Should the DM "kill" a character?

[kamosa]

This seems wrong on a couple fronts. While it certainly is in flavor for the orcs to be mean spirited, I don't think most players would feel good about having a long running character killed in this fashion.

First off, this game is about the heroes. Killing them when there was a chance for the party to save them is going against the spirit of the game. Helping a downed companion has a long and storied history in the game. When the monsters just finish off the players, you deny the other players a chance to use their skills and potions in a postive way to help the character.

Second, using the "it was realistic for the monsters" arguement falls very flat. Made up monsters in a make believe game have what ever ethics the GM decides they have. When the GM decides to kill downed characters, your basically saying to the player, the GM wants your character to die. While deaths happen in the game and can even be fun, a blatent statement like coup de gras on a downed character sucks the energy and fun out of a game.

The much vaunted "tension" and "fear of death" that people banter about being important in the game, does not exsist in a situation like this. Instead you get personal hurt feelings and a feeling that the GM is out to get you. Those never lead to a fun game then or down the road. It breaks people out of the moment and out of their character. It leaves the player pissed or unhappy.

 

[Zappo]

I don't think this necessarily means that the DM is out to get the character. At the same time, I don't think that an orc would behave that way. A CdG on a character in the negatives is practically a wasted round, unless the orcs were planning on fleeing soon afterwards or they otherwise believed that they weren't going to win.

 

[Piratecat]

The much vaunted "tension" and "fear of death" that people banter about being important in the game, does not exsist in a situation like this. Instead you get personal hurt feelings and a feeling that the GM is out to get you. Those never lead to a fun game then or down the road. It breaks people out of the moment and out of their character. It leaves the player pissed or unhappy.

I disagree. They're in combat against a chaotic evil monster; let's face it, it's not going to hurt them and then smile "Just kidding!" I'm not a big fan of randomly killing characters, but I think it was justified and appropriate in this case.

I agree with Umbran, though; communication within the group helps quite a bit to avoid this sort of problem.

 

[Nightfall]

Agreed PC. I always say "Hey folks there's a good chance, you're gonna die."

So while it's not encouraged, it's still something that SHOULD happen in games in these situations.

 

[kamosa]

I disagree. They're in combat against a chaotic evil monster; let's face it, it's not going to hurt them and then smile "Just kidding!" I'm not a big fan of randomly killing characters, but I think it was justified and appropriate in this case.

I agree with Umbran, though; communication within the group helps quite a bit to avoid this sort of problem.

I don't think of knocking them out and leaving them to bleed to death = happy christmas card. I guess I have trouble seeing circumstances where once a character is down it is jusitfied and appropriate to kill them while a combat is going on. At some level this is a game with real people involved and it just feels like a strike against the person, especially if there has been "unwritten rules" that point other wise previously in the game.

Death happens, and in fact happens fairly often in a combat oriented game. However, killing a downed character feels almost like a murder in the game.

 

[jgbrowning]

To me, the orc wouldn't kill the downed cleric only if he's certain his group is going to win. If he thinks he's going to die, and he doesn't think surrender's a viable option, he'll spite who he can and take the downed out for certain. But I always have my bad guys coup de grace at pretty much any opportunity. It's effective, only takes a round, and makes sure there's one less to ever deal with again.

joe b.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Thanee's point's a very good one - though possibly not relevant with mook orcs, it can crop up even at low levels when facing creatures with claw/claw/bite routines.

If you drop someone with your first attack, you can continue on with a move action.

If you drop someone with your second attack, though, you're committed to a full attack action... you can't do anything else. If you still have your bite attack 'in hand', and there's no other opponent within immediate range of a 5' step, you're not "wasting" any actions at all if you use that bite on the fallen opponent. It's not a CDG, but it's a melee attack against a prone creature with a -5 Dex modifier... so it's hard to miss.

In that situation, the creature would be foolish not to 'make sure' of his kill... 'cos let's face it, what the hell else is he going to do with a spare bite attack?

-Hyp.

 

[milotha]

If you are in a campaign where you want to foster attachment to characters, I think this isn't a good GM strategy. I find that falling into negative hitpoints is usually penalty enough to worry the PCs. They've effectively lost one ally for a couple or rounds, have to worry about bleeding to death, and the fallen player has to sit and watch helpless to effect the situation. This builds enough tension.

As a GM, you have many opportunities to kill fallen chaacters. Are you going to do this every time or are you going to do it sporadically? If you pass up other player's fallen characters and select out others to be killed, then it's going to feel rather personal to those that are killed.

You can have certain monsters kill fallen characters. However, you need to let the players know that certain monsters are going to use this strategy, otherwise you won't seem like an impartial GM. It's sad to lose 1 year of playing time to a CdG if you are in a world without ressurection or raise dead.

 

[Mr. Kaze]

Having killed possibly more than my fair share of characters, I have to say that it's very important to the enjoyment of the enjoyment of the game that players don't love their characters more than the game.

The following are true stories...
- A rogue was scouting out ahead, doubling back through an unseen room. She encountered a couple of spectres and was quickly drained to death. She came back as a wight and the party killed the wight. She was raised from that. The next session, she was doing the same sort of thing and killed by a Bodak's gaze. The party killed the resulting undead while it was still in a bag. The party didn't raise her that time and she quit.
- One session, a rogue was scouting out ahead and got ripped appart by dire apes while the fighters were milling about a full 40' back. Next session, a wizard was shredded by a fiendish dire lion's pounce while the fighters were a good 20' back. The rogue and the wizard were played by folks from the previous story. The fighters quit the next session because "heroes aren't supposed to die."
- A party was effectively TPK'd because they camped out immediately adjacent to a Drow city after walking through and waving at the guards, who were the same sort of guards they'd been slaughtering with reckless abandon for the past week -- only with enough sense to not attack a party of armed-to-the-teeth adventurers who'd been slaughtering guards like them with reckless abandon all week. (Unfortunately, the replacement heroes didn't have enough mooks to get XP from to make continuing the adventure feasible, which resulted in a TPK despite my valient efforts. Nobody quit, but we're on a different campaign now.)
- In this campaign, a character got killed by a Slay Living while he was sneak attacking a cleric. No problems there. The replacement character got killed by a Slay Living glyph targeting humans less than half an hour after showing up. We're not docking him XP for that one. There've been a few other casualties, but that's the worst of them. The really sad thing about that, though, is that the glyph was set to target a different member of the party who'd been on the campaign for the past couple of in-game months...

So my rules for killing characters are as follows:
- If you want to target a character for extermination, have a campaign reason for it. Only two current party members have been causing the cult grief for a long time, so they're at the top of the target list -- and at least one of them certainly knows it due to constant harrying and a couple of failed attempts on his life. That's good tension.
- If you want characters to finish off NPCs they knock down, start rolling congeal chances for the NPCs. I expect that most of the players who don't finish downed NPCs don't do it because the DM ignores the NPC after the 0-line is crossed. (If you want to teach this behavior, remember the poison tooth scene in Dune...)
- If you want an NPC to kill downed PCs, do it with their boss while the underlings pursue the rest of the party. Offing downed enemies is the luxury of rank -- peons put their own lives on the line. Of course, the counterpoint to this is "don't arbitrarily kill a PC with a mere lucky mook." (Of course, there are probably fewer mere mooks as the campaign goes on, but that's a risk to your PCs...)
- And if you kill the weakest member of the party because they're too much in harms' way, feel free to bend the death/resurrection rules to ensure that they don't fall too terribly far behind the party. Just because you kill the character doesn't mean that the player should so weak that they're not having any fun anymore. It'll make it easier for your players to get over losing a character and get on with the game.

::Kaze (hopes that helps -- if it was an Orc party leader, he would've offed the downed cleric, too. After all, no telling when he'd recover, heal himself and flame strike the noble orcs from behind...)

 

[random user]

I follow those who think it would be very hard for the orc cleric to know that the guy wasn't dead dead, especially in the heat of battle.

This isn't a situation like a drow using poison to sleep a PC or an orc or other monster seeing someone cast a hold person or sleep on a PC. In these situations it's obvious that the PC isn't dead.

I have never in my real life ever encountered someone dead nor someone who is almost dead but just bleeding out and will be dead in a minute or so, so maybe I'm wrong, but I assume that telling the difference between the two while in the midst of combat would require something like stopping and checking for a faint heart rate.

Now if your orcs have a habit of sticking a sword etc into dead corpses in the middle of combat, then sure, that action is fine. But I think that action isn't going to be that common. Orcs and most monsters are going to make sure there are no more threats before CdG'ing dead people.

Or if you had a monster whose description says they start feeding as soon as they see dead meat, to the disregard of their own safety, or something like that, I would see it as reasonable to finish off a dying character.

Just my 2cp