"Run away! Run away!" ... what if they don't?

[Ancalagon]

Late to the party, but I'd have them turn to the beginning of the PHB and follow the step-by-step instructions for creating new characters.


Good discussion [MENTION=23]Ancalagon[/MENTION] - thanks for getting it going!

I didn't realize that it would be such a controversy! :O

I think that *if* they decide to fight, a PC death is quite likely. The TPK danger comes if they decide to *stay* fighting after that. The monster won't pursue - it has food now! - but if they insist...

That is where loyalty becomes dangerous....

I'm also going to have the monster target the PCs at random if there are multiple targets - it really doesn't care, they all look edible.

 

[Maxperson]

1) Is this borne out through play, or is this theoretically what would happen. I.e. how many TPKs have you presided over?

Hard to say. I've been playing for 35 years. Since 3e, though, they're really rare. 3e-5e made the game easy street. Most of the TPKs I've presided over were in 1e and 2e where things were far deadlier.

2) If the former, what are the reactions of your players? Do they love it? Hate it? Shrug and just grab some d6s to roll up a new toon?

I have yet to see a group love it. The overwhelming reaction I've seen is acceptance and understanding, mixed in with disappointment. My players don't like to see characters die, but expect death to be a part of the game.

3) How invested are your players with their characters? Do they have a background and a couple of catch-phrases and are good to go? Detailed backstories to see fruition over a long campaign? Are they invested in leveling them up?

My players invest quite a bit in their characters. They write detailed backstories and develop personalities and goals for their characters.

4) Do you ever have campaign plots that hinge on a PC, even in a minor way?

Yes, but rarely. When I do, death is just as possible/probably for that PC as any others. Plots can't fail. They can only change. Years ago, before the orc invasion in the Realms was even a dream in that author's eye, I had an orc invasion from roughly the same place into the roughly the same area. There was a prophecy that the chief orc could only fail and be brought down by one of the PCs using a very specific arrow. The group made some very questionable decisions and plans and managed to lose the arrow forever. Oops! The orc chief won and took control of much of the Heartlands and the North. The campaign moved forward as having to deal with the occupying force, rather than prevention.

 

[billd91]

Hard to say. I've been playing for 35 years. Since 3e, though, they're really rare. 3e-5e made the game easy street. Most of the TPKs I've presided over were in 1e and 2e where things were far deadlier.

I'm not sure I'd agree 1e/2e were deadlier. I've killed more PCs in 3e, PF, and 5e than I ever did in 1e/2e - usually to crits, which didn't exist in the 1e/2e rules. Admittedly, the only TPK I ever inflicted was in 2e, but that was really more of a question of being executed for murdering a retired emperor than actually dying in combat.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm not sure I'd agree 1e/2e were deadlier. I've killed more PCs in 3e, PF, and 5e than I ever did in 1e/2e - usually to crits, which didn't exist in the 1e/2e rules. Admittedly, the only TPK I ever inflicted was in 2e, but that was really more of a question of being executed for murdering a retired emperor than actually dying in combat.

Every other creature in 1e/2e had poison, and pretty much all poisons were save or die. Hell, even a freaking giant centipede with it's 1 hit point or whatever, still had a weak save or die poison that PCs were likely to fail at low levels. Many of the rest were energy draining undead that usually cost you your levels permanently, but even if you managed to get your levels back, you still started over at the beginning of the level. Then you had magic which could devastate a group since saves at lower levels were so god awful and effects were so powerful.

 

[Maxperson]

Tomb of Horrors - "we can't figure out how to move forward, but there's this black hole; someone went in there and didn't come back - hey, maybe that's where we have to go."

So in they all went, one by one...

Heh. I didn't get the whole group. The first one jumped in and didn't come back. The second stuck his head in to look around for the first guy. The jig was up at that point.

 

[Lanefan]

Every other creature in 1e/2e had poison, and pretty much all poisons were save or die. Hell, even a freaking giant centipede with it's 1 hit point or whatever, still had a weak save or die poison that PCs were likely to fail at low levels. Many of the rest were energy draining undead that usually cost you your levels permanently, but even if you managed to get your levels back, you still started over at the beginning of the level. Then you had magic which could devastate a group since saves at lower levels were so god awful and effects were so powerful.

I found 3e every bit as deadly when I played it, only the cause of death was almost always straight damage from some source or other.

 

[Les Moore]

My current game is a meat grinder dungeon. The plot is minimal and PC are replaceable. The fun is in the players defeating this dungeon that in the3e days claimed many of their PC before they fled. There is a hook back to the old campaign though in that some of those dead PC now serve an Ancient skeleton warrior in death. So they will see their old guys again! I love reunions.

Personally, not such a fan of the TPK, whenever avoidable. But think about it, where would Star Trek TOS have been without their Red Shirts in the
landing party, to make the situation tense?

 

[Imaculata]

I think now that my players are high level (and approaching epic level), that the likelihood of a death of a character is going to increase. The training wheels have been off for quite a while now, and the opposition is only going to get tougher. Not just in raw numbers, but also in strategy. The players will eventually need to make a couple of difficult strategic decisions, that may be a matter of life and death.

But my players know this. They know their DM is not trying to keep them alive: Quite the opposite. The opponents they face, although balanced in regards to the strength of their party, are trying to kill them.

But I am not afraid of a character death. In fact, I think it would create an interesting bit of role playing. What happens to the water priest when he dies? Where does he go? And where would a Druid end up when he dies? Will they meet the god of death, and will he offer them a choice to come back? I can already imagine what a friendly conversation with the god of death would look like. Would he perhaps show them a glimpse of their future, should they choose life?

If my players choose to not revive their deceased character, they can start with a new character at the same level as the rest of the party.

 

[Psikerlord#]

Removing spells that return someone to life only solves the "danger" issue if the only "danger" you present in your game is death.

I don't know how many pla...er...characters I've horribly mutilated. And it's AMAZING how pla...er...characters will react to things like losing a hand, an eye, being stripped of levels, magical gear, compared to being killed. Generally speaking, one of the reasons I don't like to kill characters is because death isn't actually very dangerous.

Living on the other hand, living is very dangerous. Especially when you've got a broken leg, are moving at half speed, and just got 3 fingers bit off forcing you to make a spellcraft/arcana check each time you cast! The lengths that players will go to to see their characters restored as quickly as possible is patently astounding!

One time, I infected all the players with a "negative energy" curse. It would build 1 point of negative energy within their bodies per day until they had enough negative energy equal to their con score, and then they would perma die. Then, that night I had them all visited by demons in their dreams offering each of them the chance to save their friends, in exchange for that PC being later bound to kill one person (who wasn't one of the just-saved party members) per party member they saved.

There were 5 players.
The next morning there were 4 demonic pacts.
And the demons presented them with a list of 20 targets.
-The DM (me) subsequently laughed manically.

It was probably one of the best moments of the game. Sadly, all the characters died shortly thereafter in an unrelated prison-break...except the one who didn't make the pact. Which just meant their souls were placed into the service of these demons until their pacts were fulfilled.

So to sum this all up: death really isn't dangerous. I highly recommend mutilating your pla...er...characters instead.

But then, I'm a cat...so what do I know.

That all sounds awesome actually - and dont get me wrong, I use persistent injuries and setbacks too. But I also like a genuine threat of permanent death. I ran a sandbox however, without any overarching plot, so swapping new PCs in is easily done.

 

[hawkeyefan]

When I refer to the "goals of play," I'm referring to the ones stated by the rules themselves. Anyone adding additional goals of play to that or changing the default ones can expect different results. My players have no expectation that they will get to see the end of some plotline or whatever because there isn't one.

Okay, fair enough. I don't know the goals of play off the top of my head, so I don't know how much my game may vary from those. But I also kind of assume at least some amount of personalizing for every game.

As for there not being a plotline....how is that the case? Even something as simple as exploring a ruin and taking the treasure there is a plot. Now, my game tends to have pretty elaborate plots as things develop, but we also have very short term, basic kinds of goals that are similar to classic goals (treasure, removing a threat to the town, etc.).

I would say that nobody's looking for a TPK as a solution to anything or perceiving it as a favored result. But when the players willingly decide to stake their characters' lives on getting the XP, gold, or whatever they value and things don't go their way, the DM is doing the players a disservice by changing the stakes after the fact. "Oh, um, they actually capture you instead." I would be mightily annoyed at that because my expectation was that we'd be dead if we failed and I made all the decisions leading up to that point on that basis. I might have made other decisions had I known capture was the failure condition instead.

I don't think the stakes are always clearly established beforehand. Sure, sometimes a bad guy or monster is clearly out to kill the PCs....this may be especially true of recurring villains who have a bone to pick with the PCs. But I think in many encounters, exactly what the enemies may want is unclear. Certainly in a classic dungeon delve, the enemies are the ones under attack, so their goal is more about self defense. If they defeat intruders, I don't think that they must kill them. They may....or they may question them about who sent them and who else knows about their lair and so on. Or they may save them to cook later on....whatever.

I think with any combat, death has to be a possibility, and certainly that's the way my players approach it. If they're defeated and are not killed, it's not necessarily because I've changed the stakes. As you mentioned, nothing is set until it's actually established in game. I don't think some angry looks and aggressive behavior is enough to establish that the bad guys are dead set on killing the party.

It depends on the stakes that were set at the outset. If this fire giant battle is clearly life-or-death and the players bought into that, I would say it's denying agency that to suddenly change because things aren't going the PCs' way as the DM is negating or mitigating the impact of the players' own decisions. Don't make those the stakes to begin with if you're not willing to see it through. I'm all for other forms of stakes and my scenarios are rife with them. It would be a stupid position to take that the only stakes are life or death.

If I were running a game with your particular goal of play above (to the extent I understand it well), I would probably remove life-or-death stakes completely from the game. To do otherwise means we might not achieve the desired goal.

I don't think the stakes are established that definitively in most cases. And I would never remove PC death as a possibility....I don't think that's at all what I'm going for. In fact, in many cases, I think the death of one PC instead of a TPK is just as "effective" as a TPK. Again, this is assuming that the goals of a TPK are to maintain the established level of danger and in teaching the players a lesson about carelessness.