My players are going to hate me...

[Henry]

Sounds like the correct result (i.e., Fun) was attained. Congrats, KM.

I've not done outright kills, but I have done assassinations before on PC's, using poisoned bolts and magic to flee. You want to see a player sweat, watch him make two fort saves to avoid losing 4d6 CON total from Wyvern Poison because the cleric didn't have delay or neutralize poison prepped.

 

[StupidSmurf]

Here's my version of being a rat bastard DM. And the players don't know it's happened yet.

My campaign's set in the Forgotten Realms, Silver Marches. I've placed a sleepy little town called Fellwood along Evermoor Way. Nice little town, inhabited by around 200 farmers, shepherds, a few artisans, shopkeepers. Got the usual requisite inn, a tavern, curio shop, and in this case, a small church of Lathander. The church has a graveyard and there's a few town heroes interred there, heroes who defeated an evil family decades before.

The campaign plot revolves around a ghost, a the descendant of the evil family, who himself perished before he could complete his life's work: performing certain rituals that would restore the most powerful member of his family. Since he failed to do so in life, he's now a ghost, still charged with the same mission. He gets one shot every 24 years, which is how old he was when he was killed.

The ghost was the plot hook that got the party involved. He manipulated them into going to his family's abandoned ancestral keep and retrieve the items for him. He himself cannot enter because the place was warded against undead by the victorious heroes of Lathander. Of course, the party had no idea that the man sending them on the quest was a ghost.

Well, eventually, all the salient points were brought to light. The party has the goods, but they won't hand them over. So, the ghost has been attacking them in Fellwood, and hinted that if they didn't co-operate, he'd start attacking the villagers as well.

One PC (played by my wife, no less) came up with the idea: "Let's evacuate the town; it's small enough, and bring them over to the old keep, which we've cleaned out, and is warded against undead." All bias aside, it was a brilliant plan. Everyone else thought so too, and they put their plan into action. Lord knows, I hadn't expected this turn of events.

Now, during this campaign, the party also managed to antagonize the local Cyricist faction in nearby Everlund. They did so to the point that the Cyricists sent one of their best agents, a Ranger/Assassin, to pose as a paladin and lure them into an ambush in the sewers of Everlund. The party caught on at literally the last opportune moment, and took him down. When they killed him, they burned the body at least to the point where a Raise Dead couldn't work, then dumped the remains in the river.

All done, right? Wrong.

The Cyricists wondered what happened to their agent, especially since they had a good idea that he had at least brought the party into Everlund. A search revealed the dead body washed up on a river embankment (the party took no measures to sink it). They cast Speak With Dead, and find the story. They go to one of the merchants in Everlund (who's secretly a Cyricist follower), and demand that he put up the money for a Resurrection, and present the cleric with a B.S. story about how the victim is a relative of the merchants, who got attacked and burned to death by thieves. The merchant, not wanting his secret worship revealed, complies.

One Ranger/Assassin, really pissed, back online! He tells the whole story (since Speak with Dead IS limited), and the Cyricists, being a sane, rational, level-headed lot (haha), mobilize a large party and make a beeline to Fellwood, with intent of taking out the party (and anyone else in their way).

Naturally, they get there and the town's empty, thanks to the party's bright idea. So....the Cyricists burn the place down. They defile and loot the temple of Lathander. And...the crowning turd on the pile, they've animated all of the dead in the cemetery. Ok, so no citizens died, since they're all at the Keep. But...these people's homes and livelihood are gone....and it's because of the party.

Now, you have to bear in mind, my players are the kind who get involved with NPCs, interact with them, befriend them, help them with their problems. They have a big conscience. Heck, they even served as a funeral escort for one old lady from Everlund (an extremely old woman who used to be a Paladin), to have her interred at the Fellwood cemetery. And yes, the old woman's corpse is animated as well..

This is gonna hurt them....bum them out big time.


Yeah, I'm a stinker...so?

 

[I'm A Banana]

An assassin uses magic to get close to a player character and kill her.

Setting aside the specifics for a moment, it's just a cliche encounter that most of us have run at one time or another.

Keep in mind not everyone is as old as you, or has had the same experiences. Cliche for one group may be novel for another. Because I'm pretty much the only DM in my group of friends, and I don't like to put a lot of time into developing NPC's, the use of a humanoid against the party instead of a monster who does something similar represents a significant departure from what they're used to. And to analyze the tactics of magic to such an extent is also a significant departure (I'm most famous for grapple checks and big die rolls -- I tend to favor the "tank" style monsters, and the more subtle style ringleaders).

The simple reason is because I don't often want to bother spending the 45 minutes it takes to hone a truly in-deapth character. I'm a busy man what with the sexy parties and the job and the school. So your dry cliche is my group's juicy new experience.

For me, it's not so much the save-or-die aspect of the encounter that makes me cringe - rather, it's the take on resurrection tied into the campaign assumptions and the prevalence of magic in D&D in general.

"It's okay, the character will be merely incovenienced by being killed," screams video-game - as both a player and a GM this gets a big ol' eye-roll from me.

The fact that this is built into D&D was mentioned earlier in the thread, as is all of the magic and psionics displayed in the post-game commentary that followed. It's Magic: The Gathering - The RPG.

This is a whole separate thread, methinks, but I'll start off by saying that you sound like those people who want to use a system other than hit points because taking a 8 stabs with a sword and still fighting is too unrealistic.

Which is fine. I'm not about to roll my eyes condescendingly and tell you your players might be unhappy with a more brutal setting. I'm not going to say you're mean or making it more grim and gritty just to get your own rocks off without considering the others at your table. I'm not going to call this more permanent death style little pet names that reduce it to something trivial, either. You like what you like and your group obviously doesn't have a problem, or you wouldn't have a group!

But you seem to be telling me I'm inequal, uninteresting, and non-clever in this encounter because of easy resurrection. You can't honestly believe that I've considered the reprocussions of easy resurrection and have come to terms with what works best for me and my group? Or you truly have the hubris to tell me that making a game more potentially deadly while killing the PC's less would somehow make my game better? You think that I can't be a clever, interesting DM, even your equal in skill, simply because death isn't that big of a deal IMC, or even really according to RAW?

I mean, for the record, I don't believe you're saying that, but your first post did completely come off as saying "You are a bad DM for doing this." Or at least agreeing with those who were already saying that. And this one seems to back up the fact:

A last thought: the "rightfun police" comment completely misses the point. Fun is fun, and certainly what is to one gamer's tastes may be very different to another. That doesn't mean that every encounter, or character, or GM, is equal, IMHO. In this case, this doesn't strike me as a particularly clever or interesting encounter - it's just a plot device. It may be fun for the players in the game, but it's nothing special.

Your sense of triviality seems misplaced. It's not a plot device. It's a logical outgrowth of campaign events I didn't forsee (I had no idea they were going to stir up rebellion, just as I had no idea my campaign would be sidetracked for a month when they turned against a friendly NPC, and no idea that they would steal a beet cart to escape a flood, and no idea that the egoist would be using Metamorphosis to make camp). I don't know where it's going, either. Like the stats for a Dire Gopher, like many GM's, I make half of it up as I go along.

And if it is fun for the players and myself, then it *is* something special. If there's something a game can do other than be fun for the players and myself, something more special, well, I'd certainly like to hear about it so I can jump on this special bus. Is pleasing you with a permenant but rare death setting somehow a better goal?

Not all DM's, encounters, or players are equal? Truly? What scale shall I judge them on? What scientific measurement or relational observation can I use? Shall I measure fun from a grim and gritty setting as greater than fun from a casual setting? Is low-magic better than high magic? Cleverness? Interest? Are there meters that can measure this, or is it subject to audience interpretation, and the experience of individual players? Could what you find to be a sub-par experience for your own experienced self be much, much more fun when viewed through someone else's eyes?

 

[shilsen]

Here's my version of being a rat bastard DM. And the players don't know it's happened yet.

...

Yeah, I'm a stinker...so?

That's beautiful. Just beautiful. *wipes away a tear*

 

[ZuulMoG]

Yeah 'save or die' is just so much fun for a PC.

Maybe you and the rest of the 'It's not faiiiir, waaaaah!' group should go back to Candyland.

The party messed with an evil empire, that's EVIL EMPIRE, as in a group of losers ticking off the entire Soviet Union. One of them getting his fool head blown off by the KGB is the very LEAST they could expect.

From what I read this group of idiots took NO PRECAUTIONS.

I've played in good RPGs before, and I learned fast that when someone was messing with the Old Toad Gods or some similar group of Ancient Creeping Horrors that sometimes just running the other way wasn't enough. If your pals are messing with the OTGs, you turn them in for the reward, or get killed alongside them. ACHs are not for messing with, nor are their mortal servants.

One would hope the other PCs took this valuable lesson to heart and enacted some precautions. If not, well, time to start a new party at 1st level. Or better still, break out Candyland.

 

[StupidSmurf]

That's beautiful. Just beautiful. *wipes away a tear*

Why, thank you! Thank you very much!

 

[kigmatzomat]

Here's my version of being a rat bastard DM. And the players don't
know it's happened yet.
...
so no citizens died, since they're all at the Keep. But...these people's homes and livelihood are gone....and it's because of the party.

I'd quibble about this. The party may be the lightning rod but it is the Cyrcists to blame for most things. The party upset the Cyricists, which probably means they did good deeds. They killed an assasin, which is probably another good thing. They protected the town from a ghost and, incidentally, from a band of cyricists. I'll point out the players may think that the ghost is responsible for the burning of the town if they don't investigate enough to realize it was people. Even then, it could have been roving bandits under the influence of the ghost.

if the party is smart they will contact the Lathanderites and the Harpers (or whoever is in charge in the Marches). Someone (not the party) defiled a temple of Lathander. Someone (not the party) animated a graveyard full of dead. Someone (not the party) turned an elder Paladin into an undead. Someone (not the party) burned a village to the ground. Oh, and there's a ghost, to boot!

This should be enough to get some serious firepower on the party's side. The fact that no one was hurt and only property was lost should keep them in the town's general good graces.

 

[IcyCool]

I guess I didn't realize that the PC vs. DM mentality was so rampant.

That's the funny thing about witches. You don't realize how many there are until you start hunting for them.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

As for the rule, its broken, thus the reason its not in the Core rules nor any other book. The only mention of something similiar is a 13th level spell. I have no problem with people who love houserules changingt hings up for the campaign. But do understand that once you start doing things and the main basis of that action is a house rule, you are still cheating, the group just accepted to accept the cheating action. Also there are house rules you can incorporate that incredibly change the game. No real penality for death, easy and cheap ressurection, anyone can kill anyone at anytime, its a fun game jjust not the essence of dungeons and dragons.

That's a pretty strong claim: "House rules are cheating." Go say that on the House Rules forum, I dare you.

Aaaaaaaand, we're now dragging out that old trope, "If you change anything it's not really D&D." Hey, guess what, I have a handful of house rules, and I play D&D. I bet that almost every single other person on these message boards can truthfully state my last sentence.

According to KM's group, the rule isn't broken. The rule exists only in KM's group. What the hell is the problem? Also, what does this have to do with whether KM is being unfair? If both sides are using a non-standard and powerful option, that pretty much says "even Steven" to me.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Eh setting up an encounter to kill a pc without any interaction from them doesn't sound reasonable. I hear some dms saying they applaud KM's decision. I wonder if the players in your campaign are as happy as you think they are. I guess I didn't realize that the PC vs. DM mentality was so rampant.

Or, perhaps lots of people have different expectations from the game than you do. Lots of people are simulationists. They don't care about story. They care about realism, in events, in motivations, in outcomes. They want their enemies to act like real people, and they want to act the same way in response. A well-played enemy will do everything possible to not have his plans foiled by the PCs. Apparently, KM's players enjoy that style of enemy because it's a real challenge to defeat him. They're not so concerned about fearing death or not fearing death, but with success and failure.