killed a character tonight, and i feel sort of bad...

[eXodus]

i dmed my usual game this evening, a modified 3e forgotten realms game.

the party was trekking through the forests of cormyr looking into the rumors of a forest that came alive and attacked an army with the aid of undead. this party being: human rogue6, human barbarian1/fighter4/longblade1 (from wotc contest), sun elf evoker6, human rogue3/fighter2, halfling cleric4/rogue1, and an npc human barbarian2/fighter1/ranger1.

i had the party attacked during the night while camping by a band of elite orcs. 8 2nd level fighters, a babarian6, sorcerer5, cleric6, and a rogue3/ranger2.

the orc assault team attacked in three waves, first the rogue/ranger came in under sneakiness and then assaulted the npc with both swords, dropping him. he then ran off. the next wave was three of the fighter2, and the barbarian. i had the fighters using power attack a lot. and i was rolling pretty well.

things really got ugly when the party got seperated into three groups. the rogue/ranger made the mistake of going toe to toe with the raging barbarian who had bull's strength cast on him. the orc beat him into the ground.

the battle went poorly for a number of rounds, as i was rolling great even while using power attack, thusly the party was getting beaten down.

the party only has one asskicker and he ended up getting webbed by the sorc and was out of the battle for three rounds.

this ugly battle went on and on, almost every character spent some time in the negatives, all potions were sucked down. it all came down to a single roll of stabilization.

the poor fighter/rogue had to roll his check or die. he had failed five previous checks, and no one could get to him to save him.

he failed. he rolled 92 on his % die.

thusly he died. this is the second character that this player has lost. i feel a little bad. one it came down to a single roll of the die. two, i will now have to either add a new character to the party and developed storyline which will be a pain in my ass. or three i have to come up with a good way of raising the dead character without it seeming too cheesy.

any ideas on how i could deal with this?

 

[rounser]

It looks like the opposition was a little tough.

levels 6, 6, 6, 5, 5, 4

versus

6, 6, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2...mostly fighters with orcy stats.

I know which side my money would be on.

EDIT: Forgot a sixth level character, still a tough fight though.

 

[Valicor]

That's rough man, unfortunately sometimes the dice favour a player, and soometiems they favour a DM. Tonight was your night. Just remmber how many times the pc's wil be bashign yor baddies in. maybe let him be ressurected?

 

[Johno]

At that level, is it really "cheesy" to let them recruit aid from a powerful cleric, one who has an interest in seeing the evil in the forest cleansed? But as is often the case, politics and higher duties prevent those of greater power participating in crusades.

Does the player really want to keep playing that character? Talk to him aside, out of the gaming context, and see what he would like.

Some guys don't like having their characters brought back. But you'll never know unless you talk to him...

 

[Mark]

Howdy eXodus!

Sorry about the player's luck. Some days you get the bear, some days the bear gets you. Let him roll up a new character at the same level as the other characters and move along. Make the next adventure/session revolve around the new character (and his introduction) so that the player doesn't feel so bad.

 

[Nasma]

In my opinion there's nothing worse than having the life of your character depend on a single die roll. That's why I hate instant death spells. Once a character that I had nurtured from 1st level was hit by phantasmal killer and failed both his saves. The combat was unexpected so there was nothing I could have done to protect myself from it. It really sucked, but i suppose it's just a game.

 

[AGGEMAM]

Well, I'm surprised the whole party didn't actually die.

You put average level 6 party up against a EL 11, that hurts!

Here are my calculations:

Average party level = 6 + 6 + 6 + 5 +5 + 4 = 32 / 6 = [5] + 1 for being 6 characters

Encounter Level = ((CR 2 * 8 = CR 8) + (CR 6 *2 = CR 8) = CR 10) + (CR 5 * 2 = CR 7) = [11]

[] means rounded down.

DMG says about this:

Overpowering: The PCs should run. If they don't, they will probably lose. The EL is 5 or more levels higher than the party level.

 

[Bonedagger]

You bastard!!!

 

[Nasma]

It is difficult DMing sometimes. In my experience players love it when they just escape a very real chance of death but hate it when they die. It's hard to balance risk with safety and unfortunately sometimes players just die.

 

[Weeble]

A good "normal" encounter ECL should be at the average of the a party level. This would make most encounters pretty easy to overcome. This particular encounter was not out of the range of the party, as long as they were keeping up on their watches and had some alarms/traps, magical or otherwise, around their camp. Unfortunately, characters do die also. Sometimes by a single die roll (usually, I think). While the center of the campaign story, the PCs are not the center of the campaign world. They should have the same problems that NPCs in the world have, including having "status quo" encounters that are way too easy or way too hard from time to time. Recourceful PCs will manage to overcome or evade some of the hard encounters, and ignore many of the easy ones.
What we do in my campaign is assign 1 Fate Point for every 4 levels. This I took from someone on this message board some time ago. What happens is, when the PC would normaly die, expending 1 Fate Point would simply drop the PC to -9hp, but stabilized, and effectively "dead" as far as the enemy is concerned. While giving the PC a chance to keep his or her character alive, it still entails problems for that character, especially if no other PCs are around to bail out the PC's equipment from being taken by the enemy. This is a great way to "check" myself also if I throw an encounter at the PCs that is too hard. I will try to go easy on them and not throw another toughie at them until they have at least 1 Fate Point. This also limits the number of over powered enounters, as 1 Fate Point per 4 levels is quite spaced out.