The ripping of character sheets

[Kid Socrates]

Yow! I wouldn't do that to my players in a heartbeat -- it's enough that their character died, but that's like kicking over the headstone afterwards. I don't like the players-vs-the-DM mentality, and that would promote it too much in my opinion. So no, I wouldn't do that, and I'd pitch seven fits if it were done to me -- that's -my- character and -my- sheet, and I like to look back on them and remember the fun moments ("Remember when Amaril dove head-first into an otyugh? He couldn't get the smell out of his clothes for a week and had to sleep away from the rest of the party each night.").

 

[Enkhidu]

I keep my character's corpses in a folder, and one each I write a header (or cover page, if necessary!) detailing how they died.

Every now and then I leaf through them and mourn, but mostly I use them as proof of who had the most grand and spectacular death scenes.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Many, many years ago my friends and I played weekly at a local hobby store. The DMs rotated and pretty much every game was a one-shot. We had a portfolio of characters and would draw one of the appropriate level for the adventure the DM that day was running.

One of my friends had this one character that was his absolute favorite. On more than one occasion the character was killed, but next session the character would be right back in his portfolio, just the a "the 2nd" or whatever was appropriate after the name (I think he was up to "the 7th"). One DM in particular did not like the character and especially hated the fact that the player kept using him and so one day when the character was killed, the DM grabbed the sheet and ripped it into tiny pieces. The player and the DM almost began a fistfight and the owner of the store declared that we were all done for the day and kicked us all out.

I swear my friend ranted about that for at least two years after the incident and he and the DM never were able to play together again without there being some kind of trouble.

 

[gizmo33]

How would you react to this?

The DMs dedication to old-school character sheet brutalization would make me feel like a kid again. I would draw the line at having my miniature melted down with a lighter though. In that campaign, I would only play using the old cardboard chits and all my characters would be named Strongheart or Warduke.

 

[Henry]

This is called "Iron Man D&D" and I've heard of it before, just like "Iron Man Magic." (the Gathering, that is). None of us are crazy enough to actually do it, though (especially the Iron Man Magic).

If it was OK'ed beforehand (as a bit of table-rule fun), I don't see why not. But a lot of my group writes their sheets in pencil, and it's the only copy, so I'd feel a bit odd doing it.

 

[dagger]

Many, many years ago my friends and I played weekly at a local hobby store. The DMs rotated and pretty much every game was a one-shot. We had a portfolio of characters and would draw one of the appropriate level for the adventure the DM that day was running.

One of my friends had this one character that was his absolute favorite. On more than one occasion the character was killed, but next session the character would be right back in his portfolio, just the a "the 2nd" or whatever was appropriate after the name (I think he was up to "the 7th"). One DM in particular did not like the character and especially hated the fact that the player kept using him and so one day when the character was killed, the DM grabbed the sheet and ripped it into tiny pieces. The player and the DM almost began a fistfight and the owner of the store declared that we were all done for the day and kicked us all out.

I swear my friend ranted about that for at least two years after the incident and he and the DM never were able to play together again without there being some kind of trouble.

I would have introduced that guy to my knuckles..

 

[FolcoTook]

I'll throw my hat into the "that's just silly" ring. As far as my characters, the sheets are generally inside plastic sheet protectors in a thin plastic binder, so good luck trying to rip those up.

-FT

 

[lukelightning]

Ripping (other peoples') characters sheets is asinine, for many reasons.

As others have pointed out, most people keep back-ups, probably electronically. So it does absolutely nothing other than being obnoxious.

Also it's just plain rude, something only an overly macho DM who's high on himself would do.

I like to keep my dead/retired PCs for posterity too, and it's good to have a file of characters to be PCs or NPCs in another game. You never know when you might need to suddenly have stats for a 6th level dwarf rogue, so you just pull out old Walvin the Wascally.

(Note: when I say "NPC in another game" I don't mean you take your dearly departed, much beloved PC and inflict him upon some players, since everyone hates it when a DM brings in their own PC. I just mean using the stats and maybe personality of this character).

 

[Darth K'Trava]

I keep my own character sheets. None of our DMs get a copy; they look it over when we create a character but he/she never keeps a copy. Except for one guy (and also one of our DM's) who has this tendency to leave his at home at times. So there's a copy that particular DM has just in case. But none of them take the sheet when the character dies and shreds it.

 

[briac]

I agree with most everybody here, not only do we not rip our character sheets, but we will write on the sheet how the person died(disintegrated by mage, smashed in head by troll). This way when we look back years later we can remember almost exactly what happened.