Advice about PC death

So, I killed the party last night, again. These are the circumstances from at least my point of view.

1st death- The players decided to aid an Inevitable in the assult on a drow Liches fortress (I had originally planned for them to fight the Inevitable but they decided to think on their own. Which is good, so I let them.) They used no scouting/buffing and just walked into the fortress. They might have won if the lich wasn't a Cleric of Lloth and started to heal herself( Go Go Gadget negative energy!).

2cnd death- The party had attempted an assasination on the major badguy's main henchman and had messed up. They met/pissed off the major badguy. Then they broke up a major recruitment drive for the bad guy's army and almost killed the Henchman(TM) and a second important NPC. Both times the (important) bad guys got away.
I decided the Major Bad Guy(not quite as TM as Henchman) would set an ambush for them. Using the old 'Childs hand on a x-bow bolt with scroll telling the heroes a time and place to meet (place: 3 miles away, Time: 10 minutes) I lured them into the trap. The MBG did not screw around in this ambush. He brought close to his whole team and destroyed the PC's in 2.5 rounds.

The question I wanted to ask the Great and Powerful Board is, Should I have ambused the charachters with such well prepared/well planned/numerous bad guys?

The first story is to show support for my second point, I think my charachters keep dying from hubris. What do you think?

Finally, How can I stop killing my PC's while maintain a 'live' world so that the DM(me) is still entertained?

Gideon said:

So, I killed the party last night, again. These are the circumstances from at least my point of view.

1st death- The players decided to aid an Inevitable in the assult on a drow Liches fortress (I had originally planned for them to fight the Inevitable but they decided to think on their own. Which is good, so I let them.) They used no scouting/buffing and just walked into the fortress. They might have won if the lich wasn't a Cleric of Lloth and started to heal herself( Go Go Gadget negative energy!).

2cnd death- The party had attempted an assasination on the major badguy's main henchman and had messed up. They met/pissed off the major badguy. Then they broke up a major recruitment drive for the bad guy's army and almost killed the Henchman(TM) and a second important NPC. Both times the (important) bad guys got away.
I decided the Major Bad Guy(not quite as TM as Henchman) would set an ambush for them. Using the old 'Childs hand on a x-bow bolt with scroll telling the heroes a time and place to meet (place: 3 miles away, Time: 10 minutes) I lured them into the trap. The MBG did not screw around in this ambush. He brought close to his whole team and destroyed the PC's in 2.5 rounds.

The question I wanted to ask the Great and Powerful Board is, Should I have ambused the charachters with such well prepared/well planned/numerous bad guys?

The first story is to show support for my second point, I think my charachters keep dying from hubris. What do you think?

Finally, How can I stop killing my PC's while maintain a 'live' world so that the DM(me) is still entertained?

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If the world is truly "live" the party is probably not the only <i>problem</i> the bad guy has to deal with. The bad guy (or organization) should take a long time to bring the full extent of his/their resources to bear against the party. Or, if it does, that gives some other people in the world an opening to hinder the bad guy(s) and later on, the party should find out that because they drew major heat somebody else struck a telling blow against the evil.

Eventually the bad guy(s) will escallate their efforts against the party, but by then the party will be stronger and hopefully they have found out how to bring the fight directly to the bad guys and hit them where it really hurts.

The first case sounds like PC arrogance and reliance on the DM's leniency. The second one sounds like DM overkill...

The DM isn't supposed to be entertained, it is our obligation to provide entertainment. This is not to say that DMing can't be fun, you just get your jollies from other aspects of the game.

If the PC's are getting killed off consistently by the first scenario it may be that you aren't laying down enough hints as to how powerful/dangerous the bad guys are. Do the NPC's cower in fear at the mention of their name? Does everyone make the ward against evil when someone speaks 'you know who's' name aloud? This kind of thing may work in the second scenario you gave as well. Just give hints that he is _really_, _really_ dangerous and not to be messed with lightly.

In the 2nd encounter-

What was the CR/EL? The CR/EL numbers assigned assume that the meeting is an even up meeting. When one side has set for an ambush things are supposed to change (by as much as +2 to the CR). This is by far one of things most often overlooked by DMs, that is people forget to account for the circumstances of the encounter.

deltadave said:

The DM isn't supposed to be entertained, it is our obligation to provide entertainment.

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Hell fricken' no. A completely laughable assertion.

This is not to say that DMing can't be fun, you just get your jollies from other aspects of the game.

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There, that sounds better. Too bad it has nothing to do with your first sentence.

I'm with you on everything else, though.

I'm sorry, perhaps I am wrong, but the way you mention being entertained, I get the impression that you see DMing as adversarial - you versus the party. DM entertainment should not come as a result of trying to outwit the party or beating the party, it should come from providing clever and entertaining scenarios, encounters and challenges for your party to experience.

For your second party killing - you say the Major Bad Guy brought everything he had - why? How much did he know about the party and their abilites? Did he know more than he should because of a little DM metagaming? If the Major Bad Guy brought everything, was there any opportunity for the party to know what they were walking into? What was the EL versus the party level? Was is reasonable that the party could survive? DMs always have the ability to kill off the party, after all they hold all the cards. While it is reasonable to challenge a party with something too strong for them, the challenge is to recognize that fact and avoid the situation. If you set it up such that the party feels they have little choice but to face the foe, and you have not made it a fair fight, it may be realistic, but it won't be fun for the players - and if they are not having fun, they won't play, and then you won't have any opportunity to be entertained as a DM.

Oh, and how the heck did the party cover 3 miles in 10 minutes? That's maintaining a 3.3 minute mile - amazing in real life! In game terms, with a speed of 30 ft, double move, running (4X) you can go 1200 feet in one minute - that means a mile takes 4.4 minutes - in a straight line only.

Gideon, I think you might want to provide more information on the complete setup here. For the second scenario, I cannot see any reason why the PCs would even agree to such a setup. 3 miles in 10 minutes? That's fast. Besides, why didn't they just say 'No'. As a player I would have.

The bad guy wants us to run our butts off to meet him someplace of his choosing? Not a chance, let's grab an ale and see what happens. Or maybe we ought to raid his house right now. We know he is 3 miles away waiting for us to show up.

So in that regard, I would agree that the PCs erred. They should have just avoided the setup and done something else. Why did they agree?

I run a game to have fun. I like to put challenges in front of the players and watch them solve the challenge. I maintain fair verisimilitude for my game and I am still entertained. I do that by maintaining a dynamic environment. I have multiple story arcs running at any given time and the PCs represent tension points where they intersect those story arcs. Sometimes the PCs cause momentary tension and move on to a new story arc, sometimes they disrupt a story arc completely and foil the plans of NPCs. In any case, there are always consequences for the actions/inactions of the PCs.