There's a big difference between "PC death as part of the game" and "deliberately attempting to kill PCs." You were right to leave.The basic idea is that adventuring is a "high-risk, high-reward" activity; PCs become powerful and gain treasure because they overcome difficult challenges, not because they're "special." High rewards without correspondingly high risk become stale; if there's no real challenge, then there's no real sense of accomplishment.
Dragonchess, I take a slight exception (and a lighthearted one at that:) to your first statement. I don't think it is entirely inappropriate to "deliberately attempt to kill PCs" if it is done fairly and according to the rules of the game. All of us GM's create the Possibility of PC death every game session. It all boils down to whether the GM in question is flagrantly and deliberately breaking the rules to do so.
The question posed in the poster's story is: exactly how did the GM portray the Sphere of Anihiliation, and did he deliberately mislead the players and try to convince them that the Sphere was a teleportation device, or did one of them merely roll lousy on a Knowledge Arcana check and come away with a false notion regarding of the origin of the Sphere (being a teleportation device). In Return to the Tomb of Horrors, that is PRECISELY what the Sphere becomes when the PCs make use of Acererak's bone dust. Without Acererak's dust in a PCs possession, the Sphere will annihiliate them, but with it, it sends them to the City That Waits.
Idiots are keepers. I don't mind comic relief.
But disrupters, are different. Someone who's so far ahead of the curve power wise because of his specific (and meaningful) choices in PC generation that he's not only the star player, he's the Sun, the moon, and the sky, while the other PC's are mere acorns on the ground, watching the grandeur.
</thread hi-jack>
-S
The problem is that he tries really hard to be the sun even without top choices and makes trouble if unsuccessful...
Dragonchess, I take a slight exception (and a lighthearted one at that:) to your first statement. I don't think it is entirely inappropriate to "deliberately attempt to kill PCs" if it is done fairly and according to the rules of the game.
There's a big difference between "PC death as part of the game" and "deliberately attempting to kill PCs." You were right to leave.
In context, this was "deliberately attempt to kill PCs" just to kill PCs. "PC death as part of the game" is equivalent to "fairly and according to the rules," IMO. However, setting things up so that massive fatalities will occur regardless of the PCs' actions (optimizied massive damage blackguard) is crossing the line. And misleading the PCs into taking instantly fatal actions (describing a sphere of annihilation as a teleport device) is just dirty pool.
Kill them!! Kill them All!!!
Sorry .... that was my Tomb of Horrors (1st ed) DM self speaking.
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I recently killed off 3 13th level PC's - a Wizard, A Barbarian and a Psion, in the climatic battle of The Lost Temple of Demogrogon (Dungeon 120). The party, forewarned that a mysterious deathknight was in the region, ignored the deathknight's attempt to parley with a shout of "You are in our way, prepare to die!". I cautioned the players on such an approach, but they proceeded anyway. In this case, I viewed that they did not take appropriate caution and the chips would fall where they may. The deathknight was more than willing to stay out of the battle with the temple's remainig inhabitants, but including him was too much for the party and three of the five were slain. A narrow escape via teleport from one of the surviving members spared two lives and rescued their bodies, but they agreed that they wanted to take a break from such deadly encounters for a time with a plan to return to check on the characters after some time away from that campaign.
We are starting Age of Worms this week.... <snicker>
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For me it depends on whether or not I'm running a story-driven campaign or just 'a game.'
Going through Undermountain, I killed a few characters.
Running through the Freeport adventures, I've beefed up most of the encounters (doubling some of them and changing all of the NPC classes into PC classes, such as making the Serpentfolk warriors into Raging Barbarians), and have barely even come close, but I certainly haven't *tried* to kill anyone. I nearly accidentally killed them with a trap, but that was just a nasty, nasty trap combined with a poor choice on the players part.
My gold standard encounter was with a band of mercenaries sent to kill the party. I buffed them all up, and ended up dropping every single party member* to 0 or negatives at least once during the fight (luckily at seperate times, so they were able to recover and keep fighting!). It was a very exciting fight, and the party ended up making a potential ally, due to their treatment of the mercenaries after the fight was over, which will work to their benefit later when one of them comes by with some useful information.
*Except the Druid's damn dog. I'm gonna kill that thing on general principle. It's not like he can't replace it in 24 hours anyway...
Gamers Haven Podcast the one on Character death. pretty comprehensive.
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Idiots are keepers. I don't mind comic relief.
But disrupters, are different. Someone who's so far ahead of the curve power wise because of his specific (and meaningful) choices in PC generation that he's not only the star player, he's the Sun, the moon, and the sky, while the other PC's are mere acorns on the ground, watching the grandeur.
</thread hi-jack>
-S
This is where Lawful or Neutral organizations can come into play - say someone like the Harpers who advocate balance, or a guild of assassins whose feet have been trampled on. You can generate a challenging villain whose sole interest will be the disruptive player (not saying try to kill them, just challenge them). Having orders to attack only one character keeps the encounter from becoming overwhelming for the less powerful party members. Other good choices are single-minded creatures like CE or insane hunter-monsters who focus on one foe at a time, allowing the whole party to gang up but still threatening the super-character.
Also, look for weakness. After a while, the villains will clue in to how to defeat their pesky nemesis. In the meantime, throw meaningless encounters at them to make them feel like they are winning, but ar ein fact only supplying the villains with information on how to defeat them. For example, eventually they might discover from reports that touch-attacks work effectively against the opponent - then yu have a reason to beef up the sorcerers and spiked-chain-fighters.
my wicked older brother
Hee hee.
I will fudge sometimes when I realize I have inadvertantly overestimated the PCs' prowess and it is obvious I have a TPK brewing for that reason only.
I am not averse to killing PCs when they make poor decisions that they should know better. For example, the 2nd-level sorcerer charging into the underbrush after the brigands sprung their ambush. Poor decision, ended badly for that PC.
Bottom line, like Greg said, fun is the ultimate goal. A well-placed cloudkill or the perfect critical hit, while a bummer at the moment often turn into fond (and funny) memories. Just ask Greg about my first encounter with Vesicant or my wizard trying to teleport to the temple of Orcus.
Despite my avatar name, I really don't like killing characters off. I think it is a delicate balancing act for a DM to keep up the excitement that a character could die at any moment and the problem of killing them off too often or never at all.
I dislike the ability of characters returning from the dead, so I make access to those spells very limited and costly. So as a general rule in my campaign, dead is dead. This adds an extra dimension to the combat, but also means I have to judge the challenge ratings better to avoid too many character deaths.
I generally do this by playing the monsters to their weaknesses as well as their strengths.
I would like to think I have it down to a fine art, but the reality is probably a different thing entirely.
It is interesting to get other Dm's takes on characters death, so this thread has been of great interest to me.
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I kill PCs at first level all the time. Its like driving out of my driveway in the country, I never know what is going to stick to my tires.
Seriously, I go with the "did something stupid crowd" and the "Theoden's Last Charge on the forces of Mordor". Go out with a bang or die as footnote in some "What not to do" handbook.
Cheers,
Zuxius
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I had a great character that I killed off simply because the game got completely stupid, the DM went nuts with a Pit Fiend showing up and NOT slaughtering us all, even though we were 4th level, and he adjusted a prc so i could get it earlier, the min/maxer in me giggled like a school girl, until about a month later I was completely bored with it, it came down to me simply not earning it, and i felt cheap using the bonus stuff.
the other main problem with that game though, was that none of the other characters had any reason to stick together, half of the players in the game didn't like the other half either, so all in all the game went south really quite quickly and the DM did an almost TPK just to end what should have been ended much much sooner. it never helped the dm was very much into home brew and the soured the campaign setting for us, but. BUT, he was probably simply the best storyteller I've ever played with, too bad he sucked as a dm.
I think honestly, if you're not happy with your character, or the game for longer than a couple of sessions, you should nuke him, and if the dm isn't happy with the game, he should nuke the campaign, but not drag it out into a tpk.
think it just depends, i would much rather my chars get killed off honestly for stupid moves and that lucky head shot the goblin happens to get off than a dm molly-coddling us.
this is d&d, not spin the bottle.
I usually play the monsters to the best of my ability, often giggling whe they get a crit on the PCs. My players say I take for the bad guys... To which I respond: I AM THE BAD GUYS!! LOL
I fudge rolls (sometimes), when I want the fight to last longer, or when I judge that a PC death here would be pointless. Everything that happens in my game is orchestrated by me to enhance the overall story and the general experience of it all.
Mind you, that unplanned deaths still occure sometimes. After all, I gotta keep my players on their toes!
Ultradan
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I try to play monsters using their characteristics and intelligence. So no tactics for zombies and wolf pack tactics for gnolls (or whatever - grabbed the examples out of the air). If I'm going to ambush the PCs and put them at a disadvantage I hit them with lower CR encounters (like the 6 Kobolds on the Mid level Pally above). It's about balance.
I don't fudge die rolls. I do let some Meta-gaming come in to avert death. My monsters don't gang up on the wizard or coup-de-gras the downed PC. If death threatens there are opportunities (sometimes) for PCs to save their teammates (eg. downed PCs being carried off to a monsters lair for later eating or for later sacrifice). Sometimes they do silly tactics because they are scared or angry - so do the PCs but my RP skills are such that I can usually avert instant PC death (negetives are a different story). PCs will die then if they think that it's warrented.
I am a major softy IRL and to combat my lame-arse need to save the PCs I don't keep track of hp. I outsource a lot of that stuff to the PCs (we are a close enough group that we don't cheat or if we do I don't care as long as fun is being had). I use good prep and RP to stave off needless PC deaths but like someone said above "The PCs and dice rolls and ME tell a story together". They like getting down to the line so I give it to them.
I have a fairly simple rule. I never kill PCs, I let the players do it themselves.
What I mean is that I never set up a situation in which a PC absolutely will die. I even cheat on die rolls so they don't die just because of random dumb luck. However, I set up many situations where they CAN die if they choose the wrong path. Now, by that I mean that if they're supposed to be heroes and they're taking the villainous path, then they will find themselves growing ever closer to doom. If they're level 1 and they encounter a dragon, it'll be sleeping. If they walk off, they live. If they poke around and loot the place, the chances increase that the dragon will wake up and eat them. If they decide to attack the dragon, then they're probably not going to like the outcome. And if they continue to fight him after the first character dropped in one or two hits, then there's likely to be a campaign restart soon.
Really, it all depends on the players. Some players want the danger, most want to at least feel like there's some danger even if there isn't. Some players are cool with their characters dropping like flies. Others are ok if it happens in an appropriately dramatic way. Yet others will scream bloody murder if their characters die.
Truthfully, I've yet to ever kill a character in a game I ran. Yet somehow I acquired a reputation as a terrifying GM. I don't quite know how that worked out.
But, if you want the best advice possible, I recommend checking out an article by Steven Marsh in Pyramid magazine. I wish I could remember its name... Basically, it compared games to adventure movies in general and Indiana Jones in particular. You know when you start the movie that Indiana isn't going to die no matter how grim the situation looks. But you don't know about other things. Will he win the fight and rescue the woman locked in the plane before it explodes? Will he be able fight through the nazis before the ship leaves with the all important MacGuffin? The death of a PC isn't the only thing that can add drama to a fight.
Of course, resurrection scrolls are cheap....
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I personally follow 3 rules when it comes to PC death.
1) Kill them when it makes sense. Do you really think that the Red Dragon is going to hold back when the PC's have made it known that his hoard is theirs? I don't think so.
2) When they do something REALLY stupid. Like one PC decides to take on said Red Dragon by themselves so "I don't have to share the treasure".
3) When your game decides for you. Sometimes your dice roll well, sometimes you just outflanked the fighter and he's going down. It happens, the PC will just have to make a new character, or you can wave the wand of "The DM can do what he wants" and make it not happen.
There's my 2 cp.
As a DM, I've killed many a PC. Some deserved it (damned purple-faced gnome warlock- Eat Mummy Rot!) and some didn't (elf ranger taken off stairs by falling bell to his squishy death because of a bad reflex roll). But death is part of the game- it's that simple. During low levels 1-5 I tend to baby the pc's just a little, fudge a die-roll here, remove an ambush there, but rarely preventing pc death. My group are a bunch of power hungry dice-rollers, with one or two that enjoy a little role-playing thrown in. Of course, no-one wants to play a cleric, so you have to drive home the importance of having a character that can heal. The last thing I want is for them to die and make new characters even more broken than the last, so I gently force them to buy potions of healing, scrolls of raise dead, etc. The party now have a cleric, permanent Gentle Repose due to amulets, and scrolls of breath of life- which no longer has to be cast in the 1st round after death. No more untimely character death resulting in more annoyingly broken PC's, and I can kill them whenever the dice would dictate. I'm all about the random factor and I make all my combat rolls in the open...
If PC's are dumb then they deserve to die.
In my game a low level human barbarian chased after mounted archers at night, with a light spell cast on his axe. He couldn't see them or catch them but they could see him. They just shot him until he died. Fair enough, he deserved to. I often hear 'but he was playing in character' so he died in character as well.
In a campaign I was in we were in a tower in another dimension with magical portals we had to go through to get out. We were a 7th level party with one paladin, a gnomish bard, a mystic theurge and a thief. We went through the portal and found ourselves on a 10x10 platform surrounded by negative energy. If you hit the negative energy you took the damage AND got teleported back into the middle of the platform. The way out was across a walkway with a large undead minotaur on it. Surrounding us were four large undead wyverns. Each of the undead had about 100 hit points and about +12 on the BAB and about +9 on damage. Of course they were all immune to charming, sneak attacks and critical hits. We had to take the amulet that was around the neck of the minotaur to get out of the other portal. Unsurprisingly 3 of the party members died and only the gnomish bard survived.
Fair? I don't think so. Did we have a choice about doing this encounter? no. As roleplayers we need a challenge but there is an upper limit. We want to earn our experience and feel that there is a risk but to always know we have a small chance if we do things right.
I will say though that it does sometimes seem to players as if there is no choice. Sometimes the choice is to fight another day (or level).
Hrm... the "did something stupid" has always been interesting to me. Lemme tell you why. Consider this scenario, which actually happened.
Party opens the door to a small dungeon room in which a number of monsters (some hellwasp swarms, I think) were chilling out. Wizard wins initiative and steps up to the door and casts fireball, maxed and empowered. Problem is that as I said, the dungeon room isn't that big, the blast radius will surely encapsulate his character (as the flames burst out the door) and kill him. This is dumb. On the other hand, he is playing a wizard, who surely knows the ins-and-outs of his spells, coupled with a very high intelligence score. Should I, as a DM, give him a hint that he is about to slay himself? Or do I just go ahead and let him die? [I let him die, but I don't know if that was the right decision]
Lots of people say that PCs should die when they do something stupid. You mean when their player does something stupid? What if their character is smarter than that? A dwarf fighter with INT 10 jumps into a lake to put out a fire in his beard. Do I remind him that he is wearing full plate, the water is very deep, and it will be hard for him to swim? Someone with an average intelligence (if they were actually there, wearing the full plate) would reasonably figure that out. Problem is, as the PLAYER is actually not there wearing the full plate, this might seem like a good idea. So I'm asking for clarification from the "when my player does something stupid" crowd. Do you give them a fair warning and only kill of they go ahead, heedless of your words? I guess that you don't. In that case, are you really being fair?
Hrm... the "did something stupid" has always been interesting to me. Lemme tell you why. Consider this scenario, which actually happened.
Party opens the door to a small dungeon room in which a number of monsters (some hellwasp swarms, I think) were chilling out. Wizard wins initiative and steps up to the door and casts fireball, maxed and empowered. Problem is that as I said, the dungeon room isn't that big, the blast radius will surely encapsulate his character (as the flames burst out the door) and kill him. This is dumb. On the other hand, he is playing a wizard, who surely knows the ins-and-outs of his spells, coupled with a very high intelligence score. Should I, as a DM, give him a hint that he is about to slay himself? Or do I just go ahead and let him die? [I let him die, but I don't know if that was the right decision]
Lots of people say that PCs should die when they do something stupid. You mean when their player does something stupid? What if their character is smarter than that? A dwarf fighter with INT 10 jumps into a lake to put out a fire in his beard. Do I remind him that he is wearing full plate, the water is very deep, and it will be hard for him to swim? Someone with an average intelligence (if they were actually there, wearing the full plate) would reasonably figure that out. Problem is, as the PLAYER is actually not there wearing the full plate, this might seem like a good idea. So I'm asking for clarification from the "when my player does something stupid" crowd. Do you give them a fair warning and only kill of they go ahead, heedless of your words? I guess that you don't. In that case, are you really being fair?
I try to give fair warning. If they ignore it they bear the consequences.