D&D General If not death, then what?

[James Gasik]

Errr...I guess? Not familiar with the Black Company.

It's a long running fantasy series that follows the trials and tribulations of a mercenary band. Since they are often embroiled in war, even major characters can die, and new ones pop up frequently.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

First, as I wrote "dumb luck" can happen.

But, in this case, you were concentrating on a spell, why weren't you doing other non-concentration spells or other actions to help the other three more quickly dispatch the BBEG? If you had, maybe you wouldn't have died? Playing too passively can lead to death, too.

Of course, I don't know the whole scenario. Maybe you couldn't for some reason?

Other questions would be removing your self from LoS on the BBEG is one thing, but didn't any other other three party members know you were there? Why wouldn't you have told them when you moved to hide? Moving to look around the building, yelling to the others about things to alert them you were still ok might have helped.


Assuming they survived, none of them called out to you to see if you were okay?

Your inaction also made it so the others had no reason to suspect something was wrong when you continued to do nothing.

None of them also thought to check on you?


Maybe. Like I said, I don't know the whole scenario. Being overly aggressive is only one poor choice. Others include:

Being overly passive.
Making tactical errors.
Not using features well.
Lack of team play.

For example, your PC was a druid. Why weren't you wild shaped after you cast your spell? Then you would have had an additional buffer of hit points when you took the damage. A CR 2 beast would have given you an extra 40+ hit points.

So, I'm not saying it wasn't just "dumb luck", but 90% of the time when I see a PC die or hear about it, there is usually a poor choice made that contributed to it. I mean, you admit to playing suboptimally to concentrate on one spell (a good one in most cases of course), but that was your choice. In this case, that might have been a bad one.

Additional facts for the scenario.

1. In addition to killing me, the spell also did 52 damage to the party barbarian and mage and blinded both of them. The barbarian for 1 round and the mage for 3.
2. The party split up to do guerrilla tactics against the bad guys from different areas to avoid being grouped up. The spell just happened to have a giant area that caught me at the edge.
3. I was a wildfire druid who used wildshape to summon a fire elemental companion, not wildshape myself. This companion also died to the spell. It can fly and shoot which it was doing.
4. In addition to being blinded, the other party members were busy saving themselves from dying after the spell went off.
5. I chose to not cast other spells because I was trying to avoid detection of my own character for safety. This was my ultimate point. Not only was I not doing something to contribute to dying, I was trading offense for defense during the battle.

Finally, less of a fact and more of a play style....one thing I always do is keep my character status to myself unless my character has the opportunity to let others know how they are. After the spell, when my turn came up I just announced "I do nothing." Since this was mostly the same thing the blinded wizard and barbarian were doing the other player may or may not have suspected my character was actually dying instead of waiting out blindness. I don't think it would have made a difference even if they had because it only took 3 rounds to actually die a d as stated 2 of the 3 remaining characters were also incapacitated by the spell and the last was across the map engaging the BBEG.

 

[John R Davis]

PC death is a loss condition in a particular sort of RPGing.

If a group isn't playing win/lose RPGing, then their game doesn't need loss conditions.

Loss and lose are very different

 

[pemerton]

Loss and lose are very different

What do you have in mind?

The model for PC death in D&D is the loss of a figure in a wargame, adapted to the one-figure = one character model of RPGing. And while keeping all your figures alive in a wargame may not be enough to win (if there are other objectives/win conditions that you fail to meet), losing them all will normally be sufficient for a loss.

If a group is playing RPGs in a way that departs from the wargaming framework, then that initial rationale for PC death as a significant possibility/consequence for play also seems to have been left behind. A new one might be constructed, but it needn't be.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Additional facts for the scenario.

Cool. Thanks for the info!

1. In addition to killing me, the spell also did 52 damage to the party barbarian and mage and blinded both of them. The barbarian for 1 round and the mage for 3.

1A. Was there a fourth, or just the three of you?

1B. Could the mage (wizard??) counterspell, or attempt to?

2. The party split up to do guerrilla tactics against the bad guys from different areas to avoid being grouped up. The spell just happened to have a giant area that caught me at the edge.

2A. Splitting up is rarely a good tactic IMO, but that does depend a lot on the size of the party. Not knowing if there was more than three PCs, splitting up with just 3-4 PCs is very risky IME! While not being "grouped" might seem like a good idea, it also means you can't support each other as easily. The fact the other PCs didn't know you were down and dying is evidence of that happening.

2B. How was the spell the just caught you in the area placed? If the other two PCs were the targets and not you, it likely should of been centered between the two of them. If that happened to catch you, it happens. But, if the DM placed it so that it just caught you, but was not optimally placed for the other two, to me that reeks of abuse by the DM! Unless the BBEG knew where you were, which then of course it makes sense.

2C. Not knowing the spell or save, you were hiding behind a building. Did you gain any bonus to your save for cover?

3. I was a wildfire druid who used wildshape to summon a fire elemental companion, not wildshape myself. This companion also died to the spell. It can fly and shoot which it was doing.

I'm not as familiar with that subclass since it's in Tasha's. I see quickly from it that it should have had 55 hit points, so I guess it was already damaged?

Frankly, the summoned spirit seems a poor substitution for wild shaping yourself.

Also, a 10th-level Druid would have about 53 + 10 x CON mod hp. So, I guess you also were already injured badly? IME most PCs have CON 14, which would be 73 hp. So, even taking 52 points of damage normally wouldn't take you out.

4. In addition to being blinded, the other party members were busy saving themselves from dying after the spell went off.

Well, again, there is a lot I don't know of what is going on. One PC was a barbarian (I guess 10th-level?), probably raging, so 26 damage really should have been a major issue unless it was well into the fight and he was severely injured. Otherwise, why would he be trying to save himself from dying? If he was that injured, healing him might have been a better priority than concentrating on heat metal?

Again, on the surface, this sounds more like a side-effect of splitting up the party, which in this case seems to have been a tactical mistake.

5. I chose to not cast other spells because I was trying to avoid detection of my own character for safety. This was my ultimate point. Not only was I not doing something to contribute to dying, I was trading offense for defense during the battle.

Well, trying to avoid detection for what purpose? Was the party in such a sad state that you needed to hide during a BBEG battle?

As I said, being too passive can also lead to PC death, just like being too aggressive. The fact you were trading one for the other is immaterial since I wasn't there to see the event unfold.

Finally, less of a fact and more of a play style....one thing I always do is keep my character status to myself unless my character has the opportunity to let others know how they are.

So, during the rounds you were hiding you never called out, told others to watch out, or communicated in any way with the other PCs??? I mean, I agree players shouldn't share/declare information, but characters should be communicating with each other constantly.

After the spell, when my turn came up I just announced "I do nothing." Since this was mostly the same thing the blinded wizard and barbarian were doing the other player may or may not have suspected my character was actually dying instead of waiting out blindness.

After the uber-spell, neither of the other PCs, both blinded, felt the need to call out to make sure the others were still up? I mean, they can't see the others at that point, so finding out about the state of your allies seems like something they should have done. If they had, and you didn't answer, maybe they would have acted in time to save your PC?

Sorry, but this seems like you're saying the other PCs basically did nothing because they were blinded? I really hope that wasn't the case...

I don't think it would have made a difference even if they had because it only took 3 rounds to actually die a d as stated 2 of the 3 remaining characters were also incapacitated by the spell and the last was across the map engaging the BBEG.

Being blind doesn't incapacitate you, but anyway I doubt there is any point in continuing this.

I stand by what I said. 90% or more of the time PC death isn't just "dumb luck" but usually due to a mistake or bad tactics or poor choices. Even if it is just bad luck, that is part of life and part of the game IMO.

 

[Baron Opal II]

When there is conflict there are stakes, something for the PCs to lose or at least fail to gain.

There are many things to be lost; life, health, prestige, wealth, treasures, social standing, access to the powerful, political allies, monopolistic rights, property, &c. It should be fairly direct to remove one or more of those stakes from a game and pursue others.

 

[Medic]

So being a hero is a sucker's game? I refuse to believe it.

Overcoming this hurdle was my first step to unlocking the secrets of prosperity. The first DM I ever played with kept putting our group into sweaty situations where the lives of innocents were at stake, a fairly typical staple of any heroic fantasy. That's not to say they pulled their punches; jumping into the fray to save peasant townies was usually a suitably arduous task for us bold paragons of righteousness that left us burned and bruised and in dire need of healing. The pay was not spectacular either - it turns out that the impoverished, the young, and the ailing, those small folk who have no choice but to rely on the compassion and bravery of others, don't have much to give besides their gratitude.

It wasn't until the sorceress that I was playing got particularly beat up protecting a family of amiable albeit cryptoracist halfling yokels from the local vampire lord that I had a sort of epiphany: every round that a bad guy spends killing these soulless husks meant to approximate the behaviors of sapient beings (or "NPCs," as some call them) is a round they don't spend dealing damage to me.

Now, this may sound like a given, but it's the sort of knowledge that can be used for practical purposes when properly applied. It took some convincing to get the rest of her party to come around to her way of thinking, but when Orc Warlord Ironfist Killgore and his band of merry murderers arrived to raze the town we were squatting in, we liberated everything we wanted from the best shops (usually violently) and skipped town, aware that few would live to tell of our misdeeds and fewer still could do anything about it. Not our adventuring party's finest hour, but money is money, and we didn't have to lose a single hit point between ourselves to get it.

And that's a real teaching moment, I think. As the old adage goes, you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I'll read the rest of the thread after posting this, but to give some examples of things I've done @James Gasik ...

Well, actually, let me start by saying that I agree with some of your major points. I know that I, as the DM, will often be practically begging for the players to make their Death Saves. The story is made interesting by the risk. but it is the story of these characters for a reason, and losing one of them permanently is a problem. Not just in a "this is bad for the player" but "this is bad for me, and my plans" Character death has massive impacts on the plot lines.

So, what to do?

Well, one time, I had a character who died, and to resolve it I had them offered a warlock pact. They had died in a massive fire, and one of the other players had a backstory involving a fire demon hunting them, so it made sense to have that pulled in. They swapped characters two sessions later and ruined it all, but it was a good idea I think.

Another thing involving warlocks, is that I had a character who should have died in my "sort of single player campaign/novel" that I've been running. The readers/players had good plans, they should have won, but the dice betrayed them again and again. It was purely RNG. So I gave them some outs. I let them spend a hit die "illegally" to force themselves to stay alive, but this had consequences.

1) That hit Die was unavailable for a Month in-game. It actually just came back recently in the story.
2) Narratively, it involved them using their Pact Tome to block the attack, which had the creature destroy secret knowledge in the tome. This pissed off their patron. I made sure to let them know, that I knew it wasn't their fault, but that has led to them getting an additional quest from their patron to restore that lost knowledge.

I'm also not against consequences like scars and such, but I hesitate to do anything that permanently impacts the player. Like the example of the fighter being turned into a gnome, and no longer being able to actually keep playing their character, if you injury a character to the point where they can no longer be played properly, then your player would prefer them to just be dead.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Which is why I consider this way of playing superior. We are not attempting to create the DM's novel or the background story of a player or some players. We are literally seeing a story evolve from our game. Sometimes, the story ends well. Sometimes, it ends badly. We truly do not know. This is what makes it so fun.

But sometimes this approach has problems too.

I'm remembering one of my first campaigns. My character died in the session before we were supposed to fight my own nemesis. And it was impossible for me to come back before that fight. So, I skipped that sesssion and everyone else got to enjoy fighting the nemesis I had come up with that was defining to my characters backstory.

Sure, I could have played random guard #3, but wouldn't that have been even more insulting? "Here's your nemesis, but now you fight them as someone with zero connection to the story you've been building" And that was fundamentally disappointing because the party (who was the reason for my death) got to defeat and kill my nemesis, and that was the first and last time they appeared in the entire campaign.

I know a lot of people swear by having no plan, no plot, just what happens at the table, but while that can lead to great moments, it can lead to terrible disappointments as well.

 

[James Gasik]

It really does come down to the type of game you want to run, I guess. Some people like all storytelling to occur organically, and that's fine. But I like creating a story, finding ways to invest the players into the game world by making it their story.

And having death be always on the table does sort run counter to this impulse. But like I said before, I think what I'm missing is that the player characters don't have built in stakes often. If they have nothing to lose, then death is the only thing that makes them strive to overcome adversity, basically.

If I can persuade the players to give me things their characters don't want to lose, then maybe having things other than death as a fail state become possible. But I know it's hard to give the DM things like family members to work with- you'll be happily adventuring, and then one day, oh no, your sister has been kidnapped!

Let's just say I've seen a lot of PC's who are orphans...