DM's: How many PC's do you kill per campaign?

[Emirikol]

How many PC's do you kill per campaign?

I always figured 4 or so per 15 level campaign was average, but I'm finding myself taking out bunches per campaign now that our group has aged. I just don't have any mercy anymore as a DM.

I discovered the saying, "A God all mercy is a God unjust." Stick the word DM in there instead

jh

 

[Crothian]

Usually not too many. I prefer to have them face defeat in other ways.

 

[el-remmen]

Let's see:

The Sign of Four Campaign (including resurrections): 10
The Oath Campaign: 25
"Out of the Frying Pan": 4

So what's that average to?

 

[Bad Paper]

I answered 7-9, because my party is currently at 9, but they're just getting into 17th level, and have quite a ways to go. I am about 80% sure that there will be at least one more. Your poll needs more options.

 

[EyeontheMountain]

Need to define a campaign., I think.

For me, there are few deaths, and most of the time resurrections are common, or at least happen. I find myself less willingto bring people back froteh brink of death, and if the characters screw up, then they can die. Orsometimes they jsut fightthings too powerful and die also. It happens.

As a ralated note, how do your characters die? From teh amin adventure, or from wandering encounters? For me it is the wandering encounters, where I don't rally mediate much. If the table says a high CR creature encounters a low ECL party, then well, time to run boys. In that case I do give them a chance to run, but sometimes they just do not take it.

 

[Arkham]

All but one.
Damn him, only one to survive 18 levels, and then retire, without dying.

But everyone else who has played at least a dozen sessions has died, often multiple times.

 

[mcrow]

normally none, but if they (knowingly)do something really stupid, I'm not going to bail them out.

 

[stonegod]

I don't gun after them, but if they do something too stupid, or the dice are really bad, thems the breaks.

Of course, a PC just skilled the undeadified version of his old PC. Does that count as 2 or 1?

 

[Nightfall]

3-4 is my usual spread. Some times I go as high as 6. But not often.

 

[DeeEight]

Depends how little us players pay attention to details of situations with our GM. We usually find our own ways to kill ourselves that he can't help but take advantage of.

Case in point, two of us lost are most experienced and favourite characters in the same fight when instead of just writing off the loss of some gear that was bugged and always leading the bad guys to us when we used them, we tried to take on those bad guys and promptly died. In hindsight (the drive home from the game) is when I realized that my now late-character had the skill needed to remove the offending "bugs" from the guns.

Or a few weeks (or months previously) when my same character with his near godlike awareness and danger sense and everything going in his favour had to check to see if it was safe to get out of the transport, on an oil platform, during a hurricane, at night. Of course... that's the one time I fumble the roll and go "yeah its safe, you go first, i'll cover you" as the next PC gets to find out what being fired on with a big gun feels like.

We went something like 13 or 14 months of play with those characters, ever increasing skill levels and better opponents, and then lost them due to a lack of common sense on the part of us players.