Ever felt bad killing off a character?

[Boddha]

I hate killing characters as part of a random encounter, but don't want them to feel immune to danger either. If death occurs during a set encounter then so be it, but there is a feeling of loss and nostalgia when a particularly notable or long term character dies.

 

[Crothian]

Ya, but it is part of the game.

 

[DarrenGMiller]

Definitely. It is usually when a PC was particularly vivid, had a cool background and concept and/pr was well played. When the player brings the character "to life" then it feels horrible when they die. I have DM'ed for players with running characters whose deaths I rooted for, since they were just stats on a page and I have also felt remorse for a death in the 2nd session of a PC's "life" because the player did a good job bringing the character to life.

DM

 

[Darkness]

Sometimes.

In L5R, a brash Unicorn clan bushi PC once went and challenged a Scorpion clan bushi who had killed a girl dear to him (the Unicorn) in a duel.

The Scorpion, outranking the PC by a whole lot and standing nothing to gain by another duel, refused. The Unicorn tried to cut him down anyway. He knew he'd die (there were half a dozen other Scorpions close by) but that was worth it to him. So he struck, wounding his enemy severely, and was slain by the guards.

A fitting end for a brash warrior like him, sure, but I'd have preferred for him to wait for a better chance.

 

[The Shaman]

I take character deaths pretty hard most of the time.

The strange thing is that I take them much harder as a GM than as a player.

As a player, as long as the GM didn't hose my character through poor play, then I tend to shrug it off as the risk the character accepted in becoming an adventurer. I think of my PCs as living on borrowed time from the giddyup.

As a GM however, the death of a player character or a special NPC is a blow. In the case of the former, I tend to second-guess myself a lot: Did I hose the character by mistake? Did I miss a ruling, or make a clue too obscure for the players to take appropriate action? This is on my mind a lot at the moment after many bad rolls by the players in our Modern tabletop game led to a TPK a couple of weeks ago...

In the case of special NPCs, I invest a lot in their backgrounds and personalities, so it always makes me a little sad when they die, even if I created them specifically for that outcome. I certainly don't pull punches with my NPCs, but I still mourn the loss of a character that I've put real time and effort to understand and roleplay as well as I can.

 

[Evilhalfling]

Almost always, as characters only die if there are no rule or plot based reasons to have them survive. This may seem soft but raising the dead is very difficult as finding a highlevel allied cleric and 5k in diamonds within a week is difficult - last campaing had 6 deaths in 9 months and only one was returned to life.
As for serious regrets - the Barb/Sorcer who carried around some special metals for much of the game, finally forging and enchanting his own Greatsword at one time it was taken away from him and when he recieved a favor from a planar entity he asked for it back. It was only a +1 weapon but it counted as keen whenever he used truestrike (almost every battle)

And a Asimar cleric of the NE goddess of secrets. Whose mother was the highpriestess of the order (a Mystic Theurge) who had become quite evil after he was born. Of course after he was killed his mother took an intrest in the doings of the PCs - Eventually they even found out why.
They traced an assisination of one of the BBEG council and the razing of a ruined city to her.
The city was where her son died. Ever wonder what happens when a party of 12th lvl evil adventures led by mystic theurge hits a site designed to challange 4th and 5th lvl PCs? perhaps not fun to play through, but listening to the story of the d4 surviving bugbears...

 

[Gentlegamer]

Let the dice fall where they may.

If you remember him, he isn't truly dead . . .

 

[Celebrim]

I think I always feel bad about it. Killing beloved PC's off is the worst part of being a DM. In serious games, I try real hard not to do it unless the player has been given several oppurtunities to avert it. I'll even misplay monsters, avoid picking on injured PC's, and (secretly) fudge dice to prevent random criticals and such if the player has been playing well and just had a string of bad luck, and I try very hard in long running campaigns to avoid 'save or die' situations.

But ultimately, death has to be accepted. If the game doesn't include the risk of death, then the game loses its dramatic tension. Generally speaking, if you the player screw up its going to cost you. Fortunately, most groups I play with in long campaigns have a very high level of skill.

Now, when I'm running one shots that are simply excercises in dungeon crawling skill, I play the part of the gleeful DM who savors every death and add every character to my 'kill sheet' the way that some player's tally thier victories over monsters. Most of the groups that I do pick up sessions with are much less experienced than my long time gamer friends, and as such the death toll can really mount up in a hurry if the party loses cohesion. And its amazing to me how many supposedly long time players have no idea how to respond to and have no contingencies for things like yellow mold, green slime, creatures with DR, creatures with regeneration, loss of light source and so forth. So many younger players I've run sessions with seem to think an adventuring kit can be limited to a magical sword and a suit of armor.

But there is a very big difference between running a 'Tomb of Horrors' against a group of PC's rolled up solely for the evenings entertainment, and killing a PC that has been developed lovingly over the course of several years.

 

[BSF]

Heck yes I have felt bad. Wehn my players invest in a character and make the character memorable, I miss the character. Death happens and it is sometimes sad. But that often means that the player will bring in a new character that will become memorable as well. New opportunities can come from it and that can be good as well.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

I have and I haven't. It depends on the manner in which they died, usually. I won't go out of my way to kill a character, but I won't fudge, either. I don't take any glee in a PC's death, and always work with the player to create a new character.