When You Keep Killing Characters?

[Retreater]

Report.

I just killed half the party in tonight's session. Three character deaths in 4 hours of play. Not that this is bad in itself, but the reason the characters died is what concerns me.

Player 1: First combat with his new character (after his previous character died in last week's session). Walks into the middle of combat, is flanked by 4 rogues each dealing sneak attack damage. If he had stepped back into a more favorable position where he wasn't getting sneak attacked every round, he would have lived.

Player 2: Takes his rogue and enters the middle of combat, attacked by 3 flanking rogues and the BBEG (who can kill him in 2 hits).

Player 3: Takes his sorcerer into melee combat with what had just killed Player 2 and meets the same fate.

These guys are not learning some basic things about the game. For example: you don't take your 5th level sorcerer into melee combat with a half dragon with class levels. They have been playing for a couple of years with our group already. Player 1 loses, on average, a character every session or two.

So the players who keep losing the characters are falling farther behind in XP, and I think they are getting very frustrated with my DMing. The other players interested in a more tactical game are not having as much fun.

So I'm thinking of a few options here. You can let me know which you think would be the best option or suggest your own.

Option 1: Don't change anything. They will learn eventually or get tired of playing and quit our (already pretty large) group

Option 2: Run some very basic (i.e. tutorial-level) games.

Option 3: Take a break from the tactical combat of D&D and play some board/card/video games.

Option 4: Trial by fire. Encourage one of these guys to DM for a session or two (and give me a break).

Option 5: Allow players to make up x number of characters for the campaign. Once all characters are used, they are out for the rest of the campaign.

Just at a loss here. More than half our group seems to have no sense of tactics whatsoever.

Retreater

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Option 2: Run some very basic (i.e. tutorial-level) games.

This would be my best suggestion. Break out the Basic Set if you have it.

 

[Mark CMG]

Have all of the players that regularly die play Dwarf Barbarians. Tell them they have an addtional +1 in combat if they are within five feet of another one of their little clan and provided they are not flanked. If all they are going to do is close and wade into combat, they might as well be as prepared as possible for it. Plus they might pick up on the incentive to not get surrounded. Let the tacticians play characters that don't do the closing and wading.

 

[blargney the second]

I think you've got some players who don't understand the game very well...

Your tutorial idea sounds like the best to me, especially if they never realize that they were in a training scenario. I've used festivals and fair games to achieve that with great success. It's a safe environment where they'll have a lot of fun, especially if there are some fun plot hooks that they trip on while they're doing it.

Secondarily, it sounds like they've got some serious role confusion going on. You might want to sit down with them and figure out if they really want to be sorcerers, or if they wouldn't rather play a beatstick like a fighter.
-blarg

 

[William drake]

Wow

maybe its just me, but a half dragon with class levels with rouges as back up may be a bit much for a fith level anything.

You might not want to go for the killing blows at all times, I mean, not every stab goes to the heart or the lung. People do get bumps and bruies and bloody noses from combat without dying all the time.


Just a thought.

Game On.

 

[Moggthegob]

I hqve simlar problems withvguys that do not know how to build in my games. however, why so rogue-happy?What kept happening was ourgroup would have 2 great built characters and 2 poorly built ones and the poorly buls deths a around 7th level were nearly constant. So what I eventually did was start asking those players tostate why they were doing something beore doing it to help thme not get killed and be good at something.

However, I do think they fair stlye games ae good. Show thme why it is bad to be flanked and why allowing uyour enemies full attacks is a horrible idea.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

These guys are not learning some basic things about the game. For example: you don't take your 5th level sorcerer into melee combat with a half dragon with class levels. They have been playing for a couple of years with our group already. Player 1 loses, on average, a character every session or two.

That's extreme. Is he even having fun? Is he one of those guys who watches TV and play video games and reads books at the table, only occasionally doing something in the actual game?

Either you're one of the most brutal DMs out there, or he doesn't learn and doesn't even bother.

Option 1: Don't change anything. They will learn eventually or get tired of playing and quit our (already pretty large) group

Option 2: Run some very basic (i.e. tutorial-level) games.

Option 3: Take a break from the tactical combat of D&D and play some board/card/video games.

Option 4: Trial by fire. Encourage one of these guys to DM for a session or two (and give me a break).

Option 5: Allow players to make up x number of characters for the campaign. Once all characters are used, they are out for the rest of the campaign.

Option 1 could work, but I always think that the DM should do more than that, such a "love it of leave it" attitude doesn't help.

Option 2 sounds right. Get them to understand the basics of the game, a tactical crash course, so to speak.

Option 3 will only postpone the problem (not that playing something else isn't a good idea), but you could use that to train the tactical side: Play some tactical stuff, ideally DDM (since it has mostly the same rules as D&D combat, but is competitive and somewhat more tactical)

Option 4 will probably not work out, either: They seem unwilling or unable to learn the basics of combat as they apply to their character. I doubt that they will start pouring time and effort into the game to manage running a whole game including several combatants.

Option 5 doesn't sound like a solution. It's basically throwing people out of the game. If you don't like the way they play (or don't play), talk to them or uninvite them outright (I recommend talking to them)



What I'd do:

First of all: Talk to them. Find out what they like about the game, what they don't like.

If it turns out that they don't like fighting at all, they probably have the wrong game, and my advice is to try to get a Vampire game running.

If it turns out that they just don't like all the difficult tactical decisions, you might want to make the fights a bit easier, tactically. But if it turns out that they just can't be bothered to learn the rules and implications, try to make them learn it, for without that, you can't play the game, or become a huge burden while wasting your own time (and likely that of others)

As I said, try to encourage tactical behaviour and learning the rules. You could do this by playing some DDM, or just some arena type competitions between characters - everyone gets a character or two and then they fight each other or NPTs played by you. After each fight, analyse the tactics employed. Don't overdo that, though - one tactic at a time.

Show them how much more fun the game can be if you put some thought into it. How much easier combat can be.

And then, when you're back at the gaming table: Start low and slow. Easy stuff first, and slowly introduce new tactical and rules elements (either in that arena or in a tutorial game)

 

[freyar]

Got some questions:

What level is the rest of the party? If they're all 5th, maybe this encounter was a little much.

More importantly, if you have a lot of PCs, the encounter might not have been so bad, but what were the other, more tactically-minded players/PCs doing?

I'd agree that the training session option sounds like the best of your choices. Having it be in a fair or something sounds like a great idea (from one of the other posts), or you could have the surviving PCs put the new ones through some sort of boot camp. Maybe they could have skirmishes with nonlethal damage or something. The other suggestion I might have is toning down your encounters a little. Maybe reducing the EL or not using such good tactics for the bad guys. In fact, maybe if your players get the opportunity to flank, etc, they'll get the picture.

 

[pawsplay]

Bust out the DDM minis and stomp them until they learn some basic tactics.

 

[Kaladhan]

From what I understand, you're players are less effective than the expected ECL. If all players are tactically challenged, my solution would be to lower the ECL.

You should think about making the new characters about the same level as the party average (or perhaps 1 level behind). This way, the drag will be less and will not cumulate much.