How to Kill Your Players in D&D
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 1 июн 2024
- Most players are afraid of their character dying in a session. But what if you could kill your players in a way that is fun for everyone?
00:00 - Intro
01:39 - Clones
03:59 - Time Loop
06:14 - Dreams
07:37 - Planning for Player Character Death
11:13 - Pitfalls to Avoid
Find more encounter ideas and DM tips at www.masterthedungeon.com/
Support us on Patreon: / masterthedungeon
See what we're up to on Twitter: / masterdadungeon
Check out our art on Redbubble: www.redbubble.com/people/Mast...
www.masterthedungeon.com/how-...
#DungeonsAndDragons #DnD #Animatic 
Игры
"Death Action" is also a very fun way to give a character moment dripping with personality. when you fail your final death save you immediately gain 1 action (but you are immune to healing since you are already dead) make 1 more attack against something, cast one more spell, throw the important item to someone else who really needs it. what you do in your literal final moment.
And then that final action fail either fuck you dice or you counterspelling it like an asshole who want a power trip
3e book of vile darkness has death curse usuualy used by villians but good charecters can use it but it prevents raise death. ressurection and wish still work
At this point in the campaign, I think my DM is more worried about my character dying than I am 😂
That is kind of a problem…
@@Diego_Winterborg well that campaign ended so it’s now a mute point.
NGL I clicked for the "Kill your players" Meme. Also loving the Trapped groundhog's day dungeon, and totally want to use clones for "You wake up in a room with none of your gear" Start of a session.
Oh man, what if they wake up in a room with none of their gear, only to run into their real selves later on. They were unknowingly playing as their clones.
Sounds paranoid to me...
[The game Paranoia, where each character has a handful of clones that will take the character's places as they die.]
[I'd come to the comments section before the video 🤣 ]
One thing that might be good to add to the "party respawns when one player dies" dungeon (as inspired by a specific space-faring timeloop game) is that the party must intentionally disable whatever mechanic keeps them spawning before being able to complete the dungeon for the final time. The dungeon would be difficult and punishing, but once the players know exactly what steps to take and which weaknesses to exploit, they would feel confident in being able to take on the dungeon for the final time. Having the respawn mechanic disabled would give this "final run" much more weight and feel like a huge payoff for all of the mistakes and knowledge gained on previous attempts.
Neat idea, reminds me of The Outer Wilds
Reminds me of Groundhog Day, Happy Death Day, and that later season episode of Agents of Shield. 🙂
Or don't make a note and if they die outside the dungeon they redrawn back in it lol
The most recent game we started a GM I never played before included a great question on the player questionnaire "Character Death is something I'd like to avoid, but sometimes it is a consequence of the game. If your character had to die what would be the most satisfying death you could give them?" It sets the expectation that you could die without specificity and does it in a friendly tone, which is just *Chef's Kiss* quality dread. It gave us some sense of agency in this unknown end and it was a great way of helping us articulate the mortality of our character in the event we don't get an opportunity to be destroyed by the GM. 10/10 will show up on my player questionnaires in the future.
Do you have like… a Google drive link or something of the sort for it? I’ve always tried to handle that sort of thing in an in-person “session 0” but sometimes not everyone can make it so we split it up, but having it in writing might help me keep them all on the (metaphorical and physical, both) same page
I made a giant creature that lives in a lake that can revive players but he takes literally all your shit after reviving you. His names Besco and I fucking love him.
What if your players stash all their stuff somewhere before going to the creature?
@@HoRiOnS maybe he can read your memories and not revive you or smth, that would also be a way to punish murderhobos
💚 you and me both. Your world, your rules.
I’ve never met Besco but I like him.
i imagine he has millennia of practice and hands that can reach past any plane gazed by even the outmost beings (aka, he takes the items in your sheet and/or your experience and/or spell slots)
Another important thing, and this is gonna run counter to most of the advice given at the end of the video, is to remember that not EVERY death has to be heroic. But they did have to be tragic if they aren’t heroic. My party recently lost our Kolbold Rouge who we honestly thought was going to be the only one who would survive most encounters if they went south. And it was heart breaking, and tragic. But at not point, from an outside perspective, did it feel cheap or like it was bullshit. It felt like we messed up. And when we couldn’t get to them in time, and we couldn’t revivify them due to special rules in place for the setting making the whole thing go sideways, it stung in a way that felt satisfying from a story perspective. The weight of the death is what sells its value. Not always what is achieved from it.
In my campaign you can go up to death and ask him to revive you, he will if he thinks you deserve a second chance and you're able to pass a gauntlet he creates for you, the downside is that every time you revive you'll end up more and more undead, so you slowly become a zombie or a skeleton after enough resurrections so you might get a bit weaker or lose some cognitive function until you're just a shambling corpse.
I once made a D&D campaign where players are dragged to a plane between live and dead once they died.
They start with nothing, no weapons, no armor, no gold. Wake up in a random fortress in ruins. Players may find some random weapon around, but not enough for all players. Lot is really rare to find, monsters around lurking. Very hard to play, and, the best part. When players die, they respawn in a bonfire of blue fire. Where they link their souls. They'll lose part of they soul everytime they die. Along with all their equipments, so players need to save equipments in Chests just incase they die.
very interesting ideas! my go to is usually to present them with the chance to become a warlock, thus giving them a choice (with consequences) to continue. but the dream sequence also sounds like a fun way to casually blow their minds
Disappointed in this video, came here to learn how to kill players, not their characters.
You got us in the first half, not gonna lie.
Remember; for a lot of intelligent foes, it makes more sense to take a character alive if possible, either by knocking them unconscious when they reach 0HP or even by healing them after they drop. Guards or soldiers will want to take them for questioning, bandits may want to ransom them or hold them hostage, cultists may want to kill them in a ritual sacrifice instead of just in a brawl. Maybe none of them want it enough to pay the costs of a resurrection, but the BBEG or his lieutenants might if the party has been a thorn in his side or he thinks he can manipulate them; maybe he has magical bomb collars and is threatening them with dying permanently if they dont serve him; now they have to figure out a way to remove whatever leverage he has but they also have an opportunity to figure out his plans and see the inner workings of his organization, evil army, monster lair or whatever. The result of three fails need not actually be death, if you have something else that makes a better narrative.
One of the characters in my game, I was about to start her backstory quest. She had a villain in her backstory, and the villain was trying to get revenge after becoming a warlock and gaining more power. He sent some goons to try and capture that player and bring her to him. The goon’s plan was, if she died, they could cast gentle repose where she could be revived and interrogated later.
In the fight against the goons, she dropped to 0 and the goons tried to get away with her. The players focus fired on the one carrying her and managed to kill it before she failed all her death saving throws. Then the player on the turn before her, failed the médecine check to stabilize, and she rolled a nat 1 and died. The other goon tried to go in for the gentle repose but ended up getting telekinetically shoved off the roof they were on.
I haven’t told the players that they accidentally secured the permanence of her death.
Everyone had a good time though, so
Ah yes, the Task Force X option
If we apply the nonlethal damage rules to NPC attacks as well as player attacks, nonlethal damage need not even require death saves. (See page 198 of the PHB)
I like magic heavy worlds.
So it makes sense that death is often reversible.
However, one does not always come back feeling their best.
A player in a group I'm playing in commented that she rarely gets to experience the later levels in the game, because campaigns usually end before then.
It gave me an idea that takes my above take on death to the extreme.
The party is a set of adventurers that are already legendary heroes, they're starting like level 16 or so.
So they're celebrating the most recent victory, giving them a chance to know some of the characters and feel how praised they are, when the big bad invades the castle.
And just when they're about to save the day again, he casts a suicidal spell that kills everyone in the area.
The party finds themselves resurrected 30 years in the future, under the control of an evil necromancer who is a minion of a minion of the big bad.
Thanks to a good necromancer defeating the evil one, they start to regain control of themselves, but as zombies not only are their ability scores and proficiency in the negative (though retaining spell levels and class features), but they find that to keep themselves animated a constant rhythm must be played on a magical instrument...or stay within a few feet of the good necromancer at all times.
So the quest is to bring themselves back up to their former strength by seeking magical artifacts and such, while some enemies are fully aware that killing the good necromancer if he is near, or stopping whomever is playing the instrument, will cause them to slowly stop being animated.
And they may find that their interactions at the celebration 30 years ago had an impact, perhaps shaping a current group of adventurers.
**Paranoia** is most definitely a game of GM vs. players which is why clone death is so common and that mechanic is needed. Very different to D&D!
If you're killing your players, the cops are going to want a word...
If you're killing their characters, then carry on.
12:09 I feel like borrowing a mechanic from Blades in the Dark could work here. That game allows you to make a Devil's Bargain, where you can increase your chance of success or the effectiveness of your success in exchange for guaranteed bad consequences. For example, our group got attacked by a ghost. One character promised to get an NPC out to safety, but got paralyzed with fear and was stuck inside the building as the rest of us fled. They took a Devil's Bargain to increase their chance to escape, but in exchange the NPC would remember their cowardice and that player gained an enemy, who is bound to pop up later at an inconvenient time.
If a player is caught with a save or die effect and they roll too low, consider offering them a Devil's Bargain. They can choose to survive the Slay Living spell, but their heart was overtaxed and they start taking periodic levels of exhaustion that they need to see a healer long-term to get removed. That lets them carry on when they should have died, puts pressure on the party to get the dungeon over with quickly, and if they do end up dying due to their penalties on other roads later then the player has time to prepare for it. Maybe there will be an opportunity for a heroic sacrifice later in the dungeon, and that player would be the obvious choice.
Or maybe they can get through the dungeon just fine, but they have a curse on them like the Final Destination movies. Now they have disadvantage on saves vs traps and accidents, which seem magnetically attracted to them. Removing the curse might lead them to some powerful magic user that sends them on another quest, or at higher levels could send them to the outer planes to attempt to bargain with higher powers to right the character's karmic balance.
The very first dnd campaign I did was tomb of annihilation... I got used to dying and losing my characters rather quickly
"+1 to all Skills, per clone-level" might help with the players' deathophobia, from multiple angles of mechanics (represents clones getting wiser in a ludonarrative sense, every time a player dies they can say "at least I'm better now", etc)
My Paladin character in the longest-running campaign I've been in died awhile back. I loved him a lot, but it was kind of the perfect death. He had taken on a large chunk of the monsters in a magical forge so his faithful friend (an artificer) could get the opportunity of a lifetime and craft a legendary item. He had gone into a frenzy due to his wereshark lycanthropy, and dropped due to the backsplash fire damage from slaying the last fire elemental in front of him. My DM flavored this as him letting out an audible roar of fury as he slew his last foe and hit the floor. I critically failed my first death save, and normally failed the second, meaning the other characters couldn't get to him. He died doing something meaningful that he believed in, and that's what he cared about. I wrote him a last will and testimate, and the start of the next session was divvying up his stuff and doing the funeral scene. He was cremated in a sacred ritual by his religious order, his image appeared in the ashes as they fluttered through the air, and gave a smile, and with that the tale of Dareth Stormwind was over.
A wereshark?!? That's so cool!
9:38 I'm playing in a high-level evil campaign, and the GM has admitted that he doesn't know how to balance stuff for us anymore. We've survived things we definitely should not have, and the next encounter might be something that takes us by surprise and ends it all. Honestly, the world would probably be better without our characters in it, so I won't be too shook up about it. But then again, I didn't mind the series finale of Seinfeld either...
What about the 6 Feet Under finale, eh ? ^^
I’m playing a custom system where death is...easy to incur and hard to avoid for combat brevity’s sake, so thanks, this was VERY helpful
Back in the long ago days of "Chainmail," I lost three characters in my first campaign because I couldn't roll above a 7 when we got into the game.
More recently, as a fourth level cleric, I rolled five twos in the middle of combat.
Are you Will Wheaton's slightly luckier twin?
@@tiph3802 not that I'm aware of. But. we've been in America for a long time. Maybe we were related once and I just wasn't told about the curse that might pop up.
1:05 , "Johnny we hardly knew ya"... I literally listen to this song all the time lately. XD hahahahahah
One option I saw in the comments of another video, is the (IIRC) "Last Stand". If the player is down, they are allowed to decide if they want to do a Last Stand, in which they are given 1 HP (thus regain consciousness) and have their turn immediately. But, after their turn, they are dead permanently, without saving rolls and without being able to be revived. This way, killing a character is a decision made by the player, they may choose to do it if they think the situation is appropriate, and to die being the hero.
The thing that I think might have been forgotten is that a lot of the ideas only work in a TPK, because unless you force the whole party to restart because it's a dream or a time loop, it would get rather bothersome if the same character keeps dying and we would have to completely restart
My dragonborn bard once wanted to adopt this kobold as a side kick, because he was being abused. When we had wiped out all the enemies in the mountain, I wanted to check on him. As I enter his camp, a very powerful wizard cast power word kill on me.
Your DM sounds like a dick.
We play with a house rule that you can only be resurrected once. This makes death a lot closer to death in real life, but not so devastating as to always be permanent.
Read a rather old book, Rogue Moon (Algis Budrys, 1960), for a good example of the "dungeon restarts with a new clone" mechanic.
i think the reason players see death as a permanent punishment, is bc thats what it is. a better way to handle it is "you're not dead so kong as you can be resurrected. just incapacitated."
nice video! Love the art and the narrator's voice! :D
I actually keep death totally solid. I don't really allow for resurrection except by spells, and even then there's almost always a caveat. My players are terrified of death in dnd - but I never let them die unless it fits the time, or they do something absolutely stupid. But they don't know this. They *feel* as if the world keeps moving without their characters, and every time one of them dies, it's an absolute tragedy. I prefer this style.
Don't kill your players. Kill the characters instead
Had a idea for a ressurection mechanic for a horror dnd game, they can use a amulet to ressurect thier friend, however the amulet makes them eat the dead pcs flesh, then the next morning they are back, with full memories of how it felt to be eaten so its more a curse than anything
I only been watching your channel for short time but I've already grown to love it and may want my main list channels
I saw that "RNJesus" you tucked in there. I love that
Also, I have a perfect way to surprise my players with the "clone" escape hatch. My favorite neutral NPC in this specific campaign is Nana, the night hag. She's kind of a quest giver/exposition source, rather than an enemy (as one would expect from a night hag). The players more or less trust her (which, tbh, is more than I expected), so she could get their bits pretty easily. If they die, they can wake up naked in Nana's hut with no idea what is going on. This is gonna be funny
I love the art in this video but i disagree with what's being said, I'm running an extremely hard game were PC's die every few session and everyone loves it. If you have ever been really really stuck at something whether its a video game level or a skill you understand how extremely satisfying it is when you're finally able to complete it. When my players finally avenge lost characters and defeat a villain they feel an amazing sense of accomplishment.
It's just old school vs new playerbase desires. Us OG's like the challenge and brutality, playing like it's a wargame, newer crowds want their games to be carbon copies of Critical Role where every scene is straight out of a movie.
Neither is wrong, different folks enjoy different kinds of games.
Just don't mix the types of people in the groups or you're all going to have a bad time.
It depends on the group. I strongly recommend having a "session zero" where you talk with your players about what they expect from the campaign, including how lethal the campaign will be. I've seen groups fall apart because the DM forced a hardcore, high lethality campaign on a group that wasn't interested in that. I seen groups fall apart because there was no sense of threat or danger and they felt like the GM would just deus ex them whenever anything went wrong.
As long as this has been established with the group in "Session 0" it can definitely work quite well.
The only way I could enjoy a campaign where my characters frequently die, is by playing characters I don't actually like. Just, total jerks that are more villain than anything even resembling a hero.
But then the problem is that I'm constantly playing characters I don't like.
I like the dream part, VGtR's mist realms (i forgor what that were called) guidelines are basically how to write "it was just a dream" horror stories
An easy way to prep new players for game over is to have them initially make 3 charecters you can use the other two as untouchable npcs the player gets to role play they get to rotate the characters and learn other classes in the process and if one dies they simply create a new character to rotate having the others as guild mates makes it so the players have connections and friends outside the pary to come home to and lets the unplayed backups level up canonically in a natural way thus if you get board of Boris the barbarian one week you can say Selby the cleric is standing in whilst Boris is off training etc. You can have these alts level up automatic or have them need to be rotated in to gain required exp to catch up that way death isn't as hard but the game can go on and tackle the problem diffrently. This also incurages current races and classes etc so the players can explore the game differently.
This could extend the game or just have a bigger cast to celebrate ounce the game comes to a close\ when milestones get accomplished.
The clones idea is fun, especially if you opt for an aftermath situation.
If the players clear the dungeon without expending all of their "clones" completing the dungeon releases the clones into the world.
Possible stories of doppelgangers, imitators, etc can be wonderfully used and explored. A storyline where you end up hunting down identical copies of yourself and your companions, and a different amount depending on who died how often in the dungeon.
Tie this to a cursed item your party took from the dungeon which manifests new clones every so often and you get a cool story where the focus is understanding the reason why something was put in a dungeon rather than just looting said dungeon.
Believe me, they do NOT avoid dying at all cost. I've seen Wizards charge head first into combat and Clerics using all their slots in combat rather than healing a dying teammate (with the soon-to-be-corpse encouraging the bloodshed)
Also a good idea for when characters die with a lot of redirections , is much like the stormcast Eternals in Warhammer, AOS. Where the more you die the more of your self you loose , slowly getting dementia then eventually you go crazy . Only works if your players would try to RP it
Instructions unclear, the police arrested me for some reason
In the show The Magicians, there's an episode where they try out a probability spell to show them all the outcomes of fighting the BBEG, and they would wake up in the ritual chamber whenever they died.
This was really helpful! Thank you!
Glad we could help!
"How do I kill my players in D&D?"
This video: "That's the thing. You don't."
Great vid! Thanks for the ideas
As a counter-point to not using Save or Die spells on players: I tend to agree *unless* the players have a way to counter such spells.
For instance, in one game I ran the party was about to face off against the lich Azalin Rex. They had foreknowledge of the encounter, knew the lich's approximate power level and had memorized the Death Ward spell to protect themselves from instant death effects.
All of this was very smart, since Azalin had a few Finger of Death spells memorized.
They still lost the wizard to a FoD though since they decided *not* to cast their Death Ward spells before rocking into the lair of the lich, but hey. You can lead adventurers to water but you can't make them pre-buff.
I'm pretty new to DM'ing but I think I found a nice solution for death, it's a homebrew rule called "Silk Thread" I probably came across it online while searching for all kinds of stuff.
my rule goes as follows: "Can only be revived X amount of time(s) based on X stat."
So if your player chooses Dex as their stat, and their modifier is 4, they can be revived 4 times, after that you're done for.
This does not always apply depending on what killed the player. I don't actively try and kill my players, but this gives them a reason to not charge in without a plan.
This, was weirdly comforting. Context another player’s character just died in our campaign. It was an instant kill. We double checked the dice and the math several times and even the dm was shocked. Even showed us the monster stats. So…yeah…this was devastating. We are a roleplay heavy group, especially for this campaign. For us to suddenly lose his character is absolutely the worst. There are two main reasons why. One, the other two characters have only met him for 2-3 days in game (their players have been with us a while though). This means they don’t really have a strong connection to his character. Which both players are sad about because they genuinely wanted to see how the story would play out for each of their characters’ future relationship. That path is gone now. As for the second reason, that’s my character. See, I…gave my character a tragic backstory for once. And the character who died? That’s been his best friend for a while now. Just in the last week, in game, the two barely escaped their hometown with their lives. They have watched each other nearly die already in that time. And now one of them is dead dead. And for my character? This is getting to him. See, for added context, the hometown these two share? It isn’t my character’s birth place. He is a refugee already and lost his birth family to warring forces in three royal faction of the empire he is actually from. So he has lost two homes and his best friend. At this point? My character feels he can’t protect anything he cares about. It’s getting to him. But as I said, this video was weirdly comforting for that as I try to figure out what we, as a party, plan to do from here.
Oh and as a player, this is my first serious death of a player character. The first player character death was from a stupid action of that player (not the same group as this one). The second was this group and the situation I mentioned at first. So I’m still wrapping my head around how to proceed because this is genuinely break down material for my character and I don’t know why it never occurred to me to prep for that.
The whole time loop section is basically your explanation for a rouge-lite/rouge-like
Oh my god, you need so much more attention!
I like the ideas you've put forward but I have a big of a problem with the bonfire example. Mainly because it's inexplicable but also because why would it suddenly turn off for a dramatic death?
It did give me an alternative idea though - a magic item that reverses time by a day, or perhaps 6 hours. I haven't fully baked it out but imagine if your players had an exit button that could only be used once a week, 3 times total or perhaps using it comes at a huge cost.
You'd essentially be giving your players an in-universe reason for having multiple lives, where you get full control of the costs and usability because you can flavour it however you want.
The bonfire thing is based on dark souls where you, and the entire population of the world basically, are literally cursed with undeath. You can't die permanently. Ever. Until you defeat the BBEG.
Dying forever is the win condition.
After finishing the video, I thought of two more options for the DM to give the player an immediate boost: 1. Bring along a friendly NPC with no given background that the dead PC can take over playing (unless this idea was said and I just missed it.) or 2. Let the dead PC become a wraith or ghost who can still vaguely interact with the party, either in general, or through dreams, or to haunt the shit out of the bad guys if any survived.
I created an adventure that was crazy hard and inside someone’s mind. Progress was like Groundhog Day, with death or critical fails resetting, but time moved forward outside. And events were fun and unusual.
One fun idea if you really want a safety net is 'extended hp'
when player is in condition to die and should not instantly be disintegrated, hp is restored by x% but player is unable to do anything or is very limited until continued to be restored to y%
but is still recommended to maximize the time before removing control as once the conditions occur they are probably gonna be feeling excluded
If you play the clone spell RAW it's not exactly a cheap spell timewise, materialwise or spellslot/level wise. And it does specifically mention that the soul has to inhabit the body so you couldn't revive a cloned body if the soul has already transfered to the clone body.
my character, el, recently died to save his boyfriend from a surprise attack from a dragon, and it was an amazing moment.
Me and my friends were doing a very improv based campaign once and we had this one character who was a 'golem' sort of thing made out of spaghetti which kept dying Over and over only for the group to take their heart and find a way to revive them, usually just making new pasta but once they were put inside a dog's body so they were a dog for a while
It was really fun watching them mess up in weird ways and die only for them to come back later
For things like saving roles, I love the idea of having them roll 2D6 and adding 6, over having them roll a single D20. It feels less random, because the character stats that added to the saving rolls has a more reasonable chance of determining whether they succeed.
Getting unlucky and rolling on one, feels like the character was powerless. There was virtually no way any low level character can be built to withstand that. However with 2D6 +6, the lowest you can role is an 8, so it makes it far more reasonable that the character stats have a chance to survive, if the character has been designed well.
I have a few ideas for you. What I do is have the characters write up how they want to be treated if and when they die and give me that information. If then change their mind, they can give me a written update. If they die, I read this written statement to the remaining players. Perhaps they find this statement in a container in the pack or pocket of their dead friend. The other thing I do is to consider the ramifications of their death to the party and to the world. So that their death actually moves the plot forward or creates a setback that has to be overcome. So if they die, I immediately begin to implement these consequences. Another thing that I do is to do is to offer them a choice of some NPC characters that they can play and transform into a PC. This NPC is not a major NPC, monster or villain but rather a minor one that has never been fleshed out. Together we work out the PCs backstory. I make sure that the PC has something useful to add to the party. This can be skills and abilities, inside knowledge, cultural connections, etc. I then arrange a series of encounters between the NPC turned PC and the existing surviving PCs. The new PC thus joins the old PCs. This way of doing things is highly beneficial as characters can die, die permanently, die with meaning and be reborn as new characters all in a way that moves the story forward. This process also helps to involve PCs in the creation of the world without revealing villains schemes or monsters secrets etc. The world becomes their world as much as it is my world. It has a tremendous benefit to me as well because, by killing off their PCs (which are often somewhat antithetical to the my world, the new PCs that replace them are just the opposite, they are an excellent fit to the world as they are derived from it.) This is not to say that the characters are playing my NPCs. They are not, they are creating their PCs out of my old NPCs. So we are cocreating the world together. I highly recommend that you try this.
Really perfect. My fantasy players are being transported to a high tech world to battle a powerful AI in 2 weeks. This video just filled most of the gaps in in the grid dungeon.
I clicked on a video about killing players.
I got a video about killing characters.
This is just the inspiration I needed for an adventure I've been wanting to run.
Do you know how absurdly difficult it is to find people with your views on Character Death?
The second video I've seen of your content, and frankly, it's better than the majority of others.
This view that Character Death is not an evil thing is something that needs to be resurrected from old school DnD. I've met so many players that are afraid of Character Death, and GM's afraid to commit to it.
It is a tool, and like any tool, it can be used to significant effect or misused and abused.
If I were to be honest, I was always hesitant to use the Clone concept or even Dark Souls style Checkpointing. It always felt dangerously close to the revolving door that is Death in 5E.
How to kill your players.
Your... players.
Your PLAYERS.
...Uuuh, don't? You'll go to jail.
=)
The TPK I DMd was due to bad balancing (CR..), the party splitting, and people that gave played for over a year making dumb mistakes like the barbarian thinking, "I've only got two rages. I'll save them for later."
Right when players are near a TPK, stop the session. Next session, tell your players to create new characters, down some levels and with no magic stuff. These new PCs are gonna arrive at the combat scene right where you stopped last session, now have them pilot both characters, or you pilot the main ones, whatever seems right. The battle now should be an easy win for your players, you have avoided a TPK and the players now have backup characters. Now I have no problem in killing characters, and my players don't have as well, but sometimes a campaign can lose a lot of momentum when a TPK ruins the current story arc. If the table was really invested in the plot, but creating new characters seem wrong, you can do this: time skip some years ahead. Your BBEG got what he wanted, and the city/region/world was changed for it. But then a group of NPCs knew of the group of adventurers that were never seen again somehow found a way to revive them (a wish from a genie or a deck of many things, anything cool enough goes). Your PCs will awake without their gear, in a setting changed by the villain's actions, having once again to gather the strength to defeat him, but now (hopefully) using what they learned from last time.
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e (dunno about other editions) has fate points. If a PC is about to die (or be maimed, like losing arm or leg) they can expend fate points to avoid that eg. dodge at last second, a limited plot armor kind of.
1st DnD campaign.
Me and another character were trapped in a cave, with potent explosives, a nearly indestructible evil entity, and a tight tunnel.
Other character decides he is going to sacrifice himself by shoving my character out the tunnel, and lighting off the explosives. We say our farewells, after fighting alongside each other for so long...
Then, I remember that his character killed my character's brother, stab him in the gut, and leave him there. He bleeds out unceremoniously. The End.
Our DM when we pressured him into running a game when he wasn't really in the mood: "You all meet in a tavern. Rocks fall. Everyone dies!" Luckily he was only kidding.
important advice by Brennan Lee Mulligan,
Don't kill your players, kill their characters
The cyebrpunk red rulebook is funny because it basically just says "kill em lol"
you're actually just a temporal paradox that resulted from your death
*party member dies*
"Noooo, Johny!"
*phoop*
Johny: "Hey guy-AAAHHH"
"AAAAAHHHHHH"
Back in the day our DM spent most of his time killing our weapons and gear ( sometimes us too). The weapons and gears destruction would give big incentive to be more creative and aggressive during fights.
~Laughs in 3e~
...
~looks nervously at AD&D players~
The ever returning bonfire is peak comedy
This is great fodder for ideas!
I’ve been grappling with this recently and this definitely lowers the DC for me
You've inspired a spin on the time loop mechanic. You could set up a situation where disaster upon disaster befalls a town they're attached to over the course of a couple days. Assassinations, monster attacks, poison in the water supply, cult unleashing a demonic invasion. The party is unprepared and unable to handle it, ending in a TPK
They wake up three days prior, and the warlock's patron is standing in the room. He has shown them a future and offered them a chance to change things
Is Heat of the Moment playing? Godamnit Gabriel.
Recently I had this happen; the group was betrayed by an NPC and the empires guard ambushed them with 20 crossbow men and 3 griffons (the group consisted about 5 people all lvl 8) and they were to surrender, I made it clear that they couldn’t win, so they could surrender or Try to escape
The Paladin had another idea, he used a spell slot to charge a wrathful smite and charged the line, the guards were about 60 feet away from the building they were in, I was told that I should not pull punches from other DMs, and frankly I really couldn’t bullshit my way out, so the Paladin was riddled with 11 crossbow bolts (9 of them missed his 21 AC, yes they rolled pretty high) the Paladin was already singed by a fire spell beforehand, and before he even got 20 feet he was instantly dead from the amount of bolt shot into him
Sometimes DMs can’t decide what happens in the game just as much as the players
They had guns and drums, and drums and guns, hurrah D; Johnny we hardly knew ya
To avoid magical abuse, PCs in our current campaign roll a hit die when brought back to life. That is subtracted from their Max HP with no way to get it back. Also, everytime they are at 0 HP, they gain a level of exhaustion.
the issue with the PARANOIA reference-that system is explicitly designed for almost slapstick play. GMs are encouraged to have PCs drop dead for merely questioning their authority, even. The whole mechanic is meant to reinforce the absurdity of the setting (albeit, Alpha Complex is one that is near and dear to my heart)
The all guardsman party handles death pretty good. As in the PCs dying frequently and horribly is part of the story since they’re cannon fodder.
I like the idea of the "resurrection item" so that if a player is causing issues the party can make the choice to bring that party member back. It gives the players a chance to oust annoying party members if need be.
Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain!
Im working on a campaign where players start with a character that died in another campaign and were resurrected into this new world for another purpose. Sorta a 2nd chance for dead PCs.
It’s bugging me that the death saves are 3 1’s but you’d die after 2 1’s or 3 rolls of less than 9 and more than 1
For the algorithm. Happy to have found this channel
I appreciate this video. I thought most players where like me. By that i mean taking inspiration from real life goals and therefore trying as hard as they can ro die whilse skirting slightly under what would be considered suicidal.
A monk is a duel machine. If a monk tells you he's gonna 1v1 a lich, you better ready those legendary saves or the lich is gonna get stunlocked.
What i did was "you are a Government Workers (Chaotic evil paladin and an edgy rouge) in the world where Artificial Life and reviving is a thing. As long as your friend /Ally have Accessto your body and id they can revive you. Exept for a rouge... He has a fake id... Edgy rouge... (also the can have side Kicks from time to time. Artificial Life)
i like how for the timeloop you say darksouls. but i was thinking outer wilds
I make it so demons bet on your soul after revival, and if it ever gets to the hands of a collector (like a rare stamp collector, but demon) you're pretty much done for, since it's nigh impossible to get it back
and you need the soul to revive, obviously
OMG !!! She knows PARANOIA !!! Awesome !! Haven't heard about that game since my debut in role play gaming. 🙂
Oh a mosoleum with a lich inside that catches them in a time loop every time they die they wake up at the entrance with the memories of what happened, milestone level up system, and as they go through redoing it they find hidden passages and traps to kill the things that killed them till they find the item the lunch has that’s doing it, or maybe a spell or smthn… I just got to that point in the video shit… I didn’t know
I will somewhat disagree on the no death vs chance idea (assuming you can pull it right, although i will agree death vs save is definitely BS unless you're playing an easy revive setting) The reason i say this is an example from one of my own games, a player died from taking 4x max health damage from a bombardment of basically artillery from a boss monster during a huge scene where they and the whole village was fending off mechanical monsters sent to destroy the village, the player was caught in the fire and was basically dead in 1 shot as the random positioning put 3 of the hit markers right on him, in contrast to how i figured this would go all of the players though it was really memorable exactly becaseu of how pointless his death was and it gave them something to really fight for.
My character died last week after accidentally drinking poisonous wine at the very end of a session. I don’t think there was a roll to it I remember just near instant death. I wanna see what kind of character my new one will be but I gotta admit it did feel pretty crappy and like it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things 😕
death makes the game interesting
Would it be possible to, in the event of a character's death before any of the PCs have access to resurrection spells, provide an adventure where they have to find an ancient, unreliable ritual that could bring the dead PC back to life? It wouldn't be as helpful or effective as a resurrection spell, but would work in a pinch, or has some severe consequence?
I've got a version of that in a homebrewed setting I made. One of the first quests is transporting a recently-deceased villager to an ancient elven relic. The relic is huge and buried under a barrow mound. Using it allows someone who has died in the last day may be brought back to life once. It can only be used by a handful of people who know how to perform the ritual, so you have to be less than a day away from it and on the good side of one of the few people who can use it, and each player can only benefit from it once. So it is only useful to a party operating around this remote village which mostly has only low level quests in it and acts as a get out of jail free card in case low level adventurers get themselves into trouble by biting off more than they can chew or in case of obscenely unlucky rolls befalling a character.
gotta use this info on the bard