No no, I get it AD. And I agree with you to a point. As I said, I was no stranger to character death and I knew that sometimes they died. But that was the thing; the actual dying sucked. My brothers that I played with before that one GM were cool about it; sometimes we got rez'd, sometimes not and we'd make new characters. Sometimes we just ended the game and started over. But when you DID die in one of my brothers' games they made some jokes, we talked about how dumb save-or-die mechanics were, we all had a laugh. In short we didn't dwell on the consequences.
The consequences of dying didn't teach me to be a better gamer, neither did dying itself. My GM/brother did. But then I had that other GM; the gritty one. Man, after all these years I can STILL remember him grinning when I blew that save on death #2.
Thing was, he was ALL about the consequences. He laser focused on them, piled on more with em. He was all "ha ha, you're dumb and you DIED. Here's an extra helping of filth to wash down your level and con loss". I don't run my games that way.
But that's the silver lining isn't it? I learned what I don't like and how to avoid that in my games.
In my own experience, the percentage of players who I have played with that would hear this and say "cool! I totally want to do that!" would be in the range of 15% or so...Yah, because they can no-longer simulate romance... you know... if the opportunity actually ever arose.
LOL! Some of them, maybe. Others more because most of my play group really is pretty laid back plain generic standard shiny-teethed hero player.
In fact I'd only say two players in my group have ever played a really dark anti-hero type character, and I'm one of them.
All of my play group except one are married, and most have kids, we're a bunch of old fogies for the most part...
So am I the only one who has players that constantly try and kill off their characters?
My players always seem to want to do stupid things just asking for death. (Had a 2nd Fighter once charge a Devilfish barehanded and unarmored. He then ripped off one of its tentacles and then force feed it the tentacle... Got majorly lucky, but not a good idea...) And then people kill of their characters to play a new one. I think my group's games are too filled with PC death...
Let me relate the story of my first experience with character death...
Thanks for sharing that story, I completely agree.
Okay so to give a bases of what was going on, I was setting up the world for them and just told them of their mission and that Lord Rios was the main bad guy working against them to see their task uncompleted. Little did they know that Lord Rios is actually a Lich. Poor GMing on my part I showed my players his Phylactery early on in order to give them a hint about the main bad guy. This led to a fight where one of my players died...This was not what I intended to happen. Now I am having a hard time coming up with a way for them to raise that player. Help please...
They have the players toon's body with a spell on it to keep it from decaying. sooo now i just need a way for them to get rezed...
they are in the middle of no where and are wanted dead in the only city that they could get a healer to raise them. there are no dragons in my world.so what can i do now?
Retcon.
As you say things like 'first game' and 'Poor GMing,' it sounds like these were level one characters vs. a lich, and it was something you didn't want to happen.
As the GM, if you don't WANT it to happen.... it didn't HAPPEN. There could be some fun with making a new character... working a ressurection into a plot.. side quests...
OR....
The character can GASP for air and struggle to look around. His companion can shout out "HE'S STILL ALIVE!!" and another can hug his 1hp body and say "Do NOT scare us like that again!"
It happens in the movies and the comics ALLLLLLL the TIME!!!
I'm a firm believer that the IMPORTANT thing of a game is HAVING FUN! Do whatever is best for that. If in your infinite DM wisdom, that encounter should NOT have happened... don't feel constrained. Your going to have a hard time justifying a 1st level LEGALLY coming back from the dead. It's just hard to do for LATER characters between price and availability...
I wouldn't do this to OFTEN... the threat of death is half the fun. but the first night of a new campaign, dont' be afraid of a 'do over' or two to keep the game on track.
Character. It appears to be a MMORPG term.
Suddenly the twin brother of Gon the barbarian Fon the the barbarian arrives with an urgent message for his brother. Then he decides to stay and hang out with the guys.
AS a Player I've had to do this one a few times in a Exploration Sandbox Game just erased the Name on the Character Sheet and added a new one. after the 3rd time he lived a lot longer and started surviving though still dislikes vermin and Cats. :)
Over 60 comments, major sidetracking, nearly 30 hrs since first post, several possible solutions...no reply from OP. Someone is gonna be really surprised when they come to see if anyone replied to their question.
...
Plus, (and yes I know I contributed to it but) way to resurrect the arguement over player character death!
Pun intended.
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The consequences of dying didn't teach me to be a better gamer, neither did dying itself. My GM/brother did. But then I had that other GM; the gritty one. Man, after all these years I can STILL remember him grinning when I blew that save on death #2.
Thing was, he was ALL about the consequences. He laser focused on them, piled on more with em. He was all "ha ha, you're dumb and you DIED. Here's an extra helping of filth to wash down your level and con loss". I don't run my games that way.
This sounds a bit like an insult + injury deal - and moreover, piling on the biggest insults that the GM could think of. It would have been plenty for RP flavour for your character's father to give you a stern-talking to about your shame without actually exiling you for it. Likewise, you could have succeeded in destroying the BBEG at the cost of your life.
It's one thing to say "death happens, deal with it" and another to go extra lengths to make your PCs' deaths as painful and undignified as possible. I think there's not so much call for the latter style of game. Even the old "turn left and die" dungeon crawls are just "your death is unimportant" not "your death is a total failure and everything you ever loved is now gone."
To the OP - really comes down to whether you think a permanent death will add to your game at this point, and that might depend on any number of factors. If you don't think it will add anything, a hermit works fine, as does some divine entity punting him back or striking a deal for reasons of their own.
How strongly attached to the PC did the player seem to be?This is a toon she was bring into my world from another game, its the only reason we are playing. she loved the character .
So in other words she will stop playing if her character ever dies? In order for her to enjoy the game she has to have an invinsible character with no chance of permanent death?
That doesn't seem very fun to me. For you or her. She wont have much to fear if she knows her character will always be raised or wont die.
If she is dead set on this and your ok with it. I would suggest having her play a new character that is a past ally of her loved character. A sister or a relative. Someone that will stay with the party long enough to earn enough money to raise her old character. That at least lets her experience some wait before she gets the character back, and makes her play a new character.
Just my 2 cents.
I had a situation in a recent game where the party forgot to heal up before going to sleep for the night after a pretty nasty fight. They were hit in the morning with an area effect which required a reflex save. The party gnome sorcerer failed the save and as a result was killed outright.
This was a beloved character, and the event which "killed" him happened while he was still asleep. (update: to clarify, the event was preceded by a noise which woke up the party. So it was like "You wake up. Make a reflex save.")
We all sort of sat around the table. THis was the first event of the gaming session, we had last played about three weeks earlier and in the bustle of the holiday season and having to stop the previous session early so that people could get with their families or go shopping, the whole party had simply forgotten that they were pretty banged up and had never healed their characters.
We play a pretty strict "if it's on your game sheet, it's the truth" sort of game. So we started the game, the party did their watch, we went through the night and BANG! The damage was done and the gnome player said "I'm dead."
I was also caught off guard. "What? Dead? that was only 23 points of damage! You just woke up, how can you be so low?"
"Um... I guess we forgot to heal before camping."
I called a time out from the game. I don't like retconning. The party paladin said "Well, we can assume that we did heal."
I thought about that. Then I realized that the party had slept all night. The event literally happened right at dawn.
"Hey, did you add in your hit points for sleeping?"
"No... I didn't."
"Well, do that, you get those from resting so everyone should add in their overnight hit points."
"OK... so, then I'm not dead."
"Whew. Well, as much as I'd like to say you all healed the night before, that's not really the way we usually do things. At least you're not dead."
So, what do you folks think about that? Should I have left the gnome dead? Should I and the group gone back and tried to figure out what healing they could have done the night before?
What would you have done?
Thank you I think that is what im going to do. I think i just needed to hear it was okay to do so.
I do agree with AD about death, but this was suppose to be just a led in. an introduction, not a kill people. Next encounter will be all out death.
Gyain, FWIW, I think this is fine. If I were in your shoes I'd probably do the same thing in this specific case.
However, I would also probably say "That's the party mulligan. Not gonna happen again, folks."
I think you handled it the right way. You followed the rules and didn't break your principles. The character isn't dead, and the group has had a pointed warning.
Thanks Tri, that's sort of how I feel about too.
But I have to admit, I very much had an "Order of the Stick" feeling about the whole thing...
also want to say sorry for using so much MMORPG lingo, I am much more familiar with it than PPRPG terms when it comes to online things.
No need to apologize gyainmaster. Most of us on these boards have no issues with it. I've certainly done my share of MMORPGing including being part of a major raiding guild in both Everquest and World of Warcraft. There are only a very few members of these boards who get their panties in a wad over MMORPG terminology. Don't let them convince you otherwise.
Okay so to give a bases of what was going on, I was setting up the world for them and just told them of their mission and that Lord Rios was the main bad guy working against them to see their task uncompleted. Little did they know that Lord Rios is actually a Lich. Poor GMing on my part I showed my players his Phylactery early on in order to give them a hint about the main bad guy. This led to a fight where one of my players died...This was not what I intended to happen. Now I am having a hard time coming up with a way for them to raise that player. Help please...
They have the players toon's body with a spell on it to keep it from decaying. sooo now i just need a way for them to get rezed...
they are in the middle of no where and are wanted dead in the only city that they could get a healer to raise them. there are no dragons in my world.so what can i do now?
On topic...
The very question of your post seems to indicate you and the player what to continue with his existing character. This is my simple advice that being the case.
Treat the dead PC as ethereal, a ghost of a sorts, and allow him to hang around the other characters in this form for a little while. Throw in some ethereal undead to give him something to fight along with the other characters, and if you/he is creative, allow him to work the perks of being able to fly through walls, etc. Just don't let the player abuse it if their the type, give them some caveat like a time limit before they're "permanently dead."
When you're ready to end it, either have the players find or guide them to some forgotten tomb where a MacGuffin to raise dead or resurrect exists.
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Tell the player to "get out of here. YOU'RE DEAD! You don't exist anymore."
If they still complain about their character's death, tell them it would have happened sooner or later. Their character was too weak.
*note* you are not legally responsible if they end their life because they think it's their fault that Black Leaf died and they can't face life alone.
Tell the player to "get out of here. YOU'RE DEAD! You don't exist anymore."
If they still complain about their character's death, tell them it would have happened sooner or later. Their character was too weak.
*note* you are not legally responsible if they end their life because they think it's their fault that Black Leaf died and they can't face life alone.
That comic scarred me for life. I've only just been able to answer these forums in the last week after 35 years of counseling. I STILL see in black and white...
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I had a situation in a recent game where the party forgot to heal up before going to sleep for the night after a pretty nasty fight. They were hit in the morning with an area effect which required a reflex save. The party gnome sorcerer failed the save and as a result was killed outright.
This was a beloved character, and the event which "killed" him happened while he was still asleep. (update: to clarify, the event was preceded by a noise which woke up the party. So it was like "You wake up. Make a reflex save.")
We all sort of sat around the table. THis was the first event of the gaming session, we had last played about three weeks earlier and in the bustle of the holiday season and having to stop the previous session early so that people could get with their families or go shopping, the whole party had simply forgotten that they were pretty banged up and had never healed their characters.
We play a pretty strict "if it's on your game sheet, it's the truth" sort of game. So we started the game, the party did their watch, we went through the night and BANG! The damage was done and the gnome player said "I'm dead."
I was also caught off guard. "What? Dead? that was only 23 points of damage! You just woke up, how can you be so low?"
"Um... I guess we forgot to heal before camping."
I called a time out from the game. I don't like retconning. The party paladin said "Well, we can assume that we did heal."
I thought about that. Then I realized that the party had slept all night. The event literally happened right at dawn.
"Hey, did you add in your hit points for sleeping?"
"No... I didn't."
"Well, do that, you get those from resting so everyone should add in their overnight hit points."
"OK... so, then I'm not dead.""Whew. Well, as much as I'd like to say you all healed the night before, that's not really the way we usually do things. At least you're not dead."
So, what do you folks think about that? Should I have left the gnome dead? Should I and the group gone back and tried to...
I see a roleplay failure here, if they were so hurt on the last fight, surely they would realize that before sleeping. I know because i cannot sleep with a toothache, worst still with a gashing sword/claw wound on my chest.
Take that away, you did a good job.
I see a roleplay failure here, if they were so hurt on the last fight, surely they would realize that before sleeping. I know because i cannot sleep with a toothache, worst still with a gashing sword/claw wound on my chest.
Take that away, you did a good job.
I blame myself. The whole playing group had just forgotten after a three week layoff that we had ended the previous session so abruptly and that healing had not occurred. I should have reminded the group they needed to heal before they set up camp, but I too had forgotten the details of the end of the previous session.
Normally the party would have healed up before camping. That's pretty much standard operating procedure. As the GM I feel I should have been the one to remember the previous session had been ended without healing.
Had the overnight healing not been enough to "fix" the issue, I probably would have retconned, but mostly because I felt guilty about my own lack of attention to details.
I blame myself. The whole playing group had just forgotten after a three week layoff that we had ended the previous session so abruptly and that healing had not occurred. I should have reminded the group they needed to heal before they set up camp, but I too had forgotten the details of the end of the previous session.
Normally the party would have healed up before camping. That's pretty much standard operating procedure. As the GM I feel I should have been the one to remember the previous session had been ended without healing.
Had the overnight healing not been enough to "fix" the issue, I probably would have retconned, but mostly because I felt guilty about my own lack of attention to details.
I have had moments where my negligence has also caused a player to suffer. I would probably have retconed in your situation.
At the start of every session I ask all my players to tell me where they left off, and if they forgot something like if they healed or not I would remind them.
But usually I don't retcon for players if they make the same mistake...
There have been moments where a player would get hit by a creature that just rolled the AC he had written down, the damage would be dealt and resulted in character death. Moments later there would be an outcry that he forgot to add that "+2 sacred bonus to AC" or something along those lines. I have since made a house rule that whatever number a player says he rolled is the result I use.
@AD: your character death story was cool, meaningful. I think I'd be on the "death + consequences = cool" bandwagon too, had I not been scarred by it. I played with my brothers and character death occurred (I started out as a kid in 1e too) but we all died and no one really made up backstories then, so there was no shame in it.
Character death didn't really affect me, good or bad, consequences or not, until my first brush w/a "dark world" gritty GM. He killed me 3 times.
Now bear in mind we were in HS and this guy was into pathos, so he had us make up elaborate backtories, really encouraged immersion and a sense of attachment to the characters - a novel concept at the time. My first character was a female elf fighter/mage and she died stupidly from a fireball trap. When I was rez'd I lost con and was declared weak by my noble father; her backstory was all wrapped up in her family and she was all about being a protector to her future subjects after she proved herself. This went out the window and I was punished monetarily, physically, and then socially when I was exiled for weakness.
The second death; same character. I'd survived my own party signing on with the BBEG demon prince; his legions; now I wailed on him getting some phenominal rolls and he was unconscious. I hoisted my magic blade of demon slaying that my former teammates and I had labored for months on before they turned evil. Now in order to lop his head off on his own plane I also had to use an artifact rune and it activated right then...and I had to make a save or die. Not an easy save either. Predictably, I failed. He rez'd me with GM fiat but in a horrible, post-apocalyptic world where my failure had turned my homeland forest to a desert wasteland, flung me forward in time, and now all elves were hunted as parriahs.
The 3rd death was a long, slow march towards the end. I rolled up a 1/2 elf wizard. I wanted to be a thief mage but the GM said no, but he'd compromise. I spent weeks creating a gestalt unique pc, specialized barrier...
Man, that was one bad DM. The third part is specially glaring. I mean he nerfs your character into uselessness and then after he turns the character into a dmpc he fiats him back into awesomeness? Was the guy a sadist or did he just hate you?
In my campaign, I take the dead character aside and give him the option of rolling up a new character (being permanently dead) or hanging on as a ghost.
Apply the ghost template to his PC with the following restriction. For the next few sessions, make him roll a DC 20 Will save if he wants to manifest to be seen by the characters or affect the physical world. Throw some ethereal monsters or other ghosts at the party to make him feel more valuable.
Admonish him that the longer he stays a ghost, the more he will start to lose his mind (shift to Chaotic Evil). Allow him to manifest more and more without the Will save, but start telling him that he is becoming more and more angry at the living.
This allows the player to continue playing his character until the party can find a way to get him raised. (Just wave the requirement for having to destroy the undead ghost and return him to his body).
Wizards of the Coast also released a 3rd edition Ghostwalk campaign setting that had detailed rules for playing ghost characters. You might find it cheap nowadays.
@VM: IDK; all I DO know is that I don't game w/folks like this any more and don't run my games that way. I try not to be a pushover but I also like, I don't know...heroes.
They don't have to be perfect or shiny toothed or anything. But I try and run a game that promotes underdogs who win once in a while, or setbacks, not letdowns. I've killed a couple people in my games over the past decade, but those that died were doing things worse than suiciding. They were purposely derailing the game with their antics to the point where it got them killed. Amazingly none of the rest of the party in these 2 instances wanted the guy's character rez'd.
For the most part I never set out to kill anyone. The only agenda I lay out there is to 1 have a good time w/my friends and 2 run a game I can be proud of. I encourage my players to get behind that vision.
Finally I really believe my earlier statement: I didn't learn to become a better gamer by suffering consequences. I merely STROVE to learn in SPITE of those consequences. No, where I actually learned how to be better was by my brother working WITH me instead of a GM seemingly working against me.
In this whole debate over what spells or consequences to include or not, I've seen opinions on both sides of whether or not GM fiat was good or bad or if the mechanics should determine things or whatever, and many on both sides have said better play stems from mechanics or fiat or the lack thereof.
I say better play comes from better players, and better players come from when the GM and their players really work together. Not one vs the other, or in spite of each other, but honestly making the effort to, well, PLAY together as our children do.
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Why? Until the PCs come along, the enemies generally get whatever they want. Doesn't sound like an underdog to me.
You want an underdog villian, try Regina from Once Upon A Time.
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Who are you using as your Starter?
Have you considered a Sandstorm Team? A good Stealth Rock set up will cut down your enemy's HP. If you can get a good physical or special wall to set it up, then you should be golden. I suggest Skarmory.
Of course, you will need to breed a higher IV team, then make sure you have the right Nature, and for some, you will want Dream World abilities.
After that, you will want to properly EV train your team, and get a proper moveset for each one, which means you will want some to already have egg moves, and visit some Move Tutors.
Lastly, you will want to have the right held items.
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I see a roleplay failure here, if they were so hurt on the last fight, surely they would realize that before sleeping. I know because i cannot sleep with a toothache, worst still with a gashing sword/claw wound on my chest.
Take that away, you did a good job.
I blame myself. The whole playing group had just forgotten after a three week layoff that we had ended the previous session so abruptly and that healing had not occurred. I should have reminded the group they needed to heal before they set up camp, but I too had forgotten the details of the end of the previous session.
Normally the party would have healed up before camping. That's pretty much standard operating procedure. As the GM I feel I should have been the one to remember the previous session had been ended without healing.
Had the overnight healing not been enough to "fix" the issue, I probably would have retconned, but mostly because I felt guilty about my own lack of attention to details.
I understand, but don't blame entirely on yourself, in this case all the group has its share to blame. Who is more interested on keeping track of the gnome sorcerer's hit point than the sorcerer's player? No one.
For instance, i do the same thing as Razak do, before we start i ask for the players to make a resume of the last session. This help in many ways, helps the GM to know the players perspective of the story, giving some new ideas or clues of what the players are expecting and what they don't know. Helps you remind some little things about the adventure, the name of that funny looking barman that you forgot, but the player that interacted with him remembers it quite well. Its a very useful tool.
To not escape the topic's subject, there is one sorry episode of killing innocent pcs i regret. I total TPK on my first D&D 3.0 game. The party were on the 3rd level (they did the Sunless Citadel Adventure). The story was about a forgotten tomb were an ancient vampire wizard named Fianor was locked, but he had a daughter, a tiefling named Marah. She discovered her father tomb and was about to enter and reclaim her heirloom when the party came, after a short combat with Marah and some kobolds, the party agreed to joining the tiefling in exploring the tomb and slaying the vampire. I trowed some really fun and chalenging encounters on this tomb, but when the final encounter came (againts the tiefling hal-brother, the vampire spawn Ragratz and some undead minions). It proved to tough and i TPKad the party. The bright side is that my gaming group still remembers fondly of this first party and we still remember that adventure and, who knows, someday make a new party to avenge the dead ones.
Okay so to give a bases of what was going on, I was setting up the world for them and just told them of their mission and that Lord Rios was the main bad guy working against them to see their task uncompleted. Little did they know that Lord Rios is actually a Lich. Poor GMing on my part I showed my players his Phylactery early on in order to give them a hint about the main bad guy. This led to a fight where one of my players died...This was not what I intended to happen. Now I am having a hard time coming up with a way for them to raise that player. Help please...
They have the players toon's body with a spell on it to keep it from decaying. sooo now i just need a way for them to get rezed...
they are in the middle of no where and are wanted dead in the only city that they could get a healer to raise them. there are no dragons in my world.so what can i do now?
Apologize to the player. Tell him it wasn't your intention for him to die, but accidents happen, and you want your world to have consequence... Observe the table's response. Is that the kind of game they want to play? Is one of them willing to become a necromancer just to bring the character back? Is it ok if he'll be at a constant -1 or -2 level?
If you want to rez him, I'm a fan of finding a one-time mysterious and abandoned shrine in the middle of nowhere.... But I don't think you should cheapen your campaign this early by bringing him back vanilla style. Maybe have that body burned, only to have someone else show up withexactly his memories. Perhaps an oracle who's spontaneously entangled with his soul.
Wait, something got away from me here. I don't protect the characters by any means. I just don't use the consequences for dying. If there's no one to carry them out of the dungeon, or no cleric high enough to rez, there's no coming back.
In my last campaign, early on the party came into a dungeon where they were most assuredly underdogs. It was a megadungeon with 4 zones; one controlled by a young green dragon, one by an imprisoned shadow demon, one by a ghostly undead and finally one surrounded by the other 3 controlled by a forlarren fighter. The forlarren was the party's quarry - they had to bring her out alive. The other 3 for bosses for various reasons wanted them dead.
Now It's true that I gave the party every chance to "win" a given zone. However they came into the dragon area, fought some kobolds (level 3 at this point) and started doing poorly but made it through. They decided to press on and came to a gauntlet of hazards and traps laid out before the entry to their "master's" audience chamber. The heroes bungle through this taking more damage, get the door open, and immediately the cleric is intimidated.
No one bothered with a knowledge check. They blasted through the door, rolled cruddy initiatives with a green dragon, and they were all injured with the cleric intimidated. They decided to talk to it so it demanded the forlarren's death and the return of all her treasure to the youn greenie or else. The party agreed.
Now fast forward; the party gets the forlarren and heads for the door. However the party contains a paladin, so they go to the dragon and drop off the treasure...except some armor the forlarren was wearing. The dragon demands it too and the paladin loses it - battle ensues.
The party is weak while the dragon is raring to go. In short order he knocks the rogue and cleric into unconsciousness and the cleric simply could NOT stabilize. Now its down to the paladin and the barbarian. A couple more rounds go by and the paladin delivers a hard smite but then gets dropped to negatives and stabilizes. That same round the barbarian rolls a critical fumble (houserule: roll a 1, roll again; roll another 1 and the weapon becomes completely unusable) and doesn't have a b/up weapon. He's also low on HP.
He takes a hit from a wing as an AoO runs past the thing and rolls a fantastic appraise roll to find a magic axe I'd planned among the treasure hoard. The barbarian alone returns and survives to deliver a killing blow.
Now the cleric ended the fight at negative 10 of 12 before he was dead; the rogue and paladin were stabilized but unmoving. So the barbarian made multiple trips, out of the dungeon, w/all his bloody comerades.
It was a hard fight,but not impossible. The only thing I "gave away" was the axe, but that was already in the treasure hoard as written, so I let him have it. I don't feel I coddled them and I don't think they do either.
Please - I don't enjoy being characterized, no one does.
Sorry for misconception. I mean that's the only time PCs have suffered dark consequence in the form of permanent death. I really need to learn how to use these new-fangled typing machines; people can't read my face and mind with 'em! :)