D&D 5E Players Killing Players for stupid reason

[delericho]

that is why I said 80%, I've meet a few DMs that do that, but not many. I have also seen players send sheets with friends when they know they wont be there, but more often then not we are working on a 'best guess' most of the time if player isn't there...

Yep. Even as I wrote that, I knew it wouldn't be much help to most other groups. I suspect your 80% figure is about right.

Truth be told, I find it hard to wrap my head around the scenario envisaged by the OP. I simply don't play with players who would do such a thing, and don't know that I ever have. Which I suppose makes it useful to test my principle that the DM should be hands-off with PC actions versus a case that would likely kill a campaign.

there is an old sci fi show called Babylon 5...

Great show, but...

the writer JMS (also writes comics, and the old heman cartoon and a novel or two) very famously said that he had outlined a 5 year plot line from the beginning, and had even warned an actress her character wasn't going to make all 5 years early on. However when he wrote her dying, he found that another character would of course sacrifice himself for her... he said "I sat to write the scene and [he] just insisted on saving her"...

I thought that was in reference to Vir, rather than Londo, killing Cartagia?

I have seen plenty of excuses "It's what my character would do." over the years, maybe over a hundred times...

Yeah, it's an old standby. I tend to have the NPCs respond with what they would do, which tends to set players right quick enough.

(And then the player is advised that for his next character he should bring one in who wouldn't do such things.)

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

Impressive...particularly in 3e, where char-gen could be a right pain. But I have to ask, had they never heard of the spell "Summon Monster" or anything similar?

How often was the expendable one revived from the dead?

Lan-"but if the character in question somehow had immunity to fire, that'd be one hell of a tactic"-efan

We brought people back from the dead often. So often that, at one point, we made enemies of the religion devoted to the god of death; our revolving-door style of dying and coming back became seen as a mockery of their faith.

We probably could have used the summon monster spells. We were not exactly the most efficient party...

 

[GSHamster]

Have you ever played the board game Diplomacy? It's a game where you have to make and break alliances with other players. At some point during the game, you will get betrayed. It's just how the game works.

There some groups of friends who absolutely cannot play Diplomacy. It causes too much drama and hurt feelings, and can actually damage the group's bonds. Betrayal stings, even in a game. In repeated games, something like player A perceiving that player B never allies with her (rightly or wrongly) can spill over into real life.

On the other hand, there are some groups which are perfectly fine with Diplomacy. They shrug off the in-game betrayals, and it doesn't affect their out-of-game bonds.

Basically, if you have a group like the first type, PvP is a bad idea, and should be avoided. If you have a group like the second, PvP is fine. If you don't know what type of group you have, err on the side of caution and avoid PvP. Drama breaks up groups, and drama is often somewhat irrational.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I thought that was in reference to Vir, rather than Londo, killing Cartagia?

I thought it was Marcus giving up his life for Ivonava

We brought people back from the dead often. So often that, at one point, we made enemies of the religion devoted to the god of death; our revolving-door style of dying and coming back became seen as a mockery of their faith.

We probably could have used the summon monster spells. We were not exactly the most efficient party...

I had a room mate who ran a game (I wasn't in it I worked through that whole campaign) where raise and ress where so common they were in 1 dungeon used after every fight (there was a 24th level cleric, a 19/5 cleric/ranger and a 10/10/14 wizard/cleric/mystic therurge as part of a 9 player group, 6 of them had cohorts) it got so funny the DM pulled the same thing, cult of death came a calling with annilation sphears... but true ress still won out

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Still, the player pretty much decides everything about what her character IS in the first place. Including the level of "integrity" or consistency, and including the possible evolution over time.

As a general rule, I would recommend that nobody make a character who is unlikely to get along with many other characters, be it a matter of fantastic racism or any other trait. The gnoll-killer who will kill any gnoll on sight is just the example which jumped to mind, because I recently played in the Legacy of Fire campaign, where some of the pre-generated characters traits involve hating all gnolls because they killed your family and burned down your village.

Going too far can make the story feel ridiculous or unbelievable, but pretending the PCs are actually more important than the players is insane.

As a practical matter, it's okay to kill-off or otherwise offend any number of fictional characters, and nobody is going to really care. With an RPG, though, the players have all invested some significant amount of time and effort into the story and the world. Anything you do which makes it feel like those characters aren't real, or that their choices don't matter, feels disrespectful to anyone who cares.

Of course the players matter, which is why the integrity of the characters is important. When the DM (or other meta-game concern) railroads the PCs into acting out-of-character, that hurts the experience for everyone. When a new player doesn't get to play one character that might be interesting, that hurts the one player in particular. But the player could easily choose to create a different character, and it's much easier to create a character that would get along in the party than it is to make an existing character behave consistently and believably in a manner that goes strongly against prior characterization.

 

[Mallus]

there is an old sci fi show called Babylon 5, the writer JMS (also writes comics, and the old heman cartoon and a novel or two)... snip

Don't forget episodes of "Murder, She Wrote"!

I love Straczynski. I was recently thinking it's time to watch B5 again from the start. Also, I'm not too up on his comics, but I have been reading Ten Grand, which is a very nice take on a John Constantine-like character.

 

[Shasarak]

A favorite tactic? Designate a backpack the Expendable Kit. The PC who wore it was expendable for that dungeon. The backpack was filled with alchemist's fire. The PC wearing it would charge into close range near as many enemies as possible, and then the wizard or sorcerer would hit them with a fireball.

So, uh, I guess I have a different viewpoint from most people here...

My party would just buy a pig from town to load up with the alchemist fire.

I never thought about using a PC instead!

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

My party would just buy a pig from town to load up with the alchemist fire.

I never thought about using a PC instead!

The best part is the barbarian would survive the explosion at higher levels, pop into rage immediately, and begin to slaughter.

 

[Mallus]

When the DM (or other meta-game concern) railroads the PCs into acting out-of-character, that hurts the experience for everyone.

This assumes everyone wants the same thing out of the game and/or has the same priorities.

For counter-example, my group is cool w/acknowledging that we are all playing a game. Meaning we're fine with metagame concerns. Accommodating a real-like friend is at least as important as PC integrity!

 

[Shiroiken]

Have you ever played the board game Diplomacy? It's a game where you have to make and break alliances with other players. At some point during the game, you will get betrayed. It's just how the game works.

There some groups of friends who absolutely cannot play Diplomacy. It causes too much drama and hurt feelings, and can actually damage the group's bonds. Betrayal stings, even in a game. In repeated games, something like player A perceiving that player B never allies with her (rightly or wrongly) can spill over into real life.

I love this quote I heard about it:

"Diplomacy. A great game to play with people you don't want to be friends with anymore!"

Of course, I'm a serious gamer (both Boardgame and RPG), and I only play with like-minded people. We played Diplomacy every week for almost a year. Someone might be pissed for a week or so, but no long term repercussions. Mostly because everyone knows it'll happen again, and next time they might be the one holding the knife in the back =)