Character Death and GM Force

[Li Shenron]

Why do GMs feel the need to adjust the difficulty of an encounter mid stream like this?

I used to fudge and readjust things behind the screen, in my early DMing days. The main reason was that I felt very insecure about my capability of running the game correctly and designing adventures/encounters in a balanced way. So if things turned for the worse, usually my reaction was to think I had made a mistake in choosing (or running) a certain monster or trap.

In time, I changed view and now I am of a different philosophy. Today I really believe that I can run the game without fudging anything, as long as I have settled with the players the expectations of the game before we started playing. It's possibly the biggest, most important decision I can make about a game of D&D, so everyone better agree.

The way I see it, there are two options: (1) players accepts death without question or (2) player always chooses if dying or not.

Players should choose based on whether they expect to be able to develop both a serious story about their PC and specialized tactics, or if they instead expect to be wanting to change often and play something different. As a metaphore, I may ask them "do you want to see a horror movie or a soap opera?".

It is obviously easier to let a player of type (1) to play in a game setup as (2) than viceversa, and if you have a mixed group you can still play together, as long as players are willing to accept that things will work differently for others.

Either way, I don't need to fudge anything, except death itself in case (2), but that's clearly the whole point and it's up-front since the start. I think when this happens, I'd work with the players to find an idea about how to replace a PC's death or a TPK with something else, in order to continue the story.

 

[pemerton]

Why do GMs feel the need to adjust the difficulty of an encounter mid stream like this?
If you want a lower body count do you need to use GM force?
What effect does this have on player behavior and decision making?

I don't need to fudge anything, except death itself in case (2), but that's clearly the whole point and it's up-front since the start. I think when this happens, I'd work with the players to find an idea about how to replace a PC's death or a TPK with something else, in order to continue the story.

I think what Li Shenron says is pretty consistent, as a GMing technique, with what I described in my post.

13th Age has an interesting rule:

Fleeing is a party action rather than an individual action. At any point, on any PC’s turn, any player can propose that the fight is going so badly that the characters have to flee. If all of the other players agree, the heroes beat a hasty and successful retreat, carrying any fallen heroes away with them. In exchange for this extraordinarily generous retreating rule, the party suffers a campaign loss. At the GM’s discretion, something that the party was trying to do fails in a way that going back and finishing off those enemies later won’t fix.​

I think this is another variant on that same general approach, but even more focused on player choices: up front and transparent without fudging the action resolution rules, and letting the players choose what is important to them in story terms, and what story sacrifices are they willing to risk in order to keep their PCs alive.

I like all these approaches better than the examples of GM force in the OP.

 

[delericho]

Why do GMs feel the need to adjust the difficulty of an encounter mid stream like this?

Occasionally, when designing an encounter I'll screw up - I'll accidentally use the stats for one type of giant in place of another, or place way too many bad guys, or whatever. And suddenly, through no fault of their own, the PCs are not just outmatched, but heading for a TPK.

In those cases, I'll adjust things to give the PCs an escape route that might not have been there otherwise. It's still up to them to take it - and if they don't, then we let the TPK stand, but I'll at least give them the chance.

The rest of the time, I'm very much of the "lie the dice lie as they fall" school of DMing.

If you want a lower body count do you need to use GM force?

No. Just assign smaller challenges in the first place.

What effect does this have on player behavior and decision making?

About a decade ago, I took the opposite tack with DMing - that I'd only kill a PC if the players did something stupid, that I'd fudge rolls to keep them alive, and so forth. And I rolled in secret to facilitate this.

Now, I roll in the open, and don't particularly protect PCs.

And, sure enough, it does affect player decision making, and rather more than I expected it would. They'll still have their characters take risks - this is still a game after all, and those risks aren't actually very great - but they take those risks knowing fine well that their characters may well die. In other games, they know that they almost certainly won't, and they thus tend to be a bit more cavalier about the whole thing.

I don't think there's any "right" answer to the question. It's all a matter of what the individual DM and individual group wants. But I do think the decision to protect (or not to protect) the PCs is one that has a significant effect on the flavour of the game.

 

[delericho]

13th Age has an interesting rule:

Fleeing is a party action rather than an individual action. At any point, on any PC’s turn, any player can propose that the fight is going so badly that the characters have to flee. If all of the other players agree, the heroes beat a hasty and successful retreat, carrying any fallen heroes away with them. In exchange for this extraordinarily generous retreating rule, the party suffers a campaign loss. At the GM’s discretion, something that the party was trying to do fails in a way that going back and finishing off those enemies later won’t fix.​

Wow. That's a hell of a good rule. I'm going to have to steal that one.

 

[howandwhy99]

I think it is very much a play style issue. Some GMs view themselves as being in full control of the game. They have no rules, so everything they do is GM fiat. This variety of philosophy leads to concepts like so-called "GM Force". Other GMs are the ones upholding the rules and making judgment calls. But what they are doing isn't up to them, perhaps partially or wholely, as the rules determine and restrict their actions. They are running the game so the others may play it.

4E actually was designed very tightly so GMs could play competitively against the players' PCs in predetermined encounter scenarios. The strength of the ruleset let the GM become a player so they might play as capably as they could using the their game-balanced forces against the PCs in an Encounter. If PCs died, it was part of the game yet still in part due to the GM. The players are more apt to accept character death like this because they know the rules are always in play. They understand they are playing vs. the DM in encounters, but one limited by the rules they are under as well. Not a DM unlimited by rules.

GMs who have no game rules restricting them are more often than not in my experience trying to dream up something cool to entertain the players. Very rarely does this include killing someone's beloved character. So they don't kill characters. Besides, wouldn't the players see it as the fault of the GM wholly every time?. The GM is in total control and they just make it look like the PCs are in danger. It's more like taking part in the movies than in a game as the situation depicted is not the situation of the game. (i.e. the DM is not relaying the state of the game board behind the screen, but simply improvising).

 

[TwoSix]

4E actually was designed very tightly so GMs could play competitively against the players' PCs in predetermined encounter scenarios. The strength of the ruleset let the GM become a player so they might play as capably as they could using the their game-balanced forces against the PCs in an Encounter. If PCs died, it was part of the game yet still in part due to the GM. The players are more apt to accept character death like this because they know the rules are always in play. They understand they are playing vs. the DM in encounters, but one limited by the rules they are under as well. Not a DM unlimited by rules.

Yes. This is an underrecognized point as to why 4e is so much fun to DM.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm in to the 3rd real life year of a campaign, at over 60 sessions. The rules are generally D&D 3.X or would be familiar to anyone with experience in 3.X (they are as different from 3.0 as 3.5 is from 3.0).

I've had 6 players most of the campaign. I've had 8 PC deaths, largely in two brutal sessions, with basically zero DM force in use. In 7 of the 8 cases, the PC death occurred when party cohesion broke down, the group stopped playing as a team, and the party became separated. In the 8th case, the PC death occurred facing the mini-boss that had been the central antagonist for the first two years of play. In that last case, I wouldn't have stopped the death but might have arranged to allow the PC to return from the dead, but the player was moving to another state and so would have to quit the game anyway. This made the death an appropriate dramatic finish. In the other cases, there just wasn't a good excuse or method for bringing the party members back, and though I had a dramatic hook possible for one of them to survive it would have seemed like favoritism in context to save one character and not one of the others.

I LOATHE PC death. It isn't fun for anyone, least of all the DM who is suddenly deprived of continuity in the story and a host of plot hooks and depth. I have only a single survivor at this point from the original party, and all those deaths take away a certain amount of value from the story. The only thing I loathe worse in an RPG than PC death is no real possibility of PC death. If DM force is being used to ensure that the PC's can't die, and that all failures are softened to something palatable to the player and all falls occur onto a softened play ground surface, then the story just doesn't feel as satisfying to me. As player who earned a death, if I knew the DM had saved me from it, the character would still feel dead to me and continuing to play it would feel like cheating.

I do 'fail foward' running a game for my 8 year old daughters who likely can't emotionally deal with the trauma of losing a character or anything else dramatic and where I really am being careful when treading around grief, loss, murder, and any other adult theme. But as a general assumed resolution method, I don't think it works for a fantasy RPG or really any game where violent combat is central to the mechanics and play.

As player in a game with other adults, I wouldn't want the game to work that way and so as a GM in a game I don't have the game work that way either.

 

[Celebrim]

4E actually was designed very tightly so GMs could play competitively against the players' PCs in predetermined encounter scenarios. The strength of the ruleset let the GM become a player so they might play as capably as they could using the their game-balanced forces against the PCs in an Encounter. If PCs died, it was part of the game yet still in part due to the GM. The players are more apt to accept character death like this because they know the rules are always in play. They understand they are playing vs. the DM in encounters, but one limited by the rules they are under as well. Not a DM unlimited by rules.

I personally feel this is feature of every edition of D&D. We could argue over how tight the rules were and how well the rules matched the stated intention, but certainly in Gygaxian D&D there is an assumption that the experienced DM provides the players directly (by designing encounters appropriate to their level) or indirectly (by clearly delineating the area of the dungeon appropriate to characters of a particular level) with balanced and survivable encounters, and that there is valid level of antagonism between the DM and the party where within the constraints of what is fair the DM is trying to 'win' and playing the monsters intelligently and creatively. Likewise, there exists 'superior play' on the part of the players that leads to their victory and reward, and character death is an outcome accepted within this framework.

In my own experience, it's quite possible to create very balanced 3.X or 1e encounters once you have some experience with the rules set. Certainly there is as much knowing how to build a challenging but balanced encounter in any edition of the game that seems to me to be an art - 4e is not an exception to this. In my own experience, where this can go haywire is when the players actions lead to encounters you never would have intended. Almost all of the player deaths that have occurred while I was wearing the hat in the last 20 years have been the result of one or more of the following:

a) The party became separated and a small portion of the party ended up in an encounter meant to be challenging for the entire party.
b) While still engaged with one foe, the party pushed forward into a new location, or fled into a previously unexplored area, or interacted with an unexplored feature of the current environment (opening a sarcophagi for example), thereby triggering an encounter with a second group of foes.
c) While in the middle of an encounter, party cohesion broke down and one or more members of the party decided to sacrifice other party members in order to ensure their own survival. Often this involves the strategy, "I don't have to run faster than the monster, I just have to run faster than you." Or one or more members of the party while in the middle of an encounter decide to pursue their own ends rather than assist other members of the party, such as collecting treasure while the fight is still underway.
d) The party gets into an encounter where they lack metagame understanding of the foe (or perhaps false metagame understanding), and becomes confused and paniced, taking wildly inappropriate actions - deliberately switching to weapons which in fact are ineffectual against the monster when their normal weapons are sufficient, not switching to an alternate strategy despite hints their normal attacks are failing to make headway, failing to make an attack at all and in effect perpetually delaying action or otherwise generally taking a wait and see attitude while their allies are in mortal danger, turning non-undead or failing turn undead, choosing to perform spells that offer no immediate benefit, and so forth. Basically, highly suboptimal play as a result of having the resources to win, but not recognizing that they do. This also typically leads to party cohesion breaking down.

I've never DMed 4e, but I imagine that the same sort of general issues can occur if the game is played out in an organic fashion. Door A may have a wyvern, and door B a hydra - neither of which is a threat by itself. However, you may find that the PC's having opened door A, convince themselves that opening door B before dealing with the wyvern is a great idea. At that point, you get PC deaths or else you use some sort of DM force to save them - even if it is only strongly hinting that opening door B is a terrible idea.

 

[TerraDave]

4E IS easier to come up with balanced encounters...and PCs are very resilient, so you can really unload on them. (4E's problem is that it tends to push all encounters into epic battles, but that's another story).

I have still used a bit of GM force. A few times (over a period of years) to avoid a TPK that shouldn't be, and in each case this involved an NPC doing something maybe surprising....but maybe not impossible.

I have also tweaked monster stats that just felt off. Again in 4E i think this is easier as monster math tends to be more transparent (but can still be off).

SNIP

a) The party became separated and a small portion of the party ended up in an encounter meant to be challenging for the entire party.
b) While still engaged with one foe, the party pushed forward into a new location, or fled into a previously unexplored area, or interacted with an unexplored feature of the current environment (opening a sarcophagi for example), thereby triggering an encounter with a second group of foes.
c) While in the middle of an encounter, party cohesion broke down and one or more members of the party decided to sacrifice other party members in order to ensure their own survival. Often this involves the strategy, "I don't have to run faster than the monster, I just have to run faster than you." Or one or more members of the party while in the middle of an encounter decide to pursue their own ends rather than assist other members of the party, such as collecting treasure while the fight is still underway.
d) The party gets into an encounter where they lack metagame understanding of the foe (or perhaps false metagame understanding), and becomes confused and paniced, taking wildly inappropriate actions - deliberately switching to weapons which in fact are ineffectual against the monster when their normal weapons are sufficient, not switching to an alternate strategy despite hints their normal attacks are failing to make headway, failing to make an attack at all and in effect perpetually delaying action or otherwise generally taking a wait and see attitude while their allies are in mortal danger, turning non-undead or failing turn undead, choosing to perform spells that offer no immediate benefit, and so forth. Basically, highly suboptimal play as a result of having the resources to win, but not recognizing that they do. This also typically leads to party cohesion breaking down.

All of these are cases that yes, probably should lead to PC death. Maybe if the reason for the choice was somehow out of the normal course of play/metagamey, like the party is short or split because a player didn't show up..but otherwise, its good bye.

 

[Hussar]

Honestly, my two biggest sources of PC death in 3e were Save or Die or critical hits from the monsters.

IOW, the really swingy ends of the 3e system.