How not to hold back - pc death

So as a DM, there are a few times where I know that a nat 20 has the potential to outright kill a PC. Today I was running a game with an evil gunslinger (level 1, mind you) who potentially could have murdered a player in the first session. But instead of letting the 20 ring true and letting the dice where they may, I hid behind my screen and pretended it was much lesser. I know this kills the stakes. This is perhaps the third time where a enemy creature had a clear line of sight to PC death but every time it comes around I chicken out. Is there a good way to get in the "game is war" mindset?

Granted it was the first session with a player who has only played once before so an instant kill may have been a bit much on session one, but I still feel like maybe I should give my players a little more credit or else they start to see the game as only a game.

Honestly I feel it depends on the players. Some might be aww sad i'll break out my spare. other players may be more upset. Also do you have your PC's bring backup characters?

I frankly would of done the same thing you did (almost) first time player unlucky roll. I don't blame you on that one.

Some players probably do want very lethal games however. I'd ask what their looking for.

Getting into the mindset can be difficult; I typically tell myself that "it will make for the best story". However, sometimes, whether its a groups dynamic or other factors, this doesn't work...

I usually tend to ease off of people who are on low HP or unconscious. However, especially with a firearm, some great dice rolls can even lead your party fighter to be brought down a few notches. In these situations, there isn't much ways that you can stop this; though I typically look at the players feats and just generally make sure that there is absolutely no way that your missing anything.

I also recommend using the Hero Points system in the Advanced Players Guide. It has saved a number of my players a few times, as it allows them to cheat death by expending 2 Hero Points (a lot), so I recommend looking at those to see if that suits your game!

Though, to overall getting into the mindset, it makes the players more invested and, where they most likely will get peeved at you (or better, the gunslinger) for killing them, it makes for a better story! That enemy could be a recurring theme within the campaign, making his death all the more satisfying!

I've killed lots of characters, but no players - so far. ;)

My philosophy as a GM is to let the dice fall where they may, and as a player I hope that my GMs will do the same. But that's easier to do in the game that I play (AD&D) than it is in PF, because character creation is so much faster.

Talking to your players about this out of game is probably a good idea.

I tend to go easy on characters at low levels because it is to easy to kill them. This is the main reason I don't like level 1 characters, and I tend to give a few extra hit points. Once they can take at least one crit and live and solve more problems I dont hold back as much. There is no wrong way to do it, just make sure it is good for the group.

I tend to go easy on characters at low levels because it is to easy to kill them. This is the main reason I don't like level 1 characters, and I tend to give a few extra hit points. Once they can take at least one crit and live and solve more problems I dont hold back as much. There is no wrong way to do it, just make sure it is good for the group.

agreed I take the kid gloves off around levels 6-7

If there's no risk of losing, why bother keeping score?

Death happens in games, low levels especially. I roll all my dice out in the open so my players know when things go bad for them, it's pure bad luck. Heck, last game I rolled three natural 19s and two natural 20s out of sixteen rolls for a group of archers against the one character.

Moreso at low levels than high, hit point damage can kill with a lucky crit. As a DM, I'd strongly recommend avoiding the use of creatures with x3 or x4 crit weapons at level 1. I like to plan enemies that can deal a maximum of 16 damage on a critical. This means a PC that gets hit with a critical, if they have 16 Con, has got at least one round before they're dead. It's enough time for one of their allies to be a Big Effing Hero and stabilize them before they bleed out, which can make for some great table suspense.

By level 2, I still think x3 crit weapons are risky. Upping crit risk to 20 points of damage should still be survivable unless the party isn't topping off their hit points after each fight. Past level 2, x3 weapons are fair game.

I allow this guideline to be broken for bosses, and my players know that a boss fight has a good amount of risk. For example, I once gave my players a raging orc barbarian with a greataxe and a secondary bite attack for their level 1 boss fight. This lets them shine and pull out all the stops to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. In this case, they teamed up with a Burning Disarm and a Grease from the druid and magus respectively, and the samurai and kineticist took him out, weaponless and prone, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing.

It depends a lot on how you understand RPGs. An RPG is part telling a story, part a strategic game.

When you are telling a story you give more relevance to everything that happens making a better story. There, losing a character can be a relevant issue and something to avoid. When you are playing a strategic game, you have to see it from a more mechanic point of view and be prepared to be always fair even if that means that a character has to die.

As RPGs have a part of both, sometimes you have to reach for a solution inbetween: be implacable but always find a way to fit character deaths so they improve the story, don't kill a character that cannot be brought back but still apply consequences so it doesn't seem you are protecting the PCs, etc.

In the end each game and each GM has a best way to handle it.

Personally, as I don't like to have a hundred characters but a few well developed and long lived ones, I don't like losing my character without a good reason (note I say losing my character, as death not always means losing your character), but neither I like to feel like my character was being protected by the GM as the story would lack verisimilitude.

So when I am the GM, I usually provide a way to have dead characters resurrected if the players really want to keep roleplaying the same character, and make the resurrection be a part of the story, so a character death is something that improves the story, not something that hinders it.

1) level 1 and 2 are very very swingy, this is why I don't like to start games with players below level 4, it also gives more freedom with backstory, how epic can a backstory be when a goblin could quite reasonably kill you with a bow on a bad day?

2) People say being honest with dice makes for the best story, it doesn't. It makes for a particular kind of game which you may want and by all means go for it, but I would not say it was a prerequisite for a story driven one. Note Boromir wasn't killed by a lone goblin that happened to crit with a pick axe, he was defeated by a huge swarm of orchi? How do you spell that xD.

Because random crits from mooks are not typically the makings of great stories, they can be, but typically they're not.

For a story to feel important, there has to be consequences for failure. Now, those consequences don't always need to be death, but it is a relatively easy one to fall back on. If death is not a consequence, then you need to include other consequences for failure.

At my table we use a custom XP system. The maximum award for combat has the description "Oh crap, it's a dragon! Someone died." The PC's only get that award if someone dies during combat. Seriously, if no one dies, but it was a very hard fight, I give the award just under it. The death need not be permanent. In fact, I often give players a chance at a "free" raise dead, or even have gods intervene to keep them alive. Of course there is always a consequence to that help.

I sometimes, very rarely and it usually involves me getting beer and pizza, pull a sunder/disarm/trip instead of gutting a PC.

It gives a PC a second chance without looking too much like I'm pulling punches.

We play with permanent death. Without hero points. Still make challenging combat. I always debate whether this is good or bad, but ultimately, I like to run a world where death is there.

Not killing a new players character with some random ass roll - that is just being a good GM. Don't "Bang!, you're dead!" new players.

What you need to do is sit down with your players and agree on how dice N death will be handled. You can have different rules for low levels or mid levels. I would also recommend that if you are going to just follow the dice, you give players some sort of hero point type mechanism to avoid totally random bad luck. Perhaps once per level they can reroll a D20, or just be at -1HP. Also, allow that player to control an NPC or summons, be merciful with raise dead, or allow an equal level PC to replace the dead one. Once you tell your players how death will be handled, then it is up to them to act accordingly and treat their characters as... temporary. This may not be appropriate for all players or campaign styles.

Another thing to consider is how ambush type encounters are going to play out. Getting jumped and killed before you can act is just not fun. It encourages powergaming and RPG-tag. It is one thing to choose to engage a potentially lethal encounter, it is another to just die because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or failed a single roll. Generally it is best if PCs die because of their actions and/or a string of bad luck, rather then be passive victims.

Hero points and rolling in the open(with exceptions like sense motive, bluff, perception and stuff like that.)

Hero points have been explained before, but the reason it works is because it puts the decision in the hands of the players, so if someone does not wish to use that option they can and because heropoints have other uses it is not like they are just not using a resource afforded to them.

Rolling in the open is just taking the decision out of your hands mostly, that way you don't have issues with feeling bad and there will be no hard feelings from the players as that is just the way it played out.

Just tell new players the horror of 1st ED where it cost you 10K, two points of constitution and you (constitution depending) still only had a 50/50 chance of making it or you could go see a Druid and come back as badger...

Anything you do will seem better.

see my point its going to depend on your players. I have personally played a game with a high mortality rate. It gets old after awhile. we don't even play with that GM anymore. I have other players that I know practically want their characters to die. So I oblige them. A new player first character not gonna hand of god slay them from a lucky shot however.

So its going to depend on your players.

I'm currently playing a game where we have had 3 deaths. The first time, we had access to a scroll of resurrection, so we were able to bring him back. Then he got killed again when a 4-armed creature got the drop on us. It also knocked out another character who ended up being left behind when the only remaining character (me) fled. The next session, that ko'd character's player hadn't had time to make a new character, so the GM allowed the character to be found as though the creature had left him for dead and he was able to crawl away. Then in a later session, my character was killed by a magus who got an AoO on me after I made a stupid move. The GM let me make a new character at the same level as the current party. We'll still at chapter one, so we are only at level 2, but it makes a difference not having to restart at level one each time you die. The GM even let me take the slain character's inventory and give it to the new character since they were a gnome and halfling respectively and everyone else is a medium-sized race.

If there's no risk of losing, why bother keeping score?

You keep score in your games?

I've handled this of late by implementing the "Death Flag" rule from "Raising the Stakes" (OGL licensed content, PDF here)

In essence, players get a conviction pool (like hero points, or action points) where they can reroll, or take extra actions, and cannot normally die (they're left unconscious and 1 HP above death.) In a situation where the players feel that the stakes are important enough to risk dying, they can "Raise the Death Flag" and make their character eligible for death, and in exchange get 6 points in their conviction pool. The death flag stays up until you can pay back those points at a later time.

I also run a setting where resurrection style magic is not available to PCs (without a significant, campaign unto itself quest to secure such magic) so this makes it easy to not worry about killing PCs in meaningless fights.

As a bonus, you get to make actual physical "death flags" to prominently display when your character is risking their life.

One thing I do that really helps? I don't use a screen. I roll where my players can see the dice and let the rolls fall where they may. That's just me though. Also I don't have a screen and the few times I've had one didn't like it.

Try a game without the screen though, see how that feels.

Hero points. Granted I give some of the NPC's hero points too. :)

I don't tend to do deaths until a PC is level 3 (barring blatant actions, like stepping off a cliff or insisting the ocean is an illusion and taking a deep breath and inhaling while underwater to prove it.) Before that I will almost always just have them get beaten badly. In the case of a new player, I also will probably avoid a straight-out death.

Otherwise, if somehow a lucky critical (not a an effect, like drowning or a death spell) would drop a PC into dead negatives, I tend to give a 1 round window where an ally could bind or heal them to stabilize the character. I do this to cause PCs to act like they actually are concerned about their 'friends' and because I find most of the 'Oh he's just going to lose a hit point every round, so I'll just keep swinging at the foes and hope to drop them and then tend my friend' situations to be head-shaking (for PCs that are technically supposed to be helpful allies of each other.)

JDLPF wrote:

If there's no risk of losing, why bother keeping score?

You keep score in your games?

Yep. Hit points, gold, consumables and the like are all varieties of keeping score. Why bother tracking how many hit points you've lost if you'll never die anyway? Why bother buying better armor? Why worry about extra healing items?

If there's no risk, there's no meaningful reward.

Your playstyle is very alien to me.

I do this to cause PCs to act like they actually are concerned about their 'friends' and because I find most of the 'Oh he's just going to lose a hit point every round, so I'll just keep swinging at the foes and hope to drop them and then tend my friend' situations to be head-shaking (for PCs that are technically supposed to be helpful allies of each other.)

Considering most combats occur over the course of tens of seconds, I don't find this to break my verisimilitude.

I let the dice fall as they may. To help this type of game flow smoothly, I have do a few things.

To help mitigate "cheap" low level deaths, I have started implementing low level bonus HP: +15 hp at level 1, drops to +10 at 2, +5 at 3 and starting at level 4 and on PCs have standard hit points. This is not cumulative, the bonus is reducing and eventually nonexistant at 4+.

The second part is how to deal with death after the fact. Death in games I run is generally a temporary thing. In situations where at least one person survives the fight, each player of a dead PC gets to choose if they'd like to return, or bring in a new character. If they like their character, I generally bring them back in via generous Raise Dead/Resurrection scrolls, occasional crazy druids, or patrons that have a vested interest in their continued service. Dying can mean failing to stop a villain in time, or letting a monster escape to ravage another town. In this way, the punishment to death is story driven, not a mechanical hit to the party's total lifetime wealth, which can lead to a nasty downward spiral of doom. Coming back to life during downtime is generally free, whereas if the party wants to bring methods of reviving people into dungeons with them, they must pay the cost.

In the event of a TPK, I handle the situation similarly. Either the villain moves on and a friendly NPC finds and recovers their bodies, or the party can make new characters (which may fill the role of those NPCs if some of the party wants to keep their old characters). In certain situations, I will occasionally plan a special one-off heist adventure where the players all play alternate characters to recover their PCs' bodies.

Personally I run epic fantasy style games. I usually start lv3-5 and wrap up a campaign before level 16. In most campaigns I disallow most resurrection magic on anything less than an artifact you go on a quest for, excluding breathe of life. Generally I will fudge a roll to stop the PCs from dieing by pure RNG. Having lost multiple characters myself to random crits, I do not see there being any fun in getting pitchforked to death by random goblin 42. As for lack of tension, that only applies if nothing happens to you while unconscious. Wake up and find yourself stripped naked on the table of a mad wizard with a different arm, a brutally beaten drow slave, or even just missing your stuff. When one of my players goes unconscious and the others fail to rescue him it is much more interesting than just waiting for the cleric to prepare raise dead. Now if they get themselves killed by doing something dumb that's on them. But straight up death to a stray crit in a typical fight is anticlimatic. I do not fudge rolls during a climatic fight such as against the arc villain or other significant foes

Set up fair encounters, if they die, they die. If they win, they win. As long as your encounter is fair, there is no point holding back. The only reason you hold back is because you set up encounters they can't win with tactics. Encounters that can only win by luck shouldn't exist. It's not game, it's gamble. A good GM will have encounters that can be won even if the character keep rolling 1s. That's the encounter I set. If you are stupid, pray the dice will save you, if you are smart, not 1s can stop you from winning.

TriOmegaZero wrote:

JDLPF wrote:

If there's no risk of losing, why bother keeping score?

You keep score in your games?

Yep. Hit points, gold, consumables and the like are all varieties of keeping score. Why bother tracking how many hit points you've lost if you'll never die anyway? Why bother buying better armor? Why worry about extra healing items?

If there's no risk, there's no meaningful reward.

I totally get it. If there is nothing to lose, and you know the heroes will always win, it deflates it for me; and this is coming from someone who just TPK'd in a year and a half adventure on the final BBEG, ushering in an age of dragons and enslavement. It happens but I would have felt cheated if we were invincible or too many punches were pulled and we were given a free win.

I say win because there isn't another word I can think of, but win from the character's POV.

In answer to the OP, it depends. Did they do something stupid and deserve the death? Would the death turn them off of playing? Was it just bad dice? Is it good for the story and the characters in it? Did they die saving someone or for a purpose? I find that most of these are questions I ask myself when I run games.

I feel like "you want to win the fight because it gets you outcomes you like and avoids outcomes you want to avoid" is not that hard to manage when those outcomes are things other than "are you alive?" and "how rich are you now?"

Like, I see no reason to make "What the characters stand to loose" stuff like that because I prefer it (and find it much easier) to just get the players to just invest in the story instead. I mean, just because your character is hale and wealthy, doesn't mean that you successfully exposed the conspiracy, cleared your own names, brought the perpetrators to justice, and managed to rescue all of the hostages. In fact if the "heroes" manage to accomplish none of those things, it's pretty unlikely that they'll continue to get to call themselves "heroes."

One of the encounters that I feel like they are more unfair happens at the beginning of RoW.

I don't usually like this kind of encounters because dying on them seems random. Specially at low levels when resurrection is difficult I find them annoying.

I put effort on creating my characters and to fit the story I am playing. If I have to roll for a new one I don't like making it a clone of the former. So losing a character like that without any chance of reacting really bothers me.

And I aggree that it's better planning the encounters in advance with your group in mind to set up the right difficulty than to fudge rolls or making them live on a unrealistic fashion.

There is a false equivalency floating around this thread.

That somehow by wanting to not have random mooks kill a pc from a crit they couldn't have predicted at the very earliest levels people are advocating taking pc death out of the equation all together.

There is a false equivalency floating around this thread.

That somehow by wanting to not have random mooks kill a pc from a crit they couldn't have predicted at the very earliest levels people are advocating taking pc death out of the equation all together.

Right? people taking things to extremes. Extremes never work. I can site anything as an example take it to an extreme and of course its not going to work.

I don't see a random death at level 1 as being worse than a random death later on. If anything, the opposite, since you've had less time to get attached to the character.

I don't see a random death at level 1 as being worse than a random death later on. If anything, the opposite, since you've had less time to get attached to the character.

I don't know about that. My character recently died and she was only level two. I really liked that character. She was basically a 3 foot Indiana Jones with pink hair.

But if she'd died at level 5, would that be any better? Would you say, "Fine, I was getting bored of her anyway"?

But if she'd died at level 5, would that be any better? Would you say, "Fine, I was getting bored of her anyway"?

...well... sometimes.

A random dead at higher levels has higher chances of becoming later a random resurrection. That's the main difference.

Also random dead at higher levels is much less likely to happen. RNG affects low level combat much more than high level. At higher levels you have more hp, damage is typically broken into multiple hits, attack and crit negation are available. Also I can testify that being critically scythed by death himself is a much funner death than being pitchforked by goblin 42

Basically what @kileanna and @Dastis said at higher levels res is a more common occurrence and death is much less likely to happen at low levels, when one crit is more than likely to put a PC under.

Basically what @kileanna and @Dastis said at higher levels res is a more common occurrence and death is much less likely to happen at low levels, when one crit is more than likely to put a PC under.

Well, there are things he can do to stop that.

One, give them covers. Tower shield or a table. Something.

Two, not have the gunslinger use firearm against them at level 1. It's a x4 weapon. All based on luck. One crit, one death.

Three, If you really have to use gunslinger, give them warning shot. Have the gunslinger to headshot someone and roll damage dice in front of them. They will then know how deadly it is.

Is sudden death more common at level 1 than at level 5? A character might be knocked into negative HP by goblin 42 getting a lucky crit, but unless they've dumped Con, or the GM wants to coup de grace them, they'll probably survive. An ordinary CR 4 creature can do 17 damage on a hit, and 50 on a lucky crit. That could easily take someone from healthy to dead in one attack.

Yes it is, and yes there are still creatures of the right that can put level 5 characters to 0 in one hit, however by that time said characters might have mirror images or blurs, or shield related feats or flight.

So
1) whilst it can happen there are less creatures of the right CR the higher level you go that can put you down in one hit. A pattern which continues until high power spells come online and then the issue is less the opponent critting and more PCs rolling bad fort and will saves.
2) the higher level you go the more methods you will have of avoiding being hit or circumventing one.

I'm not going to go routing around bestiaries getting average damages and crit a for each CR to prove my point so by all means insist that level 1 is no less swingy than level 5 if you want. I've no idea why you'd do that but maybe you're feeling contrarian who knows.

whilst it can happen there are less creatures of the right CR the higher level you go that can put you down in one hit.

There are probably fewer creatures that can take you from full HP to dead in one round, but there are more creatures that can take you from injured-but-conscious to dead in one hit, given that 'negative Con' is a fairly solid buffer against CR 1 opponents, but doesn't keep up with high CR enemies.

Whether that will lead to more PC deaths or not probably varies widely, according to optimization and GMing style.

That much is probably true.

I've DM/GMed since 1e and have always rolled openly. I've found that since introducing the -10HP or negative CON HP rule that low level lethality has gone down significantly.

Just tell new players the horror of 1st ED where it cost you 10K, two points of constitution and you (constitution depending) still only had a 50/50 chance of making it or you could go see a Druid and come back as badger...

Anything you do will seem better.

Two of your statements about raise dead in 1E could be true in specific (but IMO unlikely) circumstances. One is simply wrong.

The price quoted in the 1E DMG is 1000 GP + 500/level of the cleric, so 5500 GP for the lowest level cleric that can cast it. 10000 GP would the price for an 18th level caster. It certainly could be that in some cases you can only find an 18th level caster, but IME the 9th level guys are much easier to find than the higher level; ones.

It costs 1 point of Constitution, not 2.

To have only a 50/50 chance of coming back you would need a pre-death Constitution of 5.

And if you're going the reincarnation route, see a magic user. Much less likelihood of coming back as a badger.

I've DM/GMed since 1e and have always rolled openly. I've found that since introducing the -10HP or negative CON HP rule that low level lethality has gone down significantly.

I roll openly. To reduce sudden death, I added a house rule saying that you could add your level number to your Con for your negative HP survival limit. Fairly small, but it helped.

I'd much rather have an "It's hard to die suddenly" rule than a "GM might be in the mood to save you by fudging" system.

Personally, I think it should depend on how much at fault the character is for their own death. If the character dies because of plain dumb luck then maybe fudge that. But if the character dies because they did something they knew could get them killed, then that's just asking for it.

If there's no risk of losing, why bother keeping score?

Death happens in games, low levels especially. I roll all my dice out in the open so my players know when things go bad for them, it's pure bad luck. Heck, last game I rolled three natural 19s and two natural 20s out of sixteen rolls for a group of archers against the one character.

Moreso at low levels than high, hit point damage can kill with a lucky crit. As a DM, I'd strongly recommend avoiding the use of creatures with x3 or x4 crit weapons at level 1. I like to plan enemies that can deal a maximum of 16 damage on a critical. This means a PC that gets hit with a critical, if they have 16 Con, has got at least one round before they're dead. It's enough time for one of their allies to be a Big Effing Hero and stabilize them before they bleed out, which can make for some great table suspense.

By level 2, I still think x3 crit weapons are risky. Upping crit risk to 20 points of damage should still be survivable unless the party isn't topping off their hit points after each fight. Past level 2, x3 weapons are fair game.

I allow this guideline to be broken for bosses, and my players know that a boss fight has a good amount of risk. For example, I once gave my players a raging orc barbarian with a greataxe and a secondary bite attack for their level 1 boss fight. This lets them shine and pull out all the stops to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. In this case, they teamed up with a Burning Disarm and a Grease from the druid and magus respectively, and the samurai and kineticist took him out, weaponless and prone, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing.

Is death the only way you can lose?