PC death by GM mistake

[thistledown]

Last game I ran 2 of the PCs died and the others had to use some pricey expendables. Part of this was because I miscalculated the APL and we played up when we shouldn't have. Once I realized that, I started pulling a lot of punches, so the rest made it through. On reviewing things afterwards though, I realized I also made an error in tactics that made things harder than it should have been.

How do I fix this for the players? I or that store's coordinator should be able to track them down again easily enough. Should I just void the deaths on their chronicle sheets?

[Bbauzh ap Aghauzh]

Yes, void the deaths on their chronicle sheets, and any expenditures they made for resolving the death and negative levels can be refunded.

However use of consumables and such should be left alone.

Mistakes happen, and really the only thing that should be overturned is major mistakes, like death, especially if its permanent.

It would be too much for you to retcon the entire battle and figure what consumables were and were not used.

[godsDMit]

Edit: What Andrew said.

Also, since you are overturning the deaths, I would issue them new chronicles if you can. It'll look better than having a death written in and marked out.

Just my 2cp.

[Chris Mortika]

In a case like that, do the players get rewards based on the legal sub-tier they should have played at, or the higher one? (I'm guessing the lower, correct sub-tier, since they didn't take the brunt of the higher sub-tier's encounters, but I'm not sure.)

[thistledown]

Thank you. I'll start on getting the new chronicles to them. They did most of the encounters at high-tier, so I'm fine with them getting high-tier rewards. It was only in the last one that we realized something was wrong.

[Lab_Rat]

Chris Mortika wrote:

In a case like that, do the players get rewards based on the legal sub-tier they should have played at, or the higher one? (I'm guessing the lower, correct sub-tier, since they didn't take the brunt of the higher sub-tier's encounters, but I'm not sure.)

Depends on how far into it they went before Thistledown started pulling punches. If they were well into it and expended consumables to get through it, I would award them the high sub-tier gold. If everything went sideways in the first encounter, then I would award the lower, correct sub-tier.

[Samuli]

To me it's this simple.

You get the high-tier rewards, if you face the high-tier challenge. If you're giving out chronicles without deaths caused by the higher sub-tier, they shouldn't get the high-tier rewards either. After all, you're handling the situation as if they would've faces low-tier challenges, and subsequently didn't die.