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

[Rolzup]

It Depends Upon The Game, frankly.

If I were to run something based upon, say, the Black Company books...yeah, death is cheap and easy and all too common.

But I'm unlikely to run that kind of game, no matter how much I enjoy the books.

D&D death, in my opinion, should be meaningful. Cedric the Paladin should die fighting evil, not because he blew a Climb check and fell off a cliff. If he does the latter, I'll drop him to negatives and break his leg...give him a minus to his AC and reduce his movement for a few days. But I ain't gonna kill him.

Seeing this discussions has really solidifed my support for some kind of Death Flag rules, so to quote rycanada....

Conviction

Player Characters have a pool of Conviction, which functions like Action points. All PCs get 6 Conviction. Conviction is replenished whenever the party has a night of complete rest.

Conviction can be used in the following ways:

Cost Result
1 Roll an extra d20, keeping the highest*
2 Re-roll a d20**
2 Take an extra move-equivalent action @
3 Take an extra standard action @

* Declare before any roll
** Declare after any roll
@ On your turn only

When a player spends Conviction, they're saying "Hey, this is important to me. I want my character to have been the one that pulled this off - or at least, put everything into trying."

The Death Flag
As an Immediate action, a player character can choose to raise his Death Flag and gain 6 Conviction instantly (even if this brings their total Conviction pool above 6).

When the death flag is raised, the normal rules for death apply. If the death flag has not been raised, then the character, if killed, is treated as reducing the player character to 1 hit point above death. The Death Flag can be lowered by spending 5 Conviction.

When a player raises the Death flag, they're saying "This is worth staking my character's life on."

And this is perfect. Let the player decide if something is worth dying for. It's exactly what I want, and future games that I run will be using some form of these rules.

 

[CleverNickName]

Death from HP Damage: Yes
Death from Traps (Non-Save-or-Die): Yes
Death from Drowning: Yes
Death from Being Eaten: Yes
Death from Slow Effect (slowly turning to stone, etc): Yes
Death from Pre-Arranged Plot Development: Yes
Death from Save-or-Die: No

Agreed. HP and/or ability damage is a much better mechanic IMHO.

 

[Stormtalon]

Anyone remember the old RPG called "Torg?" (I think that was it....). It had a mechanic where each character got a certain number of plot cards they could use at critical moments. One of them was called something like "Martyr" -- and was an option to use when battling the BBEG. It had the effect of being an insta-kill on the BBEG if it was successful, but the character who used it also died regardless. IIRC, you were supposed to at least be able to describe exactly what the doomed character did -- tackle the BBEG off of the edge of a cliff, etc.

It was an interesting system, with a solid mechanic for making a character's death sometimes mean something and make it entirely up to the player, especially since a dead character stayed that way. There was no coming back in that game.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

So, do players who don't want to die as a result of a mook's critical hit, also accept that the villian also should not succumb to that sort of death? I have seen players who whine about the evil wizard killing a PC with his save-or-die spell, but cheer and backslap each other when they use the same tactic themselves to take out the BBEG.

I have no problem with playing random deaths or only more heroic deaths, I just think it should be acceptable for the DM to apply the same restrictions to the PCs.

 

[Fobok]

So, do players who don't want to die as a result of a mook's critical hit, also accept that the villian also should not succumb to that sort of death? I have seen players who whine about the evil wizard killing a PC with his save-or-die spell, but cheer and backslap each other when they use the same tactic themselves to take out the BBEG.

I have no problem with playing random deaths or only more heroic deaths, I just think it should be acceptable for the DM to apply the same restrictions to the PCs.

Actually, most players I've talked to also hate winning that way. Big climactic fight and it's over before most of them get to do anything.

 

[Simia Saturnalia]

So, do players who don't want to die as a result of a mook's critical hit, also accept that the villian also should not succumb to that sort of death? I have seen players who whine about the evil wizard killing a PC with his save-or-die spell, but cheer and backslap each other when they use the same tactic themselves to take out the BBEG.

I have no problem with playing random deaths or only more heroic deaths, I just think it should be acceptable for the DM to apply the same restrictions to the PCs.

First,

Actually, most players I've talked to also hate winning that way. Big climactic fight and it's over before most of them get to do anything.

mirrors my experience.

And in answer to your first question, not really. The PC is there to be played by the player as his vehicle into the fictional world and his means of affecting change in it - in effect, his ability to contribute to the game. The villain is there to challenge and motivate the PCs, and through them the players.

Nobody sits out the next hour when the BBEG gets a Finger of Death at the top of the round; the GM does a death rattle, describes any contingent effects on his death (temples collapsing, that kind of thign), and somebody says "I loot the body". Play continues for all.


EDIT: I'm gonna come right out and say the thought I was percolating as I wrote this: in any roleplaying game with at least moderately intricate character creation systems, PC death is in certain ways a metagame punishment.

 

[Schmoe]

IMO monsters, spells and effects that produce a save-or-die situation for the PCs aren't scary.

I actually disagree. It usually plays out something like this, in my experience:

Player A: "Ok, now that we've infiltrated the lich-lord's crypts, we really need to be on our toes. We'll be lucky if we all make it out alive."

Player B: "I open the door."

DM: "As you open the door, you reveal strange sigils carved on the lintel. Before your eyes, the symbols begin to sway and shift, then glow with pulsing red light. You feel pain deep within your very being, as if something is trying to rip your existence to shreds. Make a Fortitude Save, DC - A Lot."

Player B: "Oh crap guys. Oh man. I need to roll like a 17 to live."

The player picks up his die with fear and trepidation and rolls...

...

Right here, at this point, there is actually quite a bit of fear in the player. If anything, these are the scariest moments at the game table.

No matter what happens, though, it leads to drama and powerful gaming. If the character makes the save and goes on to survive the adventure, he'll remember it as an extremely dangerous adventure that he was lucky to live through. He'll remember each detail more vividly because of how close he was to death.

If the character dies, the survivors will remember the adventure as a dangerous and tragic foray that claimed the life of their companion. They will raise a toast, curse the lich-lord, and sadly drink to the memory of the fallen.

 

[Grog]

I actually disagree. It usually plays out something like this, in my experience:

Player A: "Ok, now that we've infiltrated the lich-lord's crypts, we really need to be on our toes. We'll be lucky if we all make it out alive."

Player B: "I open the door."

DM: "As you open the door, you reveal strange sigils carved on the lintel. Before your eyes, the symbols begin to sway and shift, then glow with pulsing red light. You feel pain deep within your very being, as if something is trying to rip your existence to shreds. Make a Fortitude Save, DC - A Lot."

Player B: "Oh crap guys. Oh man. I need to roll like a 17 to live."

The player picks up his die with fear and trepidation and rolls...

...

Right here, at this point, there is actually quite a bit of fear in the player. If anything, these are the scariest moments at the game table.

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).

 

[Schmoe]

The problem IMO is that cinematic effects are in direct contrast with random effects.

I don't really agree. I find that dramatic, cinematic effects that come about naturally through an unbiased roll of the dice are more compelling and more dramatic than those that have been contrived. On the one hand, you have the feeling that you are taking part in something rare and special, while on the other hand you feel like you're just doing something that sounds cool because you're supposed to have cool stuff happen at this point.

I guess that sort of sounds like I'm condemning one point of view in favor of the other, which I'm not. However, I personally clearly fall into the former camp. When I was younger, I was very much a DM who fudged things to keep PCs alive for so they could continue with story and such, but it always felt fake and hollow, and I felt too much like I was the deciding factor. I have since moved to a "roll in the open and let dice fall where they may" style of DMing, and I find it much more satisfying. Sure, there are heartbreaks along the way, but that makes the successes so much dearer.

The more random you make your game, the less control you have over how cool the outcome is. The less random the game, the more a certain kind of gamer is going to feel that the game is built largely around DM fiat.

Yeah, I can agree to this. The only caveat I'd add is that, even when you give up control of the cool-factor to randomness, the game is pretty cool.

 

[Wormwood]

If the character dies, the survivors will remember the adventure as a dangerous and tragic foray that claimed the life of their companion. They will raise a toast, curse the lich-lord, and sadly drink to the memory of the fallen.

If I ran a "Tomb of Horrors" style character-shredder like that, the only toast my group would raise would be to the new DM.