Killer DMs unite!

[MerricB]

I think it's because raise dead is so affordable in 3E. I tend to kill the PCs in my campaigns more.

My Sunday campaign I started two years ago, running weekly for the first year, fortnightly for the second year. Let's call it 80 sessions. Kill count: 34.

My Friday campaign I started six months ago, and has run weekly (mostly). Let's call it 25 sessions. Kill count: 10.

I try not to fudge the dice. Most of the character deaths are due to player imbecility, although there have been a couple of times when it's been entirely my fault. (Party vs. 5 bodaks when they'd never met bodaks before. Oops). In such cases, I'm generally very kind as to resurrecting the slain - but the majority of cases have been their fault.

How does this compare to your experiences with 3E? Are the characters dying more often? Are you a Killer DM?



Cheers!

 

[Crothian]

I just get rid of any spells that bring people back. It's to easy, this isn't a video game where you have X amount of lives.

 

[Black Omega]

Hmm..nine months GMing. One PC death. And a few who wish they were dead. I guess I'm not a killer GM. But I run Rokugan, where Raise Dead doesn't really exist.

 

[MerricB]

The availability of raise dead makes the place seem a lot more like Steven Brust's Dragarea, which doesn't both me that much at all.

It might be an idea for myself to reinstitute the "you only get as many lives as your starting Con" rule.

But who else here has a high body count? Who doesn't coddle incompetent or unlucky players?

Cheers!

 

[Rackhir]

I'm not sure that someone who simply kills off large numbers of PCs counts as a "Killer DM", especially if Raise Dead is readily available. Killer DMs to me are ones that not only kill your characters, but screw them over as well. A crippled, useless character is far worse than one who's simply dead.

 

[Xarlen]

Actually, I can safely say I've only coddled someone ONCE. The priestess was about to bring down an Unholy Blight. I rolled the damage, and it would've sent the NPC tank for the party, and the mage well over -10. I backed out.

I regret it, in a way. It was near the end point of a campaign, and bringing new characters in would've been a serious pain.

Next time, I won't be lenient.

 

[Wicht]

Killer DMs to me are ones that not only kill your characters, but screw them over as well.

Nah, killer DMs are the ones that kill the PC and then maniacally kill the player too. The really nasty ones go for TPKs.

 

[Moe Ronalds]

My party is too smart to die. And it makes me feel sad inside.

 

[Fictionaut]

The first 3E game I ran, I killed at least ten characters in about ten sessions, but they were all in the course of two or three of those sessions.

The party came up against a rival group of mercenaries, who ambushed and captured/killed most of them due to some blunders on their part. They took it very personally, rolled up new characters, assaulted their dungeon stronghold without a plan in order to get their stuff back, and died again. There was literally a room in the dungeon filled with PC corpses. Eventually, they got smart about it, and there have been only 2 or 3 deaths in my subsequent games...so I guess in summary, I started out thinking I was a killer DM, but in typing this, I realize I'm not.

I don't fudge dice or adjust hit points during encounters much, I just tend to play my bad guys as the sneering French guys in Monty Python, laughing and pointing as the party flees. More entertaining than killing all of them, for some reason.

 

[DM with a vengence]

In RttToEE, I had around 18 deaths in 25 pages.

4 died attacking the castle in town
1 was slain by the dragon at the moathouse
5 were killed when they slept in the moathouse using undead as guards, and got ambushed by the evil clerics.
7 were killed in a rescue attempt
1 went CE in the rescue attempt and joined the forces of Elemental Evil.

Oh yeah, around 10 of those pages were backround, and another 11 the town. The entire party was killed in 3 pages of adventure, and they were a large party.

Now that's what I call killer DMing.