I killed a character, twice!

[Incendax]

I'm looking for public opinion on a minor issue I had with one of my players the other day. At the end of every game we have a quick discussion of our favorite and least favorite part of the game. I already knew what this player was going to say because her character had died twice in this gaming session and she looked pretty upset about it. When it was her turn to discuss her feelings on the game she explained to me that she felt I had singled out her character, ignored opportunities to hurt other characters, and should have fudged the second instance so she did not die.

Here are a few details about the circumstances: The first time she died was because we misread the rules on regeneration. I was allowing her to regenerate when she was unconscious so she got up twice after being knocked down below 0. Normally I leave unconscious characters alone, but after she had gotten up twice the monsters focus fired her to true death. This was intentional on my part and I considered it a valid tactic for the monsters when faced with such a situation. Had we known the correct rules on regeneration this situation would have been completely avoided.

The second death requires some explanation. The party is four level 10 characters that failed a skill challenge to sneak past a nest of five Incubus. The battle took place in a tower that had one wall missing that represented a 10d6 fall. The five Incubus are supposed to constitute an even match for the party, but the drop increased the risk and reward by a sizable margin.

The party made several attempts to knock the Incubus out of the tower and failed every attempt. The Incubus made several dominate attempts and succeeded quite well, forcing the dominated characters to try throwing themselves off the tower. After a few attempts were made, the players started to fail their saving throws to avoid being thrown off the edge of the tower (I allowed saving throws to avoid this even while dominated). Finally three of the four players survived the fall and were back at the base of the tower.

The fourth player succeeded against every saving throw to be thrown off the edge of the tower for three turns. Those three turns gave the remaining enemies in the tower plenty of time to surround her, and beat her into unconsciousness. What I probably should have done next was have the Incubus capture her. What I actually did was have one of the Incubus throw her off the ledge down to her waiting allies in the hopes that they would retreat and regroup. I rolled very high on the damage from the fall, and she died for the second time this game.

There are a few other minor details that could be brought up, but I am going to invite the other player to take a look at this thread and throw in her opinion because I am probably presenting a biased account. Do you think I should have fudged the situation in her favor? Do you think this combat was unnecessarily lethal? Do you think it was just bad luck on the die rolls? Do you think I singled her out?

 

[Aegeri]

I'm going to thwart the thread a bit by ignoring the discussion about the other player initially, but instead I'm going to look at that second encounter. Firstly, five incubi is a really tall order for a party - in fact all monsters that dominate at will (or have it on a recharge) like they do should be used carefully. So I think that the party, combined with the long drop had a bit of a tall order on that encounter as the incubus is a really powerful creature (compare them to the similar succubus). This is where creature diversity is something that is very important, 5 incubi are a standard encounter - but this doesn't mean the level of challenge they present in that situation will be consistent.

So I think the encounter there was almost bound to kill someone, given the creatures could easily separate the party and attacking will (often a poor NAD, even for PCs) just made that even more likely. In this particular case the infamous "luck of the dice" thing happened and she got on the receiving end of it (murderously so). I do wonder why you bothered beating her character unconscious instead of bull rushing or just dominating her over the edge (Although that is a very "daemon" thing to do I concede). In that situation I would have just had her run off the edge with the daemon leaving after-wards. I mean he's turned her into a pancake, so he probably doesn't need to inflict further insult to injury. This would also have probably not killed her character either.

It's worth noting I've had similar issues, I killed two of one players characters in back to back sessions. This happens and will happen eventually to nearly anyone. Sometimes you just get poor dice or something just hates you. Often, a kind of "natural selection" occurs in 4E where monsters that target a certain defense pick those characters weak to it off (In this case, I am thinking about the Dream Control power) leaving only people who save/aren't effected. In this situation, you should allow a PC to not take a saving throw and just damage. If you did, then in the end she made a poor tactical choice that resulted in her character dying in combination with your homicidal incubi beating it senseless. Sometimes, you just gotta take one for the team.

I can name many sessions where a player, for whatever reason, just happened to get killed, beat down and similar repeatedly. Often this is just an encounter that particularly spites them, bad luck or any combination of other things. So long as you don't consistently make a point of trying to kill her every session I feel it's something she'll get over in time. At least it doesn't sound like she was permanently killed. I permanently killed two of one players characters in a single campaign in back to back sessions as I mentioned earlier.

I would suggest thinking about the diversity of monsters in encounters. Given the situation, combined with the dominate and general hardcoreness of those creatures you were bound to kill someone.

 

[Skornn2k7]

lol, you are a mean DM. You are killing girls, for shame. lol

Nah, you did what you did in a situation that looked like it went bad cuz of dice rolls. She saved, while the rest was tossed off the tower. I probably wouldnt of penalized her the first death after realizing regen didnt work the way you thought. It wasnt her fault , she played it the way you were interpreting regen. You could have taken her down to unconscious, not final death.

I would have gave her the chance to jump down, or climb down. Maybe give her the heads up that the Inc's were determined to throw her off, so perhaps she may want to do it on her terms.

Overall, it looks like it was a bad night for her, and you leveled up twice for killing a character twice in one night. lol

 

[Incendax]

You are probably right about encounter diversity. For the majority of the encounter the Incubus were intent on knocking the party out of the tower then retreating back to the open room of the tower to defend it. One Incubus even sucked up a 20+ damage attack of opportunity just to get back to the open room of the tower.

The character in question was fighting only two Incubus at first. She was clawed once and dominated once. I had her use her dominated action to try and throw herself off the tower. She saved against the fall and the dominate so the Incubus reappeared next to her. The next round, one of the Incubus refreshed Dominate and successfully dominated her. The other incubus tried to bull rush her off the edge but she saved. A third incubus finished knocking off another party member and joined the fight against her (the last remaining hero in the tower). Next round, she used her dominated action to try and throw herself off the tower and saved against both the fall and the dominate. On their turn one of the incubus had finished flying back to the tower so it was 4v1. One of them refreshed Dominate again, and dominated her. Two of them clawed her (which brought her to unconsciousness) and the fourth bull rushed her off the tower which resulted in her death (and the dominating incubus reappeared next to her dead body at the base of the tower to be annihilated by the other PCs).

 

[Aegeri]

This is where I would say that sometimes it's okay (as the DM) to tell a player that a certain course of action would be a better idea. Saving to not fall off the roof was actually not a good idea in this case, I would have suggested that she just fail the save and go down. This would have meant she wouldn't have died (most likely) and would be able to fight again. A 3vs1 against those creatures isn't a good idea to begin with, so suggesting to the player they just allow themselves to fail the throw would be a good idea. You don't have to make a save to catch yourself if you don't want to, especially when the tactical situation is that stacked against you.

I would have suggested that if they wanted the tower that badly, she should have just let them have it and moved on.

 

[TheClone]

Wait. this is 4e, she fell and died? No three death saves? With the whole party standing right next to her for healing?

And when she was unconscious, you should have captured her. When there is a possibility to have a character unconscious rather than beating him to death, use it. First, it's usually realistic. Second, it avoids frustrated players. And third, it usually gives an interesting twist to the story.

 

[Aegeri]

Wait. this is 4e, she fell and died? No three death saves? With the whole party standing right next to her for healing?

Presumably what happened is she was knocked to negative bloodied, which is instant death and would have prevented any death saves/healing from getting to her in time. It is also probable that Incendax did not expect her to die and just happened to roll lucky enough to drop her over negative bloodied. These mistakes happen.

 

[Stumblewyk]

In situations where a PC dies...I just can't help but feel that the player needs to suck it up. If adventuring were easy, and guaranteed to make you wealthy before making you dead, everyone would be an adventurer.

That being said - I don't think Incendax used any unfair or dirty tactics. Sure, the encounter make-up left something to be desired. Clearly, 5 Incubi play far more deadly than their Encounter XP level, and when you throw in a drop from a tower as a terrain hazard, the encounter's lethality ramps up significantly.

I don't know. I don't think Incendax played dirty pool but I do think it was a bad, bad situation the PCs got themselves into, and it might have been appropriate to say "Hey guys, you're not going to win this encounter. Maybe you should consider a retreat."

 

[Infiniti2000]

The problems here are:

• Poor encounter design
  1. 5 of one monster type rather than varied
  2. All monsters have a very devastating power - be careful of stun/daze/dominate
  3. Top of a very high tower and making it very easy to knock PCs off - two methods to do it. When every PC ended up off the ledge, you know it was a terribly designed encounter - actually worse than terrible.
• Incorrect "rules" usage - these could be double checked
  1. 10d6 is not correct falling damage. If it was 100ft, it should be 10d10
  2. 5 monsters vs. 4 PCs, are you sure you have the right XP level?
  3. Regenerate, but you mentioned that. How'd you make it up to her since you already knew this one? Surely you didn't just say, "My bad, too bad."
  4. Intentional killing (twice) - although not a true violation of the rules, the guidelines recommend against this, and now you know why. Is it more important to play monsters "correctly" or have fun? Of course, this assumes that in this case playing "correctly" != having fun (though it might for some people and that's fine for them, but it obviously doesn't for this player)

 

[Infiniti2000]

Saving to not fall off the roof was actually not a good idea in this case, I would have suggested that she just fail the save and go down.

This is really a bad suggestion. And, I'm not saying bad for the PC, I'm saying bad because it totally ignores the problem. The real problem here is that the encounter was designed so badly. If a PC doing very well causes her to get killed then the DM is 100% at fault. It would've been MUCH better for the bad guys to say, "We can't kill this one, let's get out of here!" and flee. The players would've loved it and been talking about it for weeks. And, what's that to the DM? Printing up some new monsters from the MB? Whoopdy do.

There's no way that the player should be so severely punished for doing so well and suggesting that she just lay down and completely ignore the fact that you're asking her to jump off a 100ft cliff to save her life is ridiculous.