Death by Infelicitas - Is it acceptable?

[Janx]

I used to be quite hostile to the 'Elder Scrolls IV' approach, but actually running 4e I've learnt that in that system it seems best to treat the game as a story and scale threat to characters, within reason, the way you say. In other games/D&D variants (AD&D, PF, LL) I don't really do that, or only minimally, in the 'there are newbie-survivable areas, and tougher areas' sense. Even in 4e I have established areas that are 'above the pay grade' of the PCs, but they have no great reason to go there and get killed, as you say - or if they do have reason, at least they can find out it's a deadly area and I'd often give them a chance: assaulting the Zhentarim fortress of Darkhold at 9th level would be unwise, but you migh be able to sneak in, or negotiate.

As you note, there's always "within reason". If the party sets their goal to whack a high level guy, I ain't going to lower his level to meet them. But assuming the party sets level-appropriate goals, they'll get level appropriate challenges.

My ideas on my practice come from what I sense as self-selecting level appropriateness in sandbox play. A 1st level party of reasonable sense, will find stuff they can beat to adventure on. Only really stupid players attack the archmage on their first day out. So if the players are trying to select content that is level appropriate, why not smooth that out a bit for them and cut to the chase.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

If you're not going to abide by the die rolls, why bother rolling them?

 

[DM Howard]

I voted yes, within reason. The reason I say that is because when I DM/CK/GM I keep to the motto of "Don't kill the players unnecessarily, but allow your game to let the stupid/foolish players to kill themselves."

 

[howandwhy99]

Technically speaking, all death occurs from a single roll of the die or dice, usually damage dice.

I think the real question is: how much liberty are the characters given prior to the roll to avoid it or modify it to their favor? How many, how broad and how effective are the choices prior to the roll, after which it's "out of our hands"?

 

[Janx]

If you're not going to abide by the die rolls, why bother rolling them?

because most of the time, they work just fine.

And because all good processes included Rule Zero, which is, deviate from the process when a situation calls for it.

So, if the GM does run into a situation where the die roll creates a bigger problem if he accepts it as rolled, than if he just does something else, then he is within his right to activate Rule Zero to resolve the situation.

I think there is some percentage of humans who just can't fathom or tolerate ignoring a rule or process.

Just as there is some percentage of humans who seem incapable of following any kind of process.

I suspect that's where Lawful and Chaotic alignment stereotypes arise.

For the rest of us, which I assume to be a majority of the population, we function just fine by following the process most of the time, and then dealing with the exceptions when they come up.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

If a result is unacceptable, it shouldn't be an option. If 8 on a 1d8 is unacceptable, roll 1d7 instead. I'd rather take the unacceptable results out of the game before play than to ignore a result in game. Take the wandering monster table, for example. Instead of ignoring "dragon" when it come up, just remove it from the table, then it can't come up. But if it IS on the table, then ignoring it when it happens to come up would piss me off.

 

[Janx]

If a result is unacceptable, it shouldn't be an option. If 8 on a 1d8 is unacceptable, roll 1d7 instead. I'd rather take the unacceptable results out of the game before play than to ignore a result in game. Take the wandering monster table, for example. Instead of ignoring "dragon" when it come up, just remove it from the table, then it can't come up. But if it IS on the table, then ignoring it when it happens to come up would piss me off.

Not everybody has the same foresight that you appear to have.

They think that 1d8 is just fine most of the time. Until they encounter a situation where rolling an 8 yields an undesirable outcome.

With the Dragon on the encounter table, it seemed like a fine idea during the development stage of building the table, but becomes more obvious as a problem during actual usage.

The concept of Rule Zero I am advising is from general advice on process development, as advised by one business/IT consultant Bob Lewis. It just happens to mirror Rule Zero in most DMGs.

Business processes should be simpler and not hyper detailed to cover every contingency. because, as it turns out, they don't actually cover every contingency, and when a situation occurs it has unique traits from other situations. Therefore, one is advised to develop a basic process for normal situations, and allow for managers and employees to apply their own intelligence and sense to exceptional situations.

it turns out, this is also excellent advice for Game masters and game designers when developing RPG rules.

 

[the Jester]

I note with some amusement that there isn't an option for simply accepting such a roll; perhaps a bit of preselection bias?
In any case, I also like a certain degree of lethality to my games. I don't dislike save or die, for example.

Well I feel that the existing options adequately cover all the options. I'm sorry if you don't agree. Any bias is unintended.

You've probably already discussed this at length, but you don't actually have anything that is even close to "Death by poor dice luck is always acceptable".

That's my answer; I voted "Other".