"Run away! Run away!" ... what if they don't?

Hiya!

devincutler said:

More than that. Let's not forget that claw slashes across your chest and bites to your shoulder HURT. A LOT!! D&D sort of glosses over the pain factor (and it should). But let's not forget that these adventurers, even if they do not die, are suffering horrendous amounts of pain. Mind numbing, soul crushing amounts of it.

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Oh absolutely. But, it's D&D. I chalk up the 'lack of pain' as just one of the "realities" of the multiverse...sort of like how shooting a propane tank or a car (pretty much anywhere) in any action movie has said target explode into a massive, impressive, fire-ball. So folks in a D&D campaign world have the same sort of 'physics' applied to them; they can take multiple 8-pound mace hits to the abdomen, chest, face and head and have no effects actually 'apply' unless a nebulous "hit point pool" is depleted. Doesn't make sense, but it's the physics of the world.

Personally I don't mind the abstract 'physics' in a fantasy game, but what I miss in them is psychological effects...some games have stats like "Cool", "Sanity", or "Madness". Kinda like HP's, but for your mind...and these are usually defined at various 'levels of' equated to some level of psychosis. ("SAN of 100 is the most stable person in the world; SAN of 1 is almost a totally, permanently insane person").

^_^

Paul L. Ming

I see a lot of talk of giants - it was just an example I gave

I don't expect the players to know the CR of the monsters (or if they do, to act on that knowledge). But (if we go back to the fire giants haha), if the PCs see giants - they will see that they are *huge*, strong looking and well armed. Some of them may have heard stories that fire giants are particularly fierce. So roleplaying wise, the characters can make a decision.

If the monster is unfamiliar to the players, then the description can help (it's huge! covered in spines!) and skill checks from the PCs can also assist (Your readings have told you that this jungle is considered particularly dangerous due to the abundance of evil spirits, but also of worms of enormous size who are fierce predators. This is probably one such worm)

Hiya!

hawkeyefan said:

I’m kind of surprised at how often TPKs are being condoned. I am all for encounters where combat is a bad idea for the PCs, and all for maintaining danger for the PCs. But I also realize that when I present them with a challenge that is beyond their ability to defeat in combat, I’ve chosen to do so. Everyone seems to site the players’ choice to resort to combat as justification for a TPK....but no one seems to question the DM’s choice to set things up this way.

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It depends entirely on if the DM is a "new skool" DM, or an "old skool" one...or how much they lean towards one side or the other.

As an Old Skool DM, I often don't have a "choice" to set things up a certain way for the PC's. Well, at least not if I want my world to be even remotely believable and sustainable over the course of years if not decades. I can't just "decide" that some hills have kobolds when the PC's are level 2, then they have orcs when everyone is level 4, then they have ogres when everyone's level 6, then hill giants when they hit level 10. Then the players decide to make new characters for some reason and head into the hills...and suddenly they're back to 'only' encountering kobolds again.

If the Giant Hills are ventured into...you'll find Hill Giants. I don't care, as a DM, what level the PC's are. My world dictates that "The Giant hills are known for being over-run with ogres, hill giants, cave bears and even a few stone giants. Travelers are to be wary when they risk taking the Stone Road through to the other side"...well then, that's that. Ogres, giants, cave bears will be 'common' in as much as any of them can be. As a DM, my hands are virtually tied. And, IMNSHO, any DM that 'downgrades' or 'upgrades' creatures in some area/adventure to be compatible (re: "balanced") to the players PC's is doing a serious disservice to both his players and himself. But then again...I'm old and crotchety like that!

^_^

Paul L. Ming

One thing which is glossed over, with killed characters, or TPKs, is the average player puts in his week of work, home, commute, then he gets to
D&D, where he's just looking to relax, and have a good time, wants a confrontation, for the XP, loot, just for the fun of it, so a person who doesn't game as often as they might like to, or as often as some others do. This person is just making the bald assumption that the encounter is winnable. He's already calculating XP to add to get to
his PC's next level, what new armor, gear, and weapons he's going to buy with his share of the loot, totally oblivious to the fact that he should observe the
situation, do a quick gut-check with his other players, and turn tail and haul ass. This doesn't excuse or recuse him, neither does it place blame upon the DM.
Just a cognitive dissonance I've observed, where the player pushes the die button, almost unaware of the situation.

devincutler said:

I figure, as a DM, if I give suitable warning to the PCs and they choose to metagame or ignore the warnings, then they get whatever they deserve.

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I don't think I agree with that. The game is all about choice. This includes smart choices and dumb choices. I don't believe in such harsh punishment for a mistake, even if it was based on meta-gaming.

Should a dumb choice result in instant death, when the players are high level? Maybe, but preferably not.

Should a dumb choice result in instant death, when the players are low level? Absolutely not.

This is why I had my players encounter a crocodile at first level, as the 'final boss' of their grand escape out of a prison tower. It was an appropriate opponent for their level. A crocodile is not much of a fight at any level, except at level 1, where it 'can' kill you in one attack. If all of the players focus on the croc however, and keep their distance, they should be fine. I first had the crocodile attack an npc, to show what happens when you get too close (I rolled for the damage, and was kind of shocked how much damage the croc did in one attack. It killed the poor npc in one attack). But this was enough to warn my players of the danger that their opponent presented.

Technically the players 'could' have died during this fight, if they had done something monumentally stupid. But I did not throw a demi-Lich at them.

Les Moore said:

We must have radically different play paradigms, generally, I learn something, as a player, when I lose a PC. Granted, sometimes it's unavoidable,
bad rolls or luck. IME, it's usually a combination.

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What a player knows and what his next character must know are **for some people** not the same thing.

Les Moore said:

One thing which is glossed over, with killed characters, or TPKs, is the average player puts in his week of work, home, commute, then he gets to
D&D, where he's just looking to relax, and have a good time, wants a confrontation, for the XP, loot, just for the fun of it, so a person who doesn't game as often as they might like to, or as often as some others do. This person is just making the bald assumption that the encounter is winnable. He's already calculating XP to add to get to
his PC's next level, what new armor, gear, and weapons he's going to buy with his share of the loot, totally oblivious to the fact that he should observe the
situation, do a quick gut-check with his other players, and turn tail and haul ass. This doesn't excuse or recuse him, neither does it place blame upon the DM.
Just a cognitive dissonance I've observed, where the player pushes the die button, almost unaware of the situation.

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I would say if that is the average player in your games, yes, we do have vastly different playstyles.

In my experience, all that next level planning does not hapoen at the table, they play the scene and their in character plots and schemes and all that "non-optimal" stuff.

5ekyu said:

I would say if that is the average player in your games, yes, we do have vastly different playstyles.

In my experience, all that next level planning does not hapoen at the table, they play the scene and their in character plots and schemes and all that "non-optimal" stuff.

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No, I'm not saying it's the "average" player "in my games", OTOH, I find it odd you haven't experienced it at least once. Nobody ever got
greedy, or impatient, on a crawl? To borrow a term from a mighty, logical one, "fascinating"...

Should a dumb choice result in instant death, when the players are low level? Absolutely not.

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You have it backwards. A lot of the enjoyment of the game comes from a sense of peril. If the players become aware that the DM will not, under any circumstances, allow their character to die, all sense of peril is lost, an the fun greatly diminished. You can't feel heroic if you are aware there is no chance of failure.


And if a character is going to die, it is best they die at low level, before the player becomes too attached to them.

5ekyu said:

Sorry but again, its not logical to assume the next character will be played more cautiously as a matter of course after another character dies.

Its only even remotely logical on the case where the first death was due to PLAYER INEXPERIENCE (pi) on behalf of that character's player **and** where roleplaying is not strongly valued.

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Perhaps not intended, but that seems rather condescending. Your version of roleplaying is not the only one that is valid. In particular, there is (literally) a world of knowledge that PCs have that the players do not. It is quite possible to envision most improvements in player skill as improved understanding of how the PCs' world works - things that virtually every PC would know.* Certainly that's not the only way to look at it, but IMO it is a reasonable one.

It's fine to play low level characters as naive greenhorns, but I think it is also fine to assume that most really stupid or foolish characters would be washed out of the adventuring life very early (probably prior to level 1) via death, dismemberment, or just a recognition that they were just not cut out for that demanding a way of life. It is possible to reasonably reflect a low mental stat, or incorporate other interesting flaws or foibles without having the character behave in ways that frequently threaten their and/or the party's survival.

That way the character who fails actually honest to gosh learns up some from makin' mistakes without needing some post-death mind meld shenanigans!!!

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As noted, no 'mind meld' is needed to explain the player having learned things that every PC would already know.

* So, although it would be rude, inane, and pointless to mention say this in any actual situation, in the context of this theoretical discussion, one could even posit that it is playing a PC as more than usually ignorant of common (fictional world) knowledge that is poor roleplaying.