PCs die when...

[Liquidsabre]

"When I DM, player characters die when they give NPCs who would kill them, a chance to kill them."

"When I DM, player characters die when they give the environment a chance to kill them"

Yup, this best describes it for me when I DM.

 

[MPA]

...when they reach 0HP or fail their saving throw agains poison or death magic.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

...they don't buy rations.

side note: the next time something like that happened it was found that one PC had 365 days of food and water in his backpack. After it was ruled that the guy could actually carry all that food between him and his mount the DM ruled that the PC was poisoned from eating food that had gone bad. He made his saving throw and learned his lesson.

Being vindictive. It makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

So how does water in sealed containers and iron rations really go bad? Unless the Dm also arbitrarily ruled that the beef jerky got wet and some point and contaminated with mold its going to pretty well last forever.

Also by carrying 1 year of food the player is implying that he is refilling his stock every time he hits town so odds are against any of his food is actually a whole year old unless again the Dm is being vindictive and decides the player always ate the freshest food and then one day yanked out the oldest bad stuff and ate it.

This is where the sagas of horrible DM's come from I think.


BTW, unless a player had a whole wagon train of mules the only way they are carrying enough water for one whole year of water would be via magic. Probably the same for the food. A whole years supply of anything is far more than a person and his mount could carry normally. So if bags of holding and portable holes were used (which is pretty much a requirement) then how would the food become contaminated and spoil?

 

[KRT]

Being vindictive. It makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

So how does water in sealed containers and iron rations really go bad? Unless the Dm also arbitrarily ruled that the beef jerky got wet and some point and contaminated with mold its going to pretty well last forever.

Also by carrying 1 year of food the player is implying that he is refilling his stock every time he hits town so odds are against any of his food is actually a whole year old unless again the Dm is being vindictive and decides the player always ate the freshest food and then one day yanked out the oldest bad stuff and ate it.

This is where the sagas of horrible DM's come from I think.


BTW, unless a player had a whole wagon train of mules the only way they are carrying enough water for one whole year of water would be via magic. Probably the same for the food. A whole years supply of anything is far more than a person and his mount could carry normally. So if bags of holding and portable holes were used (which is pretty much a requirement) then how would the food become contaminated and spoil?

I think the DM in that campaign was doing a (in his words) "boot to the head". Wasn't much vindictiveness in it, just the old "don't do stupid things". We were only 3rd level and had no access to magic that would have helped carry all that stuff. As it was mostly a voyageur style campaign the only thing that could be readily replenished was water (except in deserts). Also I think vacuum sealed packs were beyond the technology of the campaign. Medieval style tack or rations would last for a good long time provided you took the effort to keep them dry and in a cool place. But fording rivers, crawling through swamps and delving in dungeons would cause leather armour to rot let alone rations. I think the player was either trying to avoid excess paper work like you suggested, or he really didn't want his character to run out of food again after his previous one did. Or he was passive aggressive and was making a statement.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

I think the DM in that campaign was doing a (in his words) "boot to the head". Wasn't much vindictiveness in it, just the old "don't do stupid things". We were only 3rd level and had no access to magic that would have helped carry all that stuff. As it was mostly a voyageur style campaign the only thing that could be readily replenished was water (except in deserts). Also I think vacuum sealed packs were beyond the technology of the campaign. Medieval style tack or rations would last for a good long time provided you took the effort to keep them dry and in a cool place. But fording rivers, crawling through swamps and delving in dungeons would cause leather armour to rot let alone rations. I think the player was either trying to avoid excess paper work like you suggested, or he really didn't want his character to run out of food again after his previous one did. Or he was passive aggressive and was making a statement.

So to boot him in the head he made a horrible ruling that a character could carry a years worth of water and food JUST so that he could rule the food had gone bad and the character died of food poisoning.

That is real nice.

BTW, does anyone even know how hard or easy it is to die of food poisoning? I myself had it once from old chinese and I have known several other people and not a one even went to the hospital much less got more than a couple days sick.

 

[Particle_Man]

...when they bug the DM to do another encounter that the DM has not prepared and it is 4am and the DM is tired but they bug him anyhow so the DM just yanks something out of the MM without worrying about game balance.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

...when they bug the DM to do another encounter that the DM has not prepared and it is 4am and the DM is tired but they bug him anyhow so the DM just yanks something out of the MM without worrying about game balance.

Doesnt that fall under the kicking down just ONE more door.

 

[Sejs]

... they stop making a sufficient effort to keep themselves alive.

 

[NCSUCodeMonkey]

...I'm in a bad mood . Just kidding. Combat tends to be lethal in my game, so character deaths are fairly unpredictable. It's not always because they do stupid things, sometimes they do exactly the right thing and the encounter overwhelms them.

NCSUCodeMonkey

 

[KRT]

So to boot him in the head he made a horrible ruling that a character could carry a years worth of water and food JUST so that he could rule the food had gone bad and the character died of food poisoning.

That is real nice.

BTW, does anyone even know how hard or easy it is to die of food poisoning? I myself had it once from old chinese and I have known several other people and not a one even went to the hospital much less got more than a couple days sick.

Not water just the food which was calculated to weigh about 250 lbs. which in 2nd addition left him about 80lbs for the rest of his equipment. However it was ruled that his horse was carrying some of it. The water was a non issue as we could replenish it readily. The save was made so the character did not die and I don't know what would have happened if he did fail. Although I suspect that he would have died.

We did stop playing with this particular DM but not for stuff like that, more for spending 4 sessions looking for this dungeon we had clues to but never finding it (this DM refused to lead the party in any way). After one particularly frustrating session he told us we had come within a 100 feet of it at some point in the session but didn't give us any other clue than that. I think that was the last session we ever played with him as DM.