D&D General Your Character Died! Who's Fault Was It?

[schneeland]

I wanted to pick two: the dice and myself. Ultimately, I chose the latter.

Same here. I like to do risky stuff in RPGs from time to time - sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s really my own fault for taking the risk, but nevertheless I‘m still a bit mad at those traitorous dice in the latter case

 

[James Gasik]

The last time I had a character die, it definitely was the DM's fault. He had found an online conversion of a powerful Earthdawn enemy, a Wormskull Horror. The fight had two phases- the monster's human disguise and some minions (not Minions, though it was a 4e game).

It was rough, but then the monster assumed it's true form, basically getting a whole new stat block (this led to a bit of contention as I had a sword that prevented enemies from healing that had never come up- but the DM insisted it wasn't healing, but gaining a whole new pool of hit points. Bah, lol).

4e was designed with the idea you really should get a 5 minute rest between encounters, but since that "wasn't logical", we had to continue without the encounter powers we had use. The creature had some bizarre abilities as well, like being able to counter the use of an at-will power, and steal our Action Points if we attempted to use them.

Now the idea was for us to run, but the DM overplayed his hand- the creature marked us with a curse that allowed it to, for a year and a day, not only scry on us, but use our some of it's powers (including said curse) as an emanation point for it's powers.

Thus, it could continue to harass us anywhere we went, and worse, made us a threat to anyone else we came near. With this information, I concluded we really had no choice- we kill the thing now, or else.

The battle went poorly, especially when the monster Dominated our Sorcerer into attacking our Ranger (critical hit, of course. I don't know why, but any time players are forced to attack each other, a crit seems inevitable), taking him out. Finally it was my Blackguard vs. the creature, one on one. I had high defenses, so it was taking it awhile to kill me, and all I could do was keep attacking it. My character was barely up, and I got a critical hit.

"This", I said to myself "would be the perfect way to salvage the encounter, by saying the monster falls". But no, the DM said it was still up, and it killed me.

Dead silence at the table. "I guess that's that, then." I finally said, and packed my books.

The DM had decided his great NPC nemesis and his storyline was more important than the PC's. I know some people would say "yes, exactly, that's what should happen", but the combination of putting us up against impossible odds, giving us no real way out that we could see, and grinding our characters to dust really sucked all the fun out of it.

Sure, we could make new characters and try again, but everything we'd worked for in the campaign, for months, had just been undone, so all the momentum was sucked out of the proceedings. Looking back, it felt like the DM resented us for our success.

A few months later, we gave him a second chance, but it was unfortunately more of the same. Allies we made turned against us, if we managed to pull off something he didn't account for, he would ad hoc rule that it didn't go down that way, saving his NPC's time and again (for example, we were on a moving lightning train, and we managed to push a monster out of a window. He failed the save to avoid the forced movement, looked at the die and said, "well that's a lame way to end the encounter, so it doesn't work").

It really came down to the fact that the guy felt intimidated because some of us had been playing D&D longer than he'd been alive, and didn't want to admit when he'd made a mistake, which would have been fine- mistakes happen, we can move on. Instead, he was perfectly fine with running our PC's ragged until a TPK was inevitable.

 

[aco175]

It's always the DMs fault, ain't it? I mean I did try to cross the lava, but he set the DC too high.

 

[MGibster]

I was playing through Rise of the Runelords when my Rogue PC was scouting ahead of the rest of the party and encountered a hillbilly ogre. Thinking I could get in a good sneak attack before everyone else showed up, the ogre returned my backstab by rolling a critical against my character. He did pretty close to the maximum amount of damage he could do, instantly killing my character. I don't mean my character was down, I mean the ogre did enough damage to me to drop me down to such negatives that it killed my character. Rusty hook through the face. That'll teach me not to attack hillbilly ogres before the rest of the party is near enough to help.

 

[MGibster]

I voted for “I blame myself” though, because I volunteered for it.

That's what you get for going off on a life of adventure instead of tending to crops, washing laundry, or milking cows.

 

[Charlaquin]

That's what you get for going off on a life of adventure instead of tending to crops, washing laundry, or milking cows.

Yeah it was a really good character death, as such things go. At least it was an intentional sacrifice rather than a random crit from a higher CR enemy!

 

[Maxperson]

Here on EN World, if your D&D character dies in the middle of an adventure, it's customary to assign blame. So think back to the last time your character croaked--maybe it was years ago, maybe it was just at the last gaming session--and tell us who/what was to blame. Choose the answer that is closest to the truth, and then tell us all about it in the comments!

(I know that some of us are "forever DMs," who might never have played a character, let alone had one snuff it in the middle of an adventure. So this poll might not be suited for everyone.)

In case you didn't catch it from my tone, this is supposed to be a cheeky, making-fun-of-yourself thread. If you notice your blood getting angered over this, you're doing it wrong.

It depends.

If the DM misjudged an encounter and TPKs us regardless of what we do, it's his fault.

If I make a dumb choice and perish, it's my fault.

If an NPC has a knife to my character's throat and will kill me if anyone moves, and a player goes into his backpack to get an axe and then throw it at the NPC before he can kill me, and I die, it's his fault. And yes that happened.

 

[kigmatzomat]

The last time I had a character die, it definitely was the DM's fault. He had found an online conversion of a powerful Earthdawn enemy, a Wormskull Horror.

A few months later, we gave him a second chance, but it was unfortunately more of the same. ... He failed the save to avoid the forced movement, looked at the die and said, "well that's a lame way to end the encounter, so it doesn't work").

Horrors....have the word "Horror" in them. Heck, a Wormskull was the intro story for one edition, and it was a near-TPK in that. It could have been a poorly planned encounter, but yeah, a GM who literally says "my NPCs can't die lame deaths" is straight up a problem.

And honestly, kicking a monster out a train window is a pretty cool ending to an encounter as it doesn't mean the monster dies, just that the players escaped.

 

[prabe]

I definitely blame Who. It's all his fault. Naturally.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I need a "the GM refuses to kill players" option.

The last character I had that should have died was in a Cybergen game. The younger kids were fleeing some baddies and I decided to sacrifice my character by having the biker slingshot my tinman character at a fuel truck, road flare in two-meter tentacle-arm while the other arm was a sword.

"Somehow" the over pressure did not crush my internal organ nor did the fire cook me inside my hexite shell. Instead I was hurled onto the roof of a nearby building.