What good are insta-kill spells and monsters ?

[Hypersmurf]

I should note that my spiked-armor-wearing grapple-tastic fighter took those two levels in cleric pretty much solely in order to get War Domain (Free WF:Warhammer) and the ability to use a Wand of Silence. 'Cause really, the only thing better than grappling spellcasters is having a field of Silence radiating from you while you do it.

One really nice trick I've seen - for higher level games - is to open your ambush by sending your Silenced Summoned Huge Air Elemental to grapple casters.

The major disadvantage of the dwarf grappler is that casters can run away.

Damned hard to run away from something with Fly 100' (perfect)...

-Hyp.

 

[hong]

So what's the story on this rapid succession of deaths?

Let's see...

1) Fighter, charged up to a bloodmage (evil necromantic PrC), copped a harm for his trouble. Fighter failed his save, took 140 points of damage, and died.

2) Berserker, already heavily wounded, attacked an enemy archer (actually a former PC who went bad). Archer got off her readied shot, berserker took ~20 hit points + Con damage, and died.

3) Same fighter as in 1, charged up to a lich while exploring the dungeon underneath the bloodmage's tower. Copped another harm for his trouble, failed his save, took 120 points of damage, and died. [This player actually said to me, before we started, how great it was that 3.5E harm could now kill on a failed save.]

4) Mage (same player as in 2, new PC because he got tired of always being a damage sink), got targeted by a dread wraith because he was the only one who was hurting it, got drained to 0 Con, and died.

5) Ranger cohort, got swallowed whole by a hungry spirit (based on No-Face from Spirited Away), tried to use a horn of blasting to blast his way out, detonated it instead, and died (but the resulting hole allowed the other trapped PC to escape).

6) Same mage as in 4, same battle as in 5. Got rolled over by a fiend of corruption (unique creature, sorta like a triple-HD gibbering mouther with extra powers), took 12 bite attacks, got reduced to ~-50 hit points, and died.

You don't need instakill effects for lethality, basically.

 

[Rashak Mani]

they were all chickens too. so he grabbed them by the neck and Pop! off with their heads.

now they just run around headless for a few minutes.

Wow ! They're better off than PCs... PCs stop moving after -1. Your chickens at least get to run around headless !


Hijack: Anyone ever seen a PC have his head cut off during combat ? How was the scene ? Did the other players react horrified ?

 

[Altalazar]

Insta-kill can sometimes suck. Other times, it is ok. It sucks when it just sort of comes out of the blue, no warning, and no chance to prevent it or even reverse it. Then it is just "destroy someone's PC" and they then have to start over.

I do NOT think there has to be a sense of impending death in every encounter to make the game fun.

Players know which encounters are the most dangerous, most of the time - and there is always the option to run away.

As long as there is some way to avoid it or some way to reverse it, insta-kill shouldn't derail a campaign. Not that one shouldn't punish total stupidity...
but where things are played well, one shouldn't find too many non-reversable insta-kills or TPK.

 

[DanMcS]

Hijack: Anyone ever seen a PC have his head cut off during combat ? How was the scene ? Did the other players react horrified ?

We played an epicish one-shot over the weekend. We had to have a party member duel a champion to get us into this fortress. The wizard was like, I can probably take him, so we looked over our preperation type things real fast and buffed him as best we could.

The champion is a kobold, riding a puppy. Which, right before combat, resumes its true form, as a balor riding a retriever (bebelith? some big spider-looking guy).

PC Wizard loses initiative.
Round 1:
DM: He hits, he hits, he hits, he hits, whoops, that fourth one took your head off.

It was so anticlimactic that he changed his mind and said "you know what, make a fort save, and roll high".

 

[Rashak Mani]

The champion is a kobold, riding a puppy. Which, right before combat, resumes its true form, as a balor riding a retriever (bebelith? some big spider-looking guy).

Wow... and I thought True Seeing wasn't that useful. Poor fella... really got himself more than he could handle.

 

[Liolel]

Instant deaths is a tricky topic. When I first became a dm I've went through the blind adherence to the rules and module phase, and the puppy dog dm phase. I'm still developing as a dm but I have some opinions on instant death spells. First it is no fun when out of the blue some strange monster you've never heard of instant kills you. It just ruins the fun of that player. So I'll try to avoid those type of encounters without warning. Second is that instant deaths can ruin the tension when the wizard in the party acts first and ends the climatic encounter with one spell. However I'll just accept how the dice fell, luck has its own strange way with things.

Now heres how an ideal encounter with an monster like say a bodak would go. The pcs are hired to track down a missing party of important adventurers/warriors. The party goes into the dungeon, and finds one of their bodie with a blindfold on dead from claw wounds. The party continues and find several more bodies but these had no blindfold and no wounds. As the party tries to figure out what killed these people suddenly they hear something coming towards them. At this point the party has a scary mystery which has enough clues for a quick thinker to save the party from the gaze attack.

Looking that over I should run such a setup sometime.

 

[takyris]

RE:True Seeing and Instakills

Invisible Advanced-HD Basilisks are just wonderful here.

DM: You hear the rustling of motion ahead of you. It sounds like something very large, or multiple creatures, but you can't see anything except the movement of the grass."

Player: Aha! I cast True Seeing!

DM: Eeeeexcellent. Make... seven Fortitude saves. Yes, yes, yes, yes... no. Okay, you all watch in horror as the cleric's spell goes off wrong somehow, and he abruptly turns into stone.