Plot immunity for PCs

[bekkilyn_rpg]

it's a failing of me as a player. i realize that. when i fear for my PCs life, i shut down my emotional attachment to it and i don't role-play well.

i see a lot of people saying they want combat to be deadly because that's more realistic. my point of view, however, is that i don't want the game to be realistic -- i want to simulate action movies or comic books or adventure novels, not reality. that's why i always do my best to avoid killing PCs.

...

I feel almost exactly the same way, except I don't see it as a failing. It's simply a playstyle preference and isn't necessarily better or worse than the "perma-death at all costs or it's no fun" playstyle.

I receive no enjoyment whatsoever from perma-death games. I just don't. They are a complete and utter waste of time for me unless the *only* reason I am playing the game is purely to be social or to learn the rules until the "real" game starts. I enjoy making up characters who are more than just "Adventurer 1293" and who I can feel is part of a living, breathing world rather than someone who was just plopped there as an adult to kill monsters all day long.

Now I haven't actually had any lengthy experiences with "killer DM's" in the sense that there is no other choice for a player but to roll up a new character if the character dies and I'm ecstatically glad of it. I don't want to feel terrified and that I can't take any risks at all or feel punished if I dare go out and explore something in a game. It's no fun for me. What is meaningful to me in a game *is* the exploration (both of the world and of the other people in the world) and being part of a world and helping to create an interactive story. If my characters don't get a chance to do these things, then there's no point in putting any effort into those characters. There's better things to do with one's time where someone isn't going to stomp on you for having the audacity to enjoy something too much.

 

[d4]

The sort of random senseless violence inherent in a "random blaster fight" is the sort of thing that people who value their lives should be trying to avoid. If your players wish to engage in senseless random violence, this is fine, but they should be prepared to accept the consequences of engaging in random acts of senseless violence, such as being injured and/or killed.

i was more thinking of situations like when Luke, Han, and Leia ran into a couple dozen stormtroopers on the Death Star. it would have ruined the movie IMO if, say, Luke and Han bit the dust in that scene and only Leia, Chewie, and the droids escaped.

it may be more realistic for two out of three combatants to die when in a firefight against a score of highly-trained military troops, but it would not be in keeping with the tone of the Star Wars movies. thus, in my campaigns, PCs don't die in those kinds of situations.

 

[bekkilyn_rpg]

I'm a killer DM. I don't do plot immunity. I feel that random, senseless death tends to accurately capture the spirit of real combat, and that therefore, it belongs in the game: Characters who don't wish to die in random, senseless violence should try to avoid engaging in it. Plus, I assess the difficulty of a battle based nearly entirely on casualty ratios. If there aren't any casualties, it must not have been a very hard battle. It makes for a very nice ad-hoc CR evaluation: If an encounter of a CR equal to the level of the party is expected to consume about 25% of a party's resources, a party of 4 can therefore be expected to sustain one casualty as a result. More casualties equates more challenge.

Of course, you can always try to deal with the situation without getting into a fight, which is worth the rated experience. Otherwise, somebody's likely to die, possibly in a random, utterly senseless way. And that's just how combat is.

This example you've presented might be mathematically interesting to me and if the only reason I played D&D was for the greater and greater challenge of difficult fights, then it might be even more interesting, but taking into account that fighting monsters is the absolute last reason I play roleplaying games to begin with, this sort of "challenge" on a constant basis would bore me to tears, especially as the only character-building I would be doing would consist of making sure it was as min-maxed and as combat-effective as possible, which is also a very boring procedure to me.

 

[d4]

...the only character-building I would be doing would consist of making sure it was as min-maxed and as combat-effective as possible, which is also a very boring procedure to me.

this is an interesting point. something i've noticed between games with "killer DMs" (or at least "death is possible" DMs) vs. those that allow PCs to have "plot immunity" is that PCs in the first type of campaign are almost always min-maxed for combat survival, whereas those in the latter type are much more likely to not be. this is regardless of the actual ratio of combat/role-playing the campaign is. i've seen many "death is possible" campaigns that are combat-lite and role-playing-intensive where all the characters are optimized for combat. i've seen many combat-heavy/role-playing-lite "plot immunity" campaigns where the characters were not optimized for combat, because they didn't need to be.

in short, it seems that the latter type of campaign, in my experience, tends to have a much wider range of character builds, with many more characters not so heavily min-maxed on combat.

 

[Umbran]

If an encounter of a CR equal to the level of the party is expected to consume about 25% of a party's resources, a party of 4 can therefore be expected to sustain one casualty as a result.

If and only if nobody else expends any resources whatsoever, yes that logic holds.

 

[Norfleet]

If and only if nobody else expends any resources whatsoever, yes that logic holds.

Characters *ARE* resources.

 

[Norfleet]

This example you've presented might be mathematically interesting to me and if the only reason I played D&D was for the greater and greater challenge of difficult fights, then it might be even more interesting, but taking into account that fighting monsters is the absolute last reason I play roleplaying games to begin with, this sort of "challenge" on a constant basis would bore me to tears, especially as the only character-building I would be doing would consist of making sure it was as min-maxed and as combat-effective as possible, which is also a very boring procedure to me.

Actually, I've had players which did this. Their characters were, indeed, highly combat-effective. It didn't help that much, since they eventually died anyway. Optimization of characters is helpful, but tactics work better. Furthermore, intentionally optimizing oneself for combats tends to promote hammer-and-nailism. See original "combats are deadly" thing.

However, you seem to have entirely missed the point, the fact that you're not supposed to get into these fights at all. It's kind of funny how a roleplayer like yourself utterly missed the intent of deadly combat: That of discouraging players from engaging in it in the first place, because people who get into combats frequently get KILLED.

Not getting into fights in the first place is another rather effective approach taken by one of my longer-running groups, who survived not because they were optimized for combat, but because they were optimized for avoiding combat.

 

[Norfleet]

i was more thinking of situations like when Luke, Han, and Leia ran into a couple dozen stormtroopers on the Death Star. it would have ruined the movie IMO if, say, Luke and Han bit the dust in that scene and only Leia, Chewie, and the droids escaped.

it may be more realistic for two out of three combatants to die when in a firefight against a score of highly-trained military troops, but it would not be in keeping with the tone of the Star Wars movies. thus, in my campaigns, PCs don't die in those kinds of situations.

That's because they stormed through the corridors with no regard for caution or good sense, rather than advancing carefully between points of cover, or under stealth. They ruthlessly exploited their "plot immunity" rather than trying to do things in a sensible manner. Running through a corridor engaging in a blaster fight with a bunch of stormtroopers is asking to be messily shot and killed, and when players ask for something like this, I give it to them.

Non-lethal combat simply cheapens the entire experience of combat, to the point where even the so-called anti-combat "roleplayer" crowd has come to regard it casually as something that shouldn't be taken seriously, because nobody's actually supposed to DIE in a FIGHT....right?

 

[S'mon]

i was more thinking of situations like when Luke, Han, and Leia ran into a couple dozen stormtroopers on the Death Star. it would have ruined the movie IMO if, say, Luke and Han bit the dust in that scene and only Leia, Chewie, and the droids escaped.

it may be more realistic for two out of three combatants to die when in a firefight against a score of highly-trained military troops, but it would not be in keeping with the tone of the Star Wars movies. thus, in my campaigns, PCs don't die in those kinds of situations.

Well, in the Star Wars movie Luke & co were _allowed_ to escape in order to reveal the location of the Yavin base...

If you don't want to kill PCs, give them the chance to avoid 'random senseless fights'. Don't pull punches though - lots of 'good guys' die in Star Wars.

 

[Umbran]

Characters *ARE* resources.

Yes, one whole character comprises 25% of the party's overall resources. And so if one person dies, then the party shouldn't have to lose anything else. Not a single spell or hit point should be necessary.

Or, to turn it around - if the party does choose to spread around the burden, so that everyone uses about 25% of their spells and hit points, there's no reason other than dumb luck that they should have any deaths whatsoever. That funny cooperation thing they teach on Sesame Street actually works.