Is it Fair?

[starwolf]

Any chance the character could come back as a Terrkot?

Ooooh, the posibilities.....

 

[Walter_J]

You did fine and, if there is too much grumbling, you can always point out that there are worse things than death in FRPG's! You could have taken the PC captive (especially if you could come up with a reason why the ratmen might want a captured PC)and then do something devious and nasty. For example, replace the PC with a doppleganger assassin or something similar.

Long, long ago in a 1E campaign I once snagged the party's big barbarian hero in a web spell. The encounter was with several low level MU's. Being evil and intelligent, the decided to charm him. Lots of fun.

Oh, btw, be careful letting a player actually play an assassin who has infiltrated the group in the guise of a comrad. It works darn well. Everytime that happened in a group I was playing in, it always meant the end of the party and we never knew what hit us until the end...

 

[Bonedagger]

You feel guilty? Hmm... Are there something you are not telling us?

 

[Nightfall]

Well, I was running the sewer fiend today. The party gets to the big encoutner where they fight some rat men and their arcane spellcasting master. Now this dude has virtually no combat related spells, but he gets a sleep spell off and gets one of the players.

The party moves back into the hallway to fight them in coridors instead of in the open.

The sleeping character is dragged into the room and his throat slit.

Is that realistic and fair or should something else have happened?

Nope that sounds pretty much like what a Red Witch or another ratman type would do. Just me Joe, you did fine. I doubt the ratmen would have surrender OR tried to negoitate that much. They might have fled, leaving some of their better fighters behind to deal with the party, but casting a sleep spell and then slitting the guys through, sounds very ratman like.

 

[JoeGKushner]

You feel guilty? Hmm... Are there something you are not telling us?

His character, Rannos the Red, was a multi-class fighter/rogue with lots of great background and role playing potential was very high because he hailed from Shackletown.

The player is the type who when a character dies, unless it was bad die rolls or something stupid, doesn't like ressurection so it's like a small chapter of cool things that could've been done has closed.

 

[Nightfall]

*smirks* You'd think he'd allow Madriel to make an exception for him. After all, if he's not alive, he's not going to complete his life's work...unless Nemorga said otherwise.

I'm sorry he's dead, but hey, lots of interesting characters die. It's part of the adventuring life. Not everyone makes it back, ESPECIALLY in the Scarred Lands.

 

[Ave Rage]

I'd punish the party. They let an innocent man get slaughtered due to thier inept tactics. Have the rest of the group run into an even LARGER group of ratmen or maybe two or three big ones. Maybe even a Gel. Cube that they dont see until it's too late (and one or two party members become lunch). Either way, it's a shame to lose a good character from a good player.

 

[JoeGKushner]

*smirks* You'd think he'd allow Madriel to make an exception for him. After all, if he's not alive, he's not going to complete his life's work...unless Nemorga said otherwise.

I'm sorry he's dead, but hey, lots of interesting characters die. It's part of the adventuring life. Not everyone makes it back, ESPECIALLY in the Scarred Lands.

Actually, he worships Enikili while his mentor worships Balesmith and was trying to turn him in that direction.

 

[Mark]

Time to plague the surviving members of the party with guilty nightmares until they mount a rescue effort to recover the body of their friend and get him ressurected...

 

[SableWyvern]

Personally, I would have felt bad. Killing a PC because of the cowardly actions of his PC companions isn't really fair. But it is the other characters that made it unfair - not the DM. I would have done it (killed him) because I knew it had to be done.

My group had a PC die last session because no-one bothered to render aid while he was down and dying. After the fight, I pointed out that there had been many, many occasions when PCs had made it to -8 or -9 before being helped, and that if they continued to ignore downed PCs, more were going to die.

They stopped, had a look at how they had been behaving, and realised I was right.

In future, I think they will be a lot more concerned about stabilising each other.

In your campaign, I think the PCs should be giving some serious thought to the fact that the dead character could easily have been any one of them, and that they are, in part at least, responsible for the death.

If you want to be mean, have the PC come back as a ghost, seeking revenge on his cowardly companions.