Uchawi |
I rarely use coupe de grace like affects in any game I played from 1E to 4E, GURPS, RuneQuest, etc. Unless I make a provision for the monster to be merciless, but often the players know what they are getting into, and I will throw them hints. But I have wiped total parties, based on poor judgement, and I am less apt to kill someone if they play the character to its fullest. But this is a judgement call on how close the person is to their character.
A lethal campaign is more appropriate for experienced players, as this adds an extra edge to bring them back into the game.
However, this really falls under the responsiblity of the DM and players to setup an expectation over time, and it is very hard to control in open game sessions.
One suggestion for any game, is to incorporate a luck point system where characters start with a random number and earn more over time for the DM to track. The points can be used to re-roll, auto-save on death, etc. but the players should not be aware of the total, i.e. your luck has run out.
Jeremy Mac Donald |
Still thinking about this issue quite a bit.
I did have a player go down with a condition last session. He got out of it and was not much worse for wear but I do think I can sort of see one good way to really screw with the players and up the danger level.
The ongoing damage conditions really seem to be the best way to endanger the players. I went and made sure that different types of damage do in fact stack - hence it would seem that designing encounters that have multiple creatures that use different types of ongoing damage. The fact that the damage continues even when they go down seems likely to face the players with the kind of dangerous circumstances I'm looking for. I'm certainly going to fiddle with this a bit and see what happens.
Matthew Koelbl |
Actually had an unexpected death during my last session. The party had been afflicted with a particularly nasty affliction, which was several levels above them - making it dangerous to cure. (Roll low enough, and the cure might kill you.)
The party had only been attempting to purge the affliction on characters who weren't improving on their own. This week, they tried it on our druid, and the check failed - but fortunately for the druid, our warden was a Guardian of the World Tree, and had the ability to die (and then return a round later) in place of an ally.
So no problems there. But then the healer tried to cure the warden herself. I was surprised by this - she had a good enough Endurance check that she was shrugging off the disease/affliction on her own. But they decided to go for it anyway. All he needed was to roll a 4 on his d20 Heal check roll - and as a Deva, he had Memories of a Thousand Lifetimes to give a boost if needed.
So he rolls his Heal check... and rolls a 1. And he rolls Memories... and rolls a 1. And the Warden dies.
And of course, they are able to get her Raised and bring her back, but it did make them a lot more jumpy about just hurling around cure rituals - learning that even a small chance of death can still be dangerous. :)
Fabes DM |
Rev Rosey |
Jeremy Mac Donald |
So he rolls his Heal check... and rolls a 1. And he rolls Memories... and rolls a 1. And the Warden dies.And of course, they are able to get her Raised and bring her back, but it did make them a lot more jumpy about just hurling around cure rituals - learning that even a small chance of death can still be dangerous. :)
This may also be one of the reasons I notice the issue more then some DMs. I read this and go 'gasp!' as he fails the second roll - and then you follow up with 'so the go and get him raised...'
I'm left wondering why you even bother to make the checks. Failure is inconsequential. I'd tend to want the player to either come up with a story on why he was returned from the dead or have him make a new character.
Matthew Koelbl |
Matthew Koelbl wrote:
So he rolls his Heal check... and rolls a 1. And he rolls Memories... and rolls a 1. And the Warden dies.And of course, they are able to get her Raised and bring her back, but it did make them a lot more jumpy about just hurling around cure rituals - learning that even a small chance of death can still be dangerous. :)
This may also be one of the reasons I notice the issue more then some DMs. I read this and go 'gasp!' as he fails the second roll - and then you follow up with 'so the go and get him raised...'
I'm left wondering why you even bother to make the checks. Failure is inconsequential. I'd tend to want the player to either come up with a story on why he was returned from the dead or have him make a new character.
Well, the characters are level 26 - at that point, death really is just a speed-bump. They are demi-gods, world-changers, arch-liches, and more. In this case, the character was afflicted by a disease that was slowly undoing the very essence of her being - in order to purge it from her, they had to perform a traumatic process of healing that ended up casting her soul from her body. They could restore it, of course, but not without time and resources to do so, and leaving this hero of legend weakened for days to follow.
The consequence of failure is there, if it isn't the end of the character. And it still makes for a decent story. And beyond that, the party is working personally for two gods of Death (Odin and the Raven Queen) - of anyone, it makes sense for them to be given the chance to return.
And let's be honest - this character has been playing in the campaign from levels 1 to 26. They are a couple months from a showdown with the big bad guy. I think that having to suddenly bring in a new character - and find a reason for them to be there, and join this epic party - would be far more damgaing to the narrative of the game.
The option is certainly there, and I've seen PCs take it when the character has a truly meaningful death. (I've had at least one PC already request that their character get the chance for such a death in the final fight.) But I think having every death be that permanent isn't always a good thing.
It can be in the right campaigns - at low levels, certainly, or in a setting like Dark Sun. But death being surmountable has always been true in D&D, and especially by the time the characters become heroes of legend, it makes sense to let it be something they can overcome.
And I think that having the occasional death, at epic levels, even if they can overcome it... still keeps them on their toes. Because it makes it clear the risk is there that it could come at the wrong time, and perhaps that character could be lost for good - or they could all fall, and no one would be left to bring them back...
Jeremy Mac Donald |
Well, the characters are level 26 - at that point, death really is just a speed-bump. They are demi-gods, world-changers, arch-liches, and more. In this case, the character was afflicted by a disease that was slowly undoing the very essence of her being - in order to purge it from her, they had to perform a traumatic process of healing that ended up casting her soul from her body. They could restore it, of course, but not without time and resources to do so, and leaving this hero of legend weakened for days to follow.The consequence of failure is there, if it isn't the end of the character. And it still makes for a decent story. And beyond that, the party is working personally for two gods of Death (Odin and the Raven Queen) - of anyone, it makes sense for them to be given the chance to return.
And let's be honest - this character has been playing in the campaign from levels 1 to 26. They are a couple months from a showdown with the big bad guy. I think that having to suddenly bring in a new character - and find a reason for them to be there, and join this epic party - would be far more damgaing to the narrative of the game.
The option is certainly there, and I've seen PCs take it when the...
I see your point but feel this is an area where reasonable people can disagree. In the end your narrative explanations make some sense and its obvously what you felt was best for your game but to me it still seems to boil down to 'legendary hero's can't die'. Not something I'd really want in my game but your correct in pointing out that there have always been ways of bringing characters back from the dead with near certainty from about 2nd edition on - in 1st you could do it but might fail a system shock roll.
Jeremy Mac Donald |
So I still spend a fair bit of time thinking about 'tougher' encounters and I've noticed something from some of the end boss type fights in my campaign in this regards.
It seems to me that my encounters are most threatening to my 4 players when they face down with about 3 really juiced up bad guys. I find that if there are more enemies then 3 usually the bad guys are weak enough that the players can either just focus on the many weak enemies before coming back to deal with the single biggest threat or if there is no single large threat then all the enemies are weak enough that they can be taken out reasonably quickly.
On the other hand if there are less then 3 enemies against my 4 player group then the enemies can be concentrated upon and taken down by a huge assortment of the players powers.
It simply seems like 3 versus their four is the sweet spot in terms of enemy power, to many enemies to easily lock down or focus on but each enemy is individually a tough enough hombre that it gives them real trouble.
What seems to happen is the enemies kind of pair up with most of the party members and start knocking the stuffing out of them while the few extra players are put in a situation where they can help any one of their fellows but are being overwhelmed because most of the rest of the party is crying for aid. Often the extra PCs are faced with a tough choice, the tactically intelligent thing to do is to focus on one baddie but the situation is such that they are forced to come to the aid of other comrades even though it means stopping, at least for the moment, their concentration on one of the evil hombres.
Oddly enough I noticed this in lower level 3.5 as well - the single big baddie and the horde of baddies where both easier for the PCs to handle then the group of tough baddies with slightly fewer numbers then the PCs.
4E in some ways makes this easier to comprehend from a mathematical point of view since your spending a budget on the baddies and can see how that budget makes each tough hombre a real issue for any individual PC to handle since each individual hombre is generally more bad ass then the PC they are matched up with and the extra PCs can even up some of these match ups but there are not enough extra PCs to even out all of them.
Matthew Koelbl |
I see your point but feel this is an area where reasonable people can disagree.
Oh yeah - like I said, I think you can have a preference for different levels of lethality from one game to the next, even when just dealing with a single player, much less comparing viewpoints between different gamers! Like many things, I think as long as everyone at the table is playing with the same expectations, then it's all good.
Now, I think your point might be, in part, that is also helps if the game itself supports differing playstyles or levels of lethality. And I can't really disagree with that - while they can't always cater to everyone, the more options they can make work, the better. I think MM3 helps a bit with that - it seems to have tougher monsters in general, partly a response to the capability of well-built PCs, and partly just to include some things to give players a taste of some old-school fear...
Matthew Koelbl |
So I still spend a fair bit of time thinking about 'tougher' encounters and I've noticed something from some of the end boss type fights in my campaign in this regards.
It seems to me that my encounters are most threatening to my 4 players when they face down with about 3 really juiced up bad guys. I find that if there are more enemies then 3 usually the bad guys are weak enough that the players can either just focus on the many weak enemies before coming back to deal with the single biggest threat or if there is no single large threat then all the enemies are weak enough that they can be taken out reasonably quickly.
I've actually found very similar results. More specifically, I've found an encounter with several Elites can be scarier than a single solo (who is easier to shut down with the right powers) or an encounter with a bunch of regular enemies (who fall pretty easily). 3 tough elites means a fight where you can't ignore any given enemy, all of them have significant potential for damage, but no one is going to get taken out too fast.
Even outside of the elite/solo/standard designation, I think similar things hold true, largely for the reasons you mention. It is one reason why an enemy part of NPC adventurers can be so deadly - the PCs are up against a group of enemies, each one just as capable and dangerous as a PC. You have to respond to all of them - rather than just plowing through a horde, or burning down a single tough foe.
It might not necessarily be a universal rule - but it definitely has some truth to it, and is good to think about when designing encounters.
Jeremy Mac Donald |
So I gamed with my newbs on Saturday Night and came away frustrated - though they had a really good time. Essentially I, once again, had an annoying encounter where if I did not secretly stop playing hard they'd all die because they had a (baby) Dragon blocking one exit and the two other bad guys blocking the other so running away was impossible.
Its still driving me nuts whenever I have to (secretly) step in and let them win. Of course they think they just won a super hard fight by the skin of their teeth so my players are at least happy.
Another complaint from that session is I really don't think the 'go down' and then you have three strikes before dying rule works. I suspect that it might have been somewhat functional at the very beginning. In a battle with heavy grind the rounds can just go by one after another. I could imagine a player bleeding out in that circumstance potentially being very exciting. But whatever functionality they had at that point seems to me to be lost by this stage of the game development. Both the players and the monsters powers are doing a lot more damage these days and where the monsters aren't (some MMI monsters mainly) most DMs are stepping in and boosting monster damage output manually. The result is speeded up combats and that means that a player that goes down is ever less likely to even be potentially making that death save that could finish him. Its probably, on average, about the 6th or 7th roll that's the one that has real fear in it and I'm not seeing combats that go 6 or 7 rounds beyond the time a player drops.
This actually played bad in the most recent session since the players had locked the Baby Dragon out of the room while their comrade was bleeding out beyond the door and where meta-gaming along the lines of 'we should not go and save our comrade for a few rounds, we can stay here and use our potions and second winds, get lots of hps and then go out and fight.' They figured out that with only one failed death save they still had, potentially, lots of time before they really needed to panic - they'd have to act after the downed comrade blew another roll and, possibly that would be soon but possibly they could get a bunch of extra rounds, which is the exact opposite of the reaction I'm looking for when a player is bleeding out - I want panic but, even with newbs, I'm getting complacency.
I've thought of doing a house rule for my next campaign (I don't want to change the rules on my newbs) that says 2nd strike and you die. Its not a perfect fix as its still, on average, a lot of rounds to die but the system gets more extreme here and players are likely motivated by panic much more quickly.
Uchawi |
You won't have a problem if you consider a death scenario for the encounters you develop and the types of creatures and terrain involved (falling from a great height, drowning, etc.). For instance, big brutes that are no easily distracted may beat a player into the ground until nothing is left. In regards to the baby dragon, if I understand correctly they locked both the dragon and the fallen comrade out of the room. That is pretty much a death sentence for most characters, since the dragon would finish the player off, and leave to come back another day.
During the middle of battle where opponents face off to gain advantage, they may not worry about a fallen comrade, but once the party is seperated, or a new creatures some into play, especially a lurker that is looking for easy prey, then players better watch out.
Of course, it is no fun if you kill off everyone all the time, but someone has to be made an example.
You can go even further by adding special components, or restrictions on rituals like raise dead. Or add a specific feature to a creature to prevent a raise dead by stealing the characters soul, etc. or damaging the body so severly that an attribute is affected in a negative fashion.
You are only limited by you imagination, but at the same time give the party hints and clues in regards to what they are facing, even if you have to go back to the true and tried method of taking out the party NPC via a horrific death.
Jeremy Mac Donald |
You won't have a problem if you consider a death scenario for the encounters you develop and the types of creatures and terrain involved (falling from a great height, drowning, etc.)...
Your discussing corner case situations here - sure I can make an encounter over the chasm of Infinite Doom and make it Encounter Level+1 (i.e. players should nearly certainly win) but have the monsters be pretty good at pushing. Maybe I take out a PC by knocking them from a great height. Or, yes, I can make terrain, traps or hazards that do something non-standard that in some way shape or form goes around the normal rules and lets me kill a character. Thing is neither of these accomplish my goals. Even if I do this I do not convince my players that encounters are dangerous - I convince them that heights are dangerous or that scary statues with weird magic are dangerous - but not that vampires or Orcs or BBEGs are dangerous. Usually I'd prefer it if the PCs where more scared of the BBEG then the rope bridge nearby.
...For instance, big brutes that are no easily distracted may beat a player into the ground until nothing is left.
Flip side of the same coin - If monster X is nasty and can take down a player and pretty much nothing the players can do can distract it then I'm just throwing auto-kills their way unless they build a party of clerics and Paladins...which solves the problem but makes the most grindy type of adventuring possible, i.e. cure worse then the disease.
Hence, when presented with an alternate target monsters nearly always have to go for the still standing PCs.
In regards to the baby dragon, if I understand correctly they locked both the dragon and the fallen comrade out of the room. That is pretty much a death sentence for most characters, since the dragon would finish the player off, and leave to come back another day.
True - and in fact I did just that having the Dragon go back and take a bite out of the downed character - which did get the players moving. Even here I pulled my punches - I could have used the double claw attack which would have been pretty much an auto-kill but I wanted to give the players one round to react. All that said it just means that in this circumstance there was an option on the table for me to force them to come out - in many other circumstances (say humanoids who where instead trying to break down the door) the players would have had seemingly all the time in the world...'we have all the time in the world' is not the reaction I'm looking for when a player hits the ground and starts to bleed out.
Of course, it is no fun if you kill off everyone all the time, but someone has to be made an example.
Which gets to the heart of my frustration. Your right - to convince them that dungeon delving is a dangerous line of work I need to kill a character...not the die rolls, not bad luck, no me personally as the DM, have to make a conscious decision to kill off a player. Worse yet - once I've done the deed I'll have to artificially let the rest of the players 'win' so as to avoid a TPK. Needless to say I don't want to go down this path but we are getting to the point where it may be necessary as a better alternative then dealing with players who might soon figure out that they can't ever really die. I'm essentially still being frustrated by my issue in the original post - they all live or they all die.
You can go even further by adding special components, or restrictions on rituals like raise dead. Or add a specific feature to a creature to prevent a raise dead by stealing the characters soul, etc. or damaging the body so severely that an attribute is affected in a negative fashion.
Oh I straight up don't allow any resurrection magic, its not like making a new character in 4E comes with punishment. You start with the same XP as the rest of the group, comparable magic and gold**.
I'd consider a 'coming back from the dead' story from a player that really wanted to keep playing the same character but its never 'I drank a potion'. Its always some unique event in the campaign world and I discourage the practice but can be made to cave by an earnest player.
** Gold is tricky - it does not scale by number of players so 4 player groups get more gold per character then 7 player groups. You come back with gold averaged roughly for a 5 player party, hence you lose gold if your group is smaller then 5 players but get extra for dying if its 6 players or more.
Bluenose |
I've thought of doing a house rule for my next campaign (I don't want to change the rules on my newbs) that says 2nd strike and you die. Its not a perfect fix as its still, on average, a lot of rounds to die but the system gets more extreme here and players are likely motivated by panic much more quickly.
An alternative rule would be to make failed Death saves go away after an extended rest rather than any rest. It won't work if you only have one or two encounters each day, but with failures stacking up over the course of a day later encounters are a lot more lethal. That at least was our experience early on when we misread the rules and thought that was how it was supposed to work. It made for some frantic hurrying to get to a fighter who'd gone down with two ticks against him from earlier encoutners.
ProfessorCirno |
I think it's important to note that you can bring about a sense of danger in the players without murdering them off.
You can be taken down in the battlefield without being killed, which is I think what they were really going for. And a fight can be hair-raising and dangerous without anyone hitting negatives.
I think the problem is that we've gotten so used to there being no middle ground between "just stands there and fights all day no problem" and "DEAD" that we forget that there IS a middle ground there, or at least in this edition there is.
Matthew Koelbl |
I've thought of doing a house rule for my next campaign (I don't want to change the rules on my newbs) that says 2nd strike and you die. Its not a perfect fix as its still, on average, a lot of rounds to die but the system gets more extreme here and players are likely motivated by panic much more quickly.
I've always liked the idea of the three strikes rule, because it does produce a more focused level of concern (as opposed to previously, where an attack might put you at -1 (and the party knows they have plenty of time to get to you), or at -9 (and they have no chance to help before you bleed out.) These days, they know they have a round or two, but they can't afford to wait forever. Which does often work, but as combats become faster paced, I can see the concern about even one round of complacency being too much.
My advice if you want them to treat every death seriously, but without making dropping a guaranteed death sentence? Natural 1 on a death save kills you. Or, to make it slightly less lethal, counts as two failed death saves. That way there is a risk of dying in only one or two rolls.
The chance is low, but just by existing, it will spur the players to action. Just be prepared to have people die when it comes up - you get back into the potential for someone to drop and then bleed out before anyone can do anything. As long as you are willing to actually have someone die to it when the time comes.
Matthew Koelbl |
I think it's important to note that you can bring about a sense of danger in the players without murdering them off.
You can be taken down in the battlefield without being killed, which is I think what they were really going for. And a fight can be hair-raising and dangerous without anyone hitting negatives.
I think the problem is that we've gotten so used to there being no middle ground between "just stands there and fights all day no problem" and "DEAD" that we forget that there IS a middle ground there, or at least in this edition there is.
This is also a good point.
One thing that could contribute to this mentality could be the 'injury tables' that I've seen some people come up with. Making a player who drops and starts failing saves have to roll on these tables, and risk coming out of the fight with an ongoing injury (broken arm, concussion, etc) can also be a good way to keep the player's proactive when someone drops.
Jeremy Mac Donald |
An alternative rule would be to make failed Death saves go away after an extended rest rather than any rest. It won't work if you only have one or two encounters each day, but with failures stacking up over the course of a day later encounters are a lot more lethal. That at least was our experience early on when we misread the rules and thought that was how it was supposed to work. It made for some frantic hurrying to get to a fighter who'd gone down with two ticks against him from earlier encoutners.
The problem with a rule like this is two fold. One is its hard to explain, it does not feel 'realistic'. For some reason going down earlier makes you more vulnerable later - as opposed to when you first went down.
The second problem is its probably bad for the game as a whole. What happens is that a player goes down and then is extremely motivated to take a long rest, we are back to the 5 minute work day where players are willing to move heaven and earth to stop the adventure.
Jeremy Mac Donald |
I think it's important to note that you can bring about a sense of danger in the players without murdering them off.
You can be taken down in the battlefield without being killed, which is I think what they were really going for. And a fight can be hair-raising and dangerous without anyone hitting negatives.
I think the problem is that we've gotten so used to there being no middle ground between "just stands there and fights all day no problem" and "DEAD" that we forget that there IS a middle ground there, or at least in this edition there is.
Which would be fine if hitting negatives was not such a yawner. I mean if it actually caused players to be at all nervous it'd work great. As it stands I think if I go down in the game I play in the reaction is going to be something along the lines of "I'm going to grab a soda, if you guys get around to it bring me back up."
Jeremy Mac Donald |
...My advice if you want them to treat every death seriously, but without making dropping a guaranteed death sentence? Natural 1 on a death save kills you......The chance is low, but just by existing, it will spur the players to action. Just be prepared to have people die when it comes up - you get back into the potential for someone to drop and then bleed out before anyone can do anything. As long as you are willing to actually have someone die to it when the time comes.
Hmm. You know this actually sounds like a really good rule - they should have had a sidebar with optional rules along this line. Your right that it immediately brings the tension back into the game - everyone is scared when making a fatal roll. Sort of a save or die mechanic but only applicable when you've actually hit the ground.
I like how simple the rule is, always a plus in my book, plus I really like how a DM can kind of set the lethality level of the campaign with this - a 1 for rare but potential kills. Mathematically I think this is a 'once or twice' in a hard campaign type event. However you could raise the odds, make it a 1-2, 1-3 or even 1-5 depending on how brutal a world you want to run.
I think I'm going to set this at 1-3 and see how that turns out.
Uchawi |
Maybe I don't understand your problem, but do you think because of the negative hit point threshold, combined with saves makes the certainty of death trivial, because within 1-3 rounds the character will be saved? The thing that I dislike about going negative is a heal check or power that brings you back to zero immediately, i.e. what happened to all the damage you just took?
Rolling a 1 on a D20 to die does add immediate tension to each roll (great idea), but as a DM, I can bring equal attention in regards to the threat of death by damage alone (coup de grace).
Or as it was eluded to above, if you are negative and left alone, is it too hard to die once 5 minutes has passed and combat is ended?
I will go back over the negative hit points and death rules, just so I am interpreting everything correctly.
Jeremy Mac Donald |
Maybe I don't understand your problem, but do you think because of the negative hit point threshold, combined with saves makes the certainty of death trivial, because within 1-3 rounds the character will be saved? The thing that I dislike about going negative is a heal check or power that brings you back to zero immediately, i.e. what happened to all the damage you just took?
Rolling a 1 on a D20 to die does add immediate tension to each roll (great idea), but as a DM, I can bring equal attention in regards to the threat of death by damage alone (coup de grace).
Or as it was eluded to above, if you are negative and left alone, is it too hard to die once 5 minutes has passed and combat is ended?
I will go back over the negative hit points and death rules, just so I am interpreting everything correctly.
I have issues with both the coup de grace elements of the system and the three strikes rule. coup de grace's main problems is it puts character death squarely in the hands of the DM. Generally I think its a bad situation when its DMs personal whim whether or not a players character lives or dies. That opens up a huge can of worms which can have consequences around DM favoritism and its difficult to adjudicate in the best of circumstances. If the players use Ghost Sound to try and distract the monster does that work? If not is this a case where it would have worked if another players character was down?
You mention above the concept of telegraphing to you players whether this was a 'I kill you if you go down' fight or not. This removes DM whim, mostly, from the situation but it artificially divides the fights into 'easy' and 'hard' for no other reason then a desire for the DM to get some tension from some of the fights. I want to avoid that as I prefer leaving the lethality of all fights up to the players to discover, in part because that makes fights that are not as tough much less 'grindy' the players take longer to regulate a fight down to 'not dangerous' and until they classify the fight as 'not dangerous' tension remains high and the fight exciting. Hence any method that tells the players 'here is a fight you can die in' makes all other fights less exciting. It also, somewhat, spoils scenes where the players may start by underestimating the fight - its always really exciting when they all start yelling at once because things have unexpectedly gotten out of hand.
Hence I think coup de grace has a place in the game but its place is very situational and mostly exists to deal with players cut off from their comrades who then go down.
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As for the three strikes rule. Your correct, the odds are such that, especially with characters and monsters both doing more damage these days, that it pretty much no longer comes into play. By the point where the monsters have messed the party up so badly that they start to go down there is very little chance that enough rounds will go by for players to be making that tension filled 'possibly my third strike' roll. If the monsters continue to press the attack against the still standing players then the downed player has nothing at all to fear except that his comrades might run or all die. Bleeding out itself is not actually dangerous because the fights always end before enough rounds go by to make it so except in the hugely small number of cases (I've never seen it) where the player blows the first two rolls immediately.
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Hence my issues with PC death. Coup de grace is not a very good method for killing players and the three strikes rule, if it ever functioned, certainly does not do so any more.
Uchawi |
It makes sense now, and after writing my post, I thought the issue may be one of the DM making a decision, via encounter design, or on the spot (coup de grace), versus having a game mechanic (like rolling a 1 on the D20 for death save). It is all a matter of preference. I tend towards the former, as I have already ran into the same issue multiple times with other game systems. But that goes back to my first response on this thread, and I tend to give an option to avoid death. However, I am rethinking that as well.
Hopefully, you find something that works.
Jeremy Mac Donald |
Hmm. You know this actually sounds like a really good rule - they should have had a sidebar with optional rules along this line. Your right that it immediately brings the tension back into the game - everyone is scared when making a fatal roll. Sort of a save or die mechanic but only applicable when you've actually hit the ground.I like how simple the rule is, always a plus in my book, plus I really like how a DM can kind of set the lethality level of the campaign with this - a 1 for rare but potential kills. Mathematically I think this is a 'once or twice' in a hard campaign type event. However you could raise the odds, make it a 1-2, 1-3 or even 1-5 depending on how brutal a world you want to run.
I think I'm going to set this at 1-3 and see how that turns out.
Well then...
So Tuesday evening my newbs convince me to run another session after work. After everyone takes a seat I inform them that 'The Training Wheels are now off - if you go down then on a 1-3 on your death saves you outright die'. They understand but I don't really think that they 'get it'. I've been threatening them for so long that it appears they no longer believe me even as they take their que's to make scared noses.
They've finished with the end encounter of this section of the adventure and I make some comments about things being 'all quite'. I'm actually hinting to them that its safe to take a long rest know as they are pretty tapped out.
They don't and what they don't know is that in killing the last bad guy they summoned what is essentially the fetus of a reborn God from an area of interest at the beginning of the adventure. I walk them through exiting the adventure as another hint - they need to realize that soon they will enter that evil cathedral and they have hints from the last bad guy that 'killing him will just make him stronger.' (que Star Wars music).
They even comment that maybe something will be up in this room but remain unconcerned. So they hit the room and find their way blocked by a really potent solo in the form of the evil Gods fetus (now very pissed that the Players have destroyed its chance of ever actually being a God and just left it as a horrible abomination).
The players start to go to town on it and are relieved to find that its defenses don't seem as high as some of the other creatures they have fought recently. They've never faced a Solo before, elites being the most dangerous thing they have come upon and they just don't seem to recognize the danger they are in.
Its odd to watch this thing unravel because there does not ever really seem to be a moment when they truly panic. Always before when things got hard they panicked but here it just kind of never happens. Nothing obvious about the creature really seems to set them off. It does good damage but not really more then that baby dragon. Its defenses are clearly lower - they usually hit. Its attacks are significantly worse and it misses them moderately often. Its like the monster just never sent them 'be scared' signals - the only time they really comment is when it gets past 150 hps damage and is not yet blooded, so when it all goes wrong it seems to happen in the blink of an eye.
What they seem to have missed is that its essentially a race to the bottom in terms of hps and its a race that they are loosing despite getting some pretty good rolls and my rolls being only moderate.
What happens is, seemingly out of the blue..
Paladin [at the start of the Clerics turn]: I really need healing".
Rogue: "Damn, me too, how can he heal us both?".
Cleric: "heal you both? I spent the last of my healing powers two rounds ago, I can't heal either of you."
Paladin: "Oh crap - I still have lay on hands but at the start of my turn I'm going to drop from the cold damage. What other healing does the party have?"
A quick inventory makes it clear that most of the parties healing was used in the last fight and that there is a single potion of healing...On the Paladin, who goes down at the start of the round. What follows is still oddly devoid of panic - but it certainly has consternation. Maybe this is because its turned into a math problem, they don't need me to roll low - they need to figure out how to handle the situation and the creatures cold aura 2 for 5 damage is whats really holding them up.
The cleric actually manages to stabilize the Paladin which avoids the death save roll for a round but the cold aura from the creature starts it up again while simultaneously bringing attention to the fact that the cold aura will kill the Paladin player in a few rounds unless they can distract the abomination. Its a complex series of maneuvers but they formulate a plan, the Mage uses Mage Hand to retrieve the Paladins potion, they'll draw it away and then they can save the Paladin. As the Paladin's players turn comes up he makes a speech involving the need to get him back up - he still has healing, if they could just get things organized, he can heal some, and there are second winds and action points still available - enough to win this fight.
Then its time for his death save...a 3...I say 'well thats that then - this is the end of the line for the Paladin who succumbs to the punishment he's been taking'.
I never seem to get panic from my players this session...but here I certainly get shock. How could this happen?
I stop the session and the players meander off with many accusations of 'murderer' heading my way.
I hold the Paladin player back and, roughly an hour and a half later, he has a brand new Warden character.
...and thats the story of how I killed my first 4E character - with the help of some tough house rules.