Dead in one blow

In last nights adventure our 6th level psychic warrior came up against a Minotaur Zombie.

after failing his jump check to run up the walls and around him, he got criticaled for 58 points of damage (greataxe)

dead, dead, dead

my scout spotted the creature in advance - but it was blocking a corridor and we needed to go through it. Artificier instead of a mage / sorcerer so we couldn't stand off and blast, arrows not much use on a zombie...

only the warforged in the group would have survived that hit (but down to single figure hp)

just bad luck, bad play or sick monster?

(my ranger with undead favoured enemy and the warforged fighter eventually hacked our way through, though we both needed healing midway through - luckily no-one else got criticaled)

This is a situation that always leaves me torn. If one of the PCs crit'd a big fat monster and knocked it dead in a single hit, there would be high-fives and screams of joy. But, when it happens to a PC, there are inevitably cries of inequity. "HOLY CRAP! What's the CR on that thing?!" is a favorite of mine.

If the DM celebrates a monster's prowess, he/she automatically becomes a "rat bastard" and everyone gets frustrated. If the DM fudges the dice every time a baddie rolls a nasty critical, the element of lethality that makes the game fun is lost.

So, really, it's a toss up. In this case, I'd say that it was just bad luck. Criticals are meant to be just that... critical. And, because PCs can't decide whether or not to apply critical damage if they don't want the baddie to day, I'd say that NPCs/monsters can't, either.

Buuuut... with all that said, I shall now proclaim: "HOLY CRAP!!! What's the CR on THAT THING?!"

I can't remeber if it was Shil or someone else on these boards who once posted an idea which I copied to salvage this sort of situation. I used it in my game like this; in a situation where a PC suffers a blow which would knock his HP total to -10 or below I instead deduct his remaining action points and leave the PC stabilized at -9 and out for the remainder of the combat. I don't quite recall if the original poster took as many action points or if he had a standard charge for it but this rule has worked well for me (kudos to him). Of course if you don't use APs then this isn't particularly relevant to your situation I suppose.

All so very, very true Queen D. I can't tell you how many times I've heard the "What's the CR on that thing?" line. /sigh

In fact although I love my group dearly (they're all lifelong friends), they have this nasty habit of assuming that when they get their backsides handed to them, it's because of a flaw in the adventure/campaign/rules/DM/encounter rather than any mistakes or assumptions they might have made.

Yupp, IIRC Shilsen uses action points to be stabilized at -10 instead of dying.

IMC: Deaddeaddead. Sorry. I usually don't use big strong ugly monsters but hordes of normal mooks. Much less deadly (but fireballs!). Much more hurt PCs, but scarcely anyone dead (except for fireballs!). And lots of targets for Cleave and Great Cleave (and fireballs!).

The player in question accepted it without complaint btw, though as the core of our group has been playing on and off for the last 15 years so we're not likely to get too wound up over a character death

He was giving the DM a lift home that evening as well - I wonder how that conversation went....

my take, FWIW, is that it was just bad luck. Maybe an AP solution would be a nice idea but the DM involved tends to stick to RAW as it avoids complications

Greataxe (= x3 crit) + high Strength = potentially a lot of damage.

Happens. Especially at lower levels, where a critical hit is almost always life-threatening.

If someone would have known Command Undead (2nd level arcane spell), you would have autowon this encounter.

It was just bad luck, the monster was most likely fine.

Bye
Thanee

Queen_Dopplepopolis said:

This is a situation that always leaves me torn. If one of the PCs crit'd a big fat monster and knocked it dead in a single hit, there would be high-fives and screams of joy. But, when it happens to a PC, there are inevitably cries of inequity.

Click to expand...

bad guys are targets. PCs are characters. In my game style, it's OK to have different reactions to the speed and avoidability of their deaths.

On the other hand, if a BBEG who we'd been gearing up to fight for 5 sessions went down on the first hit of combat like that, I doubt you would see as many high fives. (none in my group.) It would be more like "Uh, huh? Lamest boss fight ever." Some players might be more disapointed than having their PC taken down in a similarly random and meaningless fashion.

But then I like to play (and run) a challanging but low lethality game about the adventures of the PCs. In my game, such a death would be annoying, and my action/plot point additions to my next campaign will avoid such things unless the player wants that vibe. In other people's games it could be cool and add an air of gritty realism that keeps the players on their toes, etc.

That is how Criticals with big axes work out.

Just look at a vanilla Orc. A Critical is likely to do ~30 damage. That will instantly kill many low level PCs.

Sadly it wasn't the BBEG, just a semi-random encounter while we were searching for the BBEG.....

After two years of weekly playing with no PC deaths in the last 2 months we've had one death in each of the three games we've played.

the first two were actually avoidable by player actions - including the classic "A potion of lesser restoration wouldn't have helped against con damage, would it?" and "I'll take one last shot before running" but this one was a bit out of the blue - especially as we'd just nuked a nastier trap previously

I agree a big guy with bigger axe is nasty, but to be fair to the DM it was a published module (I wont say which to avoid spoilers) and so I know the CR would have been fair by RAW