Character Death and GM Force

[Kinak]

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

A wide variety of reasons, the most common of which is a sort of social contract. I've GMed for several groups where we had a spoken agreement of "I won't kill your character unless they've done something stupid enough to deserve it, just make their lives interesting." It occurs in widely varying degrees of formality, but most GMs will explain their GMing style at some point and that forms the basis for these shared expectations.

And, sometimes, you just screwed up during prep. It's not pretty, but it definitely happens, especially when you homebrew. If the PCs go into what was supposed to be a minor encounter and it turns into a slaughterhouse because they made a tactical mistake, awesome. If it's because the dice went against them, that's less fine but I'll probably leave it lie. If it's because I screwed up when I was designing the monster they're fighting, I'll probably fix the design on the fly.

That said, I'm kind of glad mid-to-high-level D&D have raise dead effects to fall back on. It just takes too long for my players to build and, more importantly, learn a new high-level character. I'd be seriously tempted to lean on the d20 to avoid that, even ignoring the story issues.

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

It depends what you want in other areas. If you want combats to be tense and gain their tension from the threat of death, you might need to use some GM force. But if you're willing to reserve combats for major occasions or make victory mean something other than survival, then it doesn't require any recognizable force.

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

There's a whole network of factors there.

As an example, a friend of mine is running a Pathfinder game for a party of casters. Throughout the game, there haven't been many combats, but they haven't been seriously challenged since low-level. But they won't engage unless forced, even when it's spelled out point-blank that they're at no risk in a given encounter.

As an example at the other end, my current group for Rise of the Runelords has suffered three PC deaths already and will probably have more before they're through. They usually try to talk instead of fight, but will cheerfully kill anyone who stands between them and the next chunk of the plot.

I'm sure GM force and the risk of PC death filters into both group's decisions, but it's buried under so many other factors it's completely indistinguishable.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Campbell]

Thinking about it now I think it depends quite a bit on what role you want violence to play in the game. What does it mean when you draw that sword? Where is the conflict at? How high are the stakes of armed conflict? Are they the same for PCs and NPCs? There are different ways to handle this.

One of my favorite rules for making combat suitably lethal, but ensuring character death is still suitably rare come from the revised combat rules for New World of Darkness in the God Machine Chronicles. Basically it works like this:

• At the start of an armed conflict all players declare what their intent is (what they are actually trying to achieve like get away scot free, get this guy to talk, etc.). The GM declares what the NPCs are trying to achieve.
• Once anyone takes a suitable amount of damage (based on stamina for bashing damage, any lethal damage) they are broken down.
• To take any offensive action while broken down requires the expenditure of will power. What lengths are you willing to go to press on despite your wounds.
• At your option once wounded you can give in. The opposing party gets what they want and you gain will power and a beat (xp).
• If your intent is 'murder this sob' all bets are off. The broken down rules do not apply. This will probably incur a breaking point in the game.

This is definitely not that sort of rule that would be suited for a typical D&D game. These rules presume that a significant part of the conflict is willingness to kill, and be hurt. Entering this sort of confrontation says something about your character. "I'm willing to kill and die for this." Killing for killings sake also says something fairly dramatic. Facing off against a deranged serial killer is scary because no amount of force will dissuade him. When you're told at the start "He intends to kill you." it means you need to put them down or be put down. It really helps to place players in the same emotional shoes their character is in.