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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ranes" data-source="post: 5718760" data-attributes="member: 4826">A DM who kills your PC because he tripped up sounds a bit tough.As DM, I am not out to kill the PCs. I am out to create viable threats to the PCs when and where appropriate. What happens after that is partly down to player tactics and partly down to luck. And it is only fair to make players aware of this at the beginning of a  campaign and to remind them of it occasionally. As DannyAlcatraz  illustrated, there are ways of doing this.Then a TPK may end a campaign but that does not necessarily equate to ruining it.As both a player and a DM, I do not see the problem with permanent PC deaths and storyline-ending TPKs. It makes the PCs and games that make it to the end of the campaign all the more memorable. I may believe that Zebedee is destined to be the great hero of The Elemental Age. I might want Zebedee to be instrumental in the overthrow of evil Grand Vizier Yurzic. However, developments may prove me tragically wrong. Tragedy can provide truly memorable moments, even if they are the final, unexpected moments of the story everyone's been really enjoying for months or years. And tragic deaths are often not heroic.It is I think quite difficult to find a group of players who all share that view. There are players who would accuse me of being a confrontational or otherwise bad DM, because I allow character or party death at any point, not simply as a possible outcome of some telegraphed combat encounter. Certainly, some players expect the DM to provide a game that services their PC's scaling of all the game's levels via a series of things that look like heroic challenges. That's great. Good for them. I just prefer everyone to understand that, as DM, I want to provide adventures in which there are appropriately designed challenges that feel heroic, because success is possible but not guaranteed.No, I'm not going to kill off a PC with an ill-conceived and poorly contrived accident that happens while she's resting between missions. But a PC who loses her footing on the cliff edge I put in her way and fails her saving throw? That would be an unlucky roll. Tragic. Next PC. The party who fail to notice the runes warning of the TPK-shaped deathtrap ahead or who fail to translate the runes or who get the warning but disbelieve it or don't recognise the Teleport of People Killing when they see it? Tragicomedy. Next party please.</blockquote>

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