Is D&D too PC friendly

[Moleculo]

Man my interent has been down for awhile so i havent been able to post, it seems that some people havent seen my replies about my bad wording about animosity between players and the DM. If you can handle and like the animosity then good for you, it just creates a different gaming environment. i meant that shoudl you pull punches. i, though i hated to do it, didnt fudge a roll, but did add the strength damage to an attack that would have killed a player of mine. they just made the characters, and the player rolled an uber character. playing a wood elf his stats came out to be (in order or the abilities as they appear on the character sheets) 20/18/14/13/14/11. he abviously made a REALLY good fighter. they were fighting a battle that they should have lost or at least not have beat, but came out only because they had a 4th level cleric aiding them. (they were second level). well they were not supposed to fight the 3 ogres who were just going to steal the treasure and run, but they decided to. well the last ogre is about to hit the player, makes the hit and deals him 14 damge, with strenght that would be 19. he has 5 hit points left. he knows my role. but instead of killing him off, i decided to let him stay "alive" at -9. he roles a 13 pbut says he has been doing it from the 10-20 range the whole time and that is how he made the other saves. i thought, hmm, i know he is probably lying, so i decided to let him live, mainly so i didnt hear him bitch about me "going for him" for a while (like the time i lost his character sheet on accident when we were both players, then i found it right after we decided to quite that campaign). i let him know he would have died if i added the strength damage and that from now on i roll to see if they stabalize (or i wil tell them that now that i thought of it). It is moments like that when you decide hell, realism can be suspended for a little bit just to prevent future annoyances and taking fun from the game. ill just kill him off later .

 

[Iced Tea]

Whoops, that last post was supposed to be under my account buts thats what happens when you ahve more than one person you know on en world.

 

[Tallok]

Reason why i say it is realistic is because with all of the variables and big bad guys parties have faced and criticals and all of the factors put together, there is (or should be) a chance that at least one of your characters have hit dying or dead.

Maybe it's more realistic, but it's also a lot less fun for the players

 

[Iced Tea]

that is true, its not fun for your wizard to get shredded to bits because he is caught in a whirl pool surrounded by jagged crystal shards and cant make a reflex save of 25 (except on a 20)

 

[Uder]

Re: Re: Is D&D too PC friendly

Some players like challenges.

Different people approach the game different ways. For some folks, it quickly gets boring if they know their characters can't die. In groups like these, the DM has to provide interesting and dangerous situations, or face losing players to boredom.

For me, a game without the possibility of PC death is like those awful level-treadmill MMORPGs.

Like I said before... I don't cheat (caveat: there are situations where I would fudge dice rolls, but I've never had them come up... more than a couple random faultless deaths in the same session would be one example). I let the dice fall where they may, and I feel this increases player interest and involvement, even though it makes for a more lethal game. It rewards creativity, diplomacy and good decision-making and encourages more realistic roleplaying choices if players have a sense that their characters are mortal.

 

[Kichwas]

I'm used to RPGs where the system makes it impossible, or near impossible to kill a PC, or often even an NPC.

In DnD it is not only a trivial matter to achieve a TPK, it is not considered an aberation to do so. If random factors wholly outside the control of the players -and possibly even the DM- kill off every PC, this is a non issue in the -official party line- style of managing things.

Should there be a bias for or against PCs by a GM? That's a group preference issue, not a system issue. The question on that one is not 'is DnD to harsh or kind' but 'is your GM to harsh or kind'?

Personally, I feel the GM should be a neutral arbitrator towards the PCs, but highly favoring of the players. Not the same thing btw. To put it another way, the GMs focus should be on making the player have as much fun as possible, and the player should be focusing on giving the GM as much fun as possible (most GMs get enjoyment from seeing people enjoy and get connected to their worlds and stories).

But the PCs, they're on their own.

The genre might favor them (as in Super Hero games) or disfavor them (as in Horror games), but the GM should be (IMO) neutral to them.

 

[shoplifter]

I think some of the changes with 3e made the game more PC Friendly, but not necessarily less deadly. I WILL say that in my home campaigns my players and I often take a slightly adversarial tone, mostly of the "I'm going to outsmart you" variety. I won't use insta-death traps, or ridiculously high DC ones unless the PCs are in way over their heads and should have known better.

I play non-intelligent monsters as stupid, but you'd better believe that when you're fighting that Evil Priest/Wizard/Fighter, you're going to get hurt or dead if you slip up. Intelligent adversaries WILL try to kill the PCs, and I play them that way. That isn't to say that I'll kill a character out of spite though, in fact, I tend to reward brave/valorous actions with mods on the die, but that doesn't mean I won't let them bite it if the dice don't come up in their favor.

The dice are sacred in my games, and I roll my monster's attacks and damage in front of the PCs. I figure if I can see what THEY roll, they should see what that Umber Hulk just critted them for

Of course, that leads to some situations where PCs die, but at least the players know it wasn't becuase you just murdered them arbitrarily. Its only fair that those lucky/unlucky rolls count for everyone.