Killing my NPCs
- Thread starter hong
- Start date
Does killing the PCs count?Piratecat said:
I killed six of them in six sessions not so long ago.Although one of them was a ranger cohort who sacrificed himself to kill a BBEG. He and his druid employer had been swallowed whole, and the druid had an artifact that could win the battle. So he tried to use a horn of blasting to blast his way out, but it blew up in his face, killing him. But the horn still made a hole in the monster's belly, so the druid managed to tumble out, use the artifact, and they won (just). In addition, such an act of self-sacrifice deeply affected the NPC ex-assassin they've had tagging along with them for some time, and because of this (and other events) she's just turned good.
Deaths can be cool.
cybermonkey
First Post
hong said:
I never once screwed my PCs over, as far as they knew. I never disclosed the level of an opponent and would do XP awards during the week and give it to the players at the start of the next session. I granted full XP awards for "killing" a foe I was planning to bring back. As far as the players knew, the foe was dead.
I have found doing the book-keeping work away from the game is a lot less stressful, and more often the players tend to forget every stinking creature they killed, thus I was able to fudge advancement to keep in pace with each other and the game itself.
As for as looting the body. I had one wizard (we're talking pre 3E here) that the PCs swore up and down they "killed" at least four times. I made sure nothing valuable was on the wizard's person that I wanted the players to take. If there was, I made sure that another item, comparable in value, was "found."
Inconsequenti-AL
Breaks Games
Sounds familiar... in fact, turned up last saturday.
I'm also a proud member of 'tweak club'. First rule of 'tweak club' is...
I'd spent quite a while on a pair of bad guys, meant to pose a decent challenge for my mob of low level PCs... built them around a large number of low damage hits - designed to be scary, but not too fatal.
During their fight scene, my dice refused to roll anything over a 5 for these two - didn't land a single hit over the 6 rounds of the fight.
The 7 kobold mooks they'd bought along were more effective.
Stupid randomness. I'll stick with good old fashioned Power Word: Kill!
I'm also a proud member of 'tweak club'. First rule of 'tweak club' is...
I'd spent quite a while on a pair of bad guys, meant to pose a decent challenge for my mob of low level PCs... built them around a large number of low damage hits - designed to be scary, but not too fatal.
During their fight scene, my dice refused to roll anything over a 5 for these two - didn't land a single hit over the 6 rounds of the fight.
The 7 kobold mooks they'd bought along were more effective.Stupid randomness. I'll stick with good old fashioned Power Word: Kill!
Tell me about it. The PCs IMC are all about 12th level. For the last session, I built a pumped-up nimblewright (from MM2), with added levels of martial artist for the AC boost and tons of feats. I did tone down the insane crit range from 12-20 to 15-20, but I also switched out Improved Disarm for Improved Trip. So I had this thing with AC 31, 34 when fighting defensively, a +25 attack bonus, an automatic trip attack on a crit, plus a follow up attack after each successful trip.Inconsequenti-AL said:Sounds familiar... in fact, turned up last saturday.
I'm also a proud member of 'tweak club'. First rule of 'tweak club' is...
I'd spent quite a while on a pair of bad guys, meant to pose a decent challenge for my mob of low level PCs... built them around a large number of low damage hits - designed to be scary, but not too fatal.
During their fight scene, my dice refused to roll anything over a 5 for these two - didn't land a single hit over the 6 rounds of the fight.
Stupid randomness. I'll stick with good old fashioned Power Word: Kill!
I think I rolled 5 or 6 criticals in that fight. How many trip attacks succeeded? One. Gah!
Maybe I should post these creations in the Rogues Gallery for posterity.
frankthedm
First Post
I find having the influence of the Demon lord of undeath to be a convenient and efficient way to get at least two "lives" out of an NPC.
