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

[Schmoe]

The way to ensure that character death occurs from 1) stupidity, 2) voluntary acceptance of risk, or 3) climactic battles is as follows:

Begin by making sure that the players can't be killed in a single roll during standard encounters. Allow them to instead be horribly wounded but not actually killed by a single roll, leaving them close to death but with the opportunity to react. Death looming over a character is better than being struck from full health all the way to dead in one shot.

Then, give the characters abilities and tactical options that let them react to precipitous danger. This can be as simple as a good method of running away, or as complex as a system of once a day abilities that the characters can use to amp up their power level.

Under my system, when the characters get nailed by a lucky critical, or a save-or-be-screwed effect, the character will be horribly wounded instead of outright killed. As a result, the players will have to change their strategy from "kill the monsters without expending more resources than we can afford," to "do everything it takes to save our ally and escape." And fortunately, they'll have tools to do so.

If they don't change their strategy, in spite of having the opportunity and the means to do so, then their deaths can be blamed on stupidity or on voluntarily accepted risk. Which are ok reasons for character death.

See the change in focus? The possibility of death is there. Screw up, and you can die. Take risks you know are bad ones, and you could die. Its just that now there are also contingency plans available for avoiding that death.

And that's my take on the subject. Sorry you had to wait until page 2 of the thread to hear what started it.

Interesting. Thanks for posting this, as I had missed the original post.

Having read this, I have a couple of questions/comments.

1.) This doesn't seem to prevent people from just dying. For example, using your system, a monster with multiple attacks could get multiple critical hits, taking the character from healthy, to horribly wounded, to dead. Or three hill giants gang up on the character and take him down in succession. Or any number of other scenarios.

2.) It seems like this essentially gives everyone two "lives". Are you saying that, if a character decides to escape after the first life is gone, that he can escape without risk of failure?

 

[Raven Crowking]

See the change in focus? The possibility of death is there. Screw up, and you can die. Take risks you know are bad ones, and you could die. Its just that now there are also contingency plans available for avoiding that death.

That's one of the reasons I like Action Points. I am on-page with you here.

I OD&D, or even 1e, when a new character was 5 minutes away from being done, you could potentially drop like flies and still have fun.

When it takes hours to craft a character, you want some staying power against random death. (Speaking of which, does anyone remember the Wandering Damage Table from one April issue of The Dragon? "Cut yourself shaving; roll on the Limbs Severed Table." ) Action Points provide a cushion between you and stupid deaths, without eliminating the possiblity of stupid death altogether.

Myself, I allow the players to set the condition (within limits) under which they can gain up to 1 AP per session. This works very well for my groups.

RC

 

[Sundragon2012]

I am the person who wrote the original material which Sundragon2021 used to kick off his post.

...snip...

I quoted a large enough block of text to support the position being argued and I feel that in doing so I was more than fair in representing it. I feel that way partly because no one thus far has shrieked about my terrible mischaracterization of the anti-save-or-die position. From everything I have read about the position, your post that I quoted is a very accurate snapshot of this point of view.

Anyone reading that quote in a vacuum would probably see it as a reasonable point of view as it stands without any particular explanations regarding context. I choose the quote I chose for that reason ie. to be fair.

Notice the last thread was shut down because of pointless dialogue about the validity of a post and because it fell off into an obscure no-man's land of threadcrapping and derailing. Let's keep this thread on topic please.



Sundragon

 

[Brother MacLaren]

So long as you say to your players "some of your characters are gonna insta-die through no real fault of their own, it'll be in a good cause, though, k'?" and they're all okay with that, then that's fine.

You seem to be under the impression that I'd be telling my players what adventure we'd be running. Really, they tell me. Adventures should be things the PCs want to do, not things the DM wants the PCs to do. It's been very hard running this free-form a campaign, and my players who are used to more DM direction get a little frustrated, but it's also been quite rewarding. I want to be a set designer and a director, not a scriptwriter.

Let's say I am using the lich as the villain in my campaign and he's researching the spell Apocalypse From The Sky (BOVD). I'm not going to tell the players "What you'll have to do is invade his lair, there are no other options." I'm going to say "Here's the bad guy, here's what you know about his plans, here are some allies you have. What do you want to do?" The PCs can then research, brainstorm, and try to figure out what to do. Can they create a counter-spell? Can they find out which artifact he's seeking to use as a material component and block him from getting it? Can they just destroy his tower from far away? Can they prod one of his rivals into acting against him? Can they do some plane-hopping to get more allies?

If the PCs are running through an adventure because that's what the DM wanted to run, then no, they had no chance to avoid facing the deathtraps in the first place.

 

[gizmo33]

If the PCs are running through an adventure because that's what the DM wanted to run, then no, they had no chance to avoid facing the deathtraps in the first place.

A similar debate has come up before with the Tomb of Horrors module. I'd point out that an instant death trap could be mitigated by summoning and monster and having it pull the lever that you were worried about. Then whether or not the lever has a saving throw you are protected. Of course for every suggestion I could make about how to avoid an instant death trap (divination spells to reveal them for example) there's someone who pipes up with a "but this isn't heroic, being heroic is about pulling the levers yourself".

Some people just want to undertake the adventure, and do so using tools and methods that they think of as heroic. With your flexible gaming style, it seems like you're making it so that players are responsible for choosing their adventures wisely as well. Though what you're describing here suits my gaming style just fine, other in the past, as I've said, have levelled the charge of this not being "heroic" enough for them.

 

[Doug McCrae]

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.

In my experience that sort of choice is non-existent. Zero percent of the games I've played in, and zero percent of the games I've run, have had this level of player freedom regarding challenge level.

For my next campaign I'm intending to have a choice of at least three adventures available for the PCs at all levels (which will be a lot of work). They won't be such variable challenge levels though, what would be the point? If the PCs are at a level to handle bugbears they'll never choose the lich, so there's no point preparing a lich scenario.

 

[pawsplay]

Let's face it, a lot of movies and books create "suspense" by having the protagonists act like idiots. That's not something I want to categorically endorse. It would make a lot of damned sense for casters to use summonings and spells to handle tricky situations, acrobatic rogues should go find a ballista or something if they want to fight a dragon, if potions can be bought from the local temple then wealthy adventurers should drink them like pepsi. That's the consequence of gaming.

 

[Cadfan]

Interesting. Thanks for posting this, as I had missed the original post.

Having read this, I have a couple of questions/comments.

1.) This doesn't seem to prevent people from just dying. For example, using your system, a monster with multiple attacks could get multiple critical hits, taking the character from healthy, to horribly wounded, to dead. Or three hill giants gang up on the character and take him down in succession. Or any number of other scenarios.

2.) It seems like this essentially gives everyone two "lives". Are you saying that, if a character decides to escape after the first life is gone, that he can escape without risk of failure?

You're right, it doesn't prevent people from just dying, because they could get hit by multiple hits in one round. There's only so much the rules can do. The rest has to go to DM judgment. And as for the risk of failure in attempting to escape after the "first life" is gone, it would depend on the method used to permit escape. I just think that there should be 1) a chance to try, and 2) something to try. Action points are one option. Second Wind effects are another. High mobility and the ability to flee is another. A once per day attack that you were saving but get forced to use on an orc mook is yet another. Each has its own likelihood of success, from 100% to an attack roll to who knows. This isn't a specific prescription, its a design philosophy.

That's one of the reasons I like Action Points. I am on-page with you here.

Action points are certainly one way to get this done.

Notice the last thread was shut down because of pointless dialogue about the validity of a post and because it fell off into an obscure no-man's land of threadcrapping and derailing. Let's keep this thread on topic please.

Personally, I think you've managed the remarkable feat of threadcrapping in the OP.

Your choice to leave out the second half of my post was unreasonable. Your strategy of argumentation in the OP was to use me to demonstrate a position on how D&D should function, then to move off on your own to list a number of ways my position could be enacted, and to demonstrate that the unsatisfactory nature of these options showed that my position wasn't a good one. This argument relies on the assumption that your list is at least reasonably comprehensive.

But it wasn't. You left out one option simply by cutting off your excerpt where you did.

Do you see why this bothers me? Its as if I wrote the following:

"We should do X, by method A." and you responded,
"Some people think we should do X. Here's a quote of one person who thinks that. But how can we do X? Available methods are B, C, D, and E. All of these are bad for the following reasons. Therefore we shouldn't do X."

 

[Ruin Explorer]

A similar debate has come up before with the Tomb of Horrors module. I'd point out that an instant death trap could be mitigated by summoning and monster and having it pull the lever that you were worried about. Then whether or not the lever has a saving throw you are protected. Of course for every suggestion I could make about how to avoid an instant death trap (divination spells to reveal them for example) there's someone who pipes up with a "but this isn't heroic, being heroic is about pulling the levers yourself".

There's nothing heroic about the Tomb of Horrors, though, really, is there? I don't remember the reasons for the PCs being there, but they didn't seem to be anything beyond "get through the puzzles/traps and kill the boss and take his stuff". It's not heroism-oriented, and would be completely inappropriate for a heroism-oriented campaign. I mean, I know my players would treat it as you suggest, summon this, cast that, do X Y and Z, and they'd live (at least until the demi-lich), but the mood? It would be the mood one gets when solving a lot of crossword puzzles... That's cool and all, but that's not very... fun, for my money.

If it was about heroism, you wouldn't even be in there, though. Forcing a giant puzzle-solving competition on heroic, character/RP oriented player just sounds nuts to me.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

In my experience that sort of choice is non-existent. Zero percent of the games I've played in, and zero percent of the games I've run, have had this level of player freedom regarding challenge level.

Yes, I exaggerated it a bit to illustrate the concept. I don't imagine that you would LITERALLY have a choice between "bugbear tribe" and "lich-lord," although bugbears vs giants or giants vs lich could well be an option. But if the DM says "Okay, you've found a map to the long-lost tomb of Acerak the Insane," I would ALWAYS expect the PCs to have the option to say "We sell the map. Then we book passage to Darokin, always wanted to go there."

The best thing about RPGs is that they're so wide open. Your character can go anywhere.