when a PC does something stupid. Most of the time I try to avoid it, and it's worked well for my group so far(6 years).

[golentan]

Avoidable death, and combat death should always be an option. If there's any form of fiat involved, if they couldn't see it coming, or if they simply lack the abilities which would let them cope, it shouldn't be handed down.

My 2 cp.

[Gnaeus]

Except that in DND, there's pretty much no risk of permanently dying ever at levels 10+, at worst you get raised and feel frustrated from the loss of cash and experience. Which cheapens death tremendously and does not keep you on the edge of your seat at all.

Most games I play in never pass level 10. If they do, I am usually the only full caster. That means death gives you a roll on the reincarnate table :-).

[Escheton]

The first time I killed a Pc as a DM the campaign crumbled. We had just gotten the new(first) fearun books and wanted something new anyways. But it was sorta typical.

As a player I like the chance of death, but like it if the dm fudges a few numbers and leaves me at -6.

[Godskook]

This goes completely against my experiences. I only killed a PC once, because the player had to leave the game anyway, and I don't think if any of my players ever minded. On the other hand, dying is often frustrating and very lethal games discourage roleplaying, because it's hard to get attached to a character or participate in an overarching storyline if you can die at any moment.

I disagree. I just joined a oWoD larp, and the most awesome RP I had was in a scene where I *KNEW* ooc that if my character did a certain thing, he or a fellow PC were going to die. 'Course, we were going up against a fellow PC who had just pvp'ed a fourth PC, so the PC deathrate wasn't the ST's fault.

I don't care about risk/reward. I'm playing roleplaying games, not wargames.

Huh? You're playing D&D. That means you're playing a game of chance(oh look, *DICE*). You take away the chance, you're no longer playing D&D, and you should tell your PCs this. If they're cool with the change, awesome, and enjoy your variation, but standard D&D requires a true chance of death by nature of the way it was built.

From a man who said it better:

http://angrydm.com/2010/07/winning-dd/

[Tengu_temp]

I disagree. I just joined a oWoD larp, and the most awesome RP I had was in a scene where I *KNEW* ooc that if my character did a certain thing, he or a fellow PC were going to die. 'Course, we were going up against a fellow PC who had just pvp'ed a fourth PC, so the PC deathrate wasn't the ST's fault.

Well, that's your experiences. My experiences are very different.

Huh? You're playing D&D. That means you're playing a game of chance(oh look, *DICE*). You take away the chance, you're no longer playing D&D, and you should tell your PCs this. If they're cool with the change, awesome, and enjoy your variation, but standard D&D requires a true chance of death by nature of the way it was built.

Why are you assuming I'm a DND player? There are other RPGs too. Anyway, you can have risk and run exciting battles without ever intending to kill the PCs. Getting knocked out in combat or reduced to a dying state is not fun, and most of them will try to avoid it. Failing to perform an important action might make the situation worse. All of these are temporary elements that usually don't affect the final result in the end, but temporary measures are also important.
It's worth noting that I never had to prevent a TPK. All the battles my players have won, they'd win even if they had a more bloodthirsty DM. The only difference is that one of them would lose their character in some of these battles, which would not have been fun for anyone. Although, since I'm mostly playing M&M where non-lethal combat is the default, such a DM would be going out of his way to enforce "fairness".

From a man who said it better:

http://angrydm.com/2010/07/winning-dd/

I'm a bit puzzled how he talks about running deadly games and yet mentions he's mostly playing 4e. It's a game where dying for a PC is incredibly difficult.

Not a bad article, though its tone is rather arrogant and/or defensive in places. And I disagree with him that the DM playing with smoke and mirrors (as he put it) is a bad thing.

[DukeofDellot]

... In one of my earlier games (we were playing GURPS) I killed a couple of my players' characters and mutilated them on a regular basis.

Three things happened--

The terrible player kept making characters that he thought were harder to kill, but had glaring weaknesses, such as the inability to do anything.

The decent player started thinking twice about his actions and began to look at the long-term effects of short-term stupidity.

The good player started spending his points on Fast-Talk, Stealth, and other abilities that allowed him to get around combat.


All in all, it was a fun game (when I wasn't dealing with the terrible player, who I've since kicked out of the group). They enjoyed it, and after each character died, they would get disappointed when their character was lost forever, but were excited to get to try something different.

[Ernir]

Except that in DND, there's pretty much no risk of permanently dying ever at levels 10+, at worst you get raised and feel frustrated from the loss of cash and experience. Which cheapens death tremendously and does not keep you on the edge of your seat at all.

Hmm. In the high level game I am running, death remains something to be feared. It is because the enemies have ways to extract, bind, and destroy the PCs' souls if they get to play with them for long enough, and because in this campaign, every GP and XP point they spend on getting their asses out of the afterlife is one more thing they can't use to defeat their enemy.

In any case. The players are at the edge of their seats when their characters are faced with a major (A.K.A XP-costing) death. And I mean it quite literally.

I'm playing roleplaying games, not wargames.

Your call. For me, the wargame aspect of D&D is just as important as the RP aspect.

[Sipex]

I will input my experience.

I DM a D&D 4e game and since battles have become harder (I've become better at guessing player power and making smarter monsters) and the risk of death has actually reared it's head a few times now things are more exciting for both me and the players.

The last big session we had the party Wizard nearly bit it, was on his last death saving throw and only survived because the rogue rushed over and forced his second wind out.

[Ranielle]

I don't generally kill my players as long as they aren't doing something stupid, but I also don't allow any kind of "get back from death " scheme as well so it evens out. Oh but I will cripple them, sometimes permanently.

[Volos]

In my experience it is either the least skilled player that gets killed in my games. On occasion it is one of the intermediate or highly skilled players that dies as a direct result of the least skilled player's mistake. This usually happens at high levels when the players are able to come back from death by either paying high level characters or doing the ceremonies themselves. I really don't see why you would want to avoid killing players. The game is designed to be deadly to PCs, there isn't any point in avoiding that part of the game. You might as well complain that there is magic in the game and try to avoid using that part of the game. While it is your option to do so, it isn't surprising that most people will use that mechanic of the game.

[Sir_Chivalry]

I found a really interesting system in a 3rd party book which I went on to use in my DnD game.

When you hit -10 or lower, you make a Fort save. The DC is 15+ the amount of damage in excess of -10. If you fail, you die, if you succeed, you stabalize at -9, but take 1d6 points of drain to a random ability, representing a horrendous scar or wound that won't heal. The sorcerer gish in my party took brain damage, the barbarian had part of his muscles torn out, his heart weakened and his face mutilated (he had Diehard, so he kept getting up and being dropped again), the cleric and the paladin both took nerve damage, it's quite interesting.

The drain can be cured regularly, but the scars remain, and the characters both are less likely to die, but fear death more, at least in my experience. Plus it keeps villains alive with horrible scars!

[Tyndmyr]

How do you guys view and handle player death?

With maniacal glee and laughter.

[The Glyphstone]

as a DM, I hate killing party members. I hate HATE HATE it and will do my absolute best to avoid such a senerio, but sometimes the players are unintentionally squeezed into a situation where it is a very real chance.

How do you guys view and handle player death?

As another chance to hopefully roll 'DM's choice' on the Reincarnation chart.

[pilvento]

in our actual campaing one of the DM´s npc said "u are the strongest mortals among the plane now, u are the only ones capable of saving us all". (about lvl 16)
the DM also said that we cant revive anyone cause the planes are closed.

we fought like no tomorrow saying thinks like "we can lose now" or "we cant die cause we cant come back"

well. the ancient red wyrm did, killed us all and now we cant revive and since we are not allowed to change characters "WE ARE ROLEPLAYING GHOSTS"

[Sipex]

It sounds like your DM didn't have a backup plan for a TPK.

[pilvento]

It sounds like your DM didn't have a backup plan for a TPK.

the worst...

DM: "just as planed"
we: WTF!?

btw our body and equip is melting down in lava now

[Bang!]

Are we talking about D&D? If so, I stick to the philosophy that characters are built to be eaten. If the players aren't exploring dungeon a corridor which ends up being giant worm's esophagus, I feel I'm doing something very wrong. Same goes for Paranoia, All Flesh Must Be Eaten or Deadlands.

In a game with greater emphasis on roleplay/characterization, I'm much more lenient with death (but I tend to play pulpy games like Spirit of the Century, so a character who jumps out of an airplane cockpit to wrestle the parachuting Nazi commandant is pretty much expected to survive one way or another.

[Volos]

I found a really interesting system in a 3rd party book which I went on to use in my DnD game.

When you hit -10 or lower, you make a Fort save. The DC is 15+ the amount of damage in excess of -10. If you fail, you die, if you succeed, you stabalize at -9, but take 1d6 points of drain to a random ability, representing a horrendous scar or wound that won't heal. The sorcerer gish in my party took brain damage, the barbarian had part of his muscles torn out, his heart weakened and his face mutilated (he had Diehard, so he kept getting up and being dropped again), the cleric and the paladin both took nerve damage, it's quite interesting.

The drain can be cured regularly, but the scars remain, and the characters both are less likely to die, but fear death more, at least in my experience. Plus it keeps villains alive with horrible scars!

This sounds like a wonderful mechanic to help save players from death via super crit or powerful spell while still leaving them some terrible scars. The only addition or change I would make to what you present is making the ability drain more serious. Coming so close to death, it would be reasonable to assume that part of one's soul got dislodged from your physical body. In order to restory the ability drain you must enter an area consecrated by your deity or a temple of your deity before the restoration spell is cast. The character should first make a will save at the same DC of the fort save to stabalize in order to keep one's soul intact.

the worst...

DM: "just as planed"
we: WTF!?

btw our body and equip is melting down in lava now

I love your DM now. I am so tempted to do something like that to my players.