P.C. suicides

[alsih2o]

seems to me there have been several mentions in mutliple threads lately about p.c.'s who commit suicide, nearly always for a lame reason...

anyone have a good IN-GAME solution for this?

if i had a p.c. kill himself over something extremely silly (loss of equipment or somethignelse that makes everyone in the group groan) i would have their new character start off at least 1 lvl lower than the party....IF i chose to continue playing with them.

seems to me amny players are 'putting up with' a lot of dorkish play from folks because of a love for the game, but a lack of people to play with. what is up with that? certainly we aren't faced with a geek shortage.....

 

[Clain MacFaileas]

The best solution to players who do such things is to offer them the DM's chair. This way, they have to put up with everything you've been suffering through. You'd be surprised at just how quickly most such players will start acting more apropriately when the "threat" of DMing is used on them .

As a side note, the only time I've suicided one of my characters was when I was playing a samurai who had lost his lord, his honor, and then his sword. He truly had nothing left, and so such a way out was actually in-character.

 

[alsih2o]

i offer you absolution (as if it were mine to give ) clain, there are certain and few situations where i think p.c. suicide is actually justified, the fallen paladin, the dishonored samurai and such, but over loss of a sword or bracers or a magic toothpick? well, i don't even have a descriptive term for the level of lameness thi seems to require

 

[Mojo]

Hi all,

I may have been one of these posts that mentioned character suicide. It happened in my Spelljammer campaign.

The elf character was always the atypical, brooding sort, and had lately suffered a few personal loses. And the player was not exactly in a sunny frame of mind either. When he removed his ring and let the flames engulf him, I was shocked.

To further push things, he said his next character would be a paladin of Torm. Now, my game was kind of down-and-dirty, and I was used to the characters (and NPC friends) playing fast and loose with the law to achieve their victories. I was irked.

But, since the player was a real good friend (and if he dropped out there would be only one other player and essentially no game, since HE was really the better player), I decided to see what happened.

I learned a valuable lesson, since what followed ended up being to this day one of the best (and most fun) games i have ever run.

And when I decided to bring back the suicide elf as a form of undead, who re-wrote history in his mind so that his death was blamed on the remaining comrade, both players loved it.

I'd agree that under most circumstances character suicide is not desirable, in this case it worked out, and the player was much happier with the new character. It also gave a great future story, as the quest to rid themselves of the now-evil former friend (of one of the characters at least) was a great storyline.

As an aside, one of the greatest things was when the identity of the new enemy was still unknown, and they recieved several notes written by the elf (named Nightwind). The remaining character said "I wish Nightwind was still alive. He'd know who was doing this, as he always kept better track of our enemies."

I had a hard time keeping the grin from my face.

 

[Deedlit]

Well, I have only seen one suicide, and it involved a powerful spell possessing the character and putting her under permanant mind control. The cleric of Lloth, who originally served as a knowing puppet ruler of the city, had finally made her once a week will save to regain control of self for a day. Angered at the male elf wizard who used her, she, in front of the whole city, exposed the wizard, and killed herself with a dagger, while screaming to Lloth to make the wizard pay.