D&D 5E Do PCs at your table have script immunity?

[Oofta]

So I'm gathering from some recent posts that the DM is not god?

Huh. I'll have to cancel the contractor for the altar I was going to have installed in my basement. Need to remember to tell my players to cancel that live goat they were going to bring for the sacrifice as well. Can we still keep the "Oh holy DM" incantation that we start the game with?

 

[overgeeked]

So I'm gathering from some recent posts that the DM is not god?

Huh. I'll have to cancel the contractor for the altar I was going to have installed in my basement. Need to remember to tell my players to cancel that live goat they were going to bring for the sacrifice as well. Can we still keep the "Oh holy DM" incantation that we start the game with?

 

[Baron Opal II]

It always seems to me the people enthusiastiac about death possibility in these discussions aren’t the people doing the dying. Or aren’t the people that spent months working on a backstory For a promised year plus campaign.

As far as backstory goes, I do feel that most "backstory" should be developed from when you were levels 1-3. Knowing where your character comes from is cool and useful and such. If someone came to me with a paragraph or so with some highlights, a complication or motivation of some some sort, that's great! But, in my mind, the most interesting part of your character comes from after you start play. If you're starting at first level, the majority of your story is ahead of you, not behind.

As to your first point, one of my rare times as a player has indeed informed how I DM. My character died in a campaign, alas, and I started to roll up a new one. However, I was on hold for a real month until it made narrative sense for my character to appear. The party had to leave the dungeon and trek back to town. Now, I could roll with needing to wait for a week until next session to get folded in, but indefinitely? No. After two weeks I found another game. Since that point, if you are present you're in. Just rolled up a character? The party finds you locked up, about to be eaten, fleeing, chilling at a camp, whatever. Similarly, if a player can't make it their character is in quantum superposition until next session. They can't do anything, really, but if they have a particular point of view, contact, magic item that is particularly important it is accessible.

I do tend to start new characters at first level, or half level of the average once the party gets to 6th level or so. It's at that point the AoEs come out and they need to survive one hit. Characters are eligible for xp with participation, and an attack roll my or against them counts. As I use an AD&D-ish xp table, levels come pretty quickly. Plus with treasure and achievement based xp as well they're up to speed soon, and have a history that's developed through play.

So, what happens if a character dies? Divine raising of the dead is possible, but often a character is maimed in some manner, or another form of loss occurs (ritual completes, prince lost, unconscious and the money train escapes). If a character loses an arm or eye, then they can gain an automail arm that can act as a shield or goblin's eye that also lets you see curses. Having some kind of magical, alchemical, or artifice solution is carries as soon as they can afford it so the party can take their mangled friend and escape.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That's my point. There was a suggestion that the DM has an equal vote, which implies that if the players want to outlaw character death, the DM has to go along with it because they've been outvoted (assuming they disagree with the majority).

It's just a really weird perspective IMHO, to think about it as a matter of "votes" and "forced".

Every actually-functional RPG group I've played in about achieving some kind of consensus about what you're playing, not voting or forcing. The less-functional groups were the ones where the DM decided what was happening with decreasing degrees of input from the players.

 

[jasper]

Script Immunity. I have had pcs die before the ink was dry on the paper.

 

[jasper]

.......
Rogue: "Those people in town were fools! There's no such thing as dragons!" (dies)
Cleric: "Oh no, the rumors were true! The dragon is too powerful, we have to run!" (dies)
Fighter: "Oh no, our cleric has died! We must avenge him!" (dies)
Bard: "I'll avenge you, my friends! The halls will ring with the ballad of your heroic..." (dies)
Ranger" "Hm. What do you think, Fluffy? Should we run?" (both die)

.....

IMC campaign after the cleric died, your car keys would be missing and Fluffy would be clocked doing 90 in 25 zone. But I have only 2 TPK and both of those were in 5E.

 

[Lanefan]

Truth be told... the annoying part for me isn't that my players don't think death can happen and thus take reckless actions knowing it'll work out... it's the few that believe that death is SO likely that their PCs refuse to actually take any risks at all and make their fellow party members do it for them all the time instead. You have an armored tank PC on the table, so the Ranger PC says "Oh good!" and spends all their time hiding and firing at range so that they don't get hurt-- even though they also have a really good AC and almost just as much hit points. But they still think they are a fragile flower and heaven forbid anyone sneaks through the brush to engage them. It's okay that the heavily-armored PC goers to 0 HP almost every fight because they're the only ones taking most of the hits, but you make one attack one the Ranger and suddenly they're all sullen and saying "Well, I'm dead." Sometimes I have to slap some sense into them by saying things like "Hey! Your tank is down and unconscious in the middle of the field and there are still 4 enemies around him. If you don't actually get down there and draw some attacks away from him, they're gonna kill this guy. Get a set of guts and get in there for once in your life, you whiny bastard!"

This kind of thing is where a lot of my disdain for the "winning and losing the board game" comes in... some players just put too much stock in "winning" by keeping their character alive at all costs that makes them do things that narratively don't make sense. They'll let their fellow party members get the crap kicked out of them without problem, so long as they don't get hurt. But as I tell them... if you and your best friend went out looking for a fight and your best friend started losing once you found one... are you REALLY going to run away and hide just because YOU might get hurt? If that's the case then why the hell did you go out looking for a fight in the first place?!?" Either play the narrative, or keep your PC home. Because it's not the other player's jobs to take all the risk while you get the rewards.

This, all day long. I call these guys "Coat-tail Riders and Passenger Joes" and I've even written a song about them with that title.

As the player whose PCs are often the ones sticking their necks out I get mighty torqued (both in character and out) when tougher and-or more able PCs stay back and leave me to it.

I've seen this happen in games I DM as well, except as DM there's not much I can do about it* other than to allow the other PCs to sort it out in character, sometimes via some good old-fashioned PvP...

* - well, I could try out-of-game to tell the cowardly PC's player how to play the character; but as I try not to tell people how to play in any other way that'd be wrong.

 

[Lanefan]

Me too. And I would certainly prefer a good memorable death if death is going to occur. I do greatly empathize with those who choose less lethal gaming. It can really throw off a campaign if you ever find yourself in a situation where none of the original PCs are among the living.

That's common practice around here - some parties are several "generations" removed from the original group and yet it's still the same overall campaign.

And in some games, character generation is labor intensive and it can be off putting to lose one for randomly for some lame reason.

Indeed, complexity in char-gen can be a headache.

 

[Lanefan]

Not for nothing, this (combat as performance) seems to be a pretty popular style of play.

First we had Combat as War. Then came Combat as Sport. And for this year's model we have - - - Combat as Performance!

( @Snarf Zagyg won't like this development, as in combat-as-performance the Bards will win every time...)

 

[Lanefan]

It's my personal feeling that the game becomes a phenomenally different game when group composition changes or at least it should. If it does not that mean the players are not really contributing meaningful. Either way that's not a table I want to either run for or play at if that's really the case.

By group composition are you referring to characters or players?

Character turnover is an accepted and sometimes welcome thing in our games, as it can get a bit stale running (or playing in) the same group of PCs for years at a time. Character turnover - be it due to character death, retirement, or whatever - and the associated changes to in-party dynamics and general tactics keeps things fresh. That said, sometimes particularly at very low levels that turnover can be frequent enough that you need a program to see who's in the starting lineup each week!

Player turnover is also an accepted fact of life. Over the course of a years-long campaign, players will come and players will go depending on what real-life has to say and-or their rising/falling/steady level of interest in the game.