When Do You (GM) Kill PCs?

[the Jester]

Let the dice fall where they may.

I have almost ten players and a waiting list longer than that. I run a pretty high-lethality game. Must be doing something right.

 

[Nebulous]

A long time ago i ran an underdark campaign where the party was roughly 8th level, then they recruited three 12th level NPCs to assist them. I'll never let that happen again. Long story short, the party was tactically sound on all fronts, and i tried EVERY adventure to put them in situations to kill them, simply because they always escaped. Hurt - yes, but if i didn't pull tricks out of my sleeve the danger quotient just wasn't high enough. I never did actually end up killing anyone, except for at the end from a suprise fiendish red dragon attack at close range. Then the dragon died two rounds later...

I think the problem was that the party had very smart players, and with all the PC's and NPC's and animal companions, there were 8-12 of them on the board at any given time. They flat-out outsmarted and out-strategized me with surprise abilities and spells, so i had to get dirty to keep the tension amped, otherwise it would be a cakewalk for them.

 

[Belen]

I've noticed a disparity amongst GMs when it comes to killing player characters. Some really don't like killing PCs and will try to avoid it whenever possible, even when it involved fudging dice rolls or ignoring rules. Some only do it when it is dramatically appropriate in the story. And some just let the dice fall where they may. Where do you fall?

Also, how easy is it to be ressurected in your game, and does this effect your willingness to kill PCs?

Fudging the rolls to avoid death is bad. I am not going to intentionally save someone. Killing a character for dramatic effect is worse. Unless the player is tired of the character, then a DM should never, ever kill a character to advance the "story."

I prefer to allow the dice to fall naturally. It makes the game better.

 

[lukelightning]

Ah, but then you lose the joys of seeing the other PCs nearly get massacred as they try to save their bleeding comrade. I like negative hitpoints; "lying on the ground bleeding to death with a goblin's spear in your head while the fight rages on" is classic fantasy.

Dying at -10 is the same at dying at 0. All you're doing is giving them 10 extra hp. The negative doesn't really do a thing at all but give them more hp, so why not just add it on on top and give every character 10 extra hp? Then they'll end up dying at 0, and you're right there with how diaglo does it.

 

[Xombie Master]

My players have come to fear my die rolls. All is as it should be. I don't cheat for me, so I won't cheat for them. If your first level character thinks he can take an Ogre one on one. That 2d8 greatclub is most likely gonna bury you.

Truth is I play this way in every game I run. What the dice say goes. It only seems to cause a lot of player death in D20.

Here are my thoughts on why:
*Armor leads to either a hit or a miss.
In all other systems I run, armor reduces the damage dealt usually sparing the need to fire up the printer for a new sheet. In standard D20, armor either stops the attack completely, or your disco, which is pretty abstract if you ask me. I would recommend that if you don't like to fudge rolls, switch to an Armor as DR variant, because when it comes to that 1st level character vs Ogre w/ great club scenario; 2d8+STR with a +12ish to hit, means you're probably rolling a new character. However 2d8+STR minus some decent armor, might be the edge your fighter needs to just be knocked near death, rather than well into death.

 

[ThirdWizard]

I've killed PCs on random encounters with street urchins because the dice said so.

Ressurection is about as easy as it is to get the diamond dust.

 

[just__al]

I am now letting the dice fall where they may. However... If you get taken from Positive HP to -10 or below you are instead at -9hp and will die in exactly one round. You do not get to make a stabilization roll, you need somebody else to stabilize you. Makes things really interesting when you get seperated from the "pack" and picked off. Can anybody save you in time?

 

[Sejs]

I cut my players a break if they die due to something that seems really anticlimactic and/or lame. If the manner of death leaves everyone with a bad taste in their mouth and thinking 'okay, that was just random.. and pointless'.

But if they're in the course of commiting acts of daring-do, kicking butt, chewing bubblegum, and saving the princess? Well, adventuring is a dangerous job after all...

 

[was]

I usually cut them a little leeway in battles. However, when they knowingly do something really stupid, I hammer them.

 

[shilsen]

I don't kill PCs unless the player wants to run a different character. But I don't fudge to keep them alive either. In my 2 Eberron campaigns, what I did was institute an action point option where you use 3 action pts so that instead of dying your PC ends up at -9 hp, unconscious and stable.

The players are happy, since that means their PCs don't die, and some of them really want to develop their characters over a period of time and some really hate coming up with new PCs. I'm happy, since the games are both heavily PC-driven, as in the plots and direction originate primarily from the actions and choices of the PCs, and losing a PC might drastically affect some plots the PCs have chosen to pursue. Plus I'm good at seriously challenging the PCs in combat, and without this, there'd have been a total of about 12 deaths in 27 sessions. With this rule, I can kill PCs and not worry about it

When coming up with this rule, I'd wondered if it would cut down on tension and challenge in the game, since players would know that PCs won't 'really' die unless they choose to let them. Interestingly, that's far from the case. I think the reason is a combination of roleplaying (a fight is always serious), pride (players hate to have their PCs lose, death or no death), and greed (players hate using up action pts).