Speaking of Sacrifice

[Psion]

Self-sacrifice is a commonly lauded virtue in fantasy yarns of the sort D&D hopes to emulate. Yet I've gotta say, I don't see it a whole lot in play.

Have you had any interesting situations in your games where a PC has willingly sacrificed themselves?

Do you think a GM would be a bastard for presenting a situation in which the only way out was that a character sacrifice themselves?

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Have you had any interesting situations in your games where a PC has willingly sacrificed themselves?

Yeah, in my RttToEE game. I was surrounded by beasties that would very likely have gone on to beat up the wizard nearby. I shouted for the wizard to fireball them which would have meant me as well. Granted, I didn't think he'd roll damage as well as he did ....

Do you think a GM would be a bastard for presenting a situation in which the only way out was that a character sacrifice themselves?

Fine as long as the DM is willing to let the player think of an alternate solution. A hackneyed example: if the DM says that the only way to beat the bad guy is to press a red button that will also drop an anvil on the head of the button-pressing-guy, and the player presses the button with a 10' pole, the DM should have the anvil hit the pole and not the button-presser.

 

[Henry]

I've tried before, but the DMs wouldn't let me. Seems like every time my characters are willing to throw themselves on the sword for the party or a great cause, the DMs in queston came up with a reason at the last minute I didn't have to.

Do you think a GM would be a bastard for presenting a situation in which the only way out was that a character sacrifice themselves?

Not necessarily - but then, I've always had a more gamist attitude, and I'm one of those nutso types that lines up to send their character into the Tomb of Horrors if there's an in-game need.

 

[The_Gunslinger658]

Hi-

Ha ha, you have not played in my games, lots of self sacrofice going on, "Well scum, to enter the portal, you gotta shed a little bit of blood"

Yes, blood sacrofice is all good.


Scott

 

[The_Gneech]

Generally speaking, there've been a fair number of "I'll take a hit for the team" type of moments over the years, but there hasn't yet been call for a character to die for it. The amount of work from a GM point of view it would take to set up a situation like that, vs. the amount of fun/not-fun the players are likely to get from it ... meh. Not worth it.

-TG

 

[Hammerhead]

In one of my campaigns, there was a moment where the party's Paladin, who held the essence of a dead god inside of him, considered using himself as the god's vessel so the party could defeat the BBEG at the end of the campaign. Of course, using him as such a vessel would have meant a total loss of identity. I didn't create my situation with this outcome in mind, and in the end the player decided not to go with it.

It turns out conventional methods (well, if you consider a Wish spell to reverse the effects of a Mord's Disjunction to be conventional) worked just fine to send the evil-doer to his grave.

There may be a future moment in my campaign as well, where a group of super powerful characters might volunteer to enter a one-way portal to defeat the evil Chaos gods. Naturally, I've foreseen several ways it might not be "one way," but it's one-way as far as anyone knows at this point and time. And I'm sure that my players will think of a dozen other ways to avoid certain death.

From a player standpoint, I greatly resent being 'forced' to sacrifice myself for the team, and will go to extreme lengths to avoid anyone sacrificing themselves for everyone else.

 

[Victim]

It turns out conventional methods (well, if you consider a Wish spell to reverse the effects of a Mord's Disjunction to be conventional) worked just fine to send the evil-doer to his grave.

Well, one character was going have to sacrifice themselves so we could control the activation of the BBEG's doomsday spell. However, wizards cheat.

There may be a future moment in my campaign as well, where a group of super powerful characters might volunteer to enter a one-way portal to defeat the evil Chaos gods. Naturally, I've foreseen several ways it might not be "one way," but it's one-way as far as anyone knows at this point and time. And I'm sure that my players will think of a dozen other ways to avoid certain death.

Yeah, we probably will. At least some of us.

 

[Kuld]

I once broke a staff of magi inside a prismatic sphere to save my group from a powerful lich. Yeah, it was great.

 

[Psion]

I once broke a staff of magi inside a prismatic sphere to save my group from a powerful lich. Yeah, it was great.

It's been my experience that if you give the PCs a staff of the magi (or any item with a similar "panic button" ability, really), it WILL be broken (pushed), eventually.

 

[Baron Opal]

There was a location in my old campaign where the powers of ice ruled. There was a prison vault where powerful mindless creatures were imprisoned behind a door that could only be locked from the inside, but not unlocked at all. Spring must come to all lands, so once every few hundred years the creatures escaped. I was expecting that the characters would go on a 4-5 adventure arc to contain them, but they wrapped it up in one night by luring the creatures into the vault and one character locking the door from the inside. I was floored. I had designed the adventure so that the "easy way" was self-sacrifice, but I never expected one of the players to sacrifice their character.

Baron Opal