How would you handle this situation?

[Ellie_the_Elf]

Last week we had something come up in the game I run which I wasn't entirely happy with the way I handled- I'm wondering how others would handle this situation?

The party were fighting their nemesis, an epic wizard who's been annoying them for pretty much the entire campaign, As such, everyone, pcs and npcs alike. was extensively buffed up with large numbers of spells when combat was joined. And it was a fairly complicated combat anyway- basically two separate fights going on in one place simultaneously.

After many rounds of mostly ranged magical combat the evil wizard retreated to the place where one of the party was lying helpless, inside a leomund's tiny hut, to coup de grace. The party bard and fighter gave chase and arrived before the wizard's next action. The (3.0 hasted) wizard used his next action to finger of death the fighter wizard and feeblemind the bard- both failed their saves. Another round went by and the helpless pc was dead, too following a successful coup de grace. The two remaining party members made it to the hut shortly afterwards, and battle was rejoined- at which point the fighter-wizards player informed me that the evil wizard couldn't have got his spells off due to the hut's size and the fact that he (fighter-wizard) had had a silence spell cast on him which was still active at the time of his death. After some checking mini positions, we concluded this to be correct.

I was under pressure from the players of the three dead pcs to rewind to the round where the first two deaths had occured- which I did. I announced that the evil wizard had teleported away, instead of going into the hut as a result.
All the players were happy with this, of course because it meant they lived- I think I could have handled it far better.

Which brings me to my question, if you've read this far- what would you do in that situation?

Ellie

 

[Bayushi Seikuro]

Ouch.

Generally, in games I've played in or have run as a GM, once it goes to the next round, too bad. We generally work on a guideline that if you forget that you have silence cast on you, and don't fuss about it... tough noogies. However, we usually don't run into those problems. We usually run into the 'Oh, I forgot to do my (type)-bane damage to it...' or 'I forgot to use my spell-parry ability'...

But we make exceptions. As long as everyone was happy, and they werent upset that the BBEG teleported away instead of taking his exact actions all over again (so they were better prepped), then it's all good.

 

[The Amazing Dingo]

It was a mistake but since everyone seemed to walk away happy, then everything seems good.

I'm in the same boat as Bayushi: once the round is complete then that is it. If you forgot, then oh so sorry (of course, the same applies to me as the DM). Of course, exceptions are made and I think I would have made an exception with that since it would seem to have been a fairly significant mistake with some lasting consequences.

And besides, the baddie lived to prepare a Silent Finger of Death the next time around.

 

[dvvega]

I allow some "rewinding" depending on the situation. In your case, 3 PCs were killed due to the forgetfulness of the silenced character.

This is not a great outcome for the party, and its not like the character had to "activate" the silence on a round by round basis. So what you did was what I would have done.

For things like Dodge, whereby it says you must declare on your turn who you are Dodging against I don't allow a "rewind" since it specifically states that it is up to the player.

However, if players started "forgetting" about their spells a lot - essentially waiting to see the outcome before play the "silence" card then I would start becoming a crusty DM and enforce a no rewind.

 

[BlackSilver]

Seems as thou you handled it fairly. You made an error, understood that and your Players allowed you to correct it without problem- well done.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Hi Ellie_the_elf,

I thought rewinding it was fine. No one likes a DM who kills a PC by mistake. That's just not cricket.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[argo]

Once a roll has been made and the check resolved, you should never retcon in order to correct a mistake.

Now generally I adhere to that advice prety strictly. Retconning can be just about the most annoying thing in the game if you let it get out of control. However, every rule has exceptions and in this case preventable PC death is one of them. Espically since the player pointed out the error within a round or two (I probably wouldn't have retconned if he had only remembered the error after the battle was over).

Seems like you did a good job to me.

 

[BSF]

I probably would have done something similar in this case. It was one missed detail with a huge affect and you couldn't just "do over", you had to adjust to make the situation acceptable.

The better question though is what did you do to avoid this in the future? You might consider something along the lines of the Status Log over on d20srd.org. This might make it easier for everyon to keep track of what they have going on spellwise at any given time.

 

[Monte At Home]

If everyone walked away satisfied you did your job perfectly.

 

[the Jester]

I'm pretty dead set against a retcon, but in those circumstances... wow, that's rough.

However- I think I'd let the dead stay dead, based on something that happened last game in our group.

The sorcerer pc was at -2 and got swallowed by a very nasty creature, the ur-fish. When the ur-fish's turn rolled around, I forgot to roll damage on the swallowed sorcerer, and on his turn his pseudodragon familiar poured a potion of cure moderates down his throat, waking him up and allowing him to teleport to safely.

Ooops.... I forgot to roll the 2d6+12 (or whatever it was, don't recall precisely off hand) points of 'you're swallowed!' damage. Which, as he was below 0, would have instantly killed him.

If I'll let a pc live through the lack of retconning, I think I'd also let 'em die.

But nothing quite like that has ever come up- and given that three pcs died via the forgetfulness of one, I'd really have a hard time with that one. I would like to think that someone would have pointed out the silence, would have recalled... but who knows?

That's a tough one.