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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imaculata" data-source="post: 7053396" data-attributes="member: 6801286">In my campaign, befriending him did not take any effort by the players. He was pretty much their ally right from the start of the campaign. And he was very much my guy. His daughter on the other hand is a love interest and a close ally. His death was basically the push to make his daughter a part of their crew. A reason for her to say goodbye to her old life, and join them on their future adventures. It also added an emotional side to the story, and to her character.If you kill him off and they are not emotionally invested, then what's the point? Sometimes a death has to hit home, and actually feel sad. You can't do it often, but if you do it at least once, it gives the story a bit of emotional weight. It's like killing off Gandalf at the end of Fellowship of the ring, but then not bringing him back.Of course, but in this case, this didn't feel like something they had actually earned, and it had made them feel a little bit too safe. For the story to carry some weight, it felt necessary to me to kill off a character that had been their trusted ally since the start of the campaign. This paved the way for the players to actually get politically involved in who would be his successor, with some possible bad consequences if it was the wrong person.This I sort of agree with, but I don't feel that every hard move needs to be foreshadowed. Sometimes you want to hit your players with a punch in the guts; -with a shocking twist that came totally unexpected... and yet made sense given the story. The red wedding is a good example. You can sort of see how events were building up to it, but it still came very unexpected when it happened.Of course, but this is also why I feel that the players should care when you kill off an important npc like that. It should be a catalyst for greater things that push the story forward. The villains in my campaign had already affected the lives of other characters in the campaign, but no one they were very close to. By killing off a character who was both a close ally, and the father of a character they really cared about, this was a very powerful moment. And while the players were triumphant in defeating the villains during their attack, they also suffered a great loss, that would instigate a whole new chapter in the story.</blockquote>

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