When PCs clash ... to the death

[robberbaron]

If they choose to do it then, fine, it's their characters' funerals.
I would not force them into that situation.
I wouldn't even do it to strangers.

 

[diaglo]

visit this thread for my answer:

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=108503

 

[Seeten]

If the Assassin and Knight in my group wanted to fight, I wouldnt mind. Loser gets raised as a Wight by me. *lol*

 

[Rhun]

I pose this open and possibly less-one-sided question: If a player openly announces at the gaming table for everyone to hear: "During my watch, I use my Silence token, pull out my Scythe, and Coup-de-Grace Bob" what would you do as the DM?

I'd say "Bob, good luck with your fort save."

Fights between my players in game erupt all the time, very rarely ever to the death, though. Sometimes it is inevitable, especially when you end up with differently aligned characters and such in the party.

 

[Henry]

I pose this open and possibly less-one-sided question: If a player openly announces at the gaming table for everyone to hear: "During my watch, I use my Silence token, pull out my Scythe, and Coup-de-Grace Bob" what would you do as the DM?

I will say this: If such a situation occurs, I don't do anything as DM; I'd do something as a friend, and as a fellow player who doesn't want his night ruined by hard feelings and petty grudges. Every once in a while I'll slip and let it go on (Torm only knows!) but generally if someone wants to kibosh another PC in-game, my official position is "not on my watch". Some things are worth metagaming for.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Aha! Two opposite answers in a row. I knew it would be controversial because truth told, its a question that conflicts me.

That said, here's an interesting anecdote. one of my regular players was playing with another, vindictive DM who killed off the player's wizard, let the party split all the wizard's gear, and then made him start a new character with even less money than before, causing this player to have approximately 1/4 of the wealth of any other party member (and making him likely to die again and repeat). This same DM, for no good reason while running ToEE, put a 500,000 gold piece bounty on the party's 9th-level cleric's head (you heard me right, 500,000 gp), and he used this to attempt to railroad the PCs into not being able to return to town or attempt to roleplay interactions with NPCs. So, my player's new character was a bounty-hunter...with a scythe...who spent all of his money on a supremely convincing bluff that he was actually Rary come to collect the bounty. This actually wound up helping the party, as the frantic DM called off the bounty in a Deus Ex Machina attempt to prevent the killing. So the moral of the story is: sometimes attempting to coup de grace the cleric is good for the whole party.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

Once my character and another players had some serious in game problems with each other so we decided to solve it the way our characters solved anything else; through violence. So when we tried to start attacking each other the DM had some of the NPCs who were with try to get in the way and stop us. Me and the other character killed/scared off the NPCs then so we could fight honorably with out interference. I ended up winning but one of the NPCs consequently killed me 'cause I was only at 1 or 2 HP.

Anyway to answer your question it really depends upon the situation and weather it will cause trouble out of game. In game both of our characters knew that this was the only way to solve our disagreement so we attempted (despite the NPC interferance) to fight honorably and with nobility to the death, both of our characters had a strong warrior code.

 

[diaglo]

Allow? As a DM, that's not my decision to make.

If there is a risk of being "seriously ticked off", why would a player agree to do such a thing?

in the situation presented i agree with arnwyn et. al.

but if a player was just pissed off at another and wanted to take it out on the other one by offing his PC.

well then, all those involved should be included in the decision. that includes the whole group. as this will affect their play and fun too.

this is a chat out of game. to figure out why it is necessary to bring this baggage in game.

 

[Psychic Warrior]

For those who are saying "As Dm that's not my call to make' - to me that smacks of cowardice. The primary responsibility of the DM is to run a fun game. if one player wants nothing to do with this sort of thing then you, as DM, most certainly can step in and say 'no'. Call it meta-gaming, deus ex machina or whatever I call it ensuring a stable group. If the player who wants to kill the other PCs has that big of an issue with them he can find another table to play at.

 

[Mercule]

For those who are saying "As Dm that's not my call to make' - to me that smacks of cowardice. The primary responsibility of the DM is to run a fun game. if one player wants nothing to do with this sort of thing then you, as DM, most certainly can step in and say 'no'. Call it meta-gaming, deus ex machina or whatever I call it ensuring a stable group. If the player who wants to kill the other PCs has that big of an issue with them he can find another table to play at.

There are a few ways this could shake down.

If one player is bullying another, that's a table/metagame issue. That stops. If it's an OOC conflict between players, same story.

If one (or both) of the PCs is evil, then I'll allow it. That was part of the bargain I made by allowing an evil PC (which is why I usually don't).

If it's entirely in character, then I'll let them have at it. To "hand of god" an in-character situation like that is just bad form. If a player/PC is stupid enough to charge Demogorgon at 1st level, I let them die. If two PCs want to duke it out to the death, then I'll let one of them die. I might give a warning -- I do give a warning at the beginning of the campaign that I'm willing to off characters for acts of stupidity -- but that's about it. If someone gets upset that their character died because they did something deadly and stupid, then it is their bad form, not mine.