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General Tabletop Discussion
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
Is character death acceptable in 4e? If so, how often?
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<blockquote data-quote="kilpatds" data-source="post: 4815018" data-attributes="member: 55079"><p>I think this is fundamentally one of the issues with 4th... It's very hard to kill a PC without a TPK.</p><p></p><p>If you're willing to work at it, I know of three good approaches</p><p></p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> To take out the leader, you want a moderate to easy encounter with some alpha strike ability (Skirmishers or Lurkers). Have everyone alpha strike the target. Once he/she dies, the rest of the party then is facing a moderately hard encounter that's blown all their bullets, and should be able to win even without a leader.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Stun lock the leader(s), then alpha strike the target. Once the leader recovers the battle will procede like normal.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> CDG like mad. Bad guys provoke OAs and combat challenge to run over to the downed PC to CDG him/her.</li> </ul><p></p><p>The problem with all of these approaches is that they can be DM vs. PC, not encounter vs. PC. Another way to raise encounter difficulty a little more gracefully is the 2nd wave approach. Combine a 2nd wave with some alpha strike capability, and you might have a more organic battle that ends in PC deaths without the TPK, but you'll also have a grindy battle that takes a LOT of rounds.</p><p></p><p>To go into a bit more detail, the only time I came close to killing a PC (did kill him, but handwaved it away since it was still early in the module) was a battle with a number of skirmishers. They had to charge first, and then had an encounter close burst 1 that did a lot of damage... due to handy positioning (and that no one in the party recognized a threat, and I didn't mention it to them) 3 of these baddies charged the mage. And when they all went boom the next round, he dropped straight to negative bloodied.</p><p></p><p>That's it. The two TPKs were both late in the battle when the leader was out of heals. Everyone had surges left, but had no access to them, and then the PCs just started dropping. Once there's no access to surges, luck plays a bigger role. If a couple of PCs drop before the monsters do, the monsters get a large action advantage and the rest of the PCs will drop quickly.</p><p></p><p>PCs and monsters are imbalanced. PCs put out a LOT of damage relative to their hit points, and have a lot fewer hit points than monsters. Monsters have a lot more hit points, but do much less damage. But PCs have surges. And since they start healing at 0, surges can heal a lot. The real measure of a PCs health is his surge count. And the real resource PCs manage is ACCESS to their surges. If they don't have a massive action advantage by the time they've run out of access to surges, the battle will go very badly.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="kilpatds, post: 4815018, member: 55079"] I think this is fundamentally one of the issues with 4th... It's very hard to kill a PC without a TPK. If you're willing to work at it, I know of three good approaches [LIST] [*] To take out the leader, you want a moderate to easy encounter with some alpha strike ability (Skirmishers or Lurkers). Have everyone alpha strike the target. Once he/she dies, the rest of the party then is facing a moderately hard encounter that's blown all their bullets, and should be able to win even without a leader. [*] Stun lock the leader(s), then alpha strike the target. Once the leader recovers the battle will procede like normal. [*] CDG like mad. Bad guys provoke OAs and combat challenge to run over to the downed PC to CDG him/her. [/LIST] The problem with all of these approaches is that they can be DM vs. PC, not encounter vs. PC. Another way to raise encounter difficulty a little more gracefully is the 2nd wave approach. Combine a 2nd wave with some alpha strike capability, and you might have a more organic battle that ends in PC deaths without the TPK, but you'll also have a grindy battle that takes a LOT of rounds. To go into a bit more detail, the only time I came close to killing a PC (did kill him, but handwaved it away since it was still early in the module) was a battle with a number of skirmishers. They had to charge first, and then had an encounter close burst 1 that did a lot of damage... due to handy positioning (and that no one in the party recognized a threat, and I didn't mention it to them) 3 of these baddies charged the mage. And when they all went boom the next round, he dropped straight to negative bloodied. That's it. The two TPKs were both late in the battle when the leader was out of heals. Everyone had surges left, but had no access to them, and then the PCs just started dropping. Once there's no access to surges, luck plays a bigger role. If a couple of PCs drop before the monsters do, the monsters get a large action advantage and the rest of the PCs will drop quickly. PCs and monsters are imbalanced. PCs put out a LOT of damage relative to their hit points, and have a lot fewer hit points than monsters. Monsters have a lot more hit points, but do much less damage. But PCs have surges. And since they start healing at 0, surges can heal a lot. The real measure of a PCs health is his surge count. And the real resource PCs manage is ACCESS to their surges. If they don't have a massive action advantage by the time they've run out of access to surges, the battle will go very badly. [/QUOTE]
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General Tabletop Discussion
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Is character death acceptable in 4e? If so, how often?
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