D&D 5E Killing a Teammate

[Sunseeker]

Beyond if this is good or evil, beyond whatever sort of survival rate the party has, the heart of the issue is that the DM is telling one of their players that they must either "play" an invalid or not play. And that's really uncool.

 

[iserith]

Hey, guys and gals, let us not forget that the OP is a human being and probably a new DM, both of which are prone to mistakes. Offer some advice, explain why it's important that he or she look at things another way, suggest some ways to get things back on track, and let's leave it at that. Calling the person a d-word, a bad person or DM, evil, or the like is a bridge to far in my view. We should be grooming new DMs, not driving them out of the hobby with torches and pitchforks, right?

 

[hejtmane]

That's bupkis. 1) there is no way to calculate whether it's unlikely that they will survive or if they will just be slightly inconvenienced. 2) even if it does make them unlikely to survive, which you can't prove, it's still nothing more than evil murder to execute someone so that you can have a better chance at survival. Necessary maybe, but it won't be anything but an evil and very selfish act.

That is your opinion not everyone views things and every scenario like that as black or white or that it is evil.

 

[hejtmane]

Hey, guys and gals, let us not forget that the OP is a human being and probably a new DM, both of which are prone to mistakes. Offer some advice, explain why it's important that he or she look at things another way, suggest some ways to get things back on track, and let's leave it at that. Calling the person a d-word, a bad person or DM, evil, or the like is a bridge to far in my view. We should be grooming new DMs, not driving them out of the hobby with torches and pitchforks, right?

A lot of that has happened already

 

[Kalshane]

It feels like it would be a little too weirdly convenient to just happen to find something like that right when they need it. Wouldn't that seem metagamey in itself? They're currently in the Underdark, so I can't think of a good reason anything there would be helpful.

My problem is that her character's still alive, so she shouldn't be making a new character. I don't think it's unreasonable to only allow a player to have one character at a time. I mean, it kind of sucks for her, but that's the consequence of failing the saving throw. Letting her character die feels kind of the same as letting a character die because you rolled bad stats. It's not trusting the dice to make a good story.

Sometimes as DM you have to tweak fate a bit and give the PCs a lucky coincidence. Obviously, you don't want to hand-feed them solutions, but you need to work with them so everyone has a chance to enjoy the game. If you're expecting a player to sit out for 8-10 sessions because of a single failed save, you're being unreasonable.

As others have said, you either need to allow the player to roll up a new character (so they can continue to play) or give the party the opportunity to restore their ally (this doesn't have to be easy. Maybe they have to strike a deal with an unsavory character, or have to save a Svirfnelbin community from some invaders (with the sidelined player taking control of one of the deep gnome guards) in exchange for their high priest casting Greater Restoration or something along those lines. Use this setback as a chance to take the story in a new direction (so that the encounter with the Intellect Devourer still has consequences) but without effectively kicking the fighter's player out of your game by expecting them to sit on their hands for several months of real time.

 

[Shendorion]

It's not trusting the dice to make a good story.

Dice don't make good stories. They're lumps of plastic with numbers stamped on. They're tools. Expecting the dice to make a good story is about as productive as expecting your hammer to make a piece of furniture.

Your most important task as a DM is to produce the interesting and awesome results of the things that happen in the game. The dice contribute to the success or failure of individual actions; you supply entertainment in response to those actions.

The main characters in your game fought a creature that devours minds, and it preyed on one of them during the struggle. One of the characters is now a helpless, unthinking husk. Your group doesn't seem to be interested in exploring the narrative potential of long term intensive medical care in a hostile environment. Neither do they seem to want to play through the story of being faced with a terrible choice between lingering, certain death and being forsaken by their arbitrary, merciless gods. This is the problem you have to solve. You have to offer them the prospect of a story that's not about either of those things.

If you won't come off any of your other points, if you're going to force the party to babysit this mindless thing and not let its player participate, how about you fast forward to the death? If the characters aren't able to restore their comrade's mind, are unwilling to abandon the character or offer it mercy, narrate the results of that choice and get to the point at which they've stood vigil over their mindless companion until the body starved to death. Now the story can go on, and unless they can conjure food and water, it'll include a potentially interesting survival concern (that might be an interesting point of introduction for the new character).

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I'd say a mercy killing followed by a revivify would do the trick. Then you only need a level 5 character. It's worth noting that we also look at death very differently than characters in a world where the afterlife is a certainty and death is a revolving door with a chump change cover charge. Depending on what they were in the underdark to do, lugging around a vegetable at the risk of their mission is far more evil than just sending her on to chill in Elysium until they can get a travel agent to book her a ticket back to the prime material plane.

 

[Mirtek]

Sometimes as DM you have to tweak fate a bit and give the PCs a lucky coincidence.

IMHO the problem is not what happened to the PC, like I said before I even find this a very memorable underdark death. It's the DM's refusal to let the player roll with by accepting the death and rolling up a new PC.

It's the difference between "Black Leaf is dead. Marcie, get out of here. YOU'RE DEAD! You don't exist any more" and "Black Leaf is dead. Roll up a new PC and we'll see how quickly we can find an opportunity to introduce him to the party".

 

[Gillywonka]

I would let the player roll a new character, then play and have fun. But then you can also let the 0 INT PC, hang around to be dealt with. Let the PCs play it out and the ramifications are the ramifications. Do they kill the PC or do they try and lead him around. Having him get in the way, bungle encounters and make a general nuissance.

Now for the cleric, why would his god punish him? Is the cleric in direct contradiction to his god's dogma? If his god were western society's christian god, then yes. But if he were Odin or Sylvanus, they wouldn't give a flying f@#$ if you killed the PC. And if the god were Arioch or Thanatar, heck, you'd probably get a bonus for the killing.

As for the Paladin, kind of the same applies. But what if the Paladin protest the killing and actively tries to prevent it. But when he wakes up, the PC is dead (mercifully, or not mercifully, slain in the night). He shouldnt lose anything. He stood up and actively tried to do the right thing per his tenants. He was just beaten by the opposition. Anyway, it could be fun to let the PCs play it out.

 

[Kalshane]

IMHO the problem is not what happened to the PC, like I said before I even find this a very memorable underdark death. It's the DM's refusal to let the player roll with by accepting the death and rolling up a new PC.

It's the difference between "Black Leaf is dead. Marcie, get out of here. YOU'RE DEAD! You don't exist any more" and "Black Leaf is dead. Roll up a new PC and we'll see how quickly we can find an opportunity to introduce him to the party".

I'm not disagreeing with you here. I'm just saying the DM has to be willing to tweak things in some fashion, whether it's that the party happens to encounter someone able to be their new ally (aka the replacement for the brain-dead character) or discover a method of getting their ally restored to functionality (likely via some sort of quest)rather than just saying "Well, the dice say she's a mental vegetable, guess you're dragging her body around for the next 10 sessions while the player twiddles her thumbs because anything else would be a silly coincidence."