Do we coddle new Players?

[Zappo]

Uh, am I the only one who's killing a lot more PCs in 3.X than in previous editions? I mean, I killed more PCs in the first six months of 3.0 than in all the Red Box and AD&D years combined. And the trend isn't going down either.

 

[Zappo]

He is always forgetting to announce he is casting a spell at start of the round

This is off topic, but - what do you mean? Wizards declare their actions on their initiative like everyone else.

 

[Hjorimir]

He is always forgetting to announce he is casting a spell at start of the round, but I'm going to let him slide for a level or two until I figure he should know better.

Flashback to AD&D!

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

This is off topic, but - what do you mean? Wizards declare their actions on their initiative like everyone else.

In 3.x they do. We are playing that OGL gem called Castles & Crusades.

 

[T. Foster]

I coddle new players in the sense of helping them with the rules and "genre conventions" -- helping them design their characters, making suggestions of things they might not think of, warning them that a particular action might not be such a good idea, and such -- but not in the sense of letting them live when logic (and luck) dictates they should die. Players have to understand that there is an element of risk in the game and that if they do the wrong things they're probably going to lose their characters -- and that this is how they learn not to do the wrong things. I'd never arbitrarily kill the character of a new player -- I'm not trying to humiliate them or scare them off and I don't want them to become callous towards character deaths or come to expect them (i.e. showing up with 2 or 3 'spare' characters, not bothering to name them, etc.) -- I just want to instill in players early on the idea that this is a game where actions and choices have consequences and that the way to survive/win is to learn to make the right actions and choices. (And yes I do believe it's possible to win and lose at rpgs -- if your character lives you win, if he dies you lose. Of course you can always start over with a new character but you won't have the experience (knowledge, gear, abilities, etc.) of the old character, and that's the price you pay for losing...)

NOTE: I realize it probably helps that I don't run "story" type games and that I play using systems where char-gen is quicker/easier (1st ed. and OD&D), and that neither of these necessarily apply to many/most of the other posters in this thread.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Uh, am I the only one who's killing a lot more PCs in 3.X than in previous editions?

Yes, and it's because you've grown old and bitter and cynic

Just kidding. I'm not in the business for that long, so I cannot make big distinctions between editions and body counts. (I did see two characters - one of them my own - felled by a single effect on sunday, though. Funny thing if the DM misses some pieces of monsters, like a frost worms death throes who does more damage on average than the wizard has hit points. It's not exactly avoidable either if you don't see it coming - and none of us knew anything about the beast - and the save for half damage was quite hard for him - not that it would have mattered, since even half damage would probably have killed him, after the thing used its breath weapon. It's nice of DM's to put characters in situations where they almost certainly die)

 

[ironmani]

What I don't do is fudge the rolls to give a new player a false sense of security. How can I ever expect them to have a grasp of balance in the game if they think that a first level character will survive a fight with ogres? Sure, there is a chance that character would survive. But that isn't the norm and I let the dice fall as they may.

If your first lvl PCs think they can take an Ogre, then by all means whack them. But where is the fun in having a party wizard killed cuz the goblin spearman maxed out his damage on the crit roll? Lvl 1 characters I usally cut some slack, because it can be a bad roll that kills them. My players dont have a "Superman" complex becuase of that, because once the get a little meat on thier bones, then know I flay it from them. I'll usally remind my players ONCE about a certain action, such as casting/shooting a gun triggering an AOO. After that, * shrugs * you knew what was coming. Yes every once in a while you have to remind the PCs whos boss, ("Oooo that smarts....roll a fort save for massive damage threshold.") but some times a helping hand is needed.

 

[Buttercup]

When I started D&D, back in 1980, with the Basic set, we had PCs die by the handful. My very first adventure (In Search of the Unknown), we had one PC die in the very first battle, in the first hallway, against some berserkers. We had another PC die in the second fight against some giant rats. The surviving PCs left the dungeon and regrouped with the new PCs. Then we went back in.

This doesn't sound like a game I'd enjoy.

Playing and DMing Keep on the Borderlands, I saw a dozen PCs die. Hell, we had a TPK when we took on the ogre as our first encounter in the Caves of Chaos.

Nor does this.

We didn't fret over PC deaths. It was a game first, and our emotional attachment to our characters was no more than our attachment to characters on a game board. Sure, we had names and personalities for our characters. And through game play we had backgrounds. So the PCs were not just cardboard figures. But they weren't "my precious" either.

Good for you, but please don't suggest that players who aren't interested in serial character death are in some way inferior.

Would new Players, now adays, be well served by going through a low-level meat-grinder dungeon, just to get over the shock of PC death? Let a new Player see characters die off a few times in an introductory dungeon crawl adventure before actually starting a "real" campaign?

I can't speak for everyone. But if, back when I was a new player, some DM had decided to kill my characters one after the other, "for my own good," I wouldn't be here on EN World today. I would have decided the hobby wasn't for me, and also that the DM who tried this tactic was a complete and utter jerk. If it happened to me now, I'd tell the DM in question to get bent, and find myself another game. The idea that players need to be toughened up is spurious at best. Maybe *you* like playing in a "meat-grinder" but why do others have to?

 

[Umbran]

As others have noted, there's some sense to coddling really new players a tad, so that they don't get turned off the game merely because they aren't used to it yet.

For me, the time used to create the character, in terms of just the stats, is not a real barrier to killing the charactger off. The tiem taken to come up with personality, however, is another issue.

I think by the standards I used to play by decades ago, many folks today are coddlers. But by those same standards, I'm not playing the same game I used to back when I started.

For many folks, in the beggining the game is/was mostly about fantasy combats and puzzle-solving. RPGs were fairly tactical games, more about the actions than anything else. We mostly explored what characters could do, what deeds or derring do they could accomplish. Character death wasn't such a big deal, because one could just as easily explore what could be done with another character sheet.

These days, I've grown to care a bit more about long-term story and who the character is, and a bit less about what they can do. If the character dies, you cease to be able to explore who the character is, and their long-term story ends. You cannot continue to have a similar experience in the game with a new character, so killing the character means more to the game.

 

[Quasqueton]

This doesn't sound like a game I'd enjoy.

Me neither, now.

Nor does this.

Me neither, now.

Good for you, but please don't suggest that players who aren't interested in serial character death are in some way inferior.

If I say something that can be taken two ways: 1= a concept to spur discussion, or 2= a personal insult to the way you play, I probably mean #1.

I can't speak for everyone. But if, back when I was a new player, some DM had decided to kill my characters one after the other, "for my own good," I wouldn't be here on EN World today. I would have decided the hobby wasn't for me, and also that the DM who tried this tactic was a complete and utter jerk. If it happened to me now, I'd tell the DM in question to get bent, and find myself another game. The idea that players need to be toughened up is spurious at best. Maybe *you* like playing in a "meat-grinder" but why do others have to?

No one (me included) has suggested killing characters for the Player's "own good". No one has suggested intentionally killing PCs for any reason. The conversation is concerning "allowing" PCs to die when the situation or circumstance unfolds that way.

I was just relating the way things were back in my early experience with D&D. PCs died. Often. That's the way things happened, through Player decisions and the roll of the dice. DMs didn't "kill" PCs then anymore than they do nowadays (except for those notorious very bad DMs).

The theory of fudging and DM-intervention to keep PCs alive was not a universal known. It wasn't that no one accepted the theory, it was that many beginning players had no concept of it.

I was offering up the experience (that apparently many here share) for discussion, not to lay down a law for the proper way to play. Most respondants here took my information in the spirit I offered it. But a few apparently took it as personal assaults on their play style. That is unfortunate. You should note that my post is full of question marks, not exclamation points.

Quasqueton