D&D 4E 4e How Should PCs be allowed to Die (Cinematically or Like Everyone Else)?

[JRRNeiklot]

As long as divination spells exist, they should have had a clue. Weal or Woe, Death is near, etc. Sounded like a great encounter to me.

See, I would call that an extremely badly designed adventure. Open a door and you have an 80% chance of dying on the spot? Most people I've played D&D with over the years would react extremely badly to something like that. I know I would if I was playing in that game. I wouldn't feel scared, I'd just feel pissed off that the DM (or the adventure writer) put such an obvious "screw the player" situation into the adventure.

(All this is assuming, of course, that I didn't have some kind of clue that opening this particular door would lead to disastrous consequences. If I did have a clue to that effect and just ignored it, that's my decision and I'm willing to accept the consequences. But spring something like that on me out of nowhere and I'm probably not going to play in your game again (or if it's a published adventure, I'm definitely not going to play another one by that particular author). YMMV, of course).

 

[Grog]

As long as divination spells exist, they should have had a clue. Weal or Woe, Death is near, etc. Sounded like a great encounter to me.

The problem is, then you have the players casting divination spells before they go anywhere or touch anything in the dungeon, and the adventure slows down to a crawl. Hardly an ideal solution.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

As long as divination spells exist, they should have had a clue.

Ah, yes - the classic "Cast Augury before you open every door" approach. Championed, I believe, by Conan in the book Against the Serpent Accountants.

 

[Warbringer]

I'm playing around with the idea that if you die in the encounter, you die at the end of the encounter, allowing you to react to the situation and allow your death to be memorable

 

[Jhaelen]

On the other hand, I guess I've just found that it's very difficult to frighten players without the risk of legitimate bad stuff happening to characters. So a certain amount of meta-game knowledge, i.e. the knowledge that these risks are real and not just flavor text, has a direct impact on how frightened the players are.

It's true that meta-game knowledge can sometimes increase the fear in players. But fear of the unknown works even better. Two examples:

- At the beginning of an encounter involving a (psionic) mind-flayer I asked the players to make a Will saving throw. One of them failed it, but there was no apparent immediate effect. The player was scared during the whole encounter and actually still was uncomfortable about this after they defeated the mind-flayer because he couldn't figure out what had happened and expected some delayed effect. Of course I'm encouraging the player's fears ever since by reminding him of that failed saving throw at opportune moments, e.g. by letting him wake up after a nightmare involving the mind-flayer encounter, etc.

- In my last campaign the characters travelled into an underground city where a portal to the ethereal plane had opened, so the place was flooded with ethereal, ghostly creatures (most of them actually harmless); none really matching anything from the monster manuals. However, after some minor combat action coupled with elaborate, suitably frightening descriptions while being chased I managed to scare one of the players so effectively that he was actually calling for a stop to calm down and gather his wits again!

I've also made it a habit to describe monsters and spell effects so they're difficult to identify unless one of the characters makes his knowledge or spellcraft roll.

Killing npcs in spectacular ways in the presence of the characters also works quite well to introduce some horror element without actually putting them in danger in any 'real' danger.

 

[WarlockLord]

Here is what I think:

1) Save or dies should stay. Ask any player whether it's OK to use them on mooks and most of them will say yes. As for BBEGs, I as I a DM don't mind: I always have another, after all, and most can pay for resurrection (which is also overlooked in this discussion. While 3.5 is filled with Save-Or-Dies, PC resurrection is also very common. If they can't cast it yet, it's not bank-breaking to get somebody to do it for you, or carry a scroll, or something.

2) The PCs should have a butt-saving ability. Action points, conviction, reroll, whatever, this would be nice. Although I notice that the 'saves as AC' change would seem to make saves in favor of the defender, as the opponent can suffer the run of bad luck, and I expect it's not terribly difficult to raise one's saves.

3) Hold person is a good spell (save every round), and other paralysis spells/fear/save or be screwed but live spells could have a save every round (except with the static saves, this'd still be not as fun)

And finally:

4) Make character creation faster. This will allow you to, if you actually die, to make a new character quickly, and it's easy (for me) to introduce a new character. (You find a bunch of hobgoblins with a prisoner...). I hated how in 3.5 one takes FOREVER to make a new character.

 

[Dinkeldog]

A lot of players won't, though, not because they don't not want to go there (yes that is what I mean), but because they're used to a certain style of GMing about which no value judgements will be made, where doing that would lead to "no adventure tonight", or worse, the GM bullying, cajoling, or tricking them into it.

Not to mention that if I'm DMing now, I'm likely to not have time to create an entire game world before the players ever step foot into the game. Usually I'll try to talk to the players before the last session ended and find out what they're intending for the next session so I can prepare for it. In that context, randomly changing their mind, "Yes, we said we were interested in Acererak's Tomb last time, but now we'd rather do something else completely," means that all the valuable time I took prepping the Tomb is now wasted (or at least going into the file) and may result in, "No adventure tonight."

There's still room for cooperation and keeping an open-ended gamestyle.

 

[shilsen]

On the other hand, I guess I've just found that it's very difficult to frighten players without the risk of legitimate bad stuff happening to characters. So a certain amount of meta-game knowledge, i.e. the knowledge that these risks are real and not just flavor text, has a direct impact on how frightened the players are.

I find that it's quite easy to worry and frighten players without death in the game, simply by having lots of legitimate bad stuff in the game besides death. Considering how many horrible things can happen to PCs which are far more interesting and have more long-term potential for future gaming than death, I just can't see a reason for it to be a real factor in my game.

 

[megamania]

"GUYS! We totally could have taken that dragon if we'd followed through on the plan! If you go back, maybe you can cut enough of Reginald out of the dragon's stomach to resurrect. Guys? Guys!"


This sums up my group.

I prefer a dramatic heroic and very action packed adventure. Thus when one dies it tends to be the same.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Here is what I think:

1) Save or dies should stay. Ask any player whether it's OK to use them on mooks and most of them will say yes. As for BBEGs, I as I a DM don't mind: I always have another, after all, and most can pay for resurrection (which is also overlooked in this discussion. While 3.5 is filled with Save-Or-Dies, PC resurrection is also very common. If they can't cast it yet, it's not bank-breaking to get somebody to do it for you, or carry a scroll, or something.

2) The PCs should have a butt-saving ability. Action points, conviction, reroll, whatever, this would be nice. Although I notice that the 'saves as AC' change would seem to make saves in favor of the defender, as the opponent can suffer the run of bad luck, and I expect it's not terribly difficult to raise one's saves.

3) Hold person is a good spell (save every round), and other paralysis spells/fear/save or be screwed but live spells could have a save every round (except with the static saves, this'd still be not as fun)

And finally:

4) Make character creation faster. This will allow you to, if you actually die, to make a new character quickly, and it's easy (for me) to introduce a new character. (You find a bunch of hobgoblins with a prisoner...). I hated how in 3.5 one takes FOREVER to make a new character.

1) and 4) are basically my problem:
I am not generally in favour of regular exceptions. They turn death into something meaningless, yet annoying. I don't really like that. Limiting resurrection automatically leads to problems with 4) (aside from the fact that players often begin to no longer care for their characters, and just create another "Bob, the Fighter". There is only so much creativity in each of us...)