Why dont you kill PCs?

[Li Shenron]

I did something like that in my very early days of DMing: I fudged some stats and some rolls because I was afraid that the game was too deadly or the players too inexperienced, and I didn't want any of them to die in their very first adventure.

Afterwards I thought it was not really necessary, and never did it again, but also the players were not beginners anymore, so they actually don't need any help.

I try not to do the opposite mistake however. For instance, I very rarely use CdG against the PCs, much like they don't use it against the NPCs. I could only use it in some rare assassination scenario, when the victim is asleep and the assassin should be well knowledged about how to kill in the quickest way. Otherwise I may use it for some crazied savage monster or cultist who delight in crushing over fallen foes.

 

[Aeric]

It's not for lack of trying, that's for sure!

Seriously, though, I haven't held back on killing a PC in a long, long time. Unless there's a real run of bad luck or stupidity on the part of the players, I never run into situations at lower levels where the PCs get slaughtered out of hand. When we get to higher levels, it's nothing to get a slain PC raised. So I usually don't need to hold back.

 

[Hussar]

Heh, Li Shenron, that sounds like one of the Nuke tactics that was getting talked about a while ago.

I do use CdG when appropriate. If I drop one PC and there's another standing, I won't take the time to finish off number one, I'll move on to number two. However, if I can get away with it, and it makes sense for the creature to do so, then, yes, I will use it.

Actually did use it recently in a fight with ghouls. Cleric failed save and was paralyzed, ghoul went to town on the cleric. But, the background of the encounter made it pretty clear that these guys REALLY hated clerics. Scratch one combat medic.

Really, sometimes in my game deat is a hugely dramatic event, such as the rogue getting obliterated while trying to escape from the wizards pet guardian, showering the landscape and the rest of the party with entrails. One of the other players radically changed the personality of her character after such a traumatic event.

And, sometimes, people just die. Stupid, meaningless deaths.

As a DM, I really try my hardest not to impose my own aesthetic onto the narrative. If the dice say that Bloggins dies, then, well, Bloggins dies. Whether its heroic or not doesn't matter to me. Or, rather, I try to be impartial about it anyway.

 

[Nomad4life]

I remember fudging a PC death once in 2E for no other reason than it was late and this particular player took forever to roll up new characters. Less than a month after that, I somehow survived a real-life “impossible-to-survive” automotive accident without serious injury. I always wondered if it was because the powers-that-be were simply feeling lazy that day.

Sometimes I’ll intrude on the reaper’s due if a PC is dying only because of bad luck, rather than anything stupid they did, because otherwise that’s a lot of prep time down the drain on everyone’s part. Sometimes I don’t. It depends on how much that particular player has been contributing to the overall fun of the game (which I’ve always seen as the #1 reason we’re all there to begin with.)

Once the players have access to “resurrection” type abilities, the gloves come off and the guardian angels go home- The dice fall where they may.

In Warhammer FR, each player got a certain number of “fate points” which they could use to fudge their own deaths. I liked that system a lot, because if a player was about to die, they could keep the story going but at a personal cost.

 

[Elf Witch]

In my game I fudge all the time. The reason is that the players I am DMing are really heavy into role playing and put a lot of work into their characters. They all love my game and I have noticed that since they are not so afraid of dying they play more bravely.

They don't stop as soon as they run out of spells, they are more willing to try something new.

Now they know that I will kill their characters if they do something stupid.

 

[Tsillanabor]

I give role-playing award points that can be exchanged for XP or saved to alter die roll-this tends to keep character death down. How lenient I am with PC death depends on how inexperienced the players are and the situation-I think there have been 3-4 in the current campaign.

 

[shilsen]

I prefer to avoid killing the PCs, because Death is an end to all suffering.

No, to really torture the PCs, they must be kept alive as long as possible. And they must retain some measure of Hope, the greatest of all gifts, that will let them foolishly believe that things cannot get any worse...

What he said

I don't like to kill PCs for a couple of reasons. Some players (and this is effectively an entire group of the two I DM for) hate creating new PCs, partly due to the hassle of creating one and partly because they've invested a fair bit into developing the current PC and want to see her continue to grow and develop. Since resurrection magic isn't easily available, dead PCs would be a pain in the ass for them.

The second reason is that both of my campaigns are very heavily character-driven, with the main plots arising from a combination of PC choices and backgrounds. So losing PCs can cause problems for the game too.

So I don't kill PCs but I don't fudge either. Instead they can use action pts to stabilize at -9 when taken to -10 or below. Good thing too, otherwise we'd be averaging a death per 2 sessions, and that would be a serious pain in the ass. Interestingly, effectively taking death out of the equation hasn't made combat any the less exciting and tense in the game.

 

[cmanos]

I had a D&D Game back in college where there was one player who kept on getting killed. He would do stupid stuff and, bam...dead. I was running through the Giant series. He died twice in the Hill Giants...once after slipping behind a hill giant jailer and into the room he had just come out of, only to be grabbed by the carnivorous ape hiding above the doorway and rent in two. I think he died a couple times in the Frost Giant area, and then in the Fire giant area he was beingr eally annoying, so I moved the 'garbage chute' underneath him and sent him down into a lake of lava. His next character, a necromancer, decided he was going to be introduced to the party in the fire ggiant crypt the party had decided to hide in and rest. He wanted to hide in a sarcophagus, cast corpse visage upon himself to make himself look like an undead, and pop out while they were making camp. I didn't even have to kill him. I told the party they were making camp, and what looked like an undead creature popped out of a coffin and started to cast a spell...he died in a round....

I don't try to kill PC's. I don't try to keep them alive. I make it difficult enough that if they do something stupid, they will have a good chance of dying. Also, my dice roll so horribly that when I do get a critical hit, I milk it. Once in Rolemaster I rolled an open-ended hit...and ended up doing like 400+ points of damage to a character.

 

[The_Gneech]

Why don't I kill PC's? 'cause that's what I have monsters for!

Seriously tho, while I try to be pretty lenient, I have one player who insists on playing low-powered-skill-monkeys as if they were tanks, and wondering why they get killed over and over.

The rest of the players, OTOH, know to back off when they only have a handful of hitpoints left, and so rarely meet the reaper.

-The Gneech

 

[diaglo]

as the referee, i let the players kill the PCs i just provide the means for them to do it