Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="scourger" data-source="post: 1878361" data-attributes="member: 12328">The risk of PC death is essential to the game for me.  As a player and as a DM.  I am unsatisfied when I play in a game in which nobody dies.  It doesn't feel like there is any true risk.  But, I think different players react differently to PC death.  Some members of our group just leave the session when their character dies.  Sometimes, they don't come back for a while.  There are players who take risks and understand that sometimes adventuring is lethal, and there are overly-cautious players who want to exploit every possible advantage before proceeding.  It is a difficult balance to strike.  I think the most important thing to do as a DM is to be fair in applying the rules.  Some good advice I read recently in a 20-year old RPG is to give the player a chance, even a very small last chance.  If you do that, the player will feel better about the outcome.  Here's a recent example from a D&D game I'm running.  PC A died while PC B was trying to carry him away to safety.  The combat continued, and the other PCs defeated the foe.  After reading the rules for a few minutes, Player A thought that I applied his first stabilization roll too soon.  I made him roll immediately because he fell on his turn after an attack of opportunity that he provoked resulted in a critical hit that put him in the negatives.  Player A felt that he should have rolled his first stabilization on his next turn (which is what the PHB says) and therefore PC A should have 1 more hit point to his name--putting him at -9 instead of -10 and DEAD.  I considered it on the spot and decided it was reasonable to allow PC B a chance to make a Heal check to try to re-stabilize PC A, and failing that to allow PC A one more stabilization roll.  It didn't affect the story too much and gave PC A a slim chance of success.  I did not allow any of the other PCs to break off combat retroactively to try to help as that would affect the way the story unfolded.  Player B had to roll a 16 or better on PC B's untrained & low-Wisdom Heal skill check to re-stabilize PC A.  The d20 fell as Player A nervously prepared his percentile dice to try again to roll 10% or less.  Player B made the check, and everyone was happy.  I suspect that if both rolls had failed, Player A would have been accepting of the result and just made up a new character.  So, make the threat of PC death a possibility; but give the players every chance you can to avoid it.  In the end, make it the fault of their dice if you possbily can.  You can't blade a bad roll!  (But you can sure blame a bad DM!)</blockquote>

Verification