In any campaign I've ever run I let the players do as they will. If at 1st level they go off into The Swamp of Death from which knowone has ever returned then i let them. The dice fall where they may. At the same time, I play the role of every person they meet. If they go around asking about The Swamp of
Death then maybe they hear that going there means you probably aren't coming back. If they still go then thats the direction the campaign goes and I say let the chips fall where they may.
During an encounter if my dice are hot i.e. the kobalds are laying the smack down on the 5th level group, then I may fudge afew roles in the parties favor so that the kobalds aren't seen as the killer kobalds from hell instead of the wandering encounter they were supposed to be. I've never fudged roles so that someone was hit when they weren't though, thats just not fair.
The group I game with is a cautious bunch. They are well aware i don't pull punches and know that if they go looking for the dragon, they'll find him no matter how prepared i think they are.
Long story short if the characters want to earn themselves a Darwin award, I say let them.
I think there as many answers to this question as there are DMs. That said generally a campaign probably falls broadly into a few categories.
Different styles of play facilitate different levels of mortality. If your campaign is heavily centred around Role Playing and the plot lines are heavily built around the individual characters then you really have to try and keep them alive. In this case the heavy role playing players have wrapped their character's motivations around each others personalities and motives while the DM has wrapped the story line around the back stories, motives, and personality of the characters. It can be a major blow to the campaign as a whole if a character dies and its more or less all over if a TPK comes up. The death of a character leads open why the rest of the characters might keep on with a specific quest and the players play their characters – if there is no reason then they play them abandoning the quest. There are however points in such a campaign where character death, far from damaging the story, actually facilitates it. If you play in this sort of campaign you might want to try and be a little extra careful when facing the BBEG (of course if your really a good RPer you won't let the fact that your facing the BBEG effect how you play your character). Your last words while expiring after heroically facing down the Demon who killed your father can actually further the powerful emotional elements that can pervade such a campaign.
Alternitivly there is the more lethal varient often referred to as 'Old School' or Gygaxian DMing. In this case the campaign is generally a plot line studded with obstacles. The campaign exists independently of the characters. It still exists even if they suffer a TPK and different characters can easily come and go. A DM will often try and spice this up with small sub-plots dealing with the players characters background and/or motivations but this is not the focus of the campaign. Almost all classic D&D campaigns fall more or less into this category and the APs are good examples of this style of play. Since the characters are not essential to the plot line they can die without damaging the overall plot. Such campaigns are often very dangerous as it is the challenge of the obstacles and the thrill of overcoming them that is providing most of the emotional punch for the campaign. That's what keeps the players coming back to table. On the other hand characters are expendable and there is no thrill of overcoming a challenge if there is no danger so expect character deaths. Certainly the characters should die if they obviously messed up and their players mostly know it. The campaign looses a lot of its impact if the players know that the DM will ultimately save them.
I think that most campaigns are generally just shades of grey on the above or the above could be thought of as two ends of a continuum. However I can think of at least one example that incorporates elements of both styles, though it is a much less common style of play.
The campaign could be a plot line in which the characters are not the movers and shakers but more of an audience. Usually this is a pretty flawed way of running a campaign. The characters almost always should be the focus of the action. Even if they are not the driving force behind the plot line they should be the driving force between moving through it. However if the campaign is a humour based one and the DM is funny enough then the players might not mind being mostly a passive audience as they wander from one Monty Pythonesque scene to the next. Often the characters find themselves playing the straight men for a series of gags. I doubt such a 'campaign' could go on for all that long but if it is truly funny it certainly could persevere through quite a few sessions. The more common use of this style that I have seen is having this style adventure act as a light hearted diversion embedded in one of the other styles of campaigns. In such a campaign the players should not die - mainly because that's not funny. It will totally blow the mood. In fact its probably a requirment that they never actually be in any kind of danger.
Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Jeremy did a good job of summing up the two poles on DM fudging. This is entirely and absolutlely a matter of the way that you and your players want to run your game - there is no right or wrong way of doing it. I see D&D as a game with story elements built by the interaction of the mechanical aspects. I can't stand DM's that pull their punches or who won't kill characters. That's my style.
There are others who are all about the story, and the mechanics are just a method for resolving conflicts and adding a little more drama into the mix. That's a perfectly fine way to play, but not one I particularly enjoy.
Do what feels right for you and your players.
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I guess it also depends on the level of maturity and age of your players, and if they are newbies or veterans.
Mature veterans, mostly, would't play in such a stupid way they would cause a TPK (however, a mistake may happen, and I wouldn't be too hard : exhaustion, strss at work or home could distract veteran players).
On the other way, young newbies could more easily play stupid !!
A few deaths, a TPK could teach them to be more cautious : in D&D, you may be a hero, but hero may die !!
And as said Jeremy, it depends the king of game you're running !
my 2 coppers...
CEO
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Basically, I am all about the story. I love the continuity of characters and the backstories that they develop. That said, people do die in my campaign. Just ask Jeremy Walker, whose sorceror was swallowed whole and the demon swam away with his body! No raise dead there. But in general, I try to let the characters have a great, heroic time. And occasionally, I fudge rolls. Both ways. Anything for a great story.
-Lisa
Basically, I am all about the story. I love the continuity of characters and the backstories that they develop. That said, people do die in my campaign...
occasionally, I fudge rolls. Both ways. Anything for a great story.
-Lisa
El ditto.
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Ditto ad nauseum.
I either fake my rolls, or let them b.s. me when I know they're cheating. I think of it more like "grading on a curve" than cheating; you can get players running a combat flawlessly like inspired warrior poets who, after 2 fumbles and a 3, end up so much monster chow.
It's times like that when I fudge something.
Ditto nauseated.
Wait, that came out wrong...
I give more slack through the first few levels of an AP, but a free-form game, I'm a little harsher. Some of my players are rather high strung when it comes to railroading, and sometimes rebel against the AP plot points. I give them slightly looser reins in fudging to make up for the tighter leash on story.
Then Big Question No. 2 would be.
Question:
How do you deal with Character death in a campaign where characters are important to the plot?Explaination:
Do they die, and be replaced by another, do you stick to conventional ressurection? Or, as I am most attracted to, and Bioware used in its Neverwinter nights games, save the characters, but give them penalties, and let them still feel like they died. And what is the best way of doing this?
Every DM is going to have to answer this based on their own campaign.
In the more extreme examples of this kind of campaign one really cannot die unless it moves the story forward. However in this case the DM is really working almost hand in glove with the players to create the story that they all want to tell - usually one full of heroism, intrigue and romance. In this sort of campaign characters don't get 'punished' for their actions instead their actions are explored and ultimately build on the characters personality. If Fara chooses to explore the swamp of sucking doom when she is to low a level to do so then she learns a bit about the swamp and comes face to face with a horror, fleeing away from it she barely escapes and her experiences there affect her characters personality from then on.
As one moves away from this extreme each DM must choose what is appropriate as a level of punishment for death. Often stripping equipment etc. is a good plan and even XP and levels. Ability Scores I would stay away from however. Equipment and XP can be earned back but ability score penalties, normally can't. Nerfing some ones well loved character is really pretty extreme. For a lot of players that's actually worse then killing the character outright.
Just as an aside regarding my personal preference of combat lethality, I enjoy one where one or more players are knocked to negative hp, but don't die. If gives that feeling of tension and danger, and they know that this foe/challenge/whatever is serious, but when it's all over, the get up, bruised, beaten, but alive, and go on adventuring. That's golden for me. If I can inspire an "Oh Shit!" moment in my players without killing them, that's about the most I can ask for.
That said, I don't like pulling punches, or that thrill of danger dissappears, even when half the party is down and out. Not only that, but I can't even count the number of times my old group pulled together to save one of their own from literally -9 hp, just in the round before death. The DM and players both feel on top of the world, in my experience, when they find themselves in a situation like that and work out of it with their own brains and ability.
well, you could in this day and age probably get away with treating it like a video game; if everyone gets killed; get 50 cents from everyone and reset the game back to the "save spot". If you don't want to imply that there is a best or right way to do an adventure you could have some back up bosses or npc's or monsters to change it up a bit kinda like they were in an alternate reality; hehe and you could use the old standby "well, that was all a shared dream you all had; you wake up and realize it as all a dream and you now have a feeling of deja vu about the next few days."
I would suggest that you go ahead and let them get themselves killed, but that is not the end all or should not necessarily be the end of the game, you can have a lot of fun with dead characters trying to fight their way back to their bodies from the underworld; maybe their souls all got misplaced due to some cosmic clerical error which is why they never got separated out to their specific ethos; now they have to run from those powers trying to, ahem, wipe our their spirits to cover up the mistake. It is quite a common theme in the classics for a hero to journey to the underworld and return.
You could also always have the bad guys heal them out and imprison them or let them go; kinda like they were to easy and boring; throwing the small fry fish back into the pond to get bigger for more challenge later.
whatever you do; just keep in the spirit of the game to have fun and have an adventure you all can enjoy.
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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I'm with Saern on this one. I usually prefer to knock the PCs into the negatives rather than kill them outright, but that doesn't mean that they don't sometimes die... it just puts the pressure on the other players. Do you continue fighting the monster and kill it before someone else gets hurt or do you step away from the fight to save your friend? Sometimes, they choose to keep fighting and the injured person slowly fades to black until they hit -10. Other times, they will use a distraction or some other tactic to get over to the person who went down and try to stabilize them in the heat of battle (sometimes even healing them enough to where they can REJOIN the fight!).
Especially in my campaigns, death is a major issue. In the last Ravenloft campaign I ran, I killed a total of 8 characters (but Ravenloft is just like that). Two of them managed to get ressurrected, but only after the party managed to amass a huge quantity of gold to pay for it. Now I'm running Iron Kingdoms where there is no ressurection or true ressurection and even good ol' raise dead is a 9th level spell. It's safe to say that any death in this campaign is likely to be very, very permanent.
So, my recommendation is that you should be ruthless up until the 'final blows.' When those start falling, make sure you leave the PC with a chance to survive as long as the other characters are willing to make a move to save them. If they don't, then its on their conscience. If they do, you've provided them a chance to be heroic. Either way, you reinforce the roleplaying elements of the game.
Another thing to note: If a certain BBEG is EXTREMELY powerful and capable of decimating a PC in one shot, perhaps straight-up killing one of the PCs would be a good indicator of the BBEG's power level and could certainly cause your PCs to think twice about attacking recklessly. This should obviously be done sparingly, as no one really likes to have their characters killed.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Then Big Question No. 2 would be.
Question:
How do you deal with Character death in a campaign where characters are important to the plot?Explaination:
Do they die, and be replaced by another, do you stick to conventional ressurection? Or, as I am most attracted to, and Bioware used in its Neverwinter nights games, save the characters, but give them penalties, and let them still feel like they died. And what is the best way of doing this?
One method would be to say that any hit that would kill a character outright instead takes them down to -9 hp. That gives the party a chance to stablize the character and prevent their death. This is particularly useful for melee combatants at mid to high levels, where being driven down to low postive hit points is more dangerous than being driven down to low negative hit points because a hit is more likely to kill you outright. If you use such a rule, I would recommend requiring at least 24 hours of rest before the PC can become concious again, regardless of magical healing to the contrary.
Another option is to employ a modified version of a cure spell. James Jacobs posted in another thread that he uses a variation of a cure wounds spell that is 4th or 5th level. If cast immediately after the character's death, it restores them to life but leaves them unconcious. The nice thing about this method is that because the spell is a "cure" spell, cleric's can convert a prepped spell and save somebody on the fly.
You could go with something a little bit on the epic side and say that the gods will not allow the PC's to die before they have achieved their destiny. Every time a PC dies, he is immediately ressurected (again, with a 24 hour unconsciousness lag). However, the PC has a negative level which will be removed once he levels up again. (I admit, I stole the negative level bit from someone else on these boards, but can't think of who).
Another thing to consider while you are asking these questions - if death is going to occur and is going to be permanent, take some time to figure out what happens to the dead PC's treasure. I impose an artificial rule on my players that they lose the treasure of the dead (except for certain quest items). Similarly, determine what level replacement characters will come in at (and I recommend making it the same level as a character raised from the dead if you use the core rules to keep the two choices roughly equal), how much treasure they will have, and how that treasure will be determined.
One final note. For TPK's (total party kills), my house rule is that the characters are not killed, but instead knocked out and lose all treasure. A TPK can (obviously) completely ruin a campaign. Sometimes that feels right and sometimes it's a random encounter gone really bad. Figure out what you and your players are comfortable with so that when the situation arises, you have a ready made out.
As far as the 2nd big question is concerned. In my experience when a character dies, espescially in a story intensive game, a good well played death sceene tends to soften the blow. Giving the character a chance for last words or a final act can turn a death sceene into a cool moment.
I try to avoid centering my story around a single character. That way if a character dies, my whole campaign doesn't get screwed. Sure, a single adventure in the campaign could be around ONE character, and if he dies in that adventure, then the story just moves on to the next chapter.
Ultradan
Long story short if the characters want to earn themselves a Darwin award, I say let them.
Ditto.
I try to avoid centering my story around a single character. That way if a character dies, my whole campaign doesn't get screwed. Sure, a single adventure in the campaign could be around ONE character, and if he dies in that adventure, then the story just moves on to the next chapter.
Ultradan
Quoted for truth and emphasis.
I try to hook as many players as possible. Sometimes character relations are hook enough (sibling, lover, friend) to keep them in. My current campaign has one character from a town that was attacked, his lover, another who was protecting it, and two others working with a secret temple in the area that doesn't like the goings on. One burning farm and I have all the hooks I need.
As for killing characters, well... Sometimes it's necessary. I've been on both sides and both are tough. Bad decisions, bad rolls it happens. Generaly if a player does something very stupid, I'll let him/her get the darwin award they so desperately seek. A bad roll, is tougher. I try to not kill players over bad luck.
But I definately don't shy away from killing characters. Especially since sometimes it leads to some great role playing.