D&D 4E How have PCs died in your 4e games?

[Karmic_vegeance]

I've killed four PCs in my short career, two of which were the same character (hackneyed insertion of old sage with knowledge of Raise Dead allowing), three of which were the result of a (retconned) TPK.

The first was an encounter in KotS, on the second level of the keep. There's a couple of corruption corpses and a gelatinous cube that sneaks up on the party. Various failures occurred, and for some reason or another, the warden ended up being digested (to negative bloodied value) by the cube. There were at least three rounds where the other players did nothing to help him, heedless of my warnings, so I made it up to the guy by giving him an (almost) free rez.

Second one was a sort of "dream realm" set of test encounters to see how far I could push the PCs without their deaths. I pushed too hard. The highlight of the encounter was when the defender fell to 0 hp after their leader companion character had already died, with no second wind available. There was a wraith present, and they knew what wraiths do to unconscious bodies... That was about the only time I expect to see a player willfully beg another to kill his character.

 

[Crazy_Dragon]

So we are in the Keep in KotS and we rescue Splug, so we come to a split and the Barbarian says split up gang! I roll a 20 on a diplo check to convince him . So we go and later everyone is fighting, with me at the end of the hall way, out of nowhere comes an orc, and I get a solid crack on the head by the first shot, luckily I'm a bloodbond seeker so I shift as minor and then use a move action to get away and shot him with grappling shot(?) so he's slowed. So anyways I kill him and get to the party, unfortunately the barbarian is out of javelins so he uses my PC as a heavy thrown weapon (very not cool!) by rolling 20 on the grapple and throwning... So my character hits the Big Bad and deals max damage (d8 I think). So my character is one point away from death and I make 2 fails, and guess who shows up? well he uses my PC as a club and deals max damage, now my DM is like "WTFH?" and my character dies...

I got him back! I convinced the DM that nature spirits should should steal his life force and give it to me

 

[BrokeAndDrive]

About two months after 4e was released, our party was murdered by a young white dragon.

Its first attack was to breathe on the party. The rogue was dead immediately. The rest of us went nova, and then died shortly thereafter by getting munched on. We even tried flanking, splitting up, etc. It just delayed the inevitable.

That humiliating defeat put us off 4e for a long time.

 

[Katana_Geldar]

Killed 4 PCs in one encounter with a red dragon I was co-DMing with a friend who said yes to the Munchkin's call for PvP in a very big party of ten. Dragon ate three of them (killed during a Bite attack, so I said they were eaten ) and the fourth, the Munchkin incidentally, was killed by the other players.

Did I mention it was the first session of 4E I ran?

 

[Joker]

How do my PC's die?

By being over-confident morons, that's how.

 

[Katana_Geldar]

Forgot there was another PC I killed. It was my boyfriend, on the very first session I ran for him.

 

[KarinsDad]

I'm still at 0 deaths witnessed or administered, out of several hundred battles. I've missed TPKing three groups due to a death save bringing someone back at a key moment, though, and missed a CdG death by about 2 points...

And I don't think my players would think of me as a DM that pulls punches on encounter design (nor would they call me a killer DM - I don't go out of my way to hit people that are down for example). I also occasionally seed in stuff, like a potion of vitality in Heroic, so they have a couple of 'outs' for when things get grim.

It really is dependent on four basic factors:

1) How well the PCs are designed (this is generally corollary to "which splat books are allowed").

2) How well the PCs are designed to work together as a specific team.

3) How well the players tactically (and to a lesser extent, strategically) play the PCs.

4) PC level. It's easier to kill lower level PCs than higher level ones due to limitations on number of PC options.

Like I mentioned earlier, we had a TPK on night one against Irontooth. After a few sessions of the players understanding the game system, a death has never occurred since and an unconscious PC is rare. Not that a death cannot occur, it can. A string of bad dice rolls is inevitable for any group of players. But well designed and played 4E PCs are extremely hard to make unconscious, let alone kill. This, of course, assumes that the DM does not go out of his way to kill the PCs. A Coup De Grace on an unconscious PC can often kill any PC.

I have to assume, based on my experience and your shared experience from hundreds of encounters each, that if a DM is killing PCs on occasion, then one or more of #1 through #3 above is not being done well by one or more of the players, or the PCs are low level. I have been in groups where one or two players just don't get it and make the worst possible design or tactical decisions without batting an eye. Either that, or the DM is going out of his way to purposely kill the PCs.


As an example from yesterday, the PCs were about to win an encounter. They were hardly touched (Cloak of Courage should definitely be a Daily power instead of an Encounter power, I wish WotC would update that soon) with 5 of the 8 foes killed already in round 3. One player decides to pull out a Daily. Everyone looked at her as if she had grown a third eye. Now at level 17, players can use a few Dailies per encounter because they have so darn many. But to pull one out when the battle is going to be won in about a round and no PCs are bloodied and some PCs are not even wounded yet is just not the brightest strategic decision. That Daily will be a lot more useful in an upcoming encounter than in the current encounter that is about to be over in a round.

 

[Gort]

Forgot there was another PC I killed. It was my boyfriend, on the very first session I ran for him.

Good show

 

[keterys]

Actually, for clarity... I did get two kills before 4e came out, using the intro materials from DDXP - ie, level 1 pregens. White dragon triple attack in one case with a crit on the 3rd attack, and another a custom leader that did an attack then granted another at a bonus (ie, like Hammer and Anvil) where the 2nd attack was a crit.

Same session, same player, even.

But that was before 4e officially came out or anyone made their own characters, so I don't count it

 

[Wormwood]

We've played the Scales of War path from level one, and to date only three PCs have died: all in a single encounter (They were all turned into elemental goo at the end of Beyond the Mottled Tower).