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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord_Blacksteel" data-source="post: 5308353" data-attributes="member: 53082">I've read the whole thread and I've killed plenty of characters over the years in various editions and other RPG's so some quick thoughts:1) No, you didn't target the player in the first death - she got up during combat and apparently did not try to escape but instead tried to continue the battle - big mistake and a good way to get killed. The character was "blinded by rage" or something similar and died for it. It happens. If she had remained still or tried to stealthily slip away I doubt she would have been focus-fired. She made a choice, the monsters responded as you thought they would, end of story.Side Note to 1: Do you not allow players to look up rules during the game? I think if I'm using regen and I'm unsure about how it works, I'm going to look it up - the DM doesn't have to do it, let the player do it. It saves time for you and it ensures they get to know their own capabilities. If you do find out later that a rule was handled badly then I usually handwave/retcon serious bad things like PC death and it sounds like you handled this OK.2) No you didn't unfairly target her in the second one. The party failed a sneak challenge. Once they see what they're up against, it sounds like a retreat and regroup may be in order - "What they can mind-control us AND there's a 100' drop right there? EVRYBODY BACK DOWN THE STAIRS!" would be a perfectly reasonable response. Especially after seeing the party composition! Fighting flyers next to a steep drop is bad tactics if you cannot fly or hover or otherwise mitigate the fall. Assuming the party charges in anyway, when you find yourself the last man standing against 4 or 5 demons that have handled the rest of your party, then you'd better have a big bang ready to go off or you had better run - you're not going to beat them with Basics & At-Wills. She mentioned "ignoring opportunities to hurt other players" in your original post - if they got thrown off the ledge first then it sounds to me like the pain was pretty evenly distributed and she's just quibbling about the order <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Side Note to 2: As far as balance, aside from any encounter design issues,  you are trying to use a balancing system designed around the "1 of each" type of party as a baseline to balance up a mono-roled party. It's going to get weird because there are holes in their capabilities that "lots more damage" (the only real benefit from an all-Striker party) isn't going to offset. Even one leader could have made a big difference in that fight through Saves, Heals, and Defense Buffs. One Controller, depending on powers, could have made a big difference there. I think 3 Strikers + a Leader would have fared quite a bit differently in this one. This may be one of those "talk to the players" kind of things to get it resolved. Finally, no player should ever come to you with "you could have fudged it". That's not something they get to decide, and it's one reason you should never discuss or admit to fudging at all IMO. Down the road if the player holds onto this "you could have fudged it" feeling and then thinks that you did fudge it for another player, now you have a bigger problem. It's a can of worms better left unopened. If asked, you don't fudge. Period. Even if you secretly do. It's a DMing tool for you alone and requires no input from your PC's.Just remember that it you ever have a character die and the player is happy with how it happened, you've done an awesome job. The rest of the time, they're going to blame at least part of it on you. It's just the way it works.Hopefully you learned a few things and your players learned a few things and everyone is happier next time.</blockquote>

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