To Kill or Not to Kill?

[Sadras]

As a player I would be unhappy with the result.

I'm mature enough to understand that if I risk my character's life chasing off alone against an unknown threat that I may very well have my character get killed. I would want the game world to react to my choices in the game fairly, and I would want to expect that the choices I make have actual consequences. Otherwise, what's the point of playing?

That is fair, you like the dice to decide every course of outcome as you stated between the tressym and orog and such and I can respect that style of play and have played it.
But I have to ask consequences = being killed only? I realise that is the title of the thread, but do you foresee or allow the probability of any other consequences to materialise. I guess with your preferred style of play those would have to be rolled for right? Like the tressym showing up, a group of elves showing up, the owlbear showing up...
If I had said to the player, I'm rolling for a random encounter and if successful one of those three would appear, say during the chase sequence, would that be more to your taste of fairness?

 

[Sadras]

So I'm in a bit of a hurry, going away for a long weekend, but will try answer your questions.

How Far were they from the group?

A fair distance away, like I said in a later post, it was the end of the session and we were wrapping up so I did a montage of the ranger tracking and killing the surviving orcs leading into a scene setup for the final encounter with the Orog. At all times I asked the PC if he desired to pursue the orcs to their ultimate death including their leader. He confirmed the character would do so, given his racial hatred for orcs (tied in with the class).

As for the chase mechanics (30 feet) and possible exhaustion, I hand waived all that given RL time pressure, so I just mentioned that the orog would be keeping pace. Furthermore I did not have the orog attempt a ranged attack - that would have perhaps resulted in either capture, but more than likely death. Having the elf captive would seem unnecessary effort by the orog, and to be honest I've already done the captive-thing to another of the same player's characters in a concurrent campaign.

If he were tracking them and caught up to them, how long did it take. If he went a sizeable distance from the group to the point that it was over an hour away or some crazy stunt like that I probably would have no problem having the Orog feel safe. Having him chase down and slay the Ranger after the Ranger got tired (if the Ranger got tired before the Orog which is feasible) if it is that far is just part of the game.

Anything from 20 minutes away to an hour seems like what I had in mind, but keep in mind this is 20-60 minutes away from the owlbear encounter not from the encampment. So no it was not that close.

Why would the Orog pursue after having their entire group wiped out. If the Orog was insane the Orog should have remained to battle the group instead of fleeing in the first place.

Different circumstances.
Some of the orcs were preoccupied with trying to maintain the owlbear in the net and all of them were surprised by the attack on them by unknown assailants from the foliage. When most dropped to spells and missile fire, the smart option was for the leader was to flee. Facing an elf on his own, without the element of surprise, is a completely different encounter altogether.

He tried to flee but he was tracked down by the ranger. This time though the ranger was not able to capitalise with the stealth. Hence the cinematic face-off.

Hope I managed to cover everything.

 

[AkaKageWarrior]

To the original post:
I think your solution was nice, but in a good way. The player survived, but paid for it.

On the other hand, it would have been perfectly okay to have the ranger killed, because he did too many mistakes:
- Why go alone? NEVER split the party!
- Why not kill the orog sniper-like? Elf ranger sounds like longbow...

 

[iserith]

Do you really think this is necessary to say?

I do.

I mean is it really necessary for the DM to state death is on the table in a D&D game?

Yes, because as your example shows, that's not always the case.

Also I find stakes change continually based on the story flow, PC choices, new information and the like. I'm not convinced stakes always need to be so clearly ironed out with no lateral movement. Maybe that is just me.

It helps to avoid a mismatch in expectations by making it clear to the player what he or she is buying in to, what's at risk, what it might cost.

 

[Monayuris]

That is fair, you like the dice to decide every course of outcome as you stated between the tressym and orog and such and I can respect that style of play and have played it.
But I have to ask consequences = being killed only? I realise that is the title of the thread, but do you foresee or allow the probability of any other consequences to materialise. I guess with your preferred style of play those would have to be rolled for right? Like the tressym showing up, a group of elves showing up, the owlbear showing up...
If I had said to the player, I'm rolling for a random encounter and if successful one of those three would appear, say during the chase sequence, would that be more to your taste of fairness?

I'm really going from my personal feelings on this. I honestly don't see anything wrong with what played out and if everyone at the table had fun and enjoyed the results, that's all that matters.

I think the issue, for me, is not so much about getting killed or not killed. My issue comes to this:

In that moment his attention turned away from the elf to this new creature which was directed at him – instinctively he turned his body and swung the greataxe at the black winged creature slicing it cleanly in two. Rillix died instantly and quietly.

I suppose it would be possible to happen too fast to react to, but I would have rather had the choice in the matter. I would have rather been presented with:

"Rillix leaps from the shadows and bears its claws and fangs ready to strike at the Orog. The orog turns its attention to your animal companion and raises its axe in response. This gives you an opening. What do you do?"

I guess I'd like the opportunity to decide whether I use the situation to save myself or maybe even hope to save my animal companion by attacking the distracted orog. If I do decide to run and my animal companion is slain as a result, it would have more meaning to me as it happened as a result of my own choice, instead of being presented to me by the DM. If I, instead chose to attack, maybe both of us would have been able to defeat the enemy or both of us would have died, but it would have come from a choice I made.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Bad stuff always happens when you split the part. Yet, players still do it. Sometimes, as the DM, I just don’t get it.

Part of the reason, I think, is that the DM’s attention is divided. Having to juggle multiple encounters at once may mean (for me anyway), that I don’t get the CR right for the one encounter, or that I don’t see that death trap coming, because a certain PC isn’t present that could deal with it.

Also on the subject, I was playing Shadow of War a few days ago, when one of the boss orcs defeated me. Death was inevitable. Except, the orc spared me, saying he wanted to savor my defeat and death. Completely unexpected; I've never seen that happen in the series. But now I’m worried about when he’s going to show up again (for those not familiar with the series, every time an orc beats you, it increases in power).

To the original post:

- Why go alone? NEVER split the party!

 

[Aiden_Keller_]

Why did the Character have to not die?

Well, I am starting Curse of Strahd...the hook is that the players are supposed to be hunting a werewolf. At level 1, a character wanted to go search for the werewolf...and found one outside Barovia (Gave them a 1/20 on d20 and they got a 1) At first it was in wolf form and because they had no silver weapons or magic they were not doing any damage. The character was like "Why has this wolf not taken damage?" and in character said "Are you the werewolf?!" I made it change shape and deliver a final blow.

So instead of killing the character I made the character get carried back to a den/cave and when he awoke was able to sneak out. The in game reason why it left him alone is because the character is a Tortle and it didn't want to waste time with the shell at that moment. (It already planned on attacking the local/starting town at that point)

 

[Keravath]

I think your solution to the circumstance was fine in this case unless you are reinforcing a cycle of continuing "heroic" (read stupid) behavior. Sometimes players start to feel invulnerable and make unreasonable choices. If a DM always saves them from these consequences it can result in either fun role playing when the player realizes how lucky they are to be alive or an unrealistic feeling of invulnerability as a DM refuses to let them die. If this case was a one off then it seems like a good enough solution to me.

I am assuming however, though that the ranger was a high elf or drow since otherwise their base movement would be higher than the orog (a wood elf has 35') and they would outdistance the orog quite quickly in any sort of chase. Keep in mind also that if the ranger was in his favoured terrain (i.e. if he had selected forest) then he can mitigate difficult terrain for longer travel times ... I would tend to give the ranger a significant advantage on any chase through their favoured terrain. In addition, if the orog stops dashing to throw a javelin, the ranger is likely to be more than 20' away and will get farther every turn. This would give the orog one shot with a ranged attack at disadvantage to hit the ranger. If they miss the ranger will likely get away since at that point the orog would never catch them. If the orog hit them then they might choose to leave the ranger for dead in which case the ranger could have made death saves to see whether they live or die. Anyway, depending on circumstances there were probably other ways the situation could have been resolved.

 

[MechaPilot]

Generally speaking, I don't like killing PCs. It always slows things down as I then have to work in that player's new character; and often my players are confident enough in their abilities to not have backup characters with them. In a few cases, this is certainly over-confidence on their part.

That said, I don't like pulling punches. Choices and actions have consequences; pretending they don't does no one any favors, and it isn't good for the story. Consequently, I have killed characters, and I have allowed TPKs to happen when the party as a whole engaged in behavior that was stupid (and often greedy). A fine example of this is when I was running PotA and the party handed over their weapons to the water cult because they were fooled into thinking the water cult could enchant their weapons for them, and would do so for a discount price of 200 gp each. I made sure to play the cultists as being as shady as I possibly could, and to let the players know that their characters were aware 200 gp was an immense discount over usual enchantment pricing. When they got the weapons back, the water cultists spoke a magical word in Aquan and all the party members were encased in globes of water that drowned the entire party. Every choice has its consequences, and you ignore warnings from the DM at your own peril.

I will say that PC death is not my preferred method of handling things. It's much more interesting to me, as the one dealing with the story, if the PCs aren't killed. Instead, they're enslaved; beaten, robbed and left for dead; maimed and left for dead; geased into performing a task for the enemies that captured them; or ransomed back to a patron with whom they'll now have strained relations. Whenever one of these options makes sense, they are my default instead of PC death. When they don't make sense, death is on the table.

 

[MechaPilot]

You move at X speed, you can Run for Y rounds. The Bad Guy moves at Z speed and can Run for Q rounds. You can choose move and take an action that may affect your enemy's ability to follow or you can Run.

I don't understand the need for "chase rules". They're already there.

I've run plenty of chases with just the info above.

The "above info" takes chance out of the equation. It's akin to resolving a Strength contest simply by comparing Strength scores. Not that there's anything wrong with doing so. That seems to be as valid a means of resolving Strength contests as any other.

When I run a chase, I divide each participant's speed by 5 feet to get their "speed modifier." I then make the chase a contested roll using 1d20 + "speed modifier" + proficiency modifier if proficient with an appropriate skill: Athletics for running, climbing, leaping and swimming; Acrobatics for hurdling obstacles.

That's the quick and dirty version, so I can resolve them as easily as a grapple. I have a more in-depth version for when I want to run them as a sort of skill challenge, but the quick version works for most scenarios.