PC's Killing PC's

[PowerWordDumb]

IHowever, as long as the group is mature about their gaming & doesn't take it personally, then I would have no problem with it.

Well said. As long as the above caveats are followed, then it's a big event to be woven into the ongoing story. It may not be something that should be encouraged, but it's certainly (in my view) nothing that should bring outright bans or other hysterical reaction. PCs die. It happens at the hands of the enemy, so why should it be impossible to die at the hands of a team-member you've betrayed or goaded?

Certainly one should take a hard look at alignment shifting, and in-party and possibly in-game legal repercussions, but beyond that... slap them on the wrist and suggest they not let it escalate to that extent again, unless they're a CE type of party with high attrition rates.

Since they players don't have their panties in a bunch over the event, and there is seemingly no lasting inter-player anger, I don't see any reason for the DM to get overly upset. Annoyed and irritated, sure, but upset? Nope.

Now, if you're running the type of game where this just never happens and it goes totally contrary to the flavor of your campaign, then you could consider some sort of sanctions against the participants.

Just my $0.02CAD.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Just remember that reasonably good folk quite often killed each other over insults and points of honor in the time eras most D&D games try to emulate. Unless they make a point of doing it frequently, or they're killing each other in their sleep, it really only affects group cohesion-- their morality is more or less not involved.

 

[HomerJS]

man we had 7 pc-pc deaths in our last campeign. no one really cares. 3 were in character smack talking, 2 from stealing items, and 2 so a powerful artifact didnt have to be split between so many people.

oh yeah it was an evil campeign. also if you had a cool item you would have probobly died.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

man we had 7 pc-pc deaths in our last campeign. no one really cares. 3 were in character smack talking, 2 from stealing items, and 2 so a powerful artifact didnt have to be split between so many people.

oh yeah it was an evil campeign. also if you had a cool item you would have probobly died.

You know, just because they're evil, doesn't mean they have to be greedy. Especially greedily stupid.

Hmm. D&D 4.0 should include Greedily Stupid as an alignment, though.

 

[Kastil]

The thief is being really abrasive and snotty towards the barbarian, which warns him that if he continues, he's going to get a punch in the face.

Hmmm....this happened in a game I was in. My rogue taunted the barbarian in the party. Of course there were these fine steel bars between us.

::looks innocently:: Hey he was trapped and I was just trying to help him escape by peving him off.

In your game, the barbarian did warn the rogue. I personally would have ran like hell at the sight of the greatsword ;-)

 

[durath]

keep it in game

I actually lost someone I thought was a friend over this.

Won't go into all the detail but his PC had been stealing from the party, planning to betray and murder certain members of the party and various other nasty deeds all while maintaing a guise of freindship.

My PC had a cohort who manged to use the Detect Dreams spell on him and the DM gave me the info about his plans to do bad stuff to certain party members.

I kept all this secret and for months of play time( a little over a year in game time) my PC tried to turn him from his evil ways(I was a good aligned cleric).

In the end my PC decided to finally confront him and had the rest of the party present but invisible. The rogue fesses up to all the plans and basically says join him or die.

My cleric gives the signal for the party to take him out. THe wizard enervates him and the Sorceress hits him with a hold monster. He fails the save and the cleric imprisons him with the Ethereal Prison spell from Monte Cooks BOEM II.

At first the player said he wasn't upset about all this because he doesn't sweat D&D but over the course of the next week he decided to drop out of the campaign and even told the DM it wouldn't be a good idea if he saw me and one of the other players ever again.

The kicker is I even told him before the fight went down that I didn't want any of this to spill out of game. I told him he could play his PC however he wanted and I would do the same. He agreed but when the fight didn't go his way I guess he got upset.

Ah well, the point is...PC vs. PC is ok by me but just make sure everyone can keep it "in game".

 

[Balgus]

I'd just let it happen. Let him roll up a new char, or ressurect this one, with the smae lvl down rule. Why should he get a brand spankin new PC just because he was the idiot who died- for whatever reason.

After a couple levels, he'll learn


Edit: sorry- this is what he should learn: to solve their differences in other ways like a rock throwing contest or a riddlin' contest.. or a subdual damage fight. Not straight out killing each other.

BTW- did the barb get xp for the fight?

 

[Darkness]

In many of my campaigns about 50% of all PC casualties are caused by other PCs.

Only once did two players nearly come to blows over a PC vs. PC death.
Unknown to me, they had brought out-of-game issues into the game. After bickering amongst themselves for a while, one of them secretly paid another PC to kill his rival.
(The "victim" was a very powerful combatant while his opponent's skills lay in other areas. Thus, hiring the third PC - who was a hired killer by trade and the victim's equal in combat - to do the deed was the guy's only chance of taking him down.)
After a very long, exceedingly close combat the hired killer succeeded and killed the other PC.
Things went downhill from there until the two bickering players were just about to start a fistfight. (The deceased character's player wasn't mad at the guy who actually killed his character, though.) To make a long story short, I stepped right between them and told them in no uncertain terms that, if they intended to start a brawl in my living room, I'd have no other option than banging their heads together as often as needed to make them calm down again. So they relented.

 

[haiiro]

I usually make the players create characters that have ic-reasons to be together, and I discourage or outright ban PCs that do not suit the rest of the PCs, so PCs killing PCs does not come up in my game.

With D&D, I follow this approach as well.

With other games, it depends on what I'm going for. One of the best scenarios that I've ever run was John Tynes' In Media Res, a Call of Cthulhu scenario where the PCs are all escaped convicts. The way the characters are set up, some sort of PC vs. PC conflict is almost inevitable -- and it works prefectly.

 

[rbingham2000]

Edit: sorry- this is what he should learn: to solve their differences in other ways like a rock throwing contest or a riddlin' contest.. or a subdual damage fight. Not straight out killing each other.

The way I understand from reading this post, the barbarian started the fight by blasting the smart-mouthed thief with a good right to the face. He probably didn't intend to kill the guy; just teach him a lesson or go for some fisticuffs if the thief wanted a fight.

The thief, however, instead of apologizing to the barbarian or blasting him with a hard shot of his own, lost his temper and made the serious mistake of drawing his sword on him. This introduced the threat of lethal force to the equation, about the equivalent of pulling a knife or a gun on someone in the modern age, and after that, things went downhill in a hurry.

Lethal weapons should never be drawn unless you are prepared to seriously hurt or kill someone -- and your opponent, if he has any sense at all, will treat you as if you are thus prepared, even if you are not.