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

[Schmoe]

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.

That is meta-game anger. I always find the game more enjoyable when I don't concern myself with the adventure author, but concern myself with actors in the adventure. If I was Bob the Fighter invading the crypts of the lich-lord, I would be surprised not to find some sort of death traps around. It's more fun for me to imagine that I'm Bob the Fighter, than for me to imagine that I'm Schmoe, Adventure Critic/Player of Bob.

(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).

Sure. There's a big difference between a Symbol of Death on the door to the lich-lord's hidden sanctuary, and a Symbol of Death on the back of the outhouse door at Mad Murdy's. But even in the very brief example I gave above, there are plenty of reasons for the PCs to take precautions against something like a Symbol of Death. Like you, if I chose not to heed those reasons, I would be willing to accept the consequences.

 

[Schmoe]

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.

Haha. Touche

Obviously people have philosophical differences on the matter. I've found one way to be a fun way to game that leads to very enjoyable games for every one involved. You've found another way to be the same. I'll probably stick with my way, and you'll probably stick with your way. The important part of the discussion, then, is how can a game easily support both ways of gaming?

Optional sub-systems, such as Conviction, seem like they might work pretty well. Are there other ways of designing such a beast?

 

[Grog]

That is meta-game anger. I always find the game more enjoyable when I don't concern myself with the adventure author, but concern myself with actors in the adventure. If I was Bob the Fighter invading the crypts of the lich-lord, I would be surprised not to find some sort of death traps around. It's more fun for me to imagine that I'm Bob the Fighter, than for me to imagine that I'm Schmoe, Adventure Critic/Player of Bob.

And what I'm saying is that running into a situation where I was about to be killed by something I had no chance to avoid would break my immersion in the game. All I'd be thinking about at that point was how badly designed the adventure was. Again, YMMV.

 

[Sundragon2012]

Maybe I see things like random death being an acceptable if unfortunate possiblity of the adventurer's life because I don't run meat-grinder campaigns. There is plenty of opportunity to die, don't get me wrong, but over the top, all or nothing, life and death struggles are relatively rare except in the context of a particularly dangerous stretch of storyline.

I'll don my fire suit if I have to, but I have to say this.

I might see things differently if I ran IMO garbage like the Tomb of Horrors that seems designed for no purpose other than TPKing PCs. IMO, Tomb of Horrors is one of the worst examples of what D&D can be like. Yeah, yeah classic, archetypal dungeon with no ecology built buy a lich...blah, blah, blah....I get it, but I still loathe it. That adventure and adventures like it that seem to encourage "killer DMs" and give them an excuse to pat themselves on the back and brag about how many PCs they've slain. Now, if one playing a beer and pretzels kind of game where no one give a fig about their characters, Tomb of Horrors can be fun, but to unleash that kind of senseless kill fest on players who actually care about their characters more deeply than as a pile of stats is, IMO, cruel.

My games are balanced between role-playing and combat but some of the best sessions I've had are those where no dice were needed. I think that I would be more sympathetic to the no-instant death point of view if I were a player in a Rat Bastard DM's campaign where such effects and other ways to die quickly were commonplace.



Sundragon

 

[Malchior]

Post edited out because it was insulting other users.

-Darkness

 

[Raven Crowking]

Action Points, or similar, allow the PCs to cheat death to some degree, to be in control of fiat to some degree, and to still need to worry about basilisks and medusae.

Glad to see them in 4e.


RC

 

[Wormwood]

Your character died? Ahhh too bad. Suck it up and move on. If you didn't want that to possibly happen, write a story together with your friends, or watch a movie, or read a book. Don't play a roleplaying game.

Unfortunately, my group is having too much fun to just give up because you think we're doing it wrong.

Thanks for the advice though.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

And what I'm saying is that running into a situation where I was about to be killed by something I had no chance to avoid would break my immersion in the game. All I'd be thinking about at that point was how badly designed the adventure was. Again, YMMV.

The PCs in the example above certainly had a chance to avoid the Symbol of Death -- but they CHOSE to enter a lich-lord's lair. They made the decision to accept a gamble of high risk for high reward.

Suppose the players know they have their choice of adventures:
The local bugbear tribe has killed a famous paladin and taken his magic sword.
The local giant clan has killed a legendary paladin and taken Purifier, his fiendbane sword.
The lich-lord has killed an epic paladin and taken The Holy Avenger.

Now, if they choose to go for the highest risk and highest reward... that risk should mean something.

 

[Fobok]

The PCs in the example above certainly had a chance to avoid the Symbol of Death -- but they CHOSE to enter a lich-lord's lair. They made the decision to accept a gamble of high risk for high reward.

Suppose the players know they have their choice of adventures:
The local bugbear tribe has killed a famous paladin and taken his magic sword.
The local giant clan has killed a legendary paladin and taken Purifier, his fiendbane sword.
The lich-lord has killed an epic paladin and taken The Holy Avenger.

Now, if they choose to go for the highest risk and highest reward... that risk should mean something.

Now that I agree with. What I don't agree with is if it's the choice of the one adventure or not playing at all, and something like that gets thrown on them.

 

[gizmo33]

Death happens. Whining about it is spoiled.

So is whining about whining about it. I actually agree with your gaming style and I still found this post to be hostile and strange. "Death" doesn't necessarily happen in an RPG. I played an RPG where we started off dead.

When I play board games with my kids and they say "can't you let me win?" I say no. I tell them that if I'm just going to let them win, then there is no point in playing the game.

This is how I am when I play kids in basketball. Life is just going to dunk on them sometimes and they might as well get used to it.

No, D&D is not real life, nor is it necessarily supposed to recreate the risks or the feel of real life, but if you're going to ask the DM and the players to agree to a system where the chances of failure are decreased to the point of "Awww, I don't want to die, that's no fun, I want to keep living"... there's not much point to playing the game.

Not much point of you or me playing the game because we agree on what makes an interesting game. But there are plenty of folks that don't think death makes for an interesting RPG. I don't want to play such a game, I don't want 4E DnD to treat such a game as the default assumption, and I think that people should be honest and open that this is how they run their games. Beyond that, why care so much about how other people are playing DnD? People are definitely having fun with the style of DnD that doesn't kill PCs.

There are lots of examples. We are creating a world of wimps by pampering people, trying to make everyone feel like they are a unique beautiful snowflake.

The first thing you'd notice about a world without wimps is what would happen when you told someone complaining they were whining. Rudeness is also indicative of a world of wimps, as Robert E. Howard (through the mouth of Conan) once said, civilized people are accustomed to being rude because they won't have their heads split with an axe as a general rule. If anything, the internet makes this worse. Politeness counts.

If there is no risk or conflict, there is no accomplishment, and no heroes.

I agree with you insofar as I fail to see the point in playing a game where a large part of the purpose is to survive an adventure if there is no possiblity of my character dying.