My First PC Kill As A DM (Sort Of)

[Olaf the Stout]

In the session last night I almost effectively killed my first PC. I am running the Dungeon adventure "Racing the Snake" from issue #105.

The party were heading through a 100ft wide canyon at night when they were attacked by 5 Cockatrices. In the 1st round of combat, 2 Cockatrices bit the 7th level Rogue/Ranger and he failed the DC 12 Fort save and was petrified. He had to roll a 6+ to succeed but managed to roll only a 2. He then spent an action point to add to the roll and got a 1! :\ The player's rolls have really sucked in the last few sessions so no-one was really surprised.

The session ended there and I decided to just fast forward through the rest of the adventure to get the party to town in the interests of group fun. The group was still a couple of days out from their destination and still had some dangerous ground to travel through. However I didn't want the "statue's" player to have to miss a session or two while the party travelled to town. Stone to Flesh is a 6th level Sorc/Wiz spell so no-one in the party is high enough level to know the spell. The only other way the party could get the statue back into real life flesh would be a high level Wizard who just happened to be nearby or a conveniently placed scroll. Both options seemed a bit contrived to me.

This encounter did make me decide that I will be very unlikely to use Cockatrices in my game again any time soon. The only real thing that a Cockatrice can do is bite. Its bite only does 1d4-2 damage so it is very unlikely to kill anything. However every time it hits with a bite (at +9 to hit, quite high for a CR 3 monster), the bitee has to make a DC 12 Fort Save. If you are low level (say level 3) this is effectively a save or die since Stone to Flesh is a 6th level spell. Does this seem slightly wrong to anyone else? How do these things eat? Chances are they will turn their prey to stone before they kill it, even if it only has a couple of HP's!

Olaf the Stout

 

[STARP_Social_Officer]

A lot of low-CR creatures are like that. The Ogre is massively overpowered for a creature with such a low CR. I've had that problem before.
I think your solution is best. Don't use cockatrices again until the party is a much higher level, whereupon you can use several at once just to screw with the party.

 

[molonel]

The first kill is the hardest. They get easier and sweeter as time goes by.

 

[Slife]

Obviously, they must eat stone.

 

[Korgoth]

In the session last night I almost effectively killed my first PC. I am running the Dungeon adventure "Racing the Snake" from issue #105.

Now the first time you kill a PC, that's the hardest... I threw up on the first one, you believe that? Then the third one... the third one is easy, you level right off. It's no problem. Now... now I do it just to watch their expression change.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

A few thoughts:

First, an ogre is only "overpowered" if it's encountered at melee range or if it gets a big jump on initiative. Neither is very likely. Before it gets a swing, smart players should have damaged or impaired it significantly: tanglefoot bag, command, color spray, or just plain smack. 29 HP at an AC of 16 is not hard to get through for a 3rd-level group. Hell, at +8 on attacks, it should be missing the meat-shields and if an attack does land, it'll take an above-average damage roll to take the meat-shield down.

Second, it's true that cockatrices and similar low-CR creatures with save-or-"die" abilities can be problematic, but only if the DM doesn't plan for them. Are they guard creatures? Well, maybe their master keeps some sort of scroll or oil around to de-stone victims. After all, you can't get answers from a statue. Are they in a city? Surely there's a mid-level wizard or cleric who'd love to have a group of adventurers indebted to him.

For all that people say they hate save-or-die effects, one thing they are is exciting. It's a shame to take that excitement out of one's bag of DMing tricks, especially when the consequences can so easily be illusory (in a non-transparent to the players way).

Creatures that I think are crazy powerful are the mid-level mountain-of-HP-swallow-you-whole monsters. Stuff like the Tyrannosaurus Rex and the dire shark. Crazy. (I've killed two PCs in two sessions with those creatures, and I was seriously holding back with the dire shark.)

 

[Nifft]

Yay first kill! Victory lap!

Wait. You qualified it twice. "Almost" and "effectively" killed is just not good enough. We want to see a confirmed kill.

Then, you can take his stuff.

Cheers! -- N

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Yay first kill! Victory lap!

Wait. You qualified it twice. "Almost" and "effectively" killed is just not good enough. We want to see a confirmed kill.

Then, you can take his stuff.

Cheers! -- N

Yeah, we fast forwarded the game to town where he managed to make his (more difficult) save to survive the Stone to Flesh process. I could have let him stay as a lump of stone for a couple more sessions but that wouldn't have been much fun for him so everyone agreed to fast forward to town and get him back in the game. One of the players did joke that he should get some good roleplaying XP if he came along and just sat there, roleplaying a lump of stone!

I was pleased with how well the player took being petrified. Considering last session he nearly was killed by Assasin Vines and spent most of the session before that trapped in an Entangle spell he's taking it a lot better than some others might! Of course rolling horribly at every chance he has got in the last 3 sessions haven't really helped his cause.

Olaf the Stout

 

[S'mon]

I think cockatrix are fine as an encounter for a 7th level party, but maybe 1-2 rather than 5 would be appropriate! I agree they make no sense, though...

 

[S'mon]

A few thoughts:

First, an ogre is only "overpowered" if it's encountered at melee range or if it gets a big jump on initiative. Neither is very likely. Before it gets a swing, smart players should have damaged or impaired it significantly: tanglefoot bag, command, color spray, or just plain smack. 29 HP at an AC of 16 is not hard to get through for a 3rd-level group. Hell, at +8 on attacks, it should be missing the meat-shields and if an attack does land, it'll take an above-average damage roll to take the meat-shield down.

+8 to attack ought to miss a 3rd level meat shield?! But Fighter-3s or Paladin-3s with standard wealth only have top ACs around 21-22, lower if they're Barbarians. They ought to have around 23 hp though so yes it should take more than 1 hit to down them.