My rule of thumb is if the player is clearly making a conscious effort to keep their character alive I'll facilitate options to let them get out alive. If you charge headfirst into an orc camp at lvl 1 though... well, what did you expect was going to happen.
Gentlemen, this is an easy question - Player characters have hit points for a reason. There has to be a challenge, and if you remove the threat of character death, you take away the thrill of victory from the players. The players thrive on the sense of achievement, and the thrill of a good story. Without the risk factor, BB King's "The Thrill is Gone" starts to play. Yes, bad saving throw rolls happen. Yes, bad luck happens. And most certainly, bone-head decisions happen. But one has to remember two important facts: Characters are numbers and letters on a sheet of paper. It's a game. That said, no DM should go out of their way to kill the player characters. They should challenge them, but not try to "win D&D". That's just being a dick. Conversely, I can also state that my rule at the table is "I might save you from a monster. I might even save you from a bad roll. But I refuse to save you from yourself." Therefore, that character that says "It's easier to kill a purple worm from the inside. Quick! Everybody jump in!" dies. Hard. Painfully. There is no Save vs Stupidity. There's just another 27 point build. So, it boils down to this: Do you kill a player character? In my opinion, yes, if it's a fair kill. If the dice and circumstances play out that way, and especially if it drives the story better, I will most certainly do so. Traps are supposed to be dangerous. Monsters have challenge ratings for a reason. Hit points exist for a reason. I recently ran a TPK encounter because the players - all of them - could not roll over an adjusted 10. So I saved their unconcious selves by having them captured instead of killed. But that was to compensate for the shittiest dice luck I've seen since Jerry Holkins. It may not happen again. The next time, if they die - they die. Because that's fair. And sometimes, that character death makes the player better. They gain a story of "remember when", as well as the lesson of "in this circumstance, it might be better to..." They learn. They grow. And that just makes the story better the next time around.
Also not afraid to kill a character or dozen, but I also believe defeat doesn't always have to = death. So in my opinion your leaving them all unconscious is perfectly fine. - Nerdarchist Dave
+Nerdarchy Hey, if I could actually take a vacation without my workplace imploding, I'd DM the lot of you in my style...and you'd see the method to my madness
+Mike Gould "Characters are numbers and letters on a sheet of paper." Wow, its been quite a long time since I have so fundamentally disagreed with such a simple statement. I would not ever want to play in a role playing game where the characters were just numbers. If that were the case, give me a video game as they are now they are the same thing.
i dont think its an issue so long as it is done by the rules and is fair. I have nearly quit playing because of killer dms, one in particular was somehow capable of hitting you once he figured out your ac. For example he missed me three times then meraculously all of the monster began to hit the exact number of my ac once i toldhim. He would reset traps that were suppose to go off only once, give monsters bonus actions for no reason. The worst one was where he made me do a saving throw against posion repeatedly until i failed after the 11th time. If you even dared to question him on the ruling he also would try and start a shouting match with you, i remember one time he threw a players rulebook across the room after a player showed him he was using the spell wrong by using d8s for inervation instead of d4s.
I once killed a PC through my own ruling. He was a fighter in half-plate armor with his shield worn as well (all donned). He decided to hold the party back from progressing and take his sweet time being alone looking for treasure in an empty room (at some point I even remember saying that it was completely empty but he wouldn't leave until I gave him more shit or something). Eventually he got left behind and he tried to catch up with the party, BUT, there was a river separating them (party was flowing down it in a small boat). So, he began to swim and roll his die furiously calling out number after number and I couldn't keep up, but I knew he failed more checks than he succeeded so he began drowning, the party couldn't get back to him in time due to the current and he died. He doesn't play with us anymore, he got really butthurt.
Death by a kill crazed dm is never a cool thing. Death from stupid player, or just the way the die rolled, it sucks but it happens. Death by heroic story point, YES ALWAYS lol. There has been many times I have been faced with the two options of, take the safe action to get the task done or jumping off the tower to hit the dragon during it's flyby (it will be cool but you're probably gonna die) and I tend to go toward the later of the two lol but it's always worth it Plus the next few sessions I get to see just who is willing to get me raised lol
Sounds like the kind of thing to decide with your players before starting the campaign; so they know how they're going to approach the game, but also so you can decide whether you want to change your approach based on what they're wanting to get out of the game (e.g. RP/social versus combat/risk etc.)
I REALLY don't mind killing a player if they do something dumb. Like stabbing a random guy in the face, jumping in front of traps, falling into obvious shits ,attack way stronger mobs, fight until death ect. But if I didn't plan the encounter correctly i will surely feel bad, because it will be a bit of my fault if lvl 1 players fights 2 ogres and get oneshot. There's nothing anyone can do with a oneshot kill, and it sucks. But yeah.
It is my opinion that PCs should be killed for bad decisions/actions, but not for bad rolls. I don't put resurrection in my games (I don't like the gameplay/story segregation it can create), but I don't want silly deaths to ruin the fun or the story.
+l0stndamned What I do, is, my god of the underworld actually hates having to ferry souls to the underworld. So, if I feel that the character is interesting, or still has more that the character has to do. Then the god will offer them a deal, return them to life, but with a cost. They may have to worship him instead if they're a paladin, they may have a permanent disfigurement, the god may give them a mission they have to do, etc. If they decline this offer, then they die. If they die several times, and I still think they warrant life. Then I may just decide, screw it, you've died enough, the gods getting tired of pissing off the god of death, who doesn't like it when people don't die.
+Kharn The Betrayer That's a pretty cool idea. You could also steal an idea from the God of War games/Greek Mythology and have the dead character be able to adventure out of the underworld. The latter idea would only be a good idea if the other players are interested in sitting there and listening to the adventure, or you basically have a TPK that you'd rather not have happen but it's okay if the escape fails. I just thought of that latter option because the only game I have going at the moment has two players (soon to be three) and they both went down in basically the first real fight. I rolled really well and they didn't, and the guy who was new made some pretty big mistakes despite the other player cautioning him not to. Luckily I had an out in the situation so I wouldn't have to make them make new characters--they were rescued by some Orcs that had been captured by the mutual enemy (and were breaking free during the fight). I had already decided the local tribe of Orcs weren't evil or anything--they just wanted to be left alone by the King's soldiers who were trying to take their land because "It belongs to the King". So, really the two player's near-death worked out for me, by putting them in an Orc village lying on cots when they wake up. Next time, though...
Shawn Wesley Yeah, that's kinda where I got the idea from. I love greek mythology, and I kinda modeled some of my gods on them. My god of death hates his job because Hades was actually the nicest god. Having a session of 'escape the underworld' would be fun.
+Kharn The Betrayer this is a very cool idea. i am going to use this. I make my encounters hard pure combat, but fair with political/social functions to help the party kill a few, but when to tired to continue they can intimidat/negotiate the rest of the scene.
I think there should be some level of DM protection for the first few levels/sessions of the game, until you feel the players are sufficiently invested in the campaign, they have a connection with their character and would feel really bad about their character dying, then you take the kiddie gloves off, and death becomes a real threat. At least that's what I'll be doing in my campaign.
I hate characters dying in stupid ways but there needs to be consequences for actions otherwise you lose the immersion factor. Some say killing characters ruins the story but on the other hand if their foes have no power to hurt them they wont take the story seriously. There are certain times I feel like if a PC or an important NPC doesn't die in the encounter you're doing it wrong. When you watch movies or read books main characters die all the time, RPG's should be no different.
I have not one single approach to this taht I do every time, but decide from game to game how I want the lethality to be. I don't mind doing a game in the the player characters only face rather easy opponents, but I give them some hard choices to make instead, but I also do games in which there are encounters that could easily kill players, if they do not gather information first and simply walk into any cave and then discover when it is too late that they face now the whole Orc tribe or a dragon that is vastly beyond their levels (I usually give some clues, like bones and the size of the cave or having a totem pole or all the stones blacked from fire, but if the characters go in, they do that on their own risk). And I usually tell my players how lethal I want a game to be before I start, so they can make informed decisions on how much they want to risk.
+Urskoy1 Yeah we had a DM we figured out was fudging rolls to keep people alive and some of the people in the party took it as a license to be even more reckless with their actions. Soon the campaign turned it a Saturday morning cartoon where no matter how ridiculous the odds the chars manage to come out on top.
Fudging rolls is something that should be used very sparingly and shouldn't be obvious, but it has a place and is something I've done on occasion. It's pretty obvious when a roll should be fudged, such if the party is struggling hard with an encounter that I can tell they're doing all they can to overcome, and really want to win. If I roll a crit against one of them, I won't hesitate to call a miss instead, as has happened before in a campaign. Every roll shouldn't be fudged, obviously, or no one will take anything seriously, but it has a place.
Heck, I was playing 1st Edition, ages ago. I had a party of 8 low-level characters, who sent into a desert lair, seeking loot. They went through 2 levels, battled a few creatures, collected a nice bit of loot and magic items and exited the lair, when they came to the surface and met an Andro-Sphinx. Negotiations failed and combat ensued. The Sphinx had Initiative. Over the course of the battle, the characters had trouble hitting the sphinx and they began dropping. Gradually, I was down to 3 characters, but the sphinx had been (new phrase) blooded. One of my characters was particularly hopeless, an archer named Thom. Every time he fired, he missed the target. At the end, two of the last three characters were down, the sphinx had only 4 hit points and Thom was the last man standing. Of course, he missed and the sphinx killed him. With no one left, the bodies have rotted away, the treasure has been covered by the sand, but it's still there!
Georgejmh why did you give an androsphinx to such a low level party? Even if there are 8 assuming level 5 or under that CR for the sphinx was way too high lol
Depends on the type of game. The standard 5e rules presuppose lots of fighting - hence the fast heal rule, relatively easy death saves, revivify. On the other hand, if you want to send the message that combat should not be entered into lightly, use the variant healing rules where you can only spend hit dice after a long rest, and only recover hit dice after a week's time. If you want to be really tough, use the system shock rules (a 1st-level character has a 50/50 chance of dropping after taking 3-7 points of damage). If you don't want revivifies thrown around, don't throw money at the characters - make it a major hassle (quests, going into debt to shady NPCs, indentured servitude) to get enough money to cast the spell. If you use these rules, make sure to reward players appropriately for coming up with non-combat solutions, though. I agree with those who say that without the threat of death the game becomes uninteresting, and that means there has to be a chance that a character will die because of dumb luck, not simply because the character is dumb. On the other hand, honest DMs have to admit (at least to themselves) that they get attached to their players' characters no less than (and not infrequently, more than) the players themselves. So the question becomes, will you be able to handle the demise, especially the permanent demise, of a long-term character who has become a vital part of your campaign?
I lost a character by a choice. Someone needed to stay on one side of the gate while the cleric and mage worked on closing the gate from the other side. (I never played a Paladin again.)
i've been reading the "Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding" over the last week, and i'm strongly considering removing healing magic from my campaign world. i may also blend the classes together so that the clerics that are in the game are more like warlocks -- they have a pact with their god, or with their pantheon. i don't have all the details down yet, but its very likely gonna be a gritty, low-magic campaign. plagues happen. blindness, deafness, and limb-loss happens, and NPCs deal with it for their entire lives. nobody just wanders over to the local temple with their "NPC insurance policy" and gets instantly healed back to full after a farming accident. where the party is concerned fights happen, people get dropped and then patched up with healer's kits, but a good chunk of the game may be knowing when the enemy is not worth fighting. the players want more of an intrigue-based puzzle-solving game rather than combat, so this may be the way to go for us. player death will certainly be possible, though i may also bring in some ideas from the Ghostwalker campaign setting so that players can continue to adventure in a ghost-state.
+Garth at the Photomaginarium As someone who runs a vampire campaign where there is an awful lot of supernatural healing i dont think healing itself is a bad thing, but unrestricted healing is a bad thing. Characters in my campaign actually have to be vampire to be able to heal and they have to have blood which they have to hunt for which may lead to further complications and more blood expenditure. If you want to have healing magic (if you dont that is also totally fine) why not restrict it temporally? Maybe even make it time based instead of life based? Anyway make healing magic users rare and healing magic only able to heal things that happened less than a 6 hours (or a day or 3 combat rounds or whatever, maybe make it scaling with level?) ago. That means healing magic are usefull within a fight and for the rich who can afford an "ambulance". Dont have the money? Injure yourself out in the woods? Only discover a health problem a few days late (like plague)? well out of luck :D
Rp Sketchbooks i love coming up with systems ^^ i just play world of darkness because more players want to play an established system than one that i build xD
Really old post, but I have 3 words for you: Dark Sun Setting. No divine classes exist at all, and you have to keep track of food/water. It doesn't stop Bards or Druids from casting healing spells, but it does restrict the access a bit.
I've found, in my experience, that a lot of DMs I've ever played with were hesitant to kill PCs. You can use a PC death as a plot hook, giving a medium sized quest to go find someone to resurrect the dead PC. I find that under Level 3, I tend to go easier on players. Up to level 4, PCs suck a lot of ass. Health is low enough that a crit can take away 1/4 to 1/2 of your health, and if you get smacked by more than 2 enemies, you can find yourself in the danger zone fast. I personally prefer when the DM doesn't actively try to murder their PCs, but doesn't go and say "Well, you survived anyway, instead of actually dying."
Actually the comic homestuck has a pretty good rule to its "godmode" that some characters acquire along the way. They are immortal, they will revive a short while after their death (or destruction) UNLESS their death was either heroic or just (so either they were doing something good or bad) which leads to some hilarious situations when one of the "godmode" characters makes plans for rescuing people or killing strong enemies who threaten their friends and has to be reminded of how stupid this immortality is. My biggest "campaign" right now is actually a sandbox game, where players can do whatever they want and there is some metaplot running in the background and the characters have their own agendas so there is always something to do, but the gameplay is mostly social (as in non dungeon crawley, you interact with other named characters, one of these interactions may be combat). How I handle death in that campaign is that i basically grant every character immortality unless they do something stupid or greedy (basically heroic or just except a lot murkier morally). If the playercharacter held a speech in front of a few people and one of them wants them out of the way and decides to ambush the PC later and i roll his attack and crit and the player rolls really badly on the soak roll and is basically crippled and has no ability to fight back i will have the ambusher have a little speech until the PC is unconscious and leave him for dead when he actually isnt instead of killing him (even if the lifepoints dropped to less than zero, he might still be robbed or have a lasting injury). If the player knows that what he is going to say will agitate his listeners to the point of trying to kill him or if he goes and picks a fight with people (pretty much only named NPCs in this campaign) i warn him that that is risky and give him the option to reconsider and only THEN would i allow the dice to kill him. That way no player character ever gets an unsatisfying death via bad rolls in an ambush i just tried to set the mood vs someone with or in any other situation that is not in their control, BUT the system is inexploitable because if you go somewhere because you know you cant be killed ... you suddenly gain the option of being killed. Which mkes every death stupid or greedy (or just or heroic) which is how death for characters should be. Also it takes away the anxiety when you design stuff that could accidentally kill a player ^^
+Maric also I have about 30 named characters right now with about half of them having complete sheets and friendships and affiliations and goals and dreams and so on and i need to build another 30 or so for the city to be completely established xD
My first 5th ed PC Death was a TPK, Orcs and inexperience (I feel ya Ted). Since then I killed two in fair play. A wraith crit a PC and drained her to death. The second was 100% out of my hands. When I first started I relied on the threat of death as one of my main tension tools. There was carnage, and there was death. Then I realized that I was wasting all the work I had put into the PC's custom content. All those hours building assets (I'm a crafter) and customizing rules were wasting away. That's when my perception of PC death began to shift. Now, if the death does not serve a dramatic purpose I would not allow it.
I don't think you should set out with the goal of killing all your players, but you have give them quests and opponents that will provide a challenge, and if they are actually being challenged then death is always a possibility. So really it's just part of the game, but don't force it.
Just my two cents for what its worth :) As a GM i never strives for the characters deaths or their gaining in power , i merely strive to create a world in which the players can do and go wherever they desire whether that means their deaths or them gaining power is totally up to the players . I am guilty of leaning toward the players at times but no one is perfect . :)
I have a funny story, my friends and I played a lighthearted play DnD, we were Lv5 and we Blier andgrebet a medusa while we sleep, and my character a beautiful female tiefling warlock who happened to sleep naked, end up being turned into stone, so after this fight takes my party statue was once me to a city where the session ends when we've finished says the GM '' if the find of a funny story about how Nicklas's (that's me) character is transformed back is she allowed to stay in the game '' and the story we found on sounds såden, our rouge choose to sell the statue (my character) to a young noblewoman who fell in love with the statue, the woman who is a wizard's apprentice, steals a scroll of remove curse from his mentor and get me turned back, we have a night of passion where my character disappears in a puff of smoke, after giving a promise that I would come back, back to my new 5000g wealthier party members
I'm so glad that I came across this video because I had so much controversy come up in one of my sessions that split the party's opinion of me (as a GM). *The following is a set-up of what happened...* So the party had gone through a mansion with a powerful illusion mage living inside, protecting an ancient artifact that makes illusions so powerful they're capable of being physical. This "dungeon" was made for the level of the party (around level 5) and the artifact at the end was in a position that if players took the extra effort to take the tome, they had a powerful magic item *BUT* it would slowly kill them and hints of that were brought up throughout the mansion. After most of the party being stopped and severely weakened by the traps of this dungeon (go figure, no rogue or spot-trapper in the party) I gave them a chance to recover via short rest. The Ranger was able to identify the creatures living within this house (2 people on the floor below them, 3 on the same floor as them and about 5 people above them, some of those being the goal of their travel here to save since they went missing). So even when knowing there was things inside this house they chose to rest. I was lenient and let them get a short rest to get some HP back. The problem came up with the pair of Shield Guardians that were protecting the attic of the house (whom were altered with less HP and a few quirks that required them to be within 5 ft. of each other to be a threat). This encounter resulted in nearly half of the party dropping (not dying) and begin to become frustrated with me for such a hard fight. One half argued that "yes this fight was hard and I'm frustrated for a hard fight, but It was not the GM's fault for making a challenge for us." while the other argued that "It is unfair, you as a GM have no right to kill a player!" The worst part is the side that wrote me out as a bad person had no idea that I intentionally withheld encounters so that the party could rest and prepare for the fight. But when the fight broke out.. the two tank's of the party were last in initiative, the bard was first in initiative and ran towards these guys alone with a flame blade spell and instantly was focused since he was alone. When one off-tank (warlock) finally showed up, he didn't regen all of his HP from the short rest and proceeded to drop, twice. Turns out that they focused on one of the lesser shield guardians that was the "tank" out of the two of them and due to lack of teamwork and/or possible mis-balancing on my part created a near total party KO.. since the guardians were made to simply remove a threat and then go back to their stationary positions. Am I in the wrong in this? And when I explained my intention is not to kill a player but I will allow it to happen if the results turn out that way, I was faced with a lot of resistance on this stance. At least there is some acknowledgement that I may not be wrong but is it possible I overlooked something and still in the wrong?
I had a character that should have died from rolling two natural 1s. My DM has a house rule that when you die the FIRST time you get a permanent disability (lost an eye in my case). My cleric had an eye patch and had disadvantage on perception checks. Made for great rp! The idea of a one eyed cleric seemed awesome, despite the (big) drawback.
Just give them the option if your not sure. Here are some examples, notice the last one is can potentially be useful given the right setting. DM: You just died. You can either let the character die or have them knocked out with a disability, i.e. lost an ear = disadvantage on perception checks relating to sound; lost a foot = replaced with peg leg and falls prone if they dash; scar = disadvantage on persuasion checks, but advantage on intimidation checks.
bigggamer If the player agrees with it they also can be send back in by an outside force. Much like a warlock has a master..this character who obviously cannot be a warlock is send back. But with as price a secret, a hidden motive, something that they really shouldn't let the others know. A price to pay to this spirit and if they fail they will die irrevocably. You can use this to force a Bond situation. Push for something to happen in his part of the story. Maybe steal the important dodady that they were freeing out of the evil temple. Not to give it to the one who asked them but to give it to someone else.
i have been playing pathfinder and 5e for over a year now, and i have lost 7+ characters split between 2 dms. i find it hard to care for the characters when i know i'm going to do or say something dumb at the wrong moment and die before i make it to level 5. only 3 made it past level 5 and 1 made it to level 9 before i had to leave the game.
In our current Pathfinder game, we lost our warlock when we needed to assassinate a captured spy that was a pirate and was guarded by a warpriest that is super lawful, but not the priest or his men. The plan had been for the prisoner to be "attacked" by a stirge(wizards familiar) and the warlock miss on his attack of the stirge and hit the prisoner, but the warpriest had allowed the prisone a sword which made the warlock use a fireball instead and during the battle he was taken, but our wizard saved him with a huge outpouring of luck, but the warlock while still in flames was safe as long as the fire did 5 or less damage, but one of the rounds it did 7 which killed the warlock and summoned the demonic force that had been with him and cracked the boat in half. We have had 2 of the original characters in our current adventure, 1 was the warlock and the other was our half-orc barbarian who was killed in an attack on a pirate ship with only half the party, the dm would allow him to surrender, but as an escaped slave he decided to do as much damage as he could. We have had a couple other deaths from non original party members, but most were due to people not being able to play anymore. We also had one death by god curse to never leave the island we fought vampires on, and in trying to leave the island he got snagged on a rock underwater and he drowned and his body is still there unremovable.
Something I'd like to try is to combine the Exhaustion System with the Hit Points. Every time a character takes a Critical Hit they make a Death Save. Fail the save and gain one level of Exhaustion. Crit Fail the save and gain two levels. If the character is reduced to 0 hp's then the Exhaustion level gain is doubled. Consider it an alternative to the Vitality System.
One of the best character death I ever had was In a gm I was mastering. A couple of players from my low level evil party angered a neutral lich, and he summoned a frost wyvern to teach them a lesson and left. The wyver was basically harmless except for a charge attack, and a rechargeable breath. that was quite strong It planned that battle as a very hard one, but not a deadly one but this party was spectacular at messing my fights and making then deadly. In this particular case, the half of the party that angered the lich simply decided to walk away with a tp portal (that was a rather important item for them) and abandoned the fighter, the cleric and the rouge alone against an enemy meant for 6 players with several ranged options. As the battle went on they actually were holding on, but the fighter took a devastating critical from the charge that knoced him out. The rouge used the fighter last stand to deal some devastating damage, but was thrown off of a considerable height and fell near the fighter, conscious but at a very low hp. The cleric was a dwarf with a feat that allowed to stand his ground and have a bonus against being knocked prone. The wyvern was taking flight for another charge attack, and so he stood, using his action to stabilize the fighter, and then he raised his sheild to take on the attack by himself and protect his party. So when the wyvern came down, he recieved the full impac, dying instantly due his low hp, but also rolled a natural 20 on the check to stop the wyvern with his feat. So we played as him dying standing heroically and actually stoping the wyvern. Afterwards the rouge finished the wyvern off, and the lich came back to congratulate them, and revived the cleric, as compesantion for his heroics actions and the three of them also earned a level. In this particular setting reviving someone is hard, but I knew that this guy loved his cleric, and while he was very happy to have protected his friends, he was also mad for his death to the guys that bailed them. So I made the exception, and gave his character back, but with a clear warning (both in game from the lich, and out game in a meta sense) that dont count on him to revive them if they keep messing up, it was an exception because the lich didnt expected the others to bail, and knew that the wyvern was a bit too much.
In a highly lethal game, I make resurrection readily available, though it will have a monetary cost. In less lethal games I make resurrection harder to come by. If you die in a less lethal game, you must have really messed up.
What I did love is, for a difference, what I call a 'high lethality campaign'. These are campaigns where the GM will inform you upfront that he is pulling no punches whatsoever, that while he's not actively trying to kill you characters (he could pull a 'rock falls, everyone dies' if he just wanted to do that) but the encounters are not going to be easy and deaths may happen either due to sheer bad luck or bad play (charging a machinegun nest across open ground is never a smart move for example). For example, playing in a oneshot World War 2 campaign, you created the initial character, gave them a backstory etc. and it was upto you to try to survive through D-day, the Bocage and even the Ardennes offensive as an American GI. The game was played fairly realisticly, everyone knew they probably wouldn't survive the run through of the entire campaign with that character (thankfully the GM had premade character sheets without names on them for quick replacement). I remember to this day how I managed to survive with good old Sgt Jones all the way upto the Ardennes...until he proceeded to meet a German Flamethrower trooper. The ammo AND grenades he was carrying (especially since he was carrying the Squads supply of ammo) all cooked off and nearly killed the rest of the group. However one persons character DID survive through the whole thing, through a bit of tactical thinking and sheer dumb luck, in character he was treated and played as a grizzled vet, respected and feared by the FNGs of the squad. We all agreed that after the campaign was finished, he got to go home, marry the girl he was always going on about and live out the rest of his life in comfort.
To deal with an annoying character, there may be times when you need to, like, say "Rocks fall, you die; everyone else levels up." My DM flat-out Killed Off For Real a PC who did something stupid because his player was drunk. We then banished him from the group & he Blackleaf'd himself.
I used to run alot of games for the past two years that had very little deaths over the course of the campaign. I noticed my characters were always cocky and unafraid of the terrible beasts they were fighting. So I invited them to something of a training session for myself and them. It was a classic style dungeon crawler similar to the oldest D&D campaigns like keep on the borderlands. I tired to keep the deaths to around 1-2 deaths per session. Soon I would get over my fear of being blamed for character deaths or losing players because of lethality but I've also noticed a change in my players as well. They are terrified. They treat running away as a viable option in all campaigns and try to avoid conflict if it seems dangerous. They have described the campaign as 'like adrenaline pumping through your veins and of there being very real danger in the game, its really thrilling and gripping'. (Of course it doesn't help that one of them tried to be cocky because he thought his dex was too high to be hit by a trap and ended up being dragged back to town with one leg in shock). That character funnily enough has also been knocked out by cultists and within one roll of being dragged off to be sacrificed twice (he's super lucky on the rolls sometimes... sometimes). There needs to be a balance I feel of some encounters being easy so the party can catch a break and some encounters bringing them to the edge(but not over) of death. Because death is bad for character development. Anyway I was wondering what you guys think of there being a balance and what kind of balances you strive for in your games. If you think that the adrenaline pumping thrillfest would engage the best during the few encouters that occur or if you agree with me in my opinion of 'death is bad for character development' and that encounters should be carefully balanced to make death unlikely (speaking from a DM and from players who usually focus alot on roleplay rather than combat).
you know I don't mind killing player characters but there comes a point where if it was due to luck that was just abysmal I'll let them slide. We had a game two weeks ago, a challenging encounter for the players but the monsters rolled two confirmed crits in a row when they can only crit on a 20 and just outright dropped one of the players. Next round out of three PC's with haste and full attacks there wasn't a single roll over a 7. 9 attacks and nothing over a 7 so they all missed. Next round both monsters hit with every single attack the had, landed four strikes total, killing another player. Next round same thing, natural 1 for an attack roll ends one character's turn with no damage dealt and the wizard character casts a spell where the monsters only had like a 20% chance of not being locked in walls of stone, they both made it. When something that unlikely happens I have a hard time letting it stand just because if I feel the characters did everything right and the dice just were not having it I'm probably just going to let them slide. If they do something dumb or reckless then I let them deal with it but bad rolls, especially like the ones we had that night where its just one after another I tend to fudge a little. No one has fun when the whole group just gets demolished.
Last year, I had a pretty solid back story for my Fighter (Heading for Eldritch Knight.) We were playingon of the premades, and on the first chapter... Our DM made a custom prologue that my fighter rocked in. After single-handedly fending off a Blue Lightning Dragon, I returned to the bottom of the keep, and long story short, I was crit by a lizard for all my health. The rest of the party ran around doing other stuff while I suffered death roll after death roll. It wasn't the first time I've died, but honestly it was a pretty weak way to go out, especially after the session prior that was epic. As a side note, after combat was over and I had been dead for awhile... our Dragonborn Tempest Cleric attempted to plead with his evil deity and "shock" me back to life. One bad roll later... not only was I still dead, but the Cleric smelled like roasted fighter for the next day.
I've always played where death wasn't immediately permanent, but becomes harder to 'fix' as time passes-for example, if it's within 24 hours, then a standard-tier resurrection spell will work, then for the next X amount of time a higher one is needed, and so on, until only the strongest will suffice. As a DM, I'll admit I sometimes fudge the dice when something is a bit harder/easier than I thought it would have been, and overall that tends to work in the PC's favor, so death isn't too common, BUT at the same time, I'm definitely not afraid to maim/mutilate them; such as with my Barbarian who has had his eyes stolen (no not poked out, very carefully stolen whole) by demons, and his hand/forearm essentially erased from existence by a sort of spacial void situation. I guess it's a bit off topic, but the point is, even without death being too much of a presence, there's definitely ways to keep up the danger level (by the way, he was eventually fixed by an Effigy Master, and is now basically a primitive cyborg)
For me, I try to be nice as DM. I don't go out of my way to kill the players, I leave it to circumstance. However, there was this person that kept deleting or 'forgetting' his character. After the 2nd character died he made a 3rd. It was then that he did something that lead to that characters death. I told him he was done (I DM at a game store so public play, I get it) and he started flipping out and left. Been about 3 months and he hasn't been back, luckily. Only time I got strict on a person.
Just ran the first session of a Hoard of the Dragon Queen campaign as my first session of DM'ing and I was really surprised that none of the party died in it. Mind you this is a group of one Rogue, one Monk, and one Sorcerer that are running this (supposed to have had a fourth player but he didn't show up) so there's really no one good at healing or taking a hit like a Cleric or Fighter but fights for the most part were just a couple rounds as they were just bringing down the damage on whatever I sent at them. Then again this was just the first session of the campaign and we didn't even get through the first part of it so there will be plenty more opportunities for the dice to change their minds and make things go awry. Also that is an amazing shirt that Ted has on, and I want to know where to get one.
Far as I'm concerned, the threat of death needs to be real. The players can tell when it isn't, and will often start getting bored when they're never truly challenged.
in the most recent game I was a part of I died. I died so hard i couldnt even make death saves. Now it happened through a series of events out of my control that put me in point blank range of a powerful spell so my DM decided to quick impliment a death game with the grim reaper that I won. While I am glad my character isn't dead I do feel that was kind of BS
Yeah, that, kind of, sucks. I personally think there are only 2 reasons a Player should die: 1. He did something really, really stupid. 2. The Story needs the player(s) to die. but your thing just sounded annoying.
+Fuma Hebi Would you just accept it if your character gets killed for no other reason than to progress the story? "Well, I hope that you enjoyed playing your bard for the last 30 hours. A powerful demigod walks up the corner and disintegrates him. What? No, of course you do not get an initiative or saving throw, silly."
Depends on what you understand under "killed". I mean, yeah, their Life Points dropped to Zero and their Bodys died. But if you insist, that the Charakters have to be unabled do be played after that: Yeah, you are right.
Elso same happened to me, bad decision on my part and while the creatures I was fighting where no longer hostile towards me, the ritual I wanted to partake in from them took the last of my hp (damage was gonna happen and I refused to "waste" a cure light when we ere so low on them.) But luckily my character serves the goddess of death raven queen and she said I was needed and blessed me with life... yeah it was upsetting when he died but at the same time the resurrection from her made me feel empty.
I actually have a story just about this. There are two DM's in my group, myself and a friend, and in this campaign there was two players, the other DM and one of our more serious players. They are in the Shadowfell and amidst a city. They were getting pinned down by an archer and had hidden away in a building. They then spent FOREVER trying to figure things out, an unrealistic amount of in character conversation for combat. I decided they needed to get moving to the next objective, so I had them roll perception checks and they both noticed a group of zombies coming at them. They asked, "Well how many are there?" And I'm like, "It's hard to tell because they're coming from another ally but you think you see 20 or 30 zombies." And I'm thinking "OK, they'll check this house they're in for a back door to escape and we can move on. They're only level 3, they already took a little damage from the archer, this should be great." So after a few more lines of in character dialogue and even one of the characters asking if there was another way our of this house, they said they wanted to attack the Zombies... I'm blown away and busting open my books, and now I'm thinking, alright, these zombies are special so I can work with this. I'll have them hit the players, knock them around a bit, and the players will try and retreat and we can move this along. Combat starts, I roll 3d20 for the number of zombies, rolled horribly low (a running trend in this combat encounter) and they ended up fighting 21 zombies. Still more than enough, I'm thinking, and I set all their health to the default 22 and go ham. Players are taking big hits, but between the fighters multiple attacks with a magic weapon and the Wizards AoE spells, they whittled down the zombies right back. By the end, the wizard is at 2 HP, the Fighter is at 5, there are still 5 zombies up. The Wizard runs away and the fighter takes on all the remaining zombies. They agreed to this, so it's not like the Wizard straight abandoned him. Anyway, the remaining rounds of combat involved a struggle we were so sure would result in death that both of the characters had resolved themselves ahead of time. His good rolls and my bad rolls saved their lives. I didn't fudge rolls or weaken the zombies. They won through careful planning and beautiful execution of their class abilities. And all the while they remained in character. This moment is actually in our live of "Awesome D&D Moments" and we always reference John Carter when we talk about it. I legitimately tried to kill the players in that I didn't hold back. The threat was there. But because these players were so good, they survived and grew closer and better as a result.
I haven't had much issue with dropping players, personally, I like to keep combat feeling consequential in terms of my damage rolls especially. I don't really fudge with those but I do sort of make a strong distinction between the forms of enemies that will really have the wherewithal to move in and make a lethal coup de grace style attack on a guy who is already downed. It basically goes down to 'fighting' centric type enemies and 'killing' type enemies with behaviors that would kinda follow from each category accordingly. It doesn't really get much more complicated than that. I try to impart some kind of information to the players that might elucidate the monsters motivation prior to combat so they know ahead of time just what they're getting into etc. All that is to say that it doesn't make that much sense to me to have every enemy trying to hack downed players to bits every time someone gets dropped because, mentally speaking, those enemies should probably have other priorities in their minds during combat that will preserve their own lives. You get the idea.
I absolutely agree. Intelligent for will leave downed opponents for later while beasts and animal like monsters might try to drag off its prey for a snack. - Nerdarchist Dave
I am the guilty DM I confess to fudging rolls to save player characters. Although I have killed PCs with wolves at 1st level purely by accident (like Ted I red the abilities and challenge ratting wrong). I think I should however bring the PCs to the "brink" of death, just for the drama. I think killing a player character should be done for just a few reasons... One, if the PC is doning "stupid shit". By this I mean acting as if they can do anything they want with no consequences. Two, if the player wants to play a different character. Three, to make a point or for a dramatic effect that fits the story (in which case there should be a way they can come back if the player wants to continue playing that character). Just my take on it. Good Topic Guys!
+Art Wood (Grave Intent) totally agree about the "brink of death" situation. really adds tension and ups the player buy-in as they try to keep their character alive. and like you i've fudged rolls to save players, especially when i was especially lucky several times in a row with the dice during the same battle. on the other hand, i've kicked PCs over the edge as well. a couple months ago i was reminded of a situation i had completely forgotten where during game play one of the players started making up a second character. i still don't remember this, but apparently i let his character die in a fight after seeing that, whereas the player was also a DM and was just trying out various options when his character wasn't at the center of the action at the table -- but i didn't know that until later. i do feel guilty about that now. still when players get suicidal with their characters i don't have a problem dropping them.
Death has to be lurking around the corner, just waiting to strike. I don't make an effort to kill off my players unless they actually start getting suicidal (has happened a few times when they're not enjoying their characters; don't know why they've felt the need to get them killed instead of just switching to another character, but if that's their choice...). Most often I run story focused games/campaign, so I'm fairly lenient, but don't shy away from some close calls to keep things interesting. Setting makes a difference, too. I'll be running a mini campaign shortly, using Pathfinder with fear/horror/madness elements from the Ravenloft setting, as a horror-filled Halloween thing. Death is most certainly going to be lurking closer in this one, and probably quite horrifically.
I don't go out of my way to slaughter characters (1-shots might be an exception, like in my Trail of Fluffy Corpses BrigadeCon game) but when it happens, it happens. There are alternatives like maimed limbs, a supernatural creature taking an interest in the character (that leads to complications in the future), etc. I think when death is removed from the table it affects play. I think this is why Dread is so much fun to play, because someone is going to die (probably many characters).
stoned during the vision quest? wake up perma stoned! -10 insight and you unless you say "whoah!" "gnarrrrr" or "rigghhhhteous duuuude"! once per day your ability checks are rolled at disadvantage.
Also as a game master for an oWOD Vampire game ... death can be just a new beginning ;D most players already are vampires but the ones that start as humans can be turned of they get vampire blood before their body goes completely cold :D Also vampires revert to corpses that can be resurrected with blood when they receive "fatal" damage but when they are destroyed (for example leaving the corpse under the sky for the sun to find it or just beheading it) they are completely gone and beyond resurrection. I usually try to get every player character a cinematic dramatic or meaningfull death and leave the deaths to show off just how grimdark the world is to their NPC friends. Except when a character decides to taunt a guy with a handgranade into throwing it and tries to hit it back with a golf club. Or someone opens a box that was nicknamed "the box of pandora" by the guys asking him to retrieve it without opening it in any case.
I ran a game using the Starter Set with a few of my friends, and I happened downed one of them in an encounter with a bugbear and goblins. He rolled crit success on his second roll, fought a round, got downed AGAIN, and miraculously rolled a crit success to finish the battle with the 1hp awarded. I have to confess that he should have died outright on the first down, but I kept the bugbear's critical hit a secret. It was a small group of beginners and I didn't want to off one of them on their first session. You're welcome guys.
If you never even try to seriously threaten a player, then they won't end up with fun stories about their experiences. Back in Pathfinder my GM had an encounter in an underground stream, with some nagas and serpentfolk, the former of which were spamming Deep Slumber on our swimming party. Somehow, out of an Arcanist, a Bard, a Brawler, a Rogue/Fighter, and a Ninja, my Brawler was the only one to pass her Will save... And she did so four times in a row. She also happens to intensely hate mind-affecting magic, and it was both hilarious and awesome to play that moment with her not only hurling her passed-out allies ashore, but also furiously swimming at the attackers in question before knocking them all silly and drowning one of the casters herself. By all rights, everyone *except* the 10 Wisdom martial probably should've passed their saves, but nope. Sometimes the dice decide who'll be the hero, and when neither the player nor the GM expects it is when it's the most memorable.
One common thing I tell my players and my DMs have told me: "I don't want any of your characters to die. The monsters and villains do not feel the same way." I keep things as fair as possible, and if death happens, it's either because of luck, bad planning/resource management, or the players chose to do the thing where the clues in the area were saying that doing this would be a very bad idea (bodies, scrawled notes, etc.) And in my games the party can choose to fork money over to a church for a resurrection fee, so there is a way to bring someone back.
I've had the crit fail come out a lot. A couple of times on Roll 20 and just recently at the table. It's shocking how much it happens. If the downed player has failed one death save, stabilization has to take priority over anything else.
I personally think that either one Rez per character or one per player seems to be the best setup (I can't tell you how many works use "it only works once on a person" for bringing back dead characters.)
Character death in my group is pretty rare. A lot of us have taken turns at DMing, and no one actively tries to kill party members. These things just happen. Our group is 1 DM and 6 players though, so we usually have at least two characters with some form of healing. There's pretty much always a cleric or paladin. Druids, rangers, and bards provide some cure wounds as support as well. The only death in 5e so far was my own actually. I was the party's only healer at the time, and we had encountered some drunken bandits masquerading as the guards of this mansion. I couldn't hit them, and they couldn't miss me. Some horrible medicine checks and a crit fail death save later, my cleric is dead in a basement.
My group that I'm a part of has a specific view on deaths of PCs. most of the time, hitting zero hit points does not mean you are going to die. you will suffer a major consiquence, but you can rise up and redeem yourself. that is until a major plot point involving the end of a story arc. my DM will take off the kid gloves and not pull any punches. my character almost died in our last game, where he almost got his neck snapped by a Minotaur war chief, but through my elf friend's strong words and using the minotaur's disabled brother as leverage, I was saved. this is worse since I'm a Goliath Bloodhunter. but then, shortly after, our elf who resolved the quarrel, was confronted by the nation he betrayed. my friend preplanned this, since he wanted to make a new PC, and felt his old character needed a good send off. long story short, he and two of his close npc friends, died killing 8 Elven Rangers and three Beholders sent from the nation he defected from (he physically redirected a beholder's disintegration eye beam to kill the other beholders, but was hit by the beam himself). as long as the death is meaningful to the plot, we allow it. his death was also a way to introduce our Dwarven Cleric, his new character.
I like to run high risk high reward games with my players. Where challenges are difficult but provide much in both rollplaying, character development etc. That being said I have killed two players in the campaign so far. We are on session 7 and both have been due to poor character choices.
One of my players once put several hours of work into their character and they loved them. They were reduced to 0 on a crit and died on the first quest. But I felt bad and had an NPC revive them with a magical charm he had
Ask yourself a different question: What would the villains do? They may let them live simply because killing them would be less productive to their goals, they may be more interested in saveing their hides then killing a PC, they may even find the entire fight to be a waste of their time and just set the place on fire and run - or they may be paid assasins who really want one specific member of the party dead.
First time player here, was playing a Lost Mine campaign, all of us...sorta new. Our Paladin walked into a room wityh three bugbears torturing a goblin. Goblin fainted, bugbear tossed morning star, crit plus max damage. Our Paladin dropped like a rock we were level 2
maybe being turned to stone in your vision quest you can somewhat return to normal but at the great loss of some mental faculties, maybe planning or empathy, something that some extra story to their character, like a permanent wound
My GM has a cool style where if we drop below 0 HP he keeps track of how negative our hit point are, and we need to get up to 0 in order to be stabilized and to no longer need death saving throws. So it means if we get dropped everyone freaks out because we need to try heal that person enough. It makes HP a much more precious resource.
I just recently put my players through an encounter where I just steamrolled over one them. Thing is, it was just meant to be a challenging consequence to an earlier action he took in a ptevious game. Had the scene been more dramatic, I would have had him stay dead. But because of how quick that portion of the encounter went & how unsatisfying it felt for all, we all came up with a quick solution to bring him back.
"Let the dice roll where they may." Pretty much what we go by with the games I play with my friends. With good leeway on plausible ways as to why they might not be dead. I've had one DM go out of his way telling us how there will be no resurrection or raising of any kind in his game because he felt it is cheap and and then go into a panic when one of his groups fell trying to find some excuse as to why they wouldn't die.
From what I've read in every bit of lore on the Astral Realm in D&D if your astral body dies you just go back to your body. As long as that silver cord is intact your kosher.
I almost killed my party today. One ended up dead of the 6. They got trapped in a small crypt(25x30) with a custom enemy who had a flame attack that almost filled the room. The mini boss just stood in the doorway trapping everyone and blasted flame into the crypt until it died, and though it didn't deal a lot of damage, everyone got hurt a lot and one died. I'm letting them negotiate with some high power level unholy entities to come back
so on the topic of DM over kill. I had a minor dungeon crawl where they broke into a lab and were after the guy who ran it. so they kill a few if his kobold minons (party lvl 6) so very little threat. A few "random" elements. the first contact was supposed to do this frog hop backwards throwing summons at them. they successfully goad him into stay so pumped out a lot of summons. fire element. a few kobolds. and he decides to summon a fiend once the part split. the half orc bladelock runs up and crits the summoner twice with the +10dam feat. deals 6d20+28. does 70dam to the poor caster. dead then quickly steps into the blood circle to hide from the fiend. then the adds sort them self's out.
I have a bit of a house rule for my game. Based on 5th edition D&D, but with quite a lot of house rules (magic is completely different, and a bunch of other things). If a character dies, fails 3 death saves, then, if I think that the characters was interesting, or the character has some story of their own they're trying to do, or just something that could warrant them living. Then the god of the underworld (who, in my game, actually hates his job, having to ferry souls all the time) offers them a deal to let them live. But this does have side effects. They may have a permanent penalty to stats, have to change their god to him if they're a paladin, etc.... But if I don't feel their character warrants a resurrection, then they die.
I only started playing D&D but there is nothing I regret more than fudging a roll to not let my gf die. Later I realised how bad the decision was. The players noticed, she could still have been stabilised and next time I let anybody else drop they'll think I only fudged the roll because she is my gf. There are still other mistakes I made but this one will have some real consequences for futures episodes.
Well, you could just address the issue head-on to clear the air, pretty say what you've said verbatim here and be like, "...but moving forward, you're all fucking dead!", hah, kidding about that last part! -Nerdarchist Ryan
I have only DM'd a couple of sessions at this point, but a party of 5 Level 2's was TPK'd (I "killed" them I guess) in one of the early sessions because they charged headlong into a den of corrupted wolves (led by a dangerous CR 3 Winter Wolf) with no semblance of strategy or tactics. It was going to be a difficult encounter regardless, but the PCs did not make it easy on themselves. I had no issue killing off the party in this instance, because (1) having no regard for strategy should have consequences, and (2) if there is no risk, the rewards are hollow. If you really want players to be ecstatic they made it to Level 5, having to start over at 1 from Level 2 or 3 makes it a much greater victory, and the players will feel a real sense of danger every time they get into combat, just as they should.
Pathfinder here. I've played with dms that won't kill players, which I find annoying. I have dms that will put creations 3 or 4 levels above what they should. Bandersnatches at lv1. Those are ..... entertaining.... hmmm its frustrating but feels good. The best Dms are indifferent to you dying.
My philosophy is that what happens, happens. Mostly. I don't set out to kill characters, but if the situation goes there, then the player needs to deal with that repercussion. However, I will fudge things if I believe a character death will end up being a huge nuisance for me and the party--I'd rather have a good time. No deus ex stuff, but fudging rolls within believability. And hoping the players can figure out a way to avoid the impending death. Because usually my little adjustments are just going to buy the player a little time to hopefully rescue themself/rethink what they're doing. My players are usually pretty smart, so I've really only killed two characters in my DM career. But there have been many super-close calls. As such I've never really had to deal with resurrection, though I think it should be a challenge (if even possible) so that people need to think whether or not it's worth it. I played in one game where the DM was too easy on resurrection, and some of the players were pretty reckless, so death ended up feeling rather inconsequential. There was literally a "death fund" that you'd put gold into to pay for your resurrection.
To me, the whole situation goes into if it is warranted or not. If I feel that the monsters were too much, I might throw in a possible escape or skill roll to talk their way out of it. If the players went in unprepared, didn't heal when they needed, and group doesn't have a way to heal. priority should be the healer for the enemies and the party. Death by bad tactics is all on them. The only exception is really bad luck. I roll in front of my players and if you live by the dice, you die by the dice.
I want the possibility of character death to be ever present otherwise there is some excitement and challenge lost if you kind of know in the back of your head that the DM will always ensure you survive. I never get too upset when my 1st to 4th level character dies but when it's a character I've had through many adventures and grown attached to, then it's upsetting but it should still be a possibilty.
i never really killed any of my player's characters. they got them selves killed. the first was a halfing in plate mail in a sky battle. he wanted the fighter to toss him at the flying monster and I warned him that nothing short of a natural 20 will succeed at landing on a moving target while in the air. the fighter rolled a 3. the other was downed fighting a boss battle, then revived mid battle and did not bother to heal when at lower than 10 hp continued to fight. the boos downed the player again and made sure the character would not get up again. I'm less forgiving in boss battles, especially if its an intelligent enemy that doesn't want to keep downing the same opponent every time they get revived.
I'm the kind of player (both in video games and D&D) who hates the "expect to die, and die a lot" mindset. I don't play games to confront mortality; I've done enough of that in my real life, thank you. But I do like to be challenged and to grow and progress, so having a death mechanic is fine. I've had a character die before, and I've come close to death with another. In both cases, I recognize that the character's death was as much as result of my bad play as well as bad luck. In neither situation was death expected, but the threat of it was necessary. I by no means want to be babied, but at the same time, there are some people out there who are more hard-ass on character death (not naming names; not gonna cause shit) that I know I could not play for out of fear of them looking for ways to "punish" what they call "bad play".
Hmm ... never intentionally tried to kill any characters, but on a few occasions I have had to bring the hammer down to the point the characters are near death, usually through one of the Good NPCs who has had enough of their s---.
Personally, I have an... aversion toward killing characters in my games, even when the situation indicates they should not be walking away afterwards, such as after falling for 12 seconds straight down, and have a clay golem land (and shatter) on top of them two seconds later... Well, permanently killing them, in any case. I'm quite fond of such things as the Dark Gifts of Ravenloft, accidental Reincarnations, dismemberments, basically permanent consequenses of various sorts. I find that, overall, the game becomes a lot more fun when character death is a possible outcome, but not necessarily the end of the line. A precious example (Adventurers' League) would be a Bard who became necrotic, and lost limbs if he took a certain amount of slashing damage. The bits could be reattached later, but still... Next session, that Bard was nowhere to be seen as soon as edged weaponry appeared on the field of battle - which again led to hilarious explanations for the rest of the party (players and characters alike). It's the sort of gift that keeps on giving. ;) Essentially, I'm a charitable and merciful DM, for definitions of charity and mercy. ;) Do note, I usually allow the player the choice - to perish or return altered. Demanding they come back to life is... not entirely in the spirit of the game, y'know.
the party that I dm for is unusually luck stricken. we play 3.5, and they have done ridicululously well or poorly in combat. the barbarian has, at 2nd level, singlehandedly defeated an aranea (arachnid shapeshifter) at cr4, but our ranger outs in every combat he meets. he hasn't died, which is lucky
I had a group of 6-8 for about a year and a half and I wracked up 5 in the first 3 weeks and then the campaign changed as they decided to try another route from the start and then I got another 16 player character deaths over 10 levels unfortunately there was like 7 revives. most deaths were player caused either PvP or shortly after TBF.
I've been DMing a game for about 2 years now and multiple before that. From my experience and my opinion I am never out to kill my players. My players are rewarding me by playing in the world I have created. Now with that said the world should not be without that risk. The job of a DM is to tell a story, present challenges and sometimes that story does lead to a death of a PC. Its not like it is the end of the world though as I do let players perform resurrection rituals if they are quick enough, or by creating a story arc to bring this character back. It also depends on how they died and where as well in my opinion.
I GM a lot and I rarely kill PCs. Only a few times have smart players lost a character because of bad rolls (I fudge behind my screen in their favor a lot if they're playing well). Most PC deaths have been because the players are doing something stupid or just not working tactically together and saving them at that point would be a give away.
I believe that death should always be a threat but should be built up. One trap or one bad roll shouldn't result in a player death but should absolutely put them on the path towards their destruction. The only part where the game should truly become cut throat DM vs Party is while fighting finale or "epic" boss creatures. They should be doing everything in their power to bring the party down, as everything has led up to that point. If they have legendary reactions / legendary saving throws they should be using those to their absolute limit, and throw in a one liner or two while doing it.
I only kill my players if it's unavoidable. Example, player tries to go for a gem after he/she successfully rolled a spot check to see that it's in a monster's mouth, while they're low levels. Players have to learn one way or another that natural 20 are a rarity.
Depends on the game and your group. My players appreciate a sense of plausibility, and they know the threat of death is real. Also we're in Ravenloft. One in particular will even ask me sometimes away from the table whether or not I've been going easy on them if things are going too well. I don't "like" killing PC's per se, especially after seeing the world developing around them from their (hopefully good) choices, but the game starts to break down a bit when the threat of death is removed. In fact, the rules for characters dying are so core they're in the PHB.
Look at Boromirs death in LOTR. Its functional, its epic, its "deserved", and they meet Boromirs brother later on. I think the fellowship lost the Amon Hen encounter but only one of them died, and two of them were captured. Thats some good DM'ing from Saruman.
i threw a pack of dire wolves at a level 1 party my first session. they barely survived. ill admit i screwed up but it made for a great confidence booster which let me 2 sessions later put them against a flame skull
I'm here exactly cause a mage died in the group, and it was a terrible batle against goblins and hobgoblins, the players got a couple of failed crits and the mage died in the end.
Hey Guys! I`ve came across your Channel just today and I like what you guys are thinking. Got a Question for all of you: I play PnP since a few years now and I found that I enjoy the game the most when I play without dice. Have you ever tried that? If yes, what do you think about it? If not, could you imagine doing that?
I was way to lenient on my players at first because we were all brand new but now I realized they really need to learn that this world does have consequences cuz there are powerful enemies and you can't just kidnap the duke and run through the town even if you have ridiculous movement speed boots of striding and spring and gauntlets of ogre power you know hypothetically
I always try to challenge the party, and to let the characters "kill themselves" by not running from something that out matches them... rarely will I kill a player outright... and then only because they've done/said something stupid to someone they shouldn't have (meeting a god in the god's plane of existance, the god offers to help the party if they perform a task for him. The party cleric "I'd rather die than bend my knee to another god")
Almost killed my first player, brought him to zero. This fighter then used second wind and got back up, however his cursed sword forced him to charge back at the troll who downed him which then proceeded to down him again.
Early level I try not to kill them off as I want them to get a feel for their characters. However, as their understanding and abilities increase with their level, i will stop being nice and if you drop then you better get some healing in there.
If a character ever dies, I believe there should be a way to resurrect them. In an adventure I'm working on, if any players died the next time the party visits a town, one of the residents joins the party and the dead player resumes play as the person who just joined the party.
i tell my players when they die. i fudge the rolls to let them live so i can give them an epic death later on. like an npc betrays them and coup de grace him. or a mechanism where he has the chance to sacrifice himself for the party later.
I think the possibility of death is what makes a story fun, but it has to be epic. Where one character sacrifices themselves to save the party when things get out of hand - that is amazing, and people remember that. Where somebody gets their head blown off by a random trap and an unlucky roll, nah, not cool.
I´ve accidently tpk a party the first session, because they hit the final boss with an aoe spell, and he just decimated them and killed every thing on the planet. It was fun..
I once had a DM who killed off our entire party early on and the entire story was us trying to climb out of hell to get revenge.
That DM is my role model
it was brutal and I have a loathing for imps. But I know more about the divine comedy now!
Greg is that you?
I waited like 3 sessions to kill off the party...
My rule of thumb is if the player is clearly making a conscious effort to keep their character alive I'll facilitate options to let them get out alive. If you charge headfirst into an orc camp at lvl 1 though... well, what did you expect was going to happen.
Gentlemen, this is an easy question -
Player characters have hit points for a reason. There has to be a challenge, and if you remove the threat of character death, you take away the thrill of victory from the players. The players thrive on the sense of achievement, and the thrill of a good story. Without the risk factor, BB King's "The Thrill is Gone" starts to play. Yes, bad saving throw rolls happen. Yes, bad luck happens. And most certainly, bone-head decisions happen. But one has to remember two important facts:
Characters are numbers and letters on a sheet of paper. It's a game.
That said, no DM should go out of their way to kill the player characters. They should challenge them, but not try to "win D&D". That's just being a dick.
Conversely, I can also state that my rule at the table is "I might save you from a monster. I might even save you from a bad roll. But I refuse to save you from yourself." Therefore, that character that says "It's easier to kill a purple worm from the inside. Quick! Everybody jump in!" dies. Hard. Painfully. There is no Save vs Stupidity. There's just another 27 point build.
So, it boils down to this: Do you kill a player character? In my opinion, yes, if it's a fair kill. If the dice and circumstances play out that way, and especially if it drives the story better, I will most certainly do so. Traps are supposed to be dangerous. Monsters have challenge ratings for a reason. Hit points exist for a reason.
I recently ran a TPK encounter because the players - all of them - could not roll over an adjusted 10. So I saved their unconcious selves by having them captured instead of killed. But that was to compensate for the shittiest dice luck I've seen since Jerry Holkins. It may not happen again. The next time, if they die - they die. Because that's fair.
And sometimes, that character death makes the player better. They gain a story of "remember when", as well as the lesson of "in this circumstance, it might be better to..." They learn. They grow. And that just makes the story better the next time around.
Best quote- "Characters have hit points for a reason ".
- Nerdarchist Dave
Also not afraid to kill a character or dozen, but I also believe defeat doesn't always have to = death. So in my opinion your leaving them all unconscious is perfectly fine.
- Nerdarchist Dave
+Nerdarchy Hey, if I could actually take a vacation without my workplace imploding, I'd DM the lot of you in my style...and you'd see the method to my madness
+Mike Gould +Nerdarchy that would be an epic game indeed.
+Mike Gould "Characters are numbers and letters on a sheet of paper." Wow, its been quite a long time since I have so fundamentally disagreed with such a simple statement. I would not ever want to play in a role playing game where the characters were just numbers. If that were the case, give me a video game as they are now they are the same thing.
i dont think its an issue so long as it is done by the rules and is fair. I have nearly quit playing because of killer dms, one in particular was somehow capable of hitting you once he figured out your ac. For example he missed me three times then meraculously all of the monster began to hit the exact number of my ac once i toldhim. He would reset traps that were suppose to go off only once, give monsters bonus actions for no reason. The worst one was where he made me do a saving throw against posion repeatedly until i failed after the 11th time. If you even dared to question him on the ruling he also would try and start a shouting match with you, i remember one time he threw a players rulebook across the room after a player showed him he was using the spell wrong by using d8s for inervation instead of d4s.
I once killed a PC through my own ruling. He was a fighter in half-plate armor with his shield worn as well (all donned). He decided to hold the party back from progressing and take his sweet time being alone looking for treasure in an empty room (at some point I even remember saying that it was completely empty but he wouldn't leave until I gave him more shit or something). Eventually he got left behind and he tried to catch up with the party, BUT, there was a river separating them (party was flowing down it in a small boat). So, he began to swim and roll his die furiously calling out number after number and I couldn't keep up, but I knew he failed more checks than he succeeded so he began drowning, the party couldn't get back to him in time due to the current and he died.
He doesn't play with us anymore, he got really butthurt.
Maj. Peppers I would have dropped a mimic.
If people are holding up the party and delaying the game a ton. There has to be consequences.
Maj. Peppers did you explain why? Bc its really easy to confuse bad playing with a personal issue.
Death by a kill crazed dm is never a cool thing. Death from stupid player, or just the way the die rolled, it sucks but it happens. Death by heroic story point, YES ALWAYS lol. There has been many times I have been faced with the two options of, take the safe action to get the task done or jumping off the tower to hit the dragon during it's flyby (it will be cool but you're probably gonna die) and I tend to go toward the later of the two lol but it's always worth it
Plus the next few sessions I get to see just who is willing to get me raised lol
You guys go easy. 26 characters have died in my campaign (many were killed in PvP, though).
Brandt Weary nice I wanna play in your group
Sounds like the kind of thing to decide with your players before starting the campaign; so they know how they're going to approach the game, but also so you can decide whether you want to change your approach based on what they're wanting to get out of the game (e.g. RP/social versus combat/risk etc.)
I REALLY don't mind killing a player if they do something dumb. Like stabbing a random guy in the face, jumping in front of traps, falling into obvious shits ,attack way stronger mobs, fight until death ect. But if I didn't plan the encounter correctly i will surely feel bad, because it will be a bit of my fault if lvl 1 players fights 2 ogres and get oneshot. There's nothing anyone can do with a oneshot kill, and it sucks. But yeah.
Dm's don't kill characters. Players kill characters.
It is my opinion that PCs should be killed for bad decisions/actions, but not for bad rolls.
I don't put resurrection in my games (I don't like the gameplay/story segregation it can create), but I don't want silly deaths to ruin the fun or the story.
+l0stndamned What I do, is, my god of the underworld actually hates having to ferry souls to the underworld. So, if I feel that the character is interesting, or still has more that the character has to do. Then the god will offer them a deal, return them to life, but with a cost. They may have to worship him instead if they're a paladin, they may have a permanent disfigurement, the god may give them a mission they have to do, etc. If they decline this offer, then they die. If they die several times, and I still think they warrant life. Then I may just decide, screw it, you've died enough, the gods getting tired of pissing off the god of death, who doesn't like it when people don't die.
Kharn The Betrayer I'll have to keep that in mind next time I'm running something where that fits in.
+Kharn The Betrayer
That's a pretty cool idea. You could also steal an idea from the God of War games/Greek Mythology and have the dead character be able to adventure out of the underworld. The latter idea would only be a good idea if the other players are interested in sitting there and listening to the adventure, or you basically have a TPK that you'd rather not have happen but it's okay if the escape fails.
I just thought of that latter option because the only game I have going at the moment has two players (soon to be three) and they both went down in basically the first real fight. I rolled really well and they didn't, and the guy who was new made some pretty big mistakes despite the other player cautioning him not to. Luckily I had an out in the situation so I wouldn't have to make them make new characters--they were rescued by some Orcs that had been captured by the mutual enemy (and were breaking free during the fight). I had already decided the local tribe of Orcs weren't evil or anything--they just wanted to be left alone by the King's soldiers who were trying to take their land because "It belongs to the King". So, really the two player's near-death worked out for me, by putting them in an Orc village lying on cots when they wake up.
Next time, though...
Shawn Wesley Yeah, that's kinda where I got the idea from. I love greek mythology, and I kinda modeled some of my gods on them. My god of death hates his job because Hades was actually the nicest god. Having a session of 'escape the underworld' would be fun.
+Kharn The Betrayer this is a very cool idea. i am going to use this. I make my encounters hard pure combat, but fair with political/social functions to help the party kill a few, but when to tired to continue they can intimidat/negotiate the rest of the scene.
I think there should be some level of DM protection for the first few levels/sessions of the game, until you feel the players are sufficiently invested in the campaign, they have a connection with their character and would feel really bad about their character dying, then you take the kiddie gloves off, and death becomes a real threat.
At least that's what I'll be doing in my campaign.
I hate characters dying in stupid ways but there needs to be consequences for actions otherwise you lose the immersion factor. Some say killing characters ruins the story but on the other hand if their foes have no power to hurt them they wont take the story seriously. There are certain times I feel like if a PC or an important NPC doesn't die in the encounter you're doing it wrong. When you watch movies or read books main characters die all the time, RPG's should be no different.
Ora Magnell very, dnd it's an evolving story. Not a video game
I have not one single approach to this taht I do every time, but decide from game to game how I want the lethality to be. I don't mind doing a game in the the player characters only face rather easy opponents, but I give them some hard choices to make instead, but I also do games in which there are encounters that could easily kill players, if they do not gather information first and simply walk into any cave and then discover when it is too late that they face now the whole Orc tribe or a dragon that is vastly beyond their levels (I usually give some clues, like bones and the size of the cave or having a totem pole or all the stones blacked from fire, but if the characters go in, they do that on their own risk). And I usually tell my players how lethal I want a game to be before I start, so they can make informed decisions on how much they want to risk.
I get bored if I think the dm is fudging stuff to keep my character alive. I'd rather take it on the chin if my time has come
+Urskoy1 Yeah, that will make me want to quit.
+Urskoy1 Yeah we had a DM we figured out was fudging rolls to keep people alive and some of the people in the party took it as a license to be even more reckless with their actions. Soon the campaign turned it a Saturday morning cartoon where no matter how ridiculous the odds the chars manage to come out on top.
Fudging rolls is something that should be used very sparingly and shouldn't be obvious, but it has a place and is something I've done on occasion. It's pretty obvious when a roll should be fudged, such if the party is struggling hard with an encounter that I can tell they're doing all they can to overcome, and really want to win. If I roll a crit against one of them, I won't hesitate to call a miss instead, as has happened before in a campaign.
Every roll shouldn't be fudged, obviously, or no one will take anything seriously, but it has a place.
If your going to fudge a roll, why even roll at all? Just say, "the monster misses" or whatever you want to happen.
Urskoy1 Our DM killed one character at a boss fight but let his own NPC, which he now plays as a PC, survive with 1HP.
Heck, I was playing 1st Edition, ages ago. I had a party of 8 low-level characters, who sent into a desert lair, seeking loot. They went through 2 levels, battled a few creatures, collected a nice bit of loot and magic items and exited the lair, when they came to the surface and met an Andro-Sphinx. Negotiations failed and combat ensued. The Sphinx had Initiative. Over the course of the battle, the characters had trouble hitting the sphinx and they began dropping. Gradually, I was down to 3 characters, but the sphinx had been (new phrase) blooded. One of my characters was particularly hopeless, an archer named Thom. Every time he fired, he missed the target. At the end, two of the last three characters were down, the sphinx had only 4 hit points and Thom was the last man standing. Of course, he missed and the sphinx killed him. With no one left, the bodies have rotted away, the treasure has been covered by the sand, but it's still there!
Georgejmh why did you give an androsphinx to such a low level party? Even if there are 8 assuming level 5 or under that CR for the sphinx was way too high lol
Depends on the type of game. The standard 5e rules presuppose lots of fighting - hence the fast heal rule, relatively easy death saves, revivify. On the other hand, if you want to send the message that combat should not be entered into lightly, use the variant healing rules where you can only spend hit dice after a long rest, and only recover hit dice after a week's time. If you want to be really tough, use the system shock rules (a 1st-level character has a 50/50 chance of dropping after taking 3-7 points of damage). If you don't want revivifies thrown around, don't throw money at the characters - make it a major hassle (quests, going into debt to shady NPCs, indentured servitude) to get enough money to cast the spell. If you use these rules, make sure to reward players appropriately for coming up with non-combat solutions, though.
I agree with those who say that without the threat of death the game becomes uninteresting, and that means there has to be a chance that a character will die because of dumb luck, not simply because the character is dumb. On the other hand, honest DMs have to admit (at least to themselves) that they get attached to their players' characters no less than (and not infrequently, more than) the players themselves. So the question becomes, will you be able to handle the demise, especially the permanent demise, of a long-term character who has become a vital part of your campaign?
I lost a character by a choice. Someone needed to stay on one side of the gate while the cleric and mage worked on closing the gate from the other side. (I never played a Paladin again.)
i've been reading the "Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding" over the last week, and i'm strongly considering removing healing magic from my campaign world. i may also blend the classes together so that the clerics that are in the game are more like warlocks -- they have a pact with their god, or with their pantheon. i don't have all the details down yet, but its very likely gonna be a gritty, low-magic campaign. plagues happen. blindness, deafness, and limb-loss happens, and NPCs deal with it for their entire lives. nobody just wanders over to the local temple with their "NPC insurance policy" and gets instantly healed back to full after a farming accident. where the party is concerned fights happen, people get dropped and then patched up with healer's kits, but a good chunk of the game may be knowing when the enemy is not worth fighting. the players want more of an intrigue-based puzzle-solving game rather than combat, so this may be the way to go for us. player death will certainly be possible, though i may also bring in some ideas from the Ghostwalker campaign setting so that players can continue to adventure in a ghost-state.
+Garth at the Photomaginarium As someone who runs a vampire campaign where there is an awful lot of supernatural healing i dont think healing itself is a bad thing, but unrestricted healing is a bad thing. Characters in my campaign actually have to be vampire to be able to heal and they have to have blood which they have to hunt for which may lead to further complications and more blood expenditure. If you want to have healing magic (if you dont that is also totally fine) why not restrict it temporally? Maybe even make it time based instead of life based? Anyway make healing magic users rare and healing magic only able to heal things that happened less than a 6 hours (or a day or 3 combat rounds or whatever, maybe make it scaling with level?) ago. That means healing magic are usefull within a fight and for the rich who can afford an "ambulance". Dont have the money? Injure yourself out in the woods? Only discover a health problem a few days late (like plague)? well out of luck :D
+Maric .... cool ideas. thanks for the reply!
=)
Rp Sketchbooks i love coming up with systems ^^ i just play world of darkness because more players want to play an established system than one that i build xD
Really old post, but I have 3 words for you: Dark Sun Setting.
No divine classes exist at all, and you have to keep track of food/water.
It doesn't stop Bards or Druids from casting healing spells, but it does restrict the access a bit.
I've found, in my experience, that a lot of DMs I've ever played with were hesitant to kill PCs. You can use a PC death as a plot hook, giving a medium sized quest to go find someone to resurrect the dead PC.
I find that under Level 3, I tend to go easier on players. Up to level 4, PCs suck a lot of ass. Health is low enough that a crit can take away 1/4 to 1/2 of your health, and if you get smacked by more than 2 enemies, you can find yourself in the danger zone fast.
I personally prefer when the DM doesn't actively try to murder their PCs, but doesn't go and say "Well, you survived anyway, instead of actually dying."
Actually the comic homestuck has a pretty good rule to its "godmode" that some characters acquire along the way. They are immortal, they will revive a short while after their death (or destruction) UNLESS their death was either heroic or just (so either they were doing something good or bad) which leads to some hilarious situations when one of the "godmode" characters makes plans for rescuing people or killing strong enemies who threaten their friends and has to be reminded of how stupid this immortality is.
My biggest "campaign" right now is actually a sandbox game, where players can do whatever they want and there is some metaplot running in the background and the characters have their own agendas so there is always something to do, but the gameplay is mostly social (as in non dungeon crawley, you interact with other named characters, one of these interactions may be combat).
How I handle death in that campaign is that i basically grant every character immortality unless they do something stupid or greedy (basically heroic or just except a lot murkier morally). If the playercharacter held a speech in front of a few people and one of them wants them out of the way and decides to ambush the PC later and i roll his attack and crit and the player rolls really badly on the soak roll and is basically crippled and has no ability to fight back i will have the ambusher have a little speech until the PC is unconscious and leave him for dead when he actually isnt instead of killing him (even if the lifepoints dropped to less than zero, he might still be robbed or have a lasting injury). If the player knows that what he is going to say will agitate his listeners to the point of trying to kill him or if he goes and picks a fight with people (pretty much only named NPCs in this campaign) i warn him that that is risky and give him the option to reconsider and only THEN would i allow the dice to kill him.
That way no player character ever gets an unsatisfying death via bad rolls in an ambush i just tried to set the mood vs someone with or in any other situation that is not in their control, BUT the system is inexploitable because if you go somewhere because you know you cant be killed ... you suddenly gain the option of being killed. Which mkes every death stupid or greedy (or just or heroic) which is how death for characters should be.
Also it takes away the anxiety when you design stuff that could accidentally kill a player ^^
+Maric also I have about 30 named characters right now with about half of them having complete sheets and friendships and affiliations and goals and dreams and so on and i need to build another 30 or so for the city to be completely established xD
My first 5th ed PC Death was a TPK, Orcs and inexperience (I feel ya Ted). Since then I killed two in fair play. A wraith crit a PC and drained her to death. The second was 100% out of my hands.
When I first started I relied on the threat of death as one of my main tension tools. There was carnage, and there was death. Then I realized that I was wasting all the work I had put into the PC's custom content. All those hours building assets (I'm a crafter) and customizing rules were wasting away.
That's when my perception of PC death began to shift. Now, if the death does not serve a dramatic purpose I would not allow it.
I don't think you should set out with the goal of killing all your players, but you have give them quests and opponents that will provide a challenge, and if they are actually being challenged then death is always a possibility. So really it's just part of the game, but don't force it.
ThuleanPerspective depends on how you play...my group plays for keeps.
ThuleanPerspective I wasn't joking.
Just my two cents for what its worth :)
As a GM i never strives for the characters deaths or their gaining in power , i merely strive to create a world in which the players can do and go wherever they desire whether that means their deaths or them gaining power is totally up to the players .
I am guilty of leaning toward the players at times but no one is perfect . :)
if you do kill a player do you let them roll up a character equal to party's level do you make them start over at
I have a funny story, my friends and I played a lighthearted play DnD, we were Lv5 and we Blier andgrebet a medusa while we sleep, and my character a beautiful female tiefling warlock who happened to sleep naked, end up being turned into stone, so after this fight takes my party statue was once me to a city where the session ends when we've finished says the GM '' if the find of a funny story about how Nicklas's (that's me) character is transformed back is she allowed to stay in the game '' and the story we found on sounds såden, our rouge choose to sell the statue (my character) to a young noblewoman who fell in love with the statue, the woman who is a wizard's apprentice, steals a scroll of remove curse from his mentor and get me turned back, we have a night of passion where my character disappears in a puff of smoke, after giving a promise that I would come back, back to my new 5000g wealthier party members
I'm so glad that I came across this video because I had so much controversy come up in one of my sessions that split the party's opinion of me (as a GM).
*The following is a set-up of what happened...*
So the party had gone through a mansion with a powerful illusion mage living inside, protecting an ancient artifact that makes illusions so powerful they're capable of being physical. This "dungeon" was made for the level of the party (around level 5) and the artifact at the end was in a position that if players took the extra effort to take the tome, they had a powerful magic item *BUT* it would slowly kill them and hints of that were brought up throughout the mansion.
After most of the party being stopped and severely weakened by the traps of this dungeon (go figure, no rogue or spot-trapper in the party) I gave them a chance to recover via short rest. The Ranger was able to identify the creatures living within this house (2 people on the floor below them, 3 on the same floor as them and about 5 people above them, some of those being the goal of their travel here to save since they went missing). So even when knowing there was things inside this house they chose to rest. I was lenient and let them get a short rest to get some HP back.
The problem came up with the pair of Shield Guardians that were protecting the attic of the house (whom were altered with less HP and a few quirks that required them to be within 5 ft. of each other to be a threat). This encounter resulted in nearly half of the party dropping (not dying) and begin to become frustrated with me for such a hard fight.
One half argued that "yes this fight was hard and I'm frustrated for a hard fight, but It was not the GM's fault for making a challenge for us." while the other argued that "It is unfair, you as a GM have no right to kill a player!"
The worst part is the side that wrote me out as a bad person had no idea that I intentionally withheld encounters so that the party could rest and prepare for the fight. But when the fight broke out.. the two tank's of the party were last in initiative, the bard was first in initiative and ran towards these guys alone with a flame blade spell and instantly was focused since he was alone. When one off-tank (warlock) finally showed up, he didn't regen all of his HP from the short rest and proceeded to drop, twice. Turns out that they focused on one of the lesser shield guardians that was the "tank" out of the two of them and due to lack of teamwork and/or possible mis-balancing on my part created a near total party KO.. since the guardians were made to simply remove a threat and then go back to their stationary positions.
Am I in the wrong in this? And when I explained my intention is not to kill a player but I will allow it to happen if the results turn out that way, I was faced with a lot of resistance on this stance. At least there is some acknowledgement that I may not be wrong but is it possible I overlooked something and still in the wrong?
I had a character that should have died from rolling two natural 1s. My DM has a house rule that when you die the FIRST time you get a permanent disability (lost an eye in my case). My cleric had an eye patch and had disadvantage on perception checks. Made for great rp! The idea of a one eyed cleric seemed awesome, despite the (big) drawback.
+bigggamer I did something similar in my 3rd edition game.
+bigggamer
I shall make note of that.. I don't know how my players feel up for it but. It will change the way they play!
Just give them the option if your not sure. Here are some examples, notice the last one is can potentially be useful given the right setting.
DM: You just died. You can either let the character die or have them knocked out with a disability, i.e. lost an ear = disadvantage on perception checks relating to sound; lost a foot = replaced with peg leg and falls prone if they dash; scar = disadvantage on persuasion checks, but advantage on intimidation checks.
bigggamer If the player agrees with it they also can be send back in by an outside force. Much like a warlock has a master..this character who obviously cannot be a warlock is send back. But with as price a secret, a hidden motive, something that they really shouldn't let the others know.
A price to pay to this spirit and if they fail they will die irrevocably.
You can use this to force a Bond situation. Push for something to happen in his part of the story.
Maybe steal the important dodady that they were freeing out of the evil temple. Not to give it to the one who asked them but to give it to someone else.
i have been playing pathfinder and 5e for over a year now, and i have lost 7+ characters split between 2 dms. i find it hard to care for the characters when i know i'm going to do or say something dumb at the wrong moment and die before i make it to level 5. only 3 made it past level 5 and 1 made it to level 9 before i had to leave the game.
Seems a bit excessive. Can you say meat grinder campaign.
- Nerdarchist Dave
Nerdarchy the trade off is i learned lessons from the deaths of my characters. not happy with it at all but it is what it is.
In our current Pathfinder game, we lost our warlock when we needed to assassinate a captured spy that was a pirate and was guarded by a warpriest that is super lawful, but not the priest or his men. The plan had been for the prisoner to be "attacked" by a stirge(wizards familiar) and the warlock miss on his attack of the stirge and hit the prisoner, but the warpriest had allowed the prisone a sword which made the warlock use a fireball instead and during the battle he was taken, but our wizard saved him with a huge outpouring of luck, but the warlock while still in flames was safe as long as the fire did 5 or less damage, but one of the rounds it did 7 which killed the warlock and summoned the demonic force that had been with him and cracked the boat in half.
We have had 2 of the original characters in our current adventure, 1 was the warlock and the other was our half-orc barbarian who was killed in an attack on a pirate ship with only half the party, the dm would allow him to surrender, but as an escaped slave he decided to do as much damage as he could. We have had a couple other deaths from non original party members, but most were due to people not being able to play anymore. We also had one death by god curse to never leave the island we fought vampires on, and in trying to leave the island he got snagged on a rock underwater and he drowned and his body is still there unremovable.
Something I'd like to try is to combine the Exhaustion System with the Hit Points. Every time a character takes a Critical Hit they make a Death Save. Fail the save and gain one level of Exhaustion. Crit Fail the save and gain two levels. If the character is reduced to 0 hp's then the Exhaustion level gain is doubled. Consider it an alternative to the Vitality System.
One of the best character death I ever had was In a gm I was mastering. A couple of players from my low level evil party angered a neutral lich, and he summoned a frost wyvern to teach them a lesson and left. The wyver was basically harmless except for a charge attack, and a rechargeable breath. that was quite strong It planned that battle as a very hard one, but not a deadly one but this party was spectacular at messing my fights and making then deadly. In this particular case, the half of the party that angered the lich simply decided to walk away with a tp portal (that was a rather important item for them) and abandoned the fighter, the cleric and the rouge alone against an enemy meant for 6 players with several ranged options. As the battle went on they actually were holding on, but the fighter took a devastating critical from the charge that knoced him out. The rouge used the fighter last stand to deal some devastating damage, but was thrown off of a considerable height and fell near the fighter, conscious but at a very low hp. The cleric was a dwarf with a feat that allowed to stand his ground and have a bonus against being knocked prone. The wyvern was taking flight for another charge attack, and so he stood, using his action to stabilize the fighter, and then he raised his sheild to take on the attack by himself and protect his party. So when the wyvern came down, he recieved the full impac, dying instantly due his low hp, but also rolled a natural 20 on the check to stop the wyvern with his feat. So we played as him dying standing heroically and actually stoping the wyvern.
Afterwards the rouge finished the wyvern off, and the lich came back to congratulate them, and revived the cleric, as compesantion for his heroics actions and the three of them also earned a level. In this particular setting reviving someone is hard, but I knew that this guy loved his cleric, and while he was very happy to have protected his friends, he was also mad for his death to the guys that bailed them. So I made the exception, and gave his character back, but with a clear warning (both in game from the lich, and out game in a meta sense) that dont count on him to revive them if they keep messing up, it was an exception because the lich didnt expected the others to bail, and knew that the wyvern was a bit too much.
In a highly lethal game, I make resurrection readily available, though it will have a monetary cost. In less lethal games I make resurrection harder to come by. If you die in a less lethal game, you must have really messed up.
What I did love is, for a difference, what I call a 'high lethality campaign'. These are campaigns where the GM will inform you upfront that he is pulling no punches whatsoever, that while he's not actively trying to kill you characters (he could pull a 'rock falls, everyone dies' if he just wanted to do that) but the encounters are not going to be easy and deaths may happen either due to sheer bad luck or bad play (charging a machinegun nest across open ground is never a smart move for example).
For example, playing in a oneshot World War 2 campaign, you created the initial character, gave them a backstory etc. and it was upto you to try to survive through D-day, the Bocage and even the Ardennes offensive as an American GI.
The game was played fairly realisticly, everyone knew they probably wouldn't survive the run through of the entire campaign with that character (thankfully the GM had premade character sheets without names on them for quick replacement).
I remember to this day how I managed to survive with good old Sgt Jones all the way upto the Ardennes...until he proceeded to meet a German Flamethrower trooper. The ammo AND grenades he was carrying (especially since he was carrying the Squads supply of ammo) all cooked off and nearly killed the rest of the group.
However one persons character DID survive through the whole thing, through a bit of tactical thinking and sheer dumb luck, in character he was treated and played as a grizzled vet, respected and feared by the FNGs of the squad.
We all agreed that after the campaign was finished, he got to go home, marry the girl he was always going on about and live out the rest of his life in comfort.
To deal with an annoying character, there may be times when you need to, like, say "Rocks fall, you die; everyone else levels up." My DM flat-out Killed Off For Real a PC who did something stupid because his player was drunk. We then banished him from the group & he Blackleaf'd himself.
I used to run alot of games for the past two years that had very little deaths over the course of the campaign. I noticed my characters were always cocky and unafraid of the terrible beasts they were fighting. So I invited them to something of a training session for myself and them. It was a classic style dungeon crawler similar to the oldest D&D campaigns like keep on the borderlands. I tired to keep the deaths to around 1-2 deaths per session. Soon I would get over my fear of being blamed for character deaths or losing players because of lethality but I've also noticed a change in my players as well. They are terrified. They treat running away as a viable option in all campaigns and try to avoid conflict if it seems dangerous. They have described the campaign as 'like adrenaline pumping through your veins and of there being very real danger in the game, its really thrilling and gripping'. (Of course it doesn't help that one of them tried to be cocky because he thought his dex was too high to be hit by a trap and ended up being dragged back to town with one leg in shock). That character funnily enough has also been knocked out by cultists and within one roll of being dragged off to be sacrificed twice (he's super lucky on the rolls sometimes... sometimes).
There needs to be a balance I feel of some encounters being easy so the party can catch a break and some encounters bringing them to the edge(but not over) of death. Because death is bad for character development. Anyway I was wondering what you guys think of there being a balance and what kind of balances you strive for in your games. If you think that the adrenaline pumping thrillfest would engage the best during the few encouters that occur or if you agree with me in my opinion of 'death is bad for character development' and that encounters should be carefully balanced to make death unlikely (speaking from a DM and from players who usually focus alot on roleplay rather than combat).
you know I don't mind killing player characters but there comes a point where if it was due to luck that was just abysmal I'll let them slide. We had a game two weeks ago, a challenging encounter for the players but the monsters rolled two confirmed crits in a row when they can only crit on a 20 and just outright dropped one of the players. Next round out of three PC's with haste and full attacks there wasn't a single roll over a 7. 9 attacks and nothing over a 7 so they all missed. Next round both monsters hit with every single attack the had, landed four strikes total, killing another player. Next round same thing, natural 1 for an attack roll ends one character's turn with no damage dealt and the wizard character casts a spell where the monsters only had like a 20% chance of not being locked in walls of stone, they both made it.
When something that unlikely happens I have a hard time letting it stand just because if I feel the characters did everything right and the dice just were not having it I'm probably just going to let them slide. If they do something dumb or reckless then I let them deal with it but bad rolls, especially like the ones we had that night where its just one after another I tend to fudge a little. No one has fun when the whole group just gets demolished.
wow those players must of been tripping all over there feet during that encounter
Last year, I had a pretty solid back story for my Fighter (Heading for Eldritch Knight.) We were playingon of the premades, and on the first chapter... Our DM made a custom prologue that my fighter rocked in. After single-handedly fending off a Blue Lightning Dragon, I returned to the bottom of the keep, and long story short, I was crit by a lizard for all my health. The rest of the party ran around doing other stuff while I suffered death roll after death roll. It wasn't the first time I've died, but honestly it was a pretty weak way to go out, especially after the session prior that was epic.
As a side note, after combat was over and I had been dead for awhile... our Dragonborn Tempest Cleric attempted to plead with his evil deity and "shock" me back to life. One bad roll later... not only was I still dead, but the Cleric smelled like roasted fighter for the next day.
I've always played where death wasn't immediately permanent, but becomes harder to 'fix' as time passes-for example, if it's within 24 hours, then a standard-tier resurrection spell will work, then for the next X amount of time a higher one is needed, and so on, until only the strongest will suffice. As a DM, I'll admit I sometimes fudge the dice when something is a bit harder/easier than I thought it would have been, and overall that tends to work in the PC's favor, so death isn't too common, BUT at the same time, I'm definitely not afraid to maim/mutilate them; such as with my Barbarian who has had his eyes stolen (no not poked out, very carefully stolen whole) by demons, and his hand/forearm essentially erased from existence by a sort of spacial void situation.
I guess it's a bit off topic, but the point is, even without death being too much of a presence, there's definitely ways to keep up the danger level (by the way, he was eventually fixed by an Effigy Master, and is now basically a primitive cyborg)
For me, I try to be nice as DM. I don't go out of my way to kill the players, I leave it to circumstance. However, there was this person that kept deleting or 'forgetting' his character. After the 2nd character died he made a 3rd. It was then that he did something that lead to that characters death. I told him he was done (I DM at a game store so public play, I get it) and he started flipping out and left. Been about 3 months and he hasn't been back, luckily. Only time I got strict on a person.
Just ran the first session of a Hoard of the Dragon Queen campaign as my first session of DM'ing and I was really surprised that none of the party died in it. Mind you this is a group of one Rogue, one Monk, and one Sorcerer that are running this (supposed to have had a fourth player but he didn't show up) so there's really no one good at healing or taking a hit like a Cleric or Fighter but fights for the most part were just a couple rounds as they were just bringing down the damage on whatever I sent at them.
Then again this was just the first session of the campaign and we didn't even get through the first part of it so there will be plenty more opportunities for the dice to change their minds and make things go awry.
Also that is an amazing shirt that Ted has on, and I want to know where to get one.
Far as I'm concerned, the threat of death needs to be real. The players can tell when it isn't, and will often start getting bored when they're never truly challenged.
in the most recent game I was a part of I died. I died so hard i couldnt even make death saves. Now it happened through a series of events out of my control that put me in point blank range of a powerful spell so my DM decided to quick impliment a death game with the grim reaper that I won. While I am glad my character isn't dead I do feel that was kind of BS
Yeah, that, kind of, sucks.
I personally think there are only 2 reasons a Player should die:
1. He did something really, really stupid.
2. The Story needs the player(s) to die.
but your thing just sounded annoying.
+Fuma Hebi
Would you just accept it if your character gets killed for no other reason than to progress the story?
"Well, I hope that you enjoyed playing your bard for the last 30 hours. A powerful demigod walks up the corner and disintegrates him. What? No, of course you do not get an initiative or saving throw, silly."
I thought more of the line:
You start the game, all of you die, you were resurected as Zombies. Welcome to the Zombie PnP!
Depends on what you understand under "killed". I mean, yeah, their Life Points dropped to Zero and their Bodys died.
But if you insist, that the Charakters have to be unabled do be played after that: Yeah, you are right.
Elso same happened to me, bad decision on my part and while the creatures I was fighting where no longer hostile towards me, the ritual I wanted to partake in from them took the last of my hp (damage was gonna happen and I refused to "waste" a cure light when we ere so low on them.)
But luckily my character serves the goddess of death raven queen and she said I was needed and blessed me with life... yeah it was upsetting when he died but at the same time the resurrection from her made me feel empty.
I actually have a story just about this.
There are two DM's in my group, myself and a friend, and in this campaign there was two players, the other DM and one of our more serious players. They are in the Shadowfell and amidst a city. They were getting pinned down by an archer and had hidden away in a building. They then spent FOREVER trying to figure things out, an unrealistic amount of in character conversation for combat. I decided they needed to get moving to the next objective, so I had them roll perception checks and they both noticed a group of zombies coming at them. They asked, "Well how many are there?" And I'm like, "It's hard to tell because they're coming from another ally but you think you see 20 or 30 zombies." And I'm thinking "OK, they'll check this house they're in for a back door to escape and we can move on. They're only level 3, they already took a little damage from the archer, this should be great."
So after a few more lines of in character dialogue and even one of the characters asking if there was another way our of this house, they said they wanted to attack the Zombies... I'm blown away and busting open my books, and now I'm thinking, alright, these zombies are special so I can work with this. I'll have them hit the players, knock them around a bit, and the players will try and retreat and we can move this along. Combat starts, I roll 3d20 for the number of zombies, rolled horribly low (a running trend in this combat encounter) and they ended up fighting 21 zombies. Still more than enough, I'm thinking, and I set all their health to the default 22 and go ham. Players are taking big hits, but between the fighters multiple attacks with a magic weapon and the Wizards AoE spells, they whittled down the zombies right back. By the end, the wizard is at 2 HP, the Fighter is at 5, there are still 5 zombies up. The Wizard runs away and the fighter takes on all the remaining zombies. They agreed to this, so it's not like the Wizard straight abandoned him. Anyway, the remaining rounds of combat involved a struggle we were so sure would result in death that both of the characters had resolved themselves ahead of time. His good rolls and my bad rolls saved their lives. I didn't fudge rolls or weaken the zombies. They won through careful planning and beautiful execution of their class abilities. And all the while they remained in character.
This moment is actually in our live of "Awesome D&D Moments" and we always reference John Carter when we talk about it. I legitimately tried to kill the players in that I didn't hold back. The threat was there. But because these players were so good, they survived and grew closer and better as a result.
I haven't had much issue with dropping players, personally, I like to keep combat feeling consequential in terms of my damage rolls especially. I don't really fudge with those but I do sort of make a strong distinction between the forms of enemies that will really have the wherewithal to move in and make a lethal coup de grace style attack on a guy who is already downed. It basically goes down to 'fighting' centric type enemies and 'killing' type enemies with behaviors that would kinda follow from each category accordingly. It doesn't really get much more complicated than that. I try to impart some kind of information to the players that might elucidate the monsters motivation prior to combat so they know ahead of time just what they're getting into etc. All that is to say that it doesn't make that much sense to me to have every enemy trying to hack downed players to bits every time someone gets dropped because, mentally speaking, those enemies should probably have other priorities in their minds during combat that will preserve their own lives. You get the idea.
I absolutely agree. Intelligent for will leave downed opponents for later while beasts and animal like monsters might try to drag off its prey for a snack.
- Nerdarchist Dave
I am the guilty DM I confess to fudging rolls to save player characters. Although I have killed PCs with wolves at 1st level purely by accident (like Ted I red the abilities and challenge ratting wrong). I think I should however bring the PCs to the "brink" of death, just for the drama. I think killing a player character should be done for just a few reasons... One, if the PC is doning "stupid shit". By this I mean acting as if they can do anything they want with no consequences. Two, if the player wants to play a different character. Three, to make a point or for a dramatic effect that fits the story (in which case there should be a way they can come back if the player wants to continue playing that character). Just my take on it. Good Topic Guys!
+Art Wood (Grave Intent) totally agree about the "brink of death" situation. really adds tension and ups the player buy-in as they try to keep their character alive. and like you i've fudged rolls to save players, especially when i was especially lucky several times in a row with the dice during the same battle. on the other hand, i've kicked PCs over the edge as well. a couple months ago i was reminded of a situation i had completely forgotten where during game play one of the players started making up a second character. i still don't remember this, but apparently i let his character die in a fight after seeing that, whereas the player was also a DM and was just trying out various options when his character wasn't at the center of the action at the table -- but i didn't know that until later. i do feel guilty about that now. still when players get suicidal with their characters i don't have a problem dropping them.
I agree. Though I'm not completely against letting fate intervene either for or against the players.
- Nerdarchist Dave
Death has to be lurking around the corner, just waiting to strike. I don't make an effort to kill off my players unless they actually start getting suicidal (has happened a few times when they're not enjoying their characters; don't know why they've felt the need to get them killed instead of just switching to another character, but if that's their choice...). Most often I run story focused games/campaign, so I'm fairly lenient, but don't shy away from some close calls to keep things interesting.
Setting makes a difference, too. I'll be running a mini campaign shortly, using Pathfinder with fear/horror/madness elements from the Ravenloft setting, as a horror-filled Halloween thing. Death is most certainly going to be lurking closer in this one, and probably quite horrifically.
I don't go out of my way to slaughter characters (1-shots might be an exception, like in my Trail of Fluffy Corpses BrigadeCon game) but when it happens, it happens. There are alternatives like maimed limbs, a supernatural creature taking an interest in the character (that leads to complications in the future), etc. I think when death is removed from the table it affects play. I think this is why Dread is so much fun to play, because someone is going to die (probably many characters).
stoned during the vision quest? wake up perma stoned! -10 insight and you unless you say "whoah!" "gnarrrrr" or "rigghhhhteous duuuude"! once per day your ability checks are rolled at disadvantage.
perma stoned hahaha
Also as a game master for an oWOD Vampire game ... death can be just a new beginning ;D most players already are vampires but the ones that start as humans can be turned of they get vampire blood before their body goes completely cold :D
Also vampires revert to corpses that can be resurrected with blood when they receive "fatal" damage but when they are destroyed (for example leaving the corpse under the sky for the sun to find it or just beheading it) they are completely gone and beyond resurrection.
I usually try to get every player character a cinematic dramatic or meaningfull death and leave the deaths to show off just how grimdark the world is to their NPC friends.
Except when a character decides to taunt a guy with a handgranade into throwing it and tries to hit it back with a golf club. Or someone opens a box that was nicknamed "the box of pandora" by the guys asking him to retrieve it without opening it in any case.
I ran a game using the Starter Set with a few of my friends, and I happened downed one of them in an encounter with a bugbear and goblins. He rolled crit success on his second roll, fought a round, got downed AGAIN, and miraculously rolled a crit success to finish the battle with the 1hp awarded. I have to confess that he should have died outright on the first down, but I kept the bugbear's critical hit a secret. It was a small group of beginners and I didn't want to off one of them on their first session. You're welcome guys.
If you never even try to seriously threaten a player, then they won't end up with fun stories about their experiences. Back in Pathfinder my GM had an encounter in an underground stream, with some nagas and serpentfolk, the former of which were spamming Deep Slumber on our swimming party. Somehow, out of an Arcanist, a Bard, a Brawler, a Rogue/Fighter, and a Ninja, my Brawler was the only one to pass her Will save... And she did so four times in a row. She also happens to intensely hate mind-affecting magic, and it was both hilarious and awesome to play that moment with her not only hurling her passed-out allies ashore, but also furiously swimming at the attackers in question before knocking them all silly and drowning one of the casters herself.
By all rights, everyone *except* the 10 Wisdom martial probably should've passed their saves, but nope. Sometimes the dice decide who'll be the hero, and when neither the player nor the GM expects it is when it's the most memorable.
One common thing I tell my players and my DMs have told me: "I don't want any of your characters to die. The monsters and villains do not feel the same way." I keep things as fair as possible, and if death happens, it's either because of luck, bad planning/resource management, or the players chose to do the thing where the clues in the area were saying that doing this would be a very bad idea (bodies, scrawled notes, etc.) And in my games the party can choose to fork money over to a church for a resurrection fee, so there is a way to bring someone back.
I've had the crit fail come out a lot. A couple of times on Roll 20 and just recently at the table. It's shocking how much it happens. If the downed player has failed one death save, stabilization has to take priority over anything else.
Our hard learned lesson.
- Nerdarchist Dave
I like what Mark did in one of your games where his Eldritch Knight died but he had his twin brother to replace him.
Yea it was quick and easy. Plus still wanted to essentially play that character so why not.
- Nerdarchist Dave
I personally think that either one Rez per character or one per player seems to be the best setup (I can't tell you how many works use "it only works once on a person" for bringing back dead characters.)
Character death in my group is pretty rare. A lot of us have taken turns at DMing, and no one actively tries to kill party members. These things just happen. Our group is 1 DM and 6 players though, so we usually have at least two characters with some form of healing. There's pretty much always a cleric or paladin. Druids, rangers, and bards provide some cure wounds as support as well. The only death in 5e so far was my own actually. I was the party's only healer at the time, and we had encountered some drunken bandits masquerading as the guards of this mansion. I couldn't hit them, and they couldn't miss me. Some horrible medicine checks and a crit fail death save later, my cleric is dead in a basement.
My group that I'm a part of has a specific view on deaths of PCs. most of the time, hitting zero hit points does not mean you are going to die. you will suffer a major consiquence, but you can rise up and redeem yourself. that is until a major plot point involving the end of a story arc. my DM will take off the kid gloves and not pull any punches. my character almost died in our last game, where he almost got his neck snapped by a Minotaur war chief, but through my elf friend's strong words and using the minotaur's disabled brother as leverage, I was saved. this is worse since I'm a Goliath Bloodhunter. but then, shortly after, our elf who resolved the quarrel, was confronted by the nation he betrayed. my friend preplanned this, since he wanted to make a new PC, and felt his old character needed a good send off. long story short, he and two of his close npc friends, died killing 8 Elven Rangers and three Beholders sent from the nation he defected from (he physically redirected a beholder's disintegration eye beam to kill the other beholders, but was hit by the beam himself). as long as the death is meaningful to the plot, we allow it. his death was also a way to introduce our Dwarven Cleric, his new character.
I like to run high risk high reward games with my players. Where challenges are difficult but provide much in both rollplaying, character development etc. That being said I have killed two players in the campaign so far. We are on session 7 and both have been due to poor character choices.
One of my players once put several hours of work into their character and they loved them. They were reduced to 0 on a crit and died on the first quest. But I felt bad and had an NPC revive them with a magical charm he had
Ask yourself a different question: What would the villains do? They may let them live simply because killing them would be less productive to their goals, they may be more interested in saveing their hides then killing a PC, they may even find the entire fight to be a waste of their time and just set the place on fire and run - or they may be paid assasins who really want one specific member of the party dead.
First time player here, was playing a Lost Mine campaign, all of us...sorta new. Our Paladin walked into a room wityh three bugbears torturing a goblin.
Goblin fainted, bugbear tossed morning star, crit plus max damage.
Our Paladin dropped like a rock
we were level 2
maybe being turned to stone in your vision quest you can somewhat return to normal but at the great loss of some mental faculties, maybe planning or empathy, something that some extra story to their character, like a permanent wound
My GM has a cool style where if we drop below 0 HP he keeps track of how negative our hit point are, and we need to get up to 0 in order to be stabilized and to no longer need death saving throws. So it means if we get dropped everyone freaks out because we need to try heal that person enough. It makes HP a much more precious resource.
I just recently put my players through an encounter where I just steamrolled over one them. Thing is, it was just meant to be a challenging consequence to an earlier action he took in a ptevious game. Had the scene been more dramatic, I would have had him stay dead. But because of how quick that portion of the encounter went & how unsatisfying it felt for all, we all came up with a quick solution to bring him back.
"Let the dice roll where they may." Pretty much what we go by with the games I play with my friends. With good leeway on plausible ways as to why they might not be dead.
I've had one DM go out of his way telling us how there will be no resurrection or raising of any kind in his game because he felt it is cheap and and then go into a panic when one of his groups fell trying to find some excuse as to why they wouldn't die.
From what I've read in every bit of lore on the Astral Realm in D&D if your astral body dies you just go back to your body. As long as that silver cord is intact your kosher.
I almost killed my party today. One ended up dead of the 6. They got trapped in a small crypt(25x30) with a custom enemy who had a flame attack that almost filled the room. The mini boss just stood in the doorway trapping everyone and blasted flame into the crypt until it died, and though it didn't deal a lot of damage, everyone got hurt a lot and one died. I'm letting them negotiate with some high power level unholy entities to come back
so on the topic of DM over kill. I had a minor dungeon crawl where they broke into a lab and were after the guy who ran it. so they kill a few if his kobold minons (party lvl 6) so very little threat. A few "random" elements. the first contact was supposed to do this frog hop backwards throwing summons at them. they successfully goad him into stay so pumped out a lot of summons. fire element. a few kobolds. and he decides to summon a fiend once the part split. the half orc bladelock runs up and crits the summoner twice with the +10dam feat. deals 6d20+28. does 70dam to the poor caster. dead then quickly steps into the blood circle to hide from the fiend. then the adds sort them self's out.
How in the hell did he get a +28
I have a bit of a house rule for my game. Based on 5th edition D&D, but with quite a lot of house rules (magic is completely different, and a bunch of other things). If a character dies, fails 3 death saves, then, if I think that the characters was interesting, or the character has some story of their own they're trying to do, or just something that could warrant them living. Then the god of the underworld (who, in my game, actually hates his job, having to ferry souls all the time) offers them a deal to let them live. But this does have side effects. They may have a permanent penalty to stats, have to change their god to him if they're a paladin, etc.... But if I don't feel their character warrants a resurrection, then they die.
I only started playing D&D but there is nothing I regret more than fudging a roll to not let my gf die. Later I realised how bad the decision was. The players noticed, she could still have been stabilised and next time I let anybody else drop they'll think I only fudged the roll because she is my gf. There are still other mistakes I made but this one will have some real consequences for futures episodes.
Well, you could just address the issue head-on to clear the air, pretty say what you've said verbatim here and be like, "...but moving forward, you're all fucking dead!", hah, kidding about that last part! -Nerdarchist Ryan
Thanks, you're probably right.
I have only DM'd a couple of sessions at this point, but a party of 5 Level 2's was TPK'd (I "killed" them I guess) in one of the early sessions because they charged headlong into a den of corrupted wolves (led by a dangerous CR 3 Winter Wolf) with no semblance of strategy or tactics. It was going to be a difficult encounter regardless, but the PCs did not make it easy on themselves. I had no issue killing off the party in this instance, because (1) having no regard for strategy should have consequences, and (2) if there is no risk, the rewards are hollow. If you really want players to be ecstatic they made it to Level 5, having to start over at 1 from Level 2 or 3 makes it a much greater victory, and the players will feel a real sense of danger every time they get into combat, just as they should.
Pathfinder here. I've played with dms that won't kill players, which I find annoying. I have dms that will put creations 3 or 4 levels above what they should. Bandersnatches at lv1. Those are ..... entertaining.... hmmm its frustrating but feels good. The best Dms are indifferent to you dying.
Our DM killed one character at a boss fight but let his own NPC, which he now plays as a PC, survive with 1HP.
My philosophy is that what happens, happens. Mostly. I don't set out to kill characters, but if the situation goes there, then the player needs to deal with that repercussion.
However, I will fudge things if I believe a character death will end up being a huge nuisance for me and the party--I'd rather have a good time. No deus ex stuff, but fudging rolls within believability. And hoping the players can figure out a way to avoid the impending death. Because usually my little adjustments are just going to buy the player a little time to hopefully rescue themself/rethink what they're doing.
My players are usually pretty smart, so I've really only killed two characters in my DM career. But there have been many super-close calls. As such I've never really had to deal with resurrection, though I think it should be a challenge (if even possible) so that people need to think whether or not it's worth it. I played in one game where the DM was too easy on resurrection, and some of the players were pretty reckless, so death ended up feeling rather inconsequential. There was literally a "death fund" that you'd put gold into to pay for your resurrection.
To me, the whole situation goes into if it is warranted or not. If I feel that the monsters were too much, I might throw in a possible escape or skill roll to talk their way out of it. If the players went in unprepared, didn't heal when they needed, and group doesn't have a way to heal. priority should be the healer for the enemies and the party. Death by bad tactics is all on them. The only exception is really bad luck. I roll in front of my players and if you live by the dice, you die by the dice.
I want the possibility of character death to be ever present otherwise there is some excitement and challenge lost if you kind of know in the back of your head that the DM will always ensure you survive. I never get too upset when my 1st to 4th level character dies but when it's a character I've had through many adventures and grown attached to, then it's upsetting but it should still be a possibilty.
i never really killed any of my player's characters. they got them selves killed. the first was a halfing in plate mail in a sky battle. he wanted the fighter to toss him at the flying monster and I warned him that nothing short of a natural 20 will succeed at landing on a moving target while in the air. the fighter rolled a 3. the other was downed fighting a boss battle, then revived mid battle and did not bother to heal when at lower than 10 hp continued to fight. the boos downed the player again and made sure the character would not get up again. I'm less forgiving in boss battles, especially if its an intelligent enemy that doesn't want to keep downing the same opponent every time they get revived.
I'm the kind of player (both in video games and D&D) who hates the "expect to die, and die a lot" mindset. I don't play games to confront mortality; I've done enough of that in my real life, thank you. But I do like to be challenged and to grow and progress, so having a death mechanic is fine.
I've had a character die before, and I've come close to death with another. In both cases, I recognize that the character's death was as much as result of my bad play as well as bad luck. In neither situation was death expected, but the threat of it was necessary. I by no means want to be babied, but at the same time, there are some people out there who are more hard-ass on character death (not naming names; not gonna cause shit) that I know I could not play for out of fear of them looking for ways to "punish" what they call "bad play".
Hmm ... never intentionally tried to kill any characters, but on a few occasions I have had to bring the hammer down to the point the characters are near death, usually through one of the Good NPCs who has had enough of their s---.
Personally, I have an... aversion toward killing characters in my games, even when the situation indicates they should not be walking away afterwards, such as after falling for 12 seconds straight down, and have a clay golem land (and shatter) on top of them two seconds later...
Well, permanently killing them, in any case. I'm quite fond of such things as the Dark Gifts of Ravenloft, accidental Reincarnations, dismemberments, basically permanent consequenses of various sorts. I find that, overall, the game becomes a lot more fun when character death is a possible outcome, but not necessarily the end of the line.
A precious example (Adventurers' League) would be a Bard who became necrotic, and lost limbs if he took a certain amount of slashing damage. The bits could be reattached later, but still...
Next session, that Bard was nowhere to be seen as soon as edged weaponry appeared on the field of battle - which again led to hilarious explanations for the rest of the party (players and characters alike). It's the sort of gift that keeps on giving. ;)
Essentially, I'm a charitable and merciful DM, for definitions of charity and mercy. ;)
Do note, I usually allow the player the choice - to perish or return altered. Demanding they come back to life is... not entirely in the spirit of the game, y'know.
the party that I dm for is unusually luck stricken. we play 3.5, and they have done ridicululously well or poorly in combat. the barbarian has, at 2nd level, singlehandedly defeated an aranea (arachnid shapeshifter) at cr4, but our ranger outs in every combat he meets. he hasn't died, which is lucky
I had a group of 6-8 for about a year and a half and I wracked up 5 in the first 3 weeks and then the campaign changed as they decided to try another route from the start and then I got another 16 player character deaths over 10 levels unfortunately there was like 7 revives. most deaths were player caused either PvP or shortly after TBF.
I've been DMing a game for about 2 years now and multiple before that. From my experience and my opinion I am never out to kill my players. My players are rewarding me by playing in the world I have created. Now with that said the world should not be without that risk. The job of a DM is to tell a story, present challenges and sometimes that story does lead to a death of a PC. Its not like it is the end of the world though as I do let players perform resurrection rituals if they are quick enough, or by creating a story arc to bring this character back. It also depends on how they died and where as well in my opinion.
I GM a lot and I rarely kill PCs. Only a few times have smart players lost a character because of bad rolls (I fudge behind my screen in their favor a lot if they're playing well). Most PC deaths have been because the players are doing something stupid or just not working tactically together and saving them at that point would be a give away.
I believe that death should always be a threat but should be built up. One trap or one bad roll shouldn't result in a player death but should absolutely put them on the path towards their destruction. The only part where the game should truly become cut throat DM vs Party is while fighting finale or "epic" boss creatures. They should be doing everything in their power to bring the party down, as everything has led up to that point. If they have legendary reactions / legendary saving throws they should be using those to their absolute limit, and throw in a one liner or two while doing it.
I only kill my players if it's unavoidable. Example, player tries to go for a gem after he/she successfully rolled a spot check to see that it's in a monster's mouth, while they're low levels. Players have to learn one way or another that natural 20 are a rarity.
Depends on the game and your group. My players appreciate a sense of plausibility, and they know the threat of death is real. Also we're in Ravenloft. One in particular will even ask me sometimes away from the table whether or not I've been going easy on them if things are going too well. I don't "like" killing PC's per se, especially after seeing the world developing around them from their (hopefully good) choices, but the game starts to break down a bit when the threat of death is removed. In fact, the rules for characters dying are so core they're in the PHB.
Look at Boromirs death in LOTR. Its functional, its epic, its "deserved", and they meet Boromirs brother later on. I think the fellowship lost the Amon Hen encounter but only one of them died, and two of them were captured. Thats some good DM'ing from Saruman.
i threw a pack of dire wolves at a level 1 party my first session. they barely survived. ill admit i screwed up but it made for a great confidence booster which let me 2 sessions later put them against a flame skull
CR and encounter building as much art as it is science in 5e.
- Nerdarchist Dave
I'm here exactly cause a mage died in the group, and it was a terrible batle against goblins and hobgoblins, the players got a couple of failed crits and the mage died in the end.
Hey Guys!
I`ve came across your Channel just today and I like what you guys are thinking.
Got a Question for all of you:
I play PnP since a few years now and I found that I enjoy the game the most when I play without dice.
Have you ever tried that?
If yes, what do you think about it?
If not, could you imagine doing that?
I was way to lenient on my players at first because we were all brand new but now I realized they really need to learn that this world does have consequences cuz there are powerful enemies and you can't just kidnap the duke and run through the town even if you have ridiculous movement speed boots of striding and spring and gauntlets of ogre power you know hypothetically
I always try to challenge the party, and to let the characters "kill themselves" by not running from something that out matches them... rarely will I kill a player outright... and then only because they've done/said something stupid to someone they shouldn't have (meeting a god in the god's plane of existance, the god offers to help the party if they perform a task for him. The party cleric "I'd rather die than bend my knee to another god")
Almost killed my first player, brought him to zero. This fighter then used second wind and got back up, however his cursed sword forced him to charge back at the troll who downed him which then proceeded to down him again.
Early level I try not to kill them off as I want them to get a feel for their characters. However, as their understanding and abilities increase with their level, i will stop being nice and if you drop then you better get some healing in there.
If a character ever dies, I believe there should be a way to resurrect them. In an adventure I'm working on, if any players died the next time the party visits a town, one of the residents joins the party and the dead player resumes play as the person who just joined the party.
i tell my players when they die. i fudge the rolls to let them live so i can give them an epic death later on. like an npc betrays them and coup de grace him. or a mechanism where he has the chance to sacrifice himself for the party later.
I think the possibility of death is what makes a story fun, but it has to be epic. Where one character sacrifices themselves to save the party when things get out of hand - that is amazing, and people remember that. Where somebody gets their head blown off by a random trap and an unlucky roll, nah, not cool.
I´ve accidently tpk a party the first session, because they hit the final boss with an aoe spell, and he just decimated them and killed every thing on the planet. It was fun..