Climactic Sacrifice of PCs

[MarkB]

So the second part of the point of the thread is: how can heroic sacrifices be presented by the DM such that there is no bitterness from the players or having the heroism fall flat?

By making the one doing the sacrificing an NPC.

Seriously, a sacrifice is a voluntary act - it shouldn't be something mandated or even expected by the DM.

In my years of playing, I've seen at least half a dozen occasions where a PC sacrificed themselves for the greater good (a couple of times it's been my PC), and they've all been gloriously memorable events, mainly because they were all spontaneous decisions arising naturally from the events as they unfolded.

You're never going to truly capture that feeling if you script or plan such an event as the DM. This is an area that's best left entirely in the players' hands.

 

[Umbran]

How would you feel if such a choice was presented to you at the very end of the campaign?

It depends upon how it is presented.

I will be a bit of a voice of dissent with the others, as I feel they mistake giving the PCs a choice with giving the PCs a list of options, one of which they are sure to find acceptable. You can choose to seal off the BBEG with your blood, or not. You don't like the options, but it is still a choice.

The Universe is full of restrictions, and you usually don't get to solve problems the way you want to. Sometimes, if you want end something, you must do something you don't like. The choice isn't in which solution you opt for, but in whether you opt to solve it at all.

 

[shadzar]

I will be a bit of a voice of dissent with the others, as I feel they mistake giving the PCs a choice with giving the PCs a list of options, one of which they are sure to find acceptable. You can choose to seal off the BBEG with your blood, or not. You don't like the options, but it is still a choice.

I disagree because that is using a system of control as a fake choice. Thus why many view it as simple railroading, because the players are NOT given a choice to make. You are saying You can buy New Coke or do without. Pepsi surely likes those kind of choices, because the company belittling the consumer will find themselves with less consumers.

But you are a forceful DM, and feel that you should "work to make the players accept" your view.

This does not make it a choice, only a system of control.

It is as others have mentioned the One Ring. It has been expressed over the years and even on this forum, that a DM should not have a one-way door that leads to another one way door for players.

This is a railroad. You are using a VERY lose definition of "choice" being having more than a single option by presenting ONLY those two options.

You would be giving the players a list of finite options. A or B. D&D isn't about the players picking A or B every time. They have every right to choose Z or J.

As a DM you must rationalize why they chose Z or J and determine if it would be acceptable. If ONLY A and B are valid options, then you have exerted your control over the players and are railroading them to tell your story.

That is why you NEVER have a puzzle, with only a single solution. This is just another puzzle, and the players would be presented with only a single solution, not a choice.

A list of options is what you present with a selection set of 2.By doing so you have already made every choice for the players. Why is it invalid for them to do something else? Why only those 2 in the list of acceptable options?

What you are presenting is something containing the word choice, but actually is something else, multiple choice:

Multiple choice is a form of assessment in which respondents are asked to select the best possible answer (or answers) out of the choices from a list.

You are giving them the only possible way to handle this situation in the form of a list of accepted resolutions. You are controlling the choices that are allowed to be made.

Choice consists of the mental process of judging the merits of multiple options and selecting one of them.

The problem with the sacrifice or the BBEG lives is that you are deciding the only options available to the players and not letting them find others. This is a form of railroading.

Multiple choice IS a form of choice, but for only a specific purpose. It works for creating characters as giving the list of available races to be played either based on published material or DM discretion, but during play it does NOT work to allow player control over their own characters. It is the DM controlling the player's characters at that point and the players ability to choose is removed, and thus they are removed as the players of the characters. Their choices are no longer meaningful if they don't pick what you want them to: Option A or Option B.

 

[Umbran]

But you are a forceful DM, and feel that you should "work to make the players accept" your view.

You've never played with me, so you've got no basis for that call. I'm not forceful. I generally allow my players to go and do and try whatever they wish.

I give you a good in-game reason to think that the blood will seal the prison. You want to go look for another solution? Sure, go look. You just made a choice. Just realize that the fact that you intend to look does not mean that the solution you want will be there. You'll just have to hope.

A major hallmark of the non-railroading GM is that the players can fail - either by bad luck or by their decisions. Sometimes the PCs make a choice that leads to failure. Such is the life of an adventurer. If I remove that, then the choices don't have a whole lot of meaning. I'm not going to set myself up for them to continue to reject solutions until they find one that they like.

I have never set up a situation where, from the start, they only way to deal with the situation is for one or more characters to die (or otherwise be rendered unplayable). But sometimes the players work themselves into such corners. If anything, I'd probably only introduce this as their last option, after they've flubbed several others and they are just out of time. Eventually, a candy and roses ending is no longer an option.

Being able to evade the hopeless scenario is cool when Kirk cheats the Kobyashi Maru, but only because he's the only one who ever did it - if it is a regular feature that everyone can always weasel out, then it ceases to be cool.

You would be giving the players a list of finite options. A or B.

No, I'm giving them A or Not A. Not A has not been explicitly defined here, but pretty much contains the rest of the universe other than A. It is just that A is the only thing they know of that will work.

You are controlling the choices that are allowed to be made.

Insofar as the rules of the universe are in my hands, not theirs, and those rules don't generally flex just because they leave the PCs in difficult places, yes.

If they find themselves on the edge of a cliff, facing a horde of charging orcs, they have the choice to fight, jump, or surrender. If they choose to jump, I'm not going to suddenly change how falling damage works just to make that choice more palatable for them.

 

[invokethehojo]

For my money I would say this is how to do it: make the final fight impossible to win unless someone sacrifices themselves. As the fight goes on the PC's start to realize they cannot win (maybe they almost kill the BBG, but then he regenerates somehow, and the PC's know they don't have enough resources to wittle him back down).

You will have to come up with some kind of interesting scenario where this option becomes evident during or right before the fight. A few suggestions (all these ideas imply that one or more PC's would have to die in order for them to be fulfilled)

- the fight takes place in some kind of area that could be collapsed or destroyed by the efforts of the party, which would kill the BBG.
- one of the PC's powerful magic items can be broken (maybe it gets damaged a little earlier on), releasing the powerful magic within, killing the BBG
- a magic source exists in the battlefield (portal, ley line, summoning circle). this power can be channeled or destroyed, unleashing great energy, but killing the one who does this.
- Diablo I ending: BBG soul is trapped inside a PC, who then must be die or be twisted by the evil inside him.
- A PC could strike a killing blow, but the only way to get to the weak spot would surely bring death (getting swallowed or similar)

 

[MarkB]

For my money I would say this is how to do it: make the final fight impossible to win unless someone sacrifices themselves. As the fight goes on the PC's start to realize they cannot win (maybe they almost kill the BBG, but then he regenerates somehow, and the PC's know they don't have enough resources to wittle him back down).

This does nothing to mitigate the objections others have raised, or even the OP's misgivings - you're still presenting the players with the inescapable choice "pick a character to die, or lose the campaign". Plus, you're making them go through a pointlessly-extended unwinnable combat to even find out this information.

 

[billd91]

I've seen it work, but I think it works best if there are alternative choices that are credible, if apparently more difficult, options. I think it also works if the situation that involves a sacrifice isn't the entire lynchpin of the campaign, though, as I said, as long as there are other reasonable options, I wouldn't call it a railroad.

In one case, the PCs had the option to entomb someone in rock for eternity, held in a semi-live status, in order to close off a major gate to hell. It wasn't directly germaine to the campaign's ultimate villainous plot, but by closing it off, the PCs would close off a significant source of evil in the setting. The DM didn't expect anybody would decide to make that sacrifice but was interested to see if someone would. Without skipping a beat, the chivalrous fighter in the party made that sacrifice. It was right in character and the player was justly proud of his accomplishment... as he then went on to roll up a new character in good spirits. We weren't railroaded into it at all, the situation was a side quest of sorts, and it was a real highpoint of the campaign.

I used to be one of those players who had a hard time losing characters, but eventually something clicked. Maybe it was reading Lord of the Rings enough times that I was finally really inspired by Theoden and Aragorn riding out of Helm's Deep into what they believe is certain death or some other passage in the story to realize that coming to a good end is enough for me to feel that I've played the character well and be satisfied. Oh, sure, I'll fight tooth and nail to survive as long as I can as any character, but if the death is in character and helps to accomplish something worthwhile to that character, I'm good. And when the death of the 1e bard character I had been playing for 20 years came, in a heroic fight against the BBEG in which he sacrificed his own attacks to save the life of at least one other of his companions before he fell (the BBEG fell shortly thereafter thanks to one of the PCs my bard had saved), I was ready for it and content.

 

[Twichyboy]

Hey maybe the sacrifice of someone willing is the only way to kill it, but hey the players could teleport it and trap it in the Nine Hells right?

The way i would see it as a player is, yeah that might be the only way we know how to kill, but there could be another way, or we could think of a creative way to stop it provided we didn't want to die, soul bind it to a gem and shove it in your head ala Diablo 1,

If anything it leads to an interesting legacy campaign

 

[shadzar]

I'm not going to set myself up for them to continue to reject solutions until they find one that they like.

Here is where I see the problem lies. You are giving them the solutions to accept or reject. That isn't how it is done in my neck of the woods. That wouldn't fly. That is the definition of a railroad. You have your story you want to tell and the players jsut get to ride along looking out the windows as you announce the sight on the left and right sides of the car, and they can choose to view those sight if they want to, but you close the windows on them so they cannot see anything else along the way unless it is a sight you have already decided they CAN look at.

The players should be giving YOU (the DM) the solution they wish to try, and you accept or reject it. That is what player choice is about.

I see it like this. Me and you both present our players with a room they enter from the North. That room contains at least a closed door to each the East and West.

When they are ready to leave the room, you present them with the options: Would you like to take the door to the East, or the one to the West.

I ask them where they wish to go leaving them room. I don't make them choose either of the doors, I allow them to go back the way they came from the North, or attempt breaking through the wall to the South.

I gave them the room, but you decided on top of giving them the room, which way they must exit it.

That is the railroad. You have taken control of the characters away from the players, in order to follow your linear path to resolution.

A DMs job is not an easy one, and if you cannot let players try to do what they want with their characters, it just makes you a certain type of DM that there are players out there who enjoy.

What it doesn't do is make it the only or correct way to do it for all other people. If your players enjoy riding your train down the tracks, then I am glad you all are having fun. But it isn't the only way the game is played.

I have played in and run games where you A and Not A exist, just like a good CYOA book. When the players are wanting that it is good fun. I have also played in games where the players are given control to make their own decisions based on what it is they want to achieve, without a set "one and only one way" to achieve something, and often times, they come up with good ways BEYOND the example method to handle a situation I present, that are just as good or better.

Which is why I ended my first post in this thread stating that is my view, and his/her players may like it.

Just because you and your players like the way you play and DM, doesn't make it less of a railroad.

Off the tracks, the DM presents an obstacle, the players present their method to solve it, and the DM decides if that method will work; and this continues until a solution is found for overcoming that obstacle.

On the tracks, the DM presents an obstacle, then presents accepted solutions that the players must "choose" from.

 

[Umbran]

Here is where I see the problem lies. You are giving them the solutions to accept or reject. That isn't how it is done in my neck of the woods. That wouldn't fly.

Well, then there are some sorts of things you cannot have in your game - like magics the PCs don't fully understand, or that they cannot design to their own specifications.

PCs: Man, we screwed up in that fight, and now the high priest has let loose Mulchinato! How do we stop this fledgling god? He's way too powerful for us to beat in a straight up fight.

PC Wizard: I'll do some research, and see if there's something that'll do the trick!

DM: You spend some time pouring through old tomes, and you discover a ritual that would enable you to lock Mulchinato back in his interdimensional cage. However, it requires the death blood of an innocent to complete the ritual....

Now the PCs have a choice - use that ritual, or not. They don't know if more research will find a ritual that only calls for celery juice, or if such a thing can be created in time. They have to choose to pursue that avenue, or not.

The fictional world has rules. That means that eventually the PCs may work themselves into a corner in which their options are limited.