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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4039026" data-attributes="member: 4937">If the NPC is known to be a heroic character in his own right, this only sidesteps the problem.  The point isn't specificly that the character that breaks his neck after falling off a horse is a 20th level Paladin.  The point is that the character is classified as heroic, and then does something that under the heroic rules is impossible.  This breaks suspension of disbelief, and causes a player to lose trust in the referee ('I like good old King Thumble, and the referee just killed him 'by fiat'.  He deserves better than that.'), or else to mistrust the description ('Clearly good old King Thumble couldn't have been killed merely by falling off his horse.  Foul play must have been involved!'), or else garner the wrong lesson about the physics of the game world, ('One little fall off a horse killed good old King Thumble!  Riding horses is dangerous!  I'm never riding a horse again!'), or else lose emmersion in the narrative ('Under the rules, the way King Thumble died is just silly.  It happened merely to serve the needs of the preestablished plot, because the DM couldn't be bothered to work within the rules.  Obviously no character really has any free will.').I mean this really isn't a difficult thing to deal with.  Lets begin with the assumption that the game rules really do describe the world.  Clearly, we live in a world where healthy heroic individuals don't die merely because they fell off a horse.  The rules proscribe a sort of 'power of plot' protection to heroic characters that prevent that sort of mundane death from happening.  They don't die from falling off horses anymore than they die from slipping in the bathtub.  That's the world that the rules describe, and its natural that the players will expect you as the referee to describe that world.But lets suppose that you decide that its absolutely essential that good King Thumble die offstage from falling off his horse.  Well, that's easily enough handled without breaking the rules.  King Thumble can't die merely from falling off his horse, but he can die from falling off his horse heroicly.  So for example, I would relate to the PC's the tragic death of King Thumble as something that had mythic force:"While riding on hunt, King Thumble together with his huntsman spied a great black hart of a stature and majesty the like of which no one in the party had ever seen.  Immediately it seemed to the huntsman that a sort of madness fell upon King Thumble, for though he was never known to dally on the chase, he immediately fell to the chase of the hart with a wild and reckless abandon and soon outdistanced all of his huntsman and was err long out of sight and his path could only be discerned by the sounds of the chase and the King's horn.  Soon the chase lead into wild country outside the King's park, little known to any save the most experienced of hunters.  Then the party heard a great noise, as of the King's horse shying and a crash.  Then the growing dread which all had been experiencing at this uncanny chase, became full and complete and with a great terror the party came to the place where the King's horn had last been heard.  There they found what they had most dreaded, for the King had been thrown from his horse on trecherous ground, and fell down a step embankment into a hidden ravine so narrow and so preciptous that some of those that followed themselves were nearly cast in.  At the bottom the saw the horrid scene, the broken body of the king lying in a shallow brook, his head dashed against a stone, with his steed lying on top of him.  Even as his huntsman reached the bottom, the good King expired.  All the nation now mourns, as one who has lost a beloved father."Problem solved, and I would think in a good deal better of a fashion.</blockquote>

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