PCs die when...
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
Lord Mhoram
Hero
For fear of starting the same tangent the RPG thread turned into :
When I have failed as a GM
When the players say words to the effect "Can you off my character, I want to play a new one"
In 20 years of GMing, no PC that I was GMing has ever died. I'm proud of that.
Given that most of my gametime is taken up by HERO rather than D&D, and primarily four color Superhero gaming, where character death is reasonably against genre emulation, that makes sense. But my players put hours into character backgrounds and months in playing and really get into the character's history, personality and storylines - it just seems unproductive to kill such a charcter. Now characters can fail, but generally I don't kill them.
I don't GM in a tactical sense, and especially not in an adveserial role, I see my job as an enabler for the players, and myself, to tell an interactive story.
When I have failed as a GM
When the players say words to the effect "Can you off my character, I want to play a new one"
In 20 years of GMing, no PC that I was GMing has ever died. I'm proud of that.
Given that most of my gametime is taken up by HERO rather than D&D, and primarily four color Superhero gaming, where character death is reasonably against genre emulation, that makes sense. But my players put hours into character backgrounds and months in playing and really get into the character's history, personality and storylines - it just seems unproductive to kill such a charcter. Now characters can fail, but generally I don't kill them.
I don't GM in a tactical sense, and especially not in an adveserial role, I see my job as an enabler for the players, and myself, to tell an interactive story.
Aeric
Explorer
...they do something stupid or are the subject of bad dice rolls, and are either high enough level to have access to resurrection or the player doesn't particularly care whether his character lives or dies."
A lot of qualifiers, sure, but we're there to have fun, and strange as it may sound, some people don't consider the death of their favorite character to be fun.
Case in point: last session, one of my players introduced a new character (his barbarian having died the session before). It was an artificer, and he was really excited about all the stuff he was going to make, whereas before with the barbarian he was only marginally involved. He played him foolishly, however, and by the end of the session he was dead. I could see the anger and disappointment on his face, so I quickly whipped up a house rule stating that if he spent all of his Action Points, he would be stabilized at -9.
The player in question is still fairly new to the game, and so he's not too savvy on the proper kinds of tactics to use with the various types of characters. If it was one of my more veteran players, I might not have been so generous. Ultimately, the point of the game is to have fun, and I knew he wasn't being stupid on purpose (I've had those before, and let me tell ya, the gloves were OFF!), so I saw no issue with letting it slide so blatantly.
A lot of qualifiers, sure, but we're there to have fun, and strange as it may sound, some people don't consider the death of their favorite character to be fun.
Case in point: last session, one of my players introduced a new character (his barbarian having died the session before). It was an artificer, and he was really excited about all the stuff he was going to make, whereas before with the barbarian he was only marginally involved. He played him foolishly, however, and by the end of the session he was dead. I could see the anger and disappointment on his face, so I quickly whipped up a house rule stating that if he spent all of his Action Points, he would be stabilized at -9.
The player in question is still fairly new to the game, and so he's not too savvy on the proper kinds of tactics to use with the various types of characters. If it was one of my more veteran players, I might not have been so generous. Ultimately, the point of the game is to have fun, and I knew he wasn't being stupid on purpose (I've had those before, and let me tell ya, the gloves were OFF!), so I saw no issue with letting it slide so blatantly.
S. Baldrick
Explorer
Some times they die when they do something foolish. Sometimes, it just happens. The adventure that I am running now is VERY deadly and it has just been almost un-avoidable, particuliarly when the bad guys have ready access to save or die attacks and spells. During the last session, 2 PCs died from a well placed cloud kill spell.
Fieari
Explorer
When they do stupid things.
I usually give newbies a "Newbie net" against this sort of thing, but occassionally, I'll have
newbies that I don't pull punches on, and I treat them like any other player. So the badguys, sizing up the party, see that there are squishy mages in the back row, and the party isn't going out of their way to defend said squishy mages, they go after the squishy mages and make them go squish. With polite newbies I'll go after the front liners, but with the jerks (and I've had some real jerks) they get nailed. And then kicked out of the game if they don't simmer down.
I had one player though, who simply couldn't keep his characters alive. He was a really cool guy, and a lot of fun to play with, but just had no sense of self preservation whatsoever in game. His shortest lived character died on the first round of combat which initiated five minutes after having been introduced to the party. Everyone else got away fine, but he just couldn't stop dying. At points, I'd try really hard to help keep him alive, but there are limits. LIMITS man!
I had one entire group die to an EL3 encounter (two gelatenous cubes) when they were level 9. Now THAT was sheer idiocy. The ranged fighters were scouting ahead, and got sucked in first. The melee fighters then went up and fought melee, and got sucked in. Eventually they failed their saves, and none of them made their grapple checks. The last character alive was actually Mr. Can't-Stay-Alive (as above) and finished everything off by fireballing both cubes in close quarters. Very amusing.
Basically, with my encounters, I make sure that there's always a way to survive. Multiple ways to survive, in fact (a game is made up of MEANINGFUL choices, after all)... usually, there's a way to run away, or negotiate, or I simply believe that they are capable of taking the thing down. But despite always having a way through, players sometimes have their characters do stupid things, like charging the entire army of wights instead of teleporting away or negotiating with the Lich King's ambassador... or like calling 13 demons without putting any restraints on them in order to prove they can to some random NPC... or like jumping off into the inky depths believing that despite rolling really high on the will save, I tell them they can't "Disbelieve the illusion".
PCs die when they're basically idiots.
I usually give newbies a "Newbie net" against this sort of thing, but occassionally, I'll have
newbies that I don't pull punches on, and I treat them like any other player. So the badguys, sizing up the party, see that there are squishy mages in the back row, and the party isn't going out of their way to defend said squishy mages, they go after the squishy mages and make them go squish. With polite newbies I'll go after the front liners, but with the jerks (and I've had some real jerks) they get nailed. And then kicked out of the game if they don't simmer down.I had one player though, who simply couldn't keep his characters alive. He was a really cool guy, and a lot of fun to play with, but just had no sense of self preservation whatsoever in game. His shortest lived character died on the first round of combat which initiated five minutes after having been introduced to the party. Everyone else got away fine, but he just couldn't stop dying. At points, I'd try really hard to help keep him alive, but there are limits. LIMITS man!
I had one entire group die to an EL3 encounter (two gelatenous cubes) when they were level 9. Now THAT was sheer idiocy. The ranged fighters were scouting ahead, and got sucked in first. The melee fighters then went up and fought melee, and got sucked in. Eventually they failed their saves, and none of them made their grapple checks. The last character alive was actually Mr. Can't-Stay-Alive (as above) and finished everything off by fireballing both cubes in close quarters. Very amusing.
Basically, with my encounters, I make sure that there's always a way to survive. Multiple ways to survive, in fact (a game is made up of MEANINGFUL choices, after all)... usually, there's a way to run away, or negotiate, or I simply believe that they are capable of taking the thing down. But despite always having a way through, players sometimes have their characters do stupid things, like charging the entire army of wights instead of teleporting away or negotiating with the Lich King's ambassador... or like calling 13 demons without putting any restraints on them in order to prove they can to some random NPC... or like jumping off into the inky depths believing that despite rolling really high on the will save, I tell them they can't "Disbelieve the illusion".
PCs die when they're basically idiots.
