Pathfinder 1E Whats a DM to do? (On death, dying, drama and group issues)

[MoonSong]

The situation is this:

I had my party fight the brainwashed and mind controlled mentor of one of them, since he was a high CR I expected him to survive to fight another day. Then the party meatshield had a a couple of high damage critical hits and things started to go downhill from there.

You see the damage was high enough to outright kill the mentor then and there, so I decided to just fiat him into having a couple of rounds left to have a few last kind dying words with his apprentice and die as himself in order to avoid an anticlimax (finding the mentor was the reason the character joined the party in the first place, at least giving her some closure sounded fair)

This is the point went everything went into madness. Another party member ripped away the dying master from his students arms and started to run away, hoping to stabilize him and then interrogate him apart from the others. (This character has an agenda of his own, he is also very fast and has a terrific stealth score if he leaves the party behind they won't see him again)

The student started to run after him but she isn't as fast and neither is the rest of the party. Now here comes the crux of this all. Should I just declare "the master is now dead, he had so little time and you wasted it by taking him away from her and you denied her closure"? Should I allow him to get away with it then find a reason why an NPC stronger than them not to join the quest? Should I send in the even higher CR challenge that naturally should await and have the master die at their hands while at the same time denying the student closure? (Remember Fiat is the only thing keeping him alive!!), this is something delicate, the student is a wide eyed idealist and the heart of the group, I don't want to break her needlessly, on the opther hand I don't want to punish the rogue's antics, but I don't want him to just run rampant and derail things too much -He is as much of a rules lawyer as I can be, just on a more Powergamey way than my scruby way-. Moreover I've seen groups torn appart by less than this. What should I do?

 

[ExploderWizard]

So this party member that ran off while carrying another person is still faster than anyone else, not so encumbered? Unless he/she is super strong and fast I would say someone would be able to catch up.

 

[Eleclipse]

Well first of all i don't think that him being alive by fiat or whatever is really important, you are the DM, decide on what's more appropiate. And yes you should let him die imo. I would also think on letting the student belive that his master had a chance of being saved, ruined by the rougue.

You say you don't work to "break her" but this is just how the story is evolving, don't try to stop it, it's not 100% up to you how the character will evolve, let it go and see how it'll go.


Anyway there are some things i'm no getting:

-How this guy who "stealed" the master is (if it is) still considered a party member? Honestly a rational party would kill him the exact moment they see him again. He may have "it's own agenda" but with a bold move like that i doubt he can remain in the group, (it may a perfect time to assume the control of the character as dm and turn it into an hostile npc you can use later in the story).

Yeah this rougue have his own agenda, hidden i guess, but now there's no chance they'll want him back, basically he acted as a stupid and it should be ready for the consequences, you "don't wanting to punish his antics" is really wrong, you are giving him the idea he can do anything without consequences, plus it's unfair to the rest of the group.

-Where did it put the "corpse" of the master? In a dimensional sack or something? if so in the time he do it the other will surely do something

-If he didn't how can a rogue carry a corpse and still hide and run like it's nothing? (like exploderwizard noted)

 

[MoonSong]

Lets just leave it at it involved some sreious enlarge person hijinks mixed with a gooddose Of haste and stuff. Wasn't joking when I said powergaming, Imeant it.
The sad part is this rogue has a secret identity to pair up with his agenda, that is how he has so little fear of retribuition IC.

 

[Eleclipse]

So are we talking about 1 powergamer among a group of normal gamer or the whole group is powergaming (how's the group composed?)

In the first case i would say that you have a much bigger problem, a powergamer going against the group, which is basically a sure method of ruining the fun for everyone.

In the second case they shouldn't have any problem exposing him and killing him.


Secondary i'm very interesteded in knowing exactly what he did, his lvl and powers/build.

I'm a fan of the rogue, i think i've built as a player and as a dm some of the most powerful rogue one can build but i sense some serious interpretation of the rules on his part (or some serious inability at playing by the other players, are they new to the game?), it's just a gut feeling as a DM of course.

 

[gamerprinter]

Just have someone cast Speak with Dead, and the master can still offer his last good byes to the one PC, and could even suggest that the rogue had done the wrong thing in stealing him away (for the rogue's future consideration.) If you, the GM, allowed the PCs to have divergent agendas, which could possibly lead to problems interacting with the party on specific issues (like this one), it is the fault of the GM for allowing it, not the PC for opting to do such a thing. I wouldn't punish the rogue character, rather I'd change up the way you run games, by either disallowing too much self agenda pursuits, offer some guidelines on how much disruption is allowed within 'self agenda pursuits' or some other thing to bring the party back together. If you give too much rope to any PC without GM control, they will eventually hang themselves - and its the GMs fault that it happened, IMO.

 

[am181d]

When I was running 3.5 I had house rules for exactly this instance. Basically, once an important character (PC or name NPC) had sustained enough damage to die, they could be temporarily revived for a short period of time. During that time they could not move or take any other action besides imparting a few final words. At this point they are considered to have sustained "Mortal Wounds" and no method of healing short of a "Cure Mortal Wounds" spell (a higher level spell that replaced Resurrection type spells in those campaigns) could restore them.

This allowed important characters to bow out gracefully without creating the awkward situation of PCs trying to pump them full of healing spells.