I've noticed that 4E seems to have something of a dearth of dead PCs. It kind of seems as if there are only two real states for a party to be in. Either everyone makes it (though it may have been close there for a bit) or there is a TPK or something close to a TPK.
This actually came up for me when we got into a debate among the players in my group on changing characters. One of the players opinioned that changing characters was fine but at least try and go out with a 'heroic death'.
I jumped in with "don't do that - you'll get us all killed'. I'm pretty sure its basically true as well. Pretty much there is enough healing in the party to access something close to every surge the our characters have, hence the probability of a character actually staying down seems remote unless the whole group is basically tapped on healing surges. Even in that case its improbable that some one would not stabilize the character - heck just being within 5 squares of my worshiper of the Raven Queen means +5 to death saves (Harbringer of Rebirth feat). In effect I have no doubt that the DM could pretty easily make an encounter too hard for us to beat but I'm not sure he can make an encounter that we beat but loose a comrade in the process.
Things seem to have gotten to the point where we are 'unkillable' simply because I'm near certain that the DM is going to move heaven and earth not to have a full on TPK - I know that when I was acting the role of 'killer DM' in 3.5 I had no compunction against killing a character but I'd not do a whole party wipe, TPKs are extremely disruptive to the campaign while the odd dead comrade adds to the role playing and allows a certain amount of 'new' to the party dynamic as well as keeping the players on their toes.
There appears to be no middle ground between everyone lives and pretty much everyone dies. I can think of maybe some corner case situations, mainly involving a player going down while the (slow) monsters have driven the party back - at which point we evaluate the situation and decide to flee - the monsters being slow can't catch us and we run off. But this somewhat improbable as a lot of factors have to be in place for this to even be a possibility.
The obvious way out of this is liberal use, by the DM, of coup de grace. But I really see some issues with that activity. In fact I'd not be surprised to find that the single most common house rule in 4E was 'Monsters don't coup de grace'. In effect all monsters leave downed characters alone. No surprise to me that this is generally the case. Unless the DM is always having the monsters kill downed characters we have moved into the realm of the DM playing favorites. A situation where the DM decides essentially which PCs get to stick around and which will be offed. Almost all DMs avoid getting into this space if at all possible as its one hell of a tightrope to walk - much easier to just let the dice decide peoples fates then to be activly choosing whether or not to kill a character.
Part of the issue here is that, if the DM does go with coup de grace's its basically always lethal. Fairly few characters can survive even a single hit by a monster after they have gone into negatives. Certainly having monsters always hit downed characters would return the lethality but now we potentially get a game that's even more lethal then the famed meat grinder that was 3.5 simply because 3.5 parties had access to a ton of magical resources that could act as a get out of jail free card for a comrade in real danger. Magic of this power is just not usually on hand for a 4E party.
The whole thing has left me with something of a conundrum both as a player and as a DM. As a player myself and my group are getting angsy with the lack of real threat. I know some of the other players are complaining to the DM that we never feel like we are really in danger and its effecting the tension level at the table and therefore the level of fun - especially in a combat heavy campaign as one gets with Scales of War.
I've noticed the issue as well as a DM in my newbs campaign. So far I'm fine because my players have not clued into the issue and still think they are in constant danger of some one dying. But I can't actually see how I could kill one of them without either slaughtering them all or arbitrary choosing to perform a coup de grace on one of them when they went down...which just seems to be unfair and unfun.
Hiya.
I don't play 4e, but here's some advice: As DM, when making a ruling/choice/decision, forget about the players and their characters.
That's right. You heard me. :) Just wipe the idea of "but the PC's are the stars of the show" from you head. Fall back on your years of DM training in the Neutral Arts of Dungeon Mastering (ala 1e style), and go with it.
The bottom line is this: if you start to make rulings based solely (or primarily) on how this will affect the player and his character, you're setting yourself, your players and your campaign up for an immenant downfall. As time goes on, things will become more and more convultuted and contrived, eventually ending up with players knowing "Oh, don't worry, the DM won't kill us because we slid down that sloping floor trap into this room with only one exit". When it gets to that point (where it looks like you are now, or very close to it), there is no fear of 'death'. It's like playing DOOM on god-mode. It may be fun for a bit, but when you finish it's a hollow victory. Playing on god-mode every week for months and months isn't going to go over very well.
Do youself and your players a favor, and make decisions based on the game world and campaign milieu.
The DMG does indeed say that in general, monsters don't coup de grace. In my case, sometimes they do. I make clear to players that the gloves will be off with this monster or group of monsters. So far in the course of two years of DMing and playing 4E (with 4 different groups both rl and online) I've had several character deaths:
Erich - coup de grace'd by Kalarel in Keep on the Shadowfell
Flora - taken to negative bloodied value by a hobgoblin force blast
Flora (again) - taken to negative bloodied value by Kravak the Damned
Seram Zal - taken to negative bloodied value mobbed by Fishmen of Dagon
Roderick (my PC) - ptaken to negative bloodied value through 2 crits from rage drakes.
The death toll seems about right to me.
I think that the tendency for a wipe is
pretty good, based on the mechanics of
the parties for 4e. Not to start an argument,
but I notice a lot of similarities with how
mmo parties work, where when the tank goes down,
the whole party tends to go down pretty quickly
afterwards (of course depending on how bad the
monsters are in terms of hp left effects that as
well) leading to the "wipe". That being said,
I have not experienced a party wipe yet in 4e,
although no one has really died in the f2f game
i'm currently in, but we have come close to a total
wipe. The closest my party has come to that was during
an encounter were everyone was taking pretty good dmg
all around, and we were super close to a wipe, with one
member down and out and everyone out of moves and heals.
In the end it probably depends on many factors like what
the party makeup is, how the DM is balancing out the encounters,
die rolls, tactical decisions in battle, etc.
I do agree with Pming in that I like to be more neutral about
DMing, letting things fall where they may, with only a few
exceptions to the rule.
Wow, I must not be doing my job right as a DM. I have been running my game from 1st level thru 12th and have never killed a PC. I have nothing against killing a PC, but I rarely get the opportunity. I've come close a few times, but that darn Cleric keeps saving everyone, and none of the players do anything stupid. They are very tactically orientated.
Wow, I must not be doing my job right as a DM. I have been running my game from 1st level thru 12th and have never killed a PC. I have nothing against killing a PC, but I rarely get the opportunity. I've come close a few times, but that darn Cleric keeps saving everyone, and none of the players do anything stupid. They are very tactically orientated.
I wouldnt think you're not doing your job
as DM, Raevhen. Not killing PCs isn't abad thing, and in the end what matters is
that the PCs/you are having fun. I think
both parties personal preferences matter too.
I've killed one fighter at very low level, but I can't remember how. I've turned a druid and a cleric to stone in the same encounter against an ogre and medusa. I had a tpk in the first encounter of an 11th level delve night event. I think that accounts for all of the characters I've killed, and none by coup de grace.
As a player, my tiefling paladin was offed by a black dragon at 3rd or 4th level.
In 3.x the fighs almost always seem one-sided, either for the monsters or the PC's. And there is much less teamwork, so if the cleric isn't healing a character, it's unlikely that anybody else is.
In 4e a lot of our fights seem to have shifts, or huge swings in the tide of battle. We've had fights where it looks like we couldn't lose and then in one round everybody around the table is announcing that they're bloodied. Then there's the opposite. In a fight we just wrapped up in my pbp, the entire party was bloodied, and the cleric was down to 2 hp when they turned their focus on the elite necromancer. Before his next turn they had done the 70 something points of damage to kill him.
Granted there are fights where nobody feels threatened, but in my experience, for the most part, just those swings in battle give enough tension, that I don't mind the lack of risk of death.
Despite some near misses, I have yet to kill a pc, bar a one shot suicide mission run at the request of the players.
I'd agree with Ghettowedge that fights often turn very rapidly from looking as if they're under control to almost being a TPK and that makes them interesting to me. There's an encounter in one of my pbps that could easily go either way at the moment.
So others have a few examples of characters dieing while the party lived. There was mention that you could go to negitive bloodied from a crit if you had very few hps prior to the crit taking place. Though here I think we need to have a character at 1-3 hps and the monster needs to crit on a nice high damage attack.
Other ways that it could happen is if your down on hps and you got tossed off a large ledge. A few monster attacks (Medusa) can kill if you fail many saves in a row. A down PC could be in the blast area for a monster's attack and simply take damage incidently.
I wonder if conditions would do it? If your on fire when you drop do you still keep taking 5 (or 10 or 15 or whatever) fire damage a turn until you save?
So others have a few examples of characters dieing while the party lived. There was mention that you could go to negitive bloodied from a crit if you had very few hps prior to the crit taking place. Though here I think we need to have a character at 1-3 hps and the monster needs to crit on a nice high damage attack.
Other ways that it could happen is if your down on hps and you got tossed off a large ledge. A few monster attacks (Medusa) can kill if you fail many saves in a row. A down PC could be in the blast area for a monster's attack and simply take damage incidently.
I wonder if conditions would do it? If your on fire when you drop do you still keep taking 5 (or 10 or 15 or whatever) fire damage a turn until you save?
Yes. All ongoing effects stay in place until saves are made - continuing damage, blindness, what have you. So, you could make the death save and still burn to death or whatever.
So others have a few examples of characters dieing while the party lived. There was mention that you could go to negitive bloodied from a crit if you had very few hps prior to the crit taking place. Though here I think we need to have a character at 1-3 hps and the monster needs to crit on a nice high damage attack.
Other ways that it could happen is if your down on hps and you got tossed off a large ledge. A few monster attacks (Medusa) can kill if you fail many saves in a row. A down PC could be in the blast area for a monster's attack and simply take damage incidently.
I wonder if conditions would do it? If your on fire when you drop do you still keep taking 5 (or 10 or 15 or whatever) fire damage a turn until you save?
I killed a character in my second ever session DMing, due to a combination of ongoing damage, horrible dice luck for the player, and the fact that I'd miscalculated how devastating a foe with the at-will ability to knock opponents prone would be. His companion couldn't get to him to stabilize or dump a potion down his throat because she kept getting knocked prone or otherwise pinned down by the enemies she was still fighting, and he kept failing his death saves.
Admittedly, this was something of an edge case, and the character probably wouldn't have died in a larger party, but my gaming group is small. (Two PCs, the DM, and an occasional guest player.) I've been a lot more careful about planning for combinations of conditions and effects since that adventure.
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Hiya.
I don't play 4e, but here's some advice: As DM, when making a ruling/choice/decision, forget about the players and their characters.
That's right. You heard me. :) Just wipe the idea of "but the PC's are the stars of the show" from you head. Fall back on your years of DM training in the Neutral Arts of Dungeon Mastering (ala 1e style), and go with it.
The bottom line is this: if you start to make rulings based solely (or primarily) on how this will affect the player and his character, you're setting yourself, your players and your campaign up for an immenant downfall. As time goes on, things will become more and more convultuted and contrived, eventually ending up with players knowing "Oh, don't worry, the DM won't kill us because we slid down that sloping floor trap into this room with only one exit". When it gets to that point (where it looks like you are now, or very close to it), there is no fear of 'death'. It's like playing DOOM on god-mode. It may be fun for a bit, but when you finish it's a hollow victory. Playing on god-mode every week for months and months isn't going to go over very well.
Do youself and your players a favor, and make decisions based on the game world and campaign milieu.
I agree completely with the above. This is my personal DMing style so of course I would agree. To be a DM is well to be nature. Cruel but fair. Players must always maintain a sense of mortality, without it you may as well remove the hit point section of all your PC's character sheets. Players also have to keep in mind action = reaction, but feel that their actions (not the DM's) have caused in harm to come their way.
Again, role-playing is personal thing and I'm only commenting on my way of DMing.
S.
Even with a handful of other ways for PCs to die it still all seems like corner case situations.
Stuff that might come up but probably no more then once in a campaign. Thinking about it I think I'd generally like a game where the lethality level was, on average, higher, say about one dead PC per three levels.
It just seems as if the game does not really allow for that unless we are talking about a TPK or using coup de grace. I still can't really see how it might come about that the dice will see to it that sometimes one of my players dies and I think that this will eventually become a problem.
As a player I found myself griefing another player last session ("I don't heal Drow") thinking that maybe we'll get some more of a challenge out of this if we introduce some clearly tactically unsound play (now the back up healer's have to deal with the healing the Drow - complicating the party dynamic and forcing less then optimum play).
In retrospect I'm not sure griefing another players is the most mature choice (I can go with 'just playing my character' but that's the most lame cop out ever) and I think I'll suggest that he should rob me of healing potions and some gold in response.
As a dm I feel slightly more guilty about killing 4E PCs. The reason is that in 3E you can usually get a dead PC back and action pretty easily. A raised dead spell is only a standard action to cast, not a lengthy ritual. I remember in 3e savage tide, the PCs were attacking a demon camp in the Abyss. One of the PCs got his head lopped off by a crit from a molydeus' vorpal axe. The characters used a time stop and a revivify spell and had him up and healed in no time. I was able to chalk up a kill for my kill count, but it didn't actually really phase the party or slow down the game.
However, I'm still happy to kill a PC now and then when I get the chance in 4E, but it is a little tougher overall. Healers don't need to come up and touch you, they can do it from a distance with minor actions. Plenty of characters have means of healing themselves, so it's harder to get PCs down to dangerous low hp etc... I find the kills tend to happen most often for me after a few encounters when the PCs are getting low on healing surges and haven't had a chance to take an extended rest. If I push them hard and lay into them with encounters that are 2-4 levels above their level I stand a pretty good shot of landing a kill or two without seeming like a totally evil dm.
I find the kills tend to happen most often for me after a few encounters when the PCs are getting low on healing surges and haven't had a chance to take an extended rest. If I push them hard and lay into them with encounters that are 2-4 levels above their level I stand a pretty good shot of landing a kill or two without seeming like a totally evil dm.
I don't understand why this does not just roll over into a TPK. Generally once your out of healing surges thats pretty much it for the party. In 3.5 they'd teleport out or fly away or some such but in 4E these abilities are usually either rituals (takes to long to escape with) or battlefield tricks (won't normally let you actually escape.
That leaves fleeing on foot but the average monster is faster then the average PC so the monsters should just chase them down and kill them. Maybe the hyperfast Avenger can actually run away but thats the exception and should be the only PC that lives.
As far as TPK's go- it hasn't really worked out that way with my group. Either they've been able to make an escape or they've still managed to win the fight. The worst I think I've had is 2-3 PC deaths in a fight (since playing 4e).
Well, there might be a death soon in one of the games I play in because he ran ahead of the rest of the party and basically got bit by everything in the next encounter while the rest of us were still busy with the previous encounter and unless all the monsters decide to stop eating him and go back to lying in the muck he's going to hit -(Bloodied) in the next few rounds. In other words, separating the party can still kill people.
Well, there might be a death soon in one of the games I play in because he ran ahead of the rest of the party and basically got bit by everything in the next encounter while the rest of us were still busy with the previous encounter and unless all the monsters decide to stop eating him and go back to lying in the muck he's going to hit -(Bloodied) in the next few rounds. In other words, separating the party can still kill people.
Absolutely. Its not really that I can't see how anyone can die. In many ways TPKs strike me as far MORE common under 4E mainly because you don't find the same kind of 'get the f*** out of dodge' type abilities that are the mainstay of 3.5 parties.
Splitting the party will still get you killed, lack of coordination among the group and egocentric play will see characters die and there are corner cases as well. Corner cases can become nearly common with very small parties - very easy for things to just go wrong here and they become much rarer with larger parties. For example Feather Fall becomes a reasonable spell in a party with multiple spell casting types as the role is being filled by more people and one can afford to have a caster pick up a niche spell like Feather Fall just to eliminate the dangers from a character falling from a great height - probably weak play if there is only a single caster.
But presuming you have a solid group playing reasonably well and covering for each other...well there it just seems to me that the system switches to extremes with either everyone living or a massacre involving a TPK with maybe a couple of exceptionally fast characters managing to simply outrun the monsters.
That said...taken to negative bloodied? Unless the DM is doing coup de graces and hitting players when they are down that does not seem like a probable result even for a player that wanders off alone (though it is very reasonable for a DM to say - 'with no other distractions around the monsters simply eat your character').
Despite some near misses, I have yet to kill a pc, bar a one shot suicide mission run at the request of the players.
I'd agree with Ghettowedge that fights often turn very rapidly from looking as if they're under control to almost being a TPK and that makes them interesting to me. There's an encounter in one of my pbps that could easily go either way at the moment.
Don't get me wrong, I think a lot of 4E fights are truly exceptional. A lot of this has to do with just how well 4E simulates a kind of sword and sorcery-fu style of play.
That said I don't really agree that 4E is more likely to swing back and forth then 3.5. I think 3.5 is much more swingy, hands down really.
This comes about in part because of criticals. Max damage is nice and all but its not comparable to what used to happen when the Orc Barbarian critted with a great axe or the Troll pulled off a critical on a rend or some such. Its an extreme swing in the combat when one of the players goes from pretty close to full hps straight past -10 and dead and that could happen at almost any point in 3.5. About half the characters I took out in 3.5 more or less went that way. The other big factor making combats swingy was spell like powers. Especially area effect things. Toss confusion into the midst of the party and it could be trivial (everyone or near everyone saves) to a near party wipe as half the party just turned on the other half. Spells worked both ways of course - how many big bads went down to a really bad roll on a save that it should have made at least 85% of the time?
I'd definitely defer to you on 3.5, as I simply don't have enough experience of playing it in a large group. We only came back to gaming about 6 months before 4e came out with a party of 3, so what I do know is based on that.
I'll admit that I'd put a lot of our fairly abrupt swings of fortune down to us being a very small party, but I can see what you mean based on what you say above.
Absolutely. Its not really that I can't see how anyone can die. In many ways TPKs strike me as far MORE common under 4E mainly because you don't find the same kind of 'get the f*** out of dodge' type abilities that are the mainstay of 3.5 parties.Splitting the party will still get you killed, lack of coordination among the group and egocentric play will see characters die and there are corner cases as well. Corner cases can become nearly common with very small parties - very easy for things to just go wrong here and they become much rarer with larger parties. For example Feather Fall becomes a reasonable spell in a party with multiple spell casting types as the role is being filled by more people and one can afford to have a caster pick up a niche spell like Feather Fall just to eliminate the dangers from a character falling from a great height - probably weak play if there is only a single caster.
But presuming you have a solid group playing reasonably well and covering for each other...well there it just seems to me that the system switches to extremes with either everyone living or a massacre involving a TPK with maybe a couple of exceptionally fast characters managing to simply outrun the monsters.
That said...taken to negative bloodied? Unless the DM is doing coup de graces and hitting players when they are down that does not seem like a probable result even for a player that wanders off alone (though it is very reasonable for a DM to say - 'with no other distractions around the monsters simply eat your character').
I'm the DM of Davi's game he's referencing and while the DMG says not to hit or coup de grace PCs when they're down, I see no problem with that when it makes sense, and in this situation having the monsters simply crawl back into the depths from where they came would strike me as strange. The creatures they're fighting are parasites, and hungry ones at that. So unfortunately for the PC, he's in a bad situation. He's not dead yet, so anything could happen, however.
Our group, when we played 4e, got TPKd and killed all the time. That is a part of why we don't play it, actually.
That said...taken to negative bloodied? Unless the DM is doing coup de graces and hitting players when they are down that does not seem like a probable result even for a player that wanders off alone (though it is very reasonable for a DM to say - 'with no other distractions around the monsters simply eat your character').
Well, it's like Amael said. It just doesn't make any sense for the the tooth-filled vicious monstrosities spawned from pure evil to not rip out his lungs while he's down.
Our group, when we played 4e, got TPKd and killed all the time. That is a part of why we don't play it, actually.
Your DM should have probably started to cut back on the Encounter Level a little after the 2nd TPK. If it happens repeatedly its because the DM is using encounters that are too hard.
I have this problem a bit when I'm DMing, especially with the big end fights but not exclusively then. Because encounter design is almost a game in itself I always find myself wanting to 'buy' more baddies or get better baddies then my xp budget will allow. I think DMs are often tempted to make the encounter harder because of this.
For example in the most recent encounter I built I found that I could not have the Orc Chieftan be a bigger bad ass then the normal Orc Warriors without going over budget - I so wanted to just say 'f*** it' and make him elite, I did not get as many minions as I wanted either to really represent an Orc tribe.
So the temptation is really there to add in some changes that happen to make the encounter tougher but I'd best resist because this is likely the 5th encounter of they've had that day and its already Level+2. I'll have to live with the monsters being a bit weaker.
That said...taken to negative bloodied? Unless the DM is doing coup de graces and hitting players when they are down that does not seem like a probable result even for a player that wanders off alone (though it is very reasonable for a DM to say - 'with no other distractions around the monsters simply eat your character').Well, it's like Amael said. It just doesn't make any sense for the the tooth-filled vicious monstrosities spawned from pure evil to not rip out his lungs while he's down.
I'm not really questioning the idea if the player is alone. As I said above I feel its perfectly reasonable for the monsters to simply eat the downed character if there is no other distraction - eating the player presumably involves coup de grace attacks if there is some question about help arriving (i.e. the other PCs are only maybe a round away so its possible that they will get their in time.)
I'm not really questioning the idea if the player is alone. As I said above I feel its perfectly reasonable for the monsters to simply eat the downed character if there is no other distraction - eating the player presumably involves coup de grace attacks if there is some question about help arriving (i.e. the other PCs are only maybe a round away so its possible that they will get their in time.)That said...taken to negative bloodied? Unless the DM is doing coup de graces and hitting players when they are down that does not seem like a probable result even for a player that wanders off alone (though it is very reasonable for a DM to say - 'with no other distractions around the monsters simply eat your character').Well, it's like Amael said. It just doesn't make any sense for the the tooth-filled vicious monstrosities spawned from pure evil to not rip out his lungs while he's down.
I think I mentioned that he ran off while we were still fighting the last encounter, since if he could dump the holy water on the tree's heart the plants we were fighting would presumably stop attacking us. Of course, the heart of the tree is apparently far enough below ground that we don't hear him, and I can't really afford to run down there for two rounds and heal him then run back up for another two rounds to keep the rest of the party alive.
EDIT: Wait, it only took him a round to get down to the next fight. I still don't think I can afford to leave the people in this encounter without a leader for two turns though.
Our group, when we played 4e, got TPKd and killed all the time. That is a part of why we don't play it, actually.Your DM should have probably started to cut back on the Encounter Level a little after the 2nd TPK. If it happens repeatedly its because the DM is using encounters that are too hard.
I have this problem a bit when I'm DMing, especially with the big end fights but not exclusively then. Because encounter design is almost a game in itself I always find myself wanting to 'buy' more baddies or get better baddies then my xp budget will allow. I think DMs are often tempted to make the encounter harder because of this.
For example in the most recent encounter I built I found that I could not have the Orc Chieftan be a bigger bad ass then the normal Orc Warriors without going over budget - I so wanted to just say 'f*** it' and make him elite, I did not get as many minions as I wanted either to really represent an Orc tribe.
So the temptation is really there to add in some changes that happen to make the encounter tougher but I'd best resist because this is likely the 5th encounter of they've had that day and its already Level+2. I'll have to live with the monsters being a bit weaker.
That would have been fine, except he was using a published adventure. That, and there were 5 of us. We, by the book, shouldn't have had an issue, yet we were. So, after that, and all sorts of things we learned about 4e, we decided we wouldn't play it, and stick to 3.5. Then, of course, we found Pathfinder. :)
That would have been fine, except he was using a published adventure. That, and there were 5 of us. We, by the book, shouldn't have had an issue, yet we were. So, after that, and all sorts of things we learned about 4e, we decided we wouldn't play it, and stick to 3.5. Then, of course, we found Pathfinder. :)
Keep on The Shadowfell, I assume? Yeah, it's not a very good adventure.
That would have been fine, except he was using a published adventure. That, and there were 5 of us. We, by the book, shouldn't have had an issue, yet we were. So, after that, and all sorts of things we learned about 4e, we decided we wouldn't play it, and stick to 3.5. Then, of course, we found Pathfinder. :)Keep on The Shadowfell, I assume? Yeah, it's not a very good adventure.
Yes it was, and no, it's not a good adventure. But it wasn't just a bad adventure that got under our skin. It was that philosophy of making those rules and breaking them so frequently in the enemies' favor. We were never in a position where we felt like bad-asses. Plus, with so many deaths, we weren't getting to that point fast enough, if it even showed up at all.
If Diablo 2 taught me anything, it's that it's just fine, in fact great, to kick ass right away from the start.
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That would have been fine, except he was using a published adventure. That, and there were 5 of us. We, by the book, shouldn't have had an issue, yet we were. So, after that, and all sorts of things we learned about 4e, we decided we wouldn't play it, and stick to 3.5. Then, of course, we found Pathfinder. :)Keep on The Shadowfell, I assume? Yeah, it's not a very good adventure.
@Swivl. Davi is right if you base your 4e experience on Shadowfell you come way thinking 4e is the pits. I did. However, once you either find a good adventure (Dungeon can help with this) or a good 4e DM then you will find NO difference from a role-playing stance and the "it's all on your character sheet" (well with the character builder for 4e) that the game runs very smoothly and I would recommend 4e before PF or 3.xe for a novice DM/player any day of the week.
In my opinion TPK shows a lack of understanding of the purpose of a role-playing from the DM. The DM doesn't "win" by killing the players. Sure PC's die, but for silly random dice rolls to kill an entire party is ridiculous. If your players look like getting murdered during an encounter a DM should be thinking of "outs". Perhaps the creatures want to capture the players? How many times was James Bond captured rather than killed outright, only to escape and win the day later. RPG's are an interactive story NOT a tactical combat similutor where the last person (or DM) standing wins. Of course I have a personal hate of the term TPK and character BUILD... No party should be entirely wiped out UNLESS it's dramatically appropriate and NO character is built, it is CREATED (as in "It's alive!!!" (said as Dr Frankenstein)).
Ranting,
S.
That would have been fine, except he was using a published adventure. That, and there were 5 of us. We, by the book, shouldn't have had an issue, yet we were. So, after that, and all sorts of things we learned about 4e, we decided we wouldn't play it, and stick to 3.5. Then, of course, we found Pathfinder. :)Keep on The Shadowfell, I assume? Yeah, it's not a very good adventure.@Swivl. Davi is right if you base your 4e experience on Shadowfell you come way thinking 4e is the pits. I did. However, once you either find a good adventure (Dungeon can help with this) or a good 4e DM then you will find NO difference from a role-playing stance and the "it's all on your character sheet" (well with the character builder for 4e) that the game runs very smoothly and I would recommend 4e before PF or 3.xe for a novice DM/player any day of the week.
In my opinion TPK shows a lack of understanding of the purpose of a role-playing from the DM. The DM doesn't "win" by killing the players. Sure PC's die, but for silly random dice rolls to kill an entire party is ridiculous. If your players look like getting murdered during an encounter a DM should be thinking of "outs". Perhaps the creatures want to capture the players? How many times was James Bond captured rather than killed outright, only to escape and win the day later. RPG's are an interactive story NOT a tactical combat similutor where the last person (or DM) standing wins. Of course I have a personal hate of the term TPK and character BUILD... No party should be entirely wiped out UNLESS it's dramatically appropriate and NO character is built, it is CREATED (as in "It's alive!!!" (said as Dr Frankenstein)).
Ranting,
S.
Don't get me wrong, I agree on many of these points. A good adventure will help even bad games, which 4e isn't. I also think it's good for new players. I mentioned in another thread that my current game is borrowing good ideas from 4e, effectively making it a hybrid 3.5/PF/bit-of-4e game. I don't mean to threadjack this into 4e rant time, really.
I guess we, as a group, just didn't like what we saw. It was more than one bad game that did it in, but it certainly didn't help.
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I guess we, as a group, just didn't like what we saw. It was more than one bad game that did it in, but it certainly didn't help.
That's all cool. Not every game is for everyone. I was more commenting on the TPK. DM's kill parties NOT adventures or encounters. DM's have no rules therefore a TPK is the fault/whim of the DM. It happens because a DM doesn't want to do anything about having a TPK not happen. Human DM's (unlike computer ones) have infinite flexibility...
Got my flame-proof undies on,
S.
-1
If a TPK happens, it happens. As a DM I subscribe to the referee school, and don't step in to save characters. I avoid coup de grace and if the PC's do a full retreat (not single move and attack) I am usually inclined to allow an escape, but I don't manufacture outs.
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-1
If a TPK happens, it happens. As a DM I subscribe to the referee school, and don't step in to save characters. I avoid coup de grace and if the PC's do a full retreat (not single move and attack) I am usually inclined to allow an escape, but I don't manufacture outs.
I'm not saying I "reward" stupidity. But you yourself are stepping in to save characters, and I quote "avoid coup de grace" and "inclined to allow an escape". This is exactly the things I was referring to that save a TPK from occurring.
Er, what does -1 mean? -1 what?
S.
-1 refers to the fact that I disagree (a lot of times people will post simply +1 when they do agree). I do not think a TPK is entirely the fault/whim of a DM.
I have no clue as to the details of Swivl's game, and that may entirely have been the DM's fault. I just don't agree that a TPK is entirely the fault of a DM.
Er, what does -1 mean? -1 what?
S.
He disagrees with you.
Anyway, I agree with both of you. The DM should try not to have a TPK, but if the dice go bad and a TPK happens, well, a TPK happens.
(Also, update on the maybe-future-TPK: Next round I'm probably going to start dying because I was dumb and decided to stab the pile of angry compost, who then ignored the mark the warden put on him and basically ate me. Bad tactics can still kill people in 4e too.)
(Also, update on the maybe-future-TPK: Next round I'm probably going to start dying because I was dumb and decided to stab the pile of angry compost, who then ignored the mark the warden put on him and basically ate me. Bad tactics can still kill people in 4e too.)
Yeah, I think every player rolled a 3 or less to attack in the first round. I'm still unhurt and doing my best to help (two dailies in one round), but the monsters even ignored the OA I provoked to get some extra damage.
We're rolling really horribly, which doesn't help and we're also kind of running around like headless chickens. Now, that's poor tactics, but it is pretty much what a bunch of people would do in a dingy grove confronted by walking compost and fretful dryads. Even heroes have off-days. Since we are supposed to be heroic and know what we're doing, it makes perfect sense to me that behaving like ordinary civilians in a heroic situation is going to get us killed :)
In my own game where the party are also on the edge of deep trouble, it's more because they just pushed straight on into the next encounter without really sizing up the situation. They're also fighting plantlife. Who says vegetables are always good for you?
In my own game where the party are also on the edge of deep trouble, it's more because they just pushed straight on into the next encounter without really sizing up the situation. They're also fighting plantlife. Who says vegetables are always good for you?
We kinda had to!! :)
More on topic, I agree with Ghetto. When I DM, I don't try and kill the players, but I don't try and save them either. Unless, I made them think that combat was the only choice at a time when they should have fled and/or talked.
Part of that, though, comes from my own not minding when my characters die. I think the occassional death is good for a story, it adds to the drama of the overall tale.
Agreed :) You were chasing a fleeing baddie and stopping him was a VERY good idea.
Oh, because of human error, it turns out I'm not going to start dying next turn.
Also, death does matters less and less the higher level you get. By epic tier, you just get back up the next turn most of the time.
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-1 refers to the fact that I disagree (a lot of times people will post simply +1 when they do agree). I do not think a TPK is entirely the fault/whim of a DM.
I have no clue as to the details of Swivl's game, and that may entirely have been the DM's fault. I just don't agree that a TPK is entirely the fault of a DM.
Ah, I was wondering what all the +1 and -1 was about! Can you be neutral about something and put 0?
Just to correct myself, I'm not saying a TPK is the DM's fault. I'm saying a DM can head off a TPK anytime they like. For example if I see that the PC's are not doing to well in an encounter and it's due to "mainly" appalling rolls I have no issues dividing all the creatures hp's by 2 - or ignoring the creatures hp's completely and having them drop dead as appropriate. In the not too distance past every RPG book had a section for the DM that said - use/modify/ignore rules when and how you see fit to keep the game running and people laughing. It just seems to me that as of late the rules have become THE RULES even if it interferes with the purpose of the game (telling an interactive story). I guess I DM with the idea that the players have rules (and I hold them to those rules 100%) but as DM I have a set of guidelines... :)
Players do die in my campaigns and I don't decide when and how (i.e. referee idea) but if it looks like a TPK (or close) I really do evaluate what is the cause and is it such a great idea. Players have a hard enough time identifying with their characters without having them change them every 2nd session. For me a TPK leaves you with very little options as a DM to integrate the new party into the story. All those NPC's they met with their old characters that somehow need to know the new PC's + all the information the new PC's wouldn't know in game. Just saying for me a TPK = end of current game. Reroll, restart.
Interested to hear how other DM's handle this.
Cheers, interesting discussion,
S.
Players do die in my campaigns and I don't decide when and how (i.e. referee idea) but if it looks like a TPK (or close) I really do evaluate what is the cause and is it such a great idea. Players have a hard enough time identifying with their characters without having them change them every 2nd session. For me a TPK leaves you with very little options as a DM to integrate the new party into the story. All those NPC's they met with their old characters that somehow need to know the new PC's + all the information the new PC's wouldn't know in game. Just saying for me a TPK = end of current game. Reroll, restart.
I certainly agree that a TPK is extremely disruptive and has a significant probability of simply destroying the campaign. They are to be avoided if at all possible. I'm loathe to 'cheat' as a DM but here I'll often make an exception, usually through bad tactics on the bad guys part or simply not using things that the bad guy should use. This is especially true if I'm pretty sure that I'm the source of the TPK as opposed to my players being the source. I made the Big Bad Evil Guy too powerful for example.
On the other hand the only thing I can think of that is actually worse then allowing a TPK to occur is having players act as if a TPK is utterly impossible and thus start behaving as if they know I'll cheat to save them from one. If I think that my players are acting in this manner I'll stop 'cheating' in their favour. Better to allow the TPK to occur in this case - especially since its a lesson that only likely needs to be taught once.
"How much death is good for a game? / How hard should a game be?" are tough questions to answer, and really depends on the game.
Sure - part of my frustration here is that I can't seem to find a 'control mechanism' for lethality. The space between every player lives (though they may be pretty beaten up) and TPK is so small that there is no way I can see controlling for it.
This is made especially salient when dealing with a group that uses effective tactics. Essentially what I notice even from my relative newbs and especially from the group I'm a player in is that the group assesses the danger poised by the various threats, picks targets and then concentrates fire to eliminate what is considered the most dangerous enemies and/or the ones that are weak enough that they should be eliminated first.
Hence what starts messing with this very effective play is enemies that are mobile and 'slippery'. These are the types of enemies that screw up the tactic and force the players to spread their fire around - you can achieve this by attacking a PC party from multiple directions as well.
The problem is that this is also the exact type of opposition that totally TPKs them if things really do head south - fast and slippery enemies or ones that have surrounded a group are ones that the players can't easily escape from and things role over into a TPK.
Hence the very type of opposition most likely to give them real trouble is the same opposition they can't escape from.
Now sometimes one faces a Dragon or some such and its just to tough to beat even with concentrated fire - but here I find that the group takes no losses since they choose to retreat (if that's possible) before anyone actually dies. Even a dragon only does so much damage - once the defenders have gone to bloodied and there is no more healing on tap they retire to the rear of the group - unless the dragon is nearly dead everyone just pulls out. Either the dragon can't catch them, in which case everyone lives - or it can in which case it should take out all of them.
The mechanism I normally use to get the desired lethality level is to start with encounters that I know are too easy and then just make things a little tougher each encounter until I get to the desired level of lethality at which point one holds unless the circumstances change. But this has not been working for me in 4E, instead it always seems to be all or nothing.
I certainly agree that a TPK is extremely disruptive and has a significant probability of simply destroying the campaign. They are to be avoided if at all possible. I'm loathe to 'cheat' as a DM but here I'll often make an exception, usually through bad tactics on the bad guys part or simply not using things that the bad guy should use. This is especially true if I'm pretty sure that I'm the source of the TPK as opposed to my players being the source. I made the Big Bad Evil Guy too powerful for example.On the other hand the only thing I can think of that is actually worse then allowing a TPK to occur is having players act as if a TPK is utterly impossible and thus start behaving as if they know I'll cheat to save them from one. If I think that my players are acting in this manner I'll stop 'cheating' in their favour. Better to allow the TPK to occur in this case - especially since its a lesson that only likely needs to be taught once.
I think it's a matter of constant correcting of the "balance" and there isn't any real hard rules for that. If you coddle the PCs too much, then they won't ever have that feel that they are at risk or accomplishing anything special, but if you rail them at every opportunity they'll become worn down by constantly dying. I believe the secret is in keeping up the "illusions" of the game and mixing it up so that PCs have no idea whether your "favoring" them or not, because a DM cannot "cheat". I prefer to keep it pretty neutral and let the dice fall how they may. If a TPK happens, then thats it, time to make new characters if they want to continue. I feel like I've cheated my players if I don't give them a good run for their money. From my perspective as a player, as long as I feel the DM is fairly calling the shots, I love a tough game where death is a real possiblilty. Makes overcoming the encounter that much sweeter. All the advice is great, but in the end it depends on how you and your players view how RPGs should be played, and if everyone is aware of that, I think you'll be free to either secretly help your PCs stay alive, or flay them mercilessly (within reason :) of course).
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I'm loathe to 'cheat' as a DM
I see someone has already mentioned that a DM cheating is impossible. I agree with the rest of what that poster was alluding to also. An RPG isn't DM vs Players. If it was then I can see how a DM can cheat, but I do believe in letting the dice fall where they may as long as it doesn't have a huge negative impact on the game. That of course is a judgment call for any DM and is the reason we have a human DM rather than a computer algorithm. Keeping the balance between a cake-walk, exciting, or deadly encounter is only in part to do with the "encounter design" as proscribed in the rulebooks the rest falls on the intellect of the DM.
For example, we had a new DM run a game. We fought through tunnels trying to escape and complete our mighty task, we were using up ALL our resources and the fights were getting tense (physically in the real world I mean - increased heart rate, it was exciting). In short the DM was doing very, very well. Excellent climax to the game. Then we get to a place where we can rest, the players are having a great time. Then he rolls a random encounter of some bats and we all die. Had to interfered or "cheated" as DM we would have walked away after that session on a high. As it was we still grumble to this day about the player killer DM. Did he set out to cause a TPK? No, but he did fail to exercise his right as DM to use/ignore/modify rules for the benefit of the game.
No rights or wrongs (I still to this day loath battle-mat based combat - but admit it works a treat in 4e),
S.
What has tended to be the tipping point in your games that turn into TPKs? You mention that you've boosted the difficulty of encounters until a TPK happens - can you give some examples? That might help figuring out what can be changed to keep things tough but not overkill.
I like your advice on the dragon. I'll use that at some point. I've not had a TPK but I've cheated to avoid a couple (the result is no dead).
I've pretty much mentioned above the scenarios that have headed me close to one. In once case the players got caught in a wide corridor, forced to deal with enemies coming from two sides. Forced to cover two directions things began to slip away. Maybe if they had concentrated fire on their retreat route they could have gotten out but as it stood the enemy took down the defender holding one side and then they where in among the rest of the PCs flanking them all over the place. The remaining players would never have managed to weave their way out of the mess before they all started to go down. I avoided the TPK by turning any enemy that had not been hit yet into a minion - was able to do that without the players noticing (I don't tell them who is or is not a minion at the start of an encounter).
The other time was against wind elemental warriors. They fly, are super fast, hard to hit and deal good damage. They where able to zip around the parties defenders and just went to town each on a the mage, rogue, and cleric. The cleric and mage kept needing to shift to avoid taking an opportunity attack when they used their powers and I was able to get it so that the party was being driven away from each other. Here I let them live by not using action points that the bad guys have and waiting until next session to correct the Paladin on the use of Lay on Hands (up to this point they had not realized that it was limited - so in this fight the Paladin pretty much empties his surges).
Lots of players go down and they even discuss running and leaving their comrades but reject the plan - they'd never even get to the end of the room and out the door (it was a big room) before the flying super fast enemies cut them down so a fight to the death was the only option.
I've even been in more fights as a player - here I don't have the DMs perspective on what the deal is - but its certainly been the case that we might be in trouble but whatever the trouble is it never seems as if we can run from it and no player has ever actually had to make three death saves. A couple of times we have tapped every drop of healing and every potion, used all our magic - everything. But once thats happened it usually seems like we are all still standing but when I take inventory on the parties hp situation (I'm the cleric thats my job) its always 'everyone between 10-20 hps - no healing left and either we are going to win in the next few rounds or we are going to drop 2 at a time and the last character will hit the floor about 4 rounds from now...probably before the first character fails their final save.
All that said its only partly encounter design that causes this extremely narrow space between every one lives and everyone dies - its more the bleeding out rules. By the point when the first character goes down and there is no longer anything the rest of the players can do for him is also the point where the length of time the players have to win is measured in two or three rounds. Ultimately the encounter resolves one way or another before the first downed character fails a third save.