player killing?

[Bagpuss]

My 10th/9th level party recently tried to destory and desecrate a temple to Chardun (LE, Scarred Lands god) so I sent his Herald to deal with them.

After the strongest figther in the party became his lapdog do to has Charming Gaze attack, and another was reduced to a wimpering fool from his Strength and Wisdom drain attack, the party had failed to make and dent and the sorerers couldn't get round his spell resistance, the cleric decided it was best to call to his own god for help rather than try and fight their way out.

That encounter definately fell into the 10% over the top challege.

 

[Nail]

But are your adventures designed with the hook already there to get out of the encounter?

Sometimes. Designing good hooks is the DMs job. ...But that doesn't mean every potential encounter should have a hook or out.

In my previous example of a TPK, I set up the opponents, their resources, and their agendas. Then I let the PCs do what they'd like. They chose the "knock loudly at the entrance, then charge in" approach......

That approach is awefully fun, and sure does get things going quickly....but does have, uhm... ...downsides.

Or do you ever just trust the players to come up with something?

Occasionally, you just have to run.

If they completely lose their brains and start firing magic missiles he gets this really determined sort of 'oh, you wanna mess with me eh?' look and the NPCs start going postal. Its truly a lot of fun, and VERY challenging.

Heh.

In the games I've been in, the real possibility of PC deaths has made it better.....However: I dislike PC vs. DM sort of out-comes. The DM should set "it" up, and let the PCs "take it or leave it"; it's no skin off my nose as a DM if the players decide to go a different dirrection or cleverly avoid/defeat the problem. It's not "me vs. them".

The thing that really gets me is when the DM is always pulling his punches. IMHO, rolling the dice behind the screen is a prime example of that. Another is when your PC has 7 hp, and the monster just happens to do 7 hp of damage to you.

But then again, I'm the suspicious type.

 

[Wraithdrit]

I used to be REALLY bad about this. I would pop my head up over the screen and ask, "How many hit points do you have left?" After a while, the PCs stopped answering. Shows they wanted to take their punches no matter the consequences. My problem is always when I OVER challenge a party and end up killing someone off I feel really guilty.

One time had a good encounter of right CR set up. But circumstances just went against one particular PC in how the encounter went down and he ended up point blank to the single bad monster. Did I mention he was a mage? Well, whack whack whack he is a bloody pulp. I didn't pull the punches. Added up the damage (including the critical) and handed him a slip of paper with how much damage was on it, and asked him then how many HPs he had left. It took him to negative but not DOA.

After the fact I realized I forgot to double the damage on the crit. He shoulda died. But I had already handed out the damage...

What would you do in this situation? Let it ride, correct it (killing the character) or what? I'm interested in how others would run this.

 

[Vaxalon]

...he just sets up the encounters, ignoring the players, and lets the players actions define what happens. If the players come up with something really clever then he smiles and rolls with it.....

That's how I do it. About half the time, they pull their butts out of the fire. About half the time, somebody dies.

 

[kingpaul]

Due to my stupidity:

My character was in the negatives while the party was being attacked by a pack of zombies. The wizard didn't have a good view of the board, and I pointed to a place that would have maximum effect against the zomibes. Wizard casts, does goodly amounts of damage to zombies; however, I didn't realize that my character was in the radius of effect, and that dropped him to -14 or so.

 

[Nail]

..... Shows they wanted to take their punches no matter the consequences.

Good for the PCs! Sometimes it can be hard to see a well-loved PC die becaue you were being honest and up-front about the combat. But then if you defeat the bad guy later, it's twice as sweet!

What would you do in this situation? Let it ride, correct it (killing the character) or what? I'm interested in how others would run this.

FWIW, I'd let it move on as is. The pace of the combat is as important as it's accuracy. Going back for a "redo" is quite annoying.

This is another great reason to roll the dice, including damage dice, in front of the players; they're likely to catch the DMs mistakes. And often the mistakes were in their favor!

"Uhm...I probably shouldn't say this, but you forgot to double the damage when that Grey Render crit-ed me."

 

[hammymchamham]

Re: Re: Re: Justifiable TPK? I think so.

But have you ever played in a game where the DM set everything in motion and let the players loose on it? I did. It was very fun, but DAMNED dangerous.

My current game will has the PC's on a road to damnation, and they don't even know it. They *think* they're helping a cleric gather antient relics to help a Lawful Good church. Even the cleric thinks it'll help his cause. Of course, no one really knows what these relics will do when they come together.

What do they do? I'm not sure exactly (haven't worked that far ahead), but I'll have to come up with some nasty things. So, if they complete their objective, they lose.

 

[Nail]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Justifiable TPK? I think so.

So, if they complete their objective, they lose.

Better hope they don't read this thread......

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Justifiable TPK? I think so.

My current game will has the PC's on a road to damnation, and they don't even know it. They *think* they're helping a cleric gather antient relics to help a Lawful Good church. Even the cleric thinks it'll help his cause. Of course, no one really knows what these relics will do when they come together.

What do they do? I'm not sure exactly (haven't worked that far ahead), but I'll have to come up with some nasty things. So, if they complete their objective, they lose.

This reminds me of a storyarc I played in last year. We were gathering the pieces to a crystal statue. A cleric tells us we need to restore the statue to prevent an evil god from breaking free from his prison. But we start finding hints that the pieces might be the pieces of the dark god himself. One NPC wants us to throw the pieces into a lava lake, and she isn't evil either....

Talk about a headache!

 

[Staffan]

This has a few spoilers for the very start of Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil.










A few weeks ago, my players were just starting the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil adventure. There were five PCs, plus two NPCs from Hommlet who wanted to come along and see what was going on in the moathouse. When they entered the moathouse's courtyard, they were of course attacked by the dragon... who proceeded to maul them utterly. Two characters (one NPC and one PC) fell in the very first round to a moderately lucky breath weapon (31 points of damage against 4th level PCs), and the dragon then proceeded to claw and bite the rest to death, with a few more lightning bolts here and there. Two of the PCs ran away, and the rest of the party died (though more or less in the opposite order, they ran when they saw how much ass the dragon kicked).

When the two surviving PCs got themselves a new party and returned, things went much better. Probably due to people avoiding standing in a row and the dragon rolling a little worse on his breath weapons. One NPC died, and two PCs went down to negative hp, but at least the party prevailed and managed to kill the dragon.