To Kill or Not to Kill

[Umbran]

he trashed the views of his DM. behind the DM's back even.

Read again my definition of "trashing a stance". Saying, "It doesn't work for me," is not trashing. Saying, "It never works for anybody, ever," is trashing. P-cat did the former, not the latter.

Unless your opinion is such that you can make no allowance for others to have a different personal preference, you can relax...

 

[Pants]

Being that you (as a player) had to make specific choices and choose specific tactics that may or may not have gotten you dead, I don't see how it is pure luck at all.

I don't think that it's so cut and dry as you think.

Tim the Fighter rushes in to attack the Frost Giant that is currently killing the Cleric. He has not been hit at all and he has both a fairly good AC and a good attack/damage ratio. The Frost Giant will be tough but he's fought and beaten them before. Unfortunately, the frost giant gets lucky and crits Tim with its oversized Great Axe doing 76 points of damage! Now, Tim has to make a Fort save (DC 15, easy as cake for Tim) or die from the shock. He rolls and rolls a 1, a failure and he dies. A case of bad luck ending a character.

And I had this happen (more or less), two sessions ago.

 

[frankthedm]

This is the heart of the matter for me. It's not the idea of characters being brought back to life (a staple of myth and fiction), it's that it's so easy to be brought back in 3E compared to earlier editions that the fear of death is meaningless because death has been reduced to a temporary inconvienience rather than a real possibility of loosing the character.

Unfortunatly Wotc based the Epic play book on this very assumption making it sub-optimal for playstyles that differ from it's 3rd edition give-give-give to the players playstyle.

How do i cope with PC dying? I let them keep thier entire EXP totals for thier next characters if they Die Well. This way a player need not worry about falling behind in XP because thier character had to choose to die or compromise thier beliefs.

 

[Steverooo]

How do you deal with the dissapointment of losiing this creative personality that you have spent so long investing life into?

So give me your thoughts. What is the stance on charectar death in your game and why?

I don't believe that character deaths is a necessity, at all... only the possibility of them! Even The Gygax has said that PC deaths are bad for character development. (Think about that one, for a minute!)

Yes, PCs who do ridiculous things (like setting a ship on fire, and then staying on it while it burns) should die... but PCs who fail a swim check, or get criticalled by an Orc?

Dieing because you fall overboard is no fun, for anyone. Not even most GMs. Why not simply remove the PC from play, and have a passing Mermaid take pity on his poor, unconscious, drowning character? Or, for the less pitying GM (or less deserving PC/Player), passing Locathah, or Kuo-Toa... or even Sahuagin! The Player is still out of the game, for a while, at least, and there may be other consequences, but it isn't necessary to kill the PC.

In the case of the Orc getting lucky and cutting down the PC with a critical, is it really necessary that they die? Isn't being unconscious and hors de combat bad enough? Maybe after the battle, when the PCs return for the body, they discover that it is gone! Later, the "dead" PC can wake up, and discover that they have been dragged away by a/n (insert appropriate critter here), and healed, recovering and regaining consciousness days later... Again, their friends are gone, and the player was out of the game, for a while, and there may be other consequences... The PC may now be a slave of the Orcs, for example.

So, the PCs fight the evil mage, and he starts lobbing spells... Why does it always hafta be Fireball, Lightning Bolt, and Magic Missile? Can't he do something else? Maybe he could Baleful Polymorph one of the PCs into an ant, scoop them up, and Teleport away. Now the PC can have four of their legs cut off, have their antannae pulled out, maybe have their wings pulled off, and IF the other PCs can recover him, he can be an ant (with no Speak With Vermin spell)!

Now I don't know about you, but I think that's plenty penalty enough, without having to die! Being carried around in the mage's pocket, shaken around inside a matchbox (and occasionally gloated over and tortured) is worse than an easily fixed death... and being threatened with becoming dinner for his Imp Familiar (in spider form) probably even worse...

One of the many problems I see with modern roleplaying is the attitude of "Well, if the players do something wrong, just kill their PCs off and make them roll new ones... They'll learn!" Maybe... IF they bother to roll up new ones... If they don't quit playing, or at least go find a new group... It bugs me how most RPGs describe the PCs as "Heroes!", then proceed to treat them as inept, incompetent, stupic stumble-bums... D&D, for instance, should describe first level PCs as "Foolish young Hero-wannabes". It would be more appropriate.

Getting killed for doing something "stupid" is pretty awfully... subjective... (to say the least), too! What is "stupid"? To face down 20 Gnome Ninjas, at first level, instead of doing whatever they tell you to do? Been there, done that, survived it without a scratch... Should I have died? I didn't think so. Apparently the GM agreed. Your mileage may vary.

Since I never play the magically powerful types, my PCs are always too easy to kill, anyway. I always do whatever I can to avoid that. I always go out of my way to keep my PCs (and other players' PCs) alive. Usually, I fail.

When my poor PC does, it usually tends to sour me on the campaign. If I have to roll up a new PC, and wave goodbye to all the hopes and dreams of my old one, I won't be doing it, that night. I'll sit out the rest of that game, and just watch. Maybe later on in the week, I'll start thinking about whether or not I want to go back and rejoin the group, and how I'll introduce another PC. In any case, I don't feet excited about creating a new PC, choosing skills and equipment, and re-entering the fight. Sometimes, it's just better to write it off as a loss.

I'll go against the general concensus (again - surprise, surprise!) and say that, as far as I'm concerned, character death adds nothing to my enjoyment of the game. There ARE other ways to handle it, you know!

I can't recall the name of the game, offhand, but I recall seeing a game, once, where the PCs are the dream selves. When they die, they wake up, and lose (not loose, Zar!) any experience for the whole adventure... The other PCs struggle on without them, until they succeed, or everyone dies. Survival equals experience, but death equals stagnation, and the inability to participate. These are penalty enough. Success is tough, and still something to strive for!

Furthermore, in MY humble experience, Raise Dead and Resurrection are *NOT* right around every corner. I have yet to play in a campaign where they were easily available. So those who talk about how easy it is to recover from death... well...

Nope, I'll go with Malk on this one. What death adds to the game depends upon YOU. Most of the posters arguing for it are probably GMs, more than players. Some players seem to like the idea, too, but... There's no accounting for taste!

To me, death is an all-too-present danger, and adds no "thrill" to the game. It just gets old. Or maybe I did... I'm just tired of almost dieing. And dieing!

There oughta be a better way! Maybe I should just go junk D&D and be playing Highlander.

 

[Steverooo]

Players do not become attached to their characters through an endless series of adventures in which there is a 100% chance of survival. Players become attached to their characters as they survive numerous deadly encounters over the course of several adventures.

Players don't (generally) become attached to PCs who tried and failed and tried and failed and tried and failed and tried and failed and tried and failed and tried and failed and tried and failed and tried and died, either... As you said, they (generally) become attached to PCs who "survive numerous deadly encounters over the course of several adventures." See? Survival is important. Playing the PCs (which requires survival - again - generally) is important. Furthermore, SUCCESS at adventuring is also (generally) important.

In order for characters to develop, they must first survive. Then, they must succeed, then prosper, and grow in knowledge, experience, and power.

Yes, there are campaigns where people play for 2-4 years, stay fourth level the whole time, and never earn an XP... but they're rare. Character development (or self-aggrandizement, if you prefer) is a major motive for adventuring (at least, for most people).

 

[S'mon]

Malk - I think your stance is workable, although I think D&D is particularly unsuited to a no-death game, D&D to me seems intimately tied to a risk-reward mechanic: if you survive and triumph you gain THE POWER, if you fail you die (and roll up a new PC). Narrativist and Simulationist games like WEG Star Wars, Buffy, Heroquest or even Call of Cthulu seem better suited to a no-death game, where the fun comes from exploring the world, developing the characters and telling a good story, rather than risk of death vs exponential power increase.

 

[Celtavian]

re

I use some House rules to give my players a better chance to survive, but that is about it. I can't even imagine playing in a campaign where my character didn't have at least a chance to die. That would be utterly boring and unchallenging, not to mention it would destroy the verisimilitude of the world. Here you are a crazy group of adventurers facing enemies that can level towns and small cities and there is not even the chance of death. That just doesn't seem right to me.

 

[danzig138]

There oughta be a better way! Maybe I should just go junk D&D and be playing Highlander.

Those are all very interesting alternatives. It seems to me that you are saying things like these events should be considered instead of character death, correct? Always? Because as a GM I would feel like I was cheating the players if I did these kinds of things every time they should be dead. As a player, I would feel cheated if, say on my third or fourth NDE, I was still having this crap happen. When I first started to GM, I was gunshy about letting characters die, but even then, when I would try to find creative alternatives, I felt like I was cheating the story by forcing it. While it might be preferrable for you, to me this kind of stuff always comes off as severe railroading.

Of course, this variance in preferences is why when a new person asks if I they can play in my game, I tell them no. I tell them that they should come and watch for a couple of sessions, to see if my style, and that of my group, fits with theirs. Something I recommend for all groups. Let new players watch first, so you can try to avoid arguments and conflicts later.

 

[James Heard]

I'm more concerned with hoping that my player's characters die well rather than not dying at all. On the other hand, I don't hold the hands of idiots who happen to be playing either. Everyone knows it more or less by now, and if they're surprised by it when it happens I hope they at least appreciate the efforts I go through to give their last hit points some meaning. As a player I could care less, after all it's just a game and to be quite honest while I get fond of characters I'm not so loving of any particular one that I'll get upset if I get to have the fun of making up a brand new one. Of course when I play I've been known to 'sit a character out' just so I could have the opportunity to roleplay NPCs.

Actually, if someone gets really upset because their character's died in my games it's one of the surest ways to be exiled from the game entirely and asked not to come back. Heck, I've walked out of games where other GMs were putting up with it. It just isn't an attractive personality feature to me. I'd much rather have players looking on the time when their favorite character 'bought it' fondly than seeing the episode as an excuse to bitch and gripe about it.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

This got longer than I expected, so I'll summerize: Death in a narrative or story based game with heavy backstory and character development sucks and is a massive setback. Death in a simulation where characters are mostly shaped by the battlefield events needs death as an integral consiquence.


I've run and played in both extremes.

On the one hand, I've been in several games where the only character death occurred as part of a hindsight view of a year passing. The player was ready to try something else, and actually came up with how her character died. Not to say that I fared much better, my character's evil ruthless side took over and he joined the enemies. That was a character development and interaction intense game. Because the game was built so strongly around the characters invovled in it and their problems, a death would have hurt very badly.

And in that situation, there were far far worse things than death. Having to live with the consiquences of failing the people who were counting on me, dealing with the jeers, and the hatred, watching as my enemies spread their influence while I could do nothing, that was far worse than dieing. That was the consiquence of failure.

In another game (diceless) everything was about building drama. The only way for a character to die was for his player to say that he died. Of course, the one time it happened, the two major factions in town went to war. Everyone was happy with the turn of events.

In either situation, if a character just up and died, the game would have ground to a halt. Each character had a huge time investment in them, and the genere and style (highly storytelling based) was such that a death that wasn't dramatic was so out of style as to be unbearable.

Now, for the other side. In one game I was in, we were stuck wandering in the wilderness for almost two weeks. During this time, we had two cans of soup per person, and no drinking water. No one suffered an ill effect. Thus, wandering in the woods without food or water was no longer threatining. Later is what cinched it though. While doing an odd excavation job, a sinkhole opened and two party members fell through it. Acting fast, I yelled for someone to get a rope, had the strongest guy around tie it to himself and secure himself as well as possible, and climbed down. One botched climb check later, I'm falling 12 stories to land on a slab of concrete. Did I mention that I was on the frail side? But ultimately, that would have been a good way to go "Died braving the unkown to rescue friends". Instead I had one hitpoint, and despite 'severly broken ribs' went on to climb through an underground complex, help dig our way out of a broken underground parking garage, and wander several days in the desert without food or water.

It was hard to be afraid of running out of food, being lost, or being shot at after those expierences. It was espeically funny when the DM explained to us that we were out of food and water, and didn't know where to go, and I just looked at him blandly and said "we managed it last time."

And I've had a ton more expierences like this. And in the games where that happened, my successes didn't feel like mine anymore. So I managed to trap a rabbit, but it doesn't matter. So I'm an awesome driver, but when anyone can do the driving moves requried to manage the situation I feel like there's no point to being awesome at it. There's no satisfaction of a perfectly executed escape from the room with the animated statue guardians when the owner comes in and escorts us out of the trap.

And the problem is that there's a thin line between where not killing players ends and where tweaking things to make them more smoothly begins. And it's far too easy to make the victory something given instead of something earned. And winning the prize is so much sweeter when it's my first place award, not a 'thanks for playing' sticker.

Those 'never going to die' games always had their best moments around when we did what we shouldn't have been able to, and the DM just looked at us wide eyed.

However, backtracking for a moment, nothing sucks worse than winning or losing (or even worse) dieing from a single die roll. Getting a lucky crit is one thing, but winning on a daring use and appreciable application of skill is far better.

On a mostly related tangent, I also found that players who believed that "a character should only die after repeatedly doing incredibly stupid things" typically were the ones doing the incredibly stupid things. The ones who were ok with dieing typically were willing to think things through a little more. Also, (and possibly unrelated) the players on the no dieing side also found the idea of a diceless or narrative game abhorrent. So it might just be them.