In their first battle (ESB) Luke loses the fight and is saved by deus ex machina (he somehow survives a thousand foot fall without injury), and in the second battle he defeats Vader rather handily (hah hah, that's a pun. 'cause he cuts Vader's hand off. get it?).
In that particular battle, Luke, realizing that he can't win, retreats -- surviving the fall by using the Force to push him into those vents. That would be the player using his abilities to get away rather than being killed (or, to Luke, worse, turned to the Dark Side) more than GM Fiat. [Also: Mal Reynolds goes in, grabs stuff and runs away from the authorities many times - not to mention his fear of Reavers.]
There's a huge difference to not retreating ever and sometimes having your back against the wall so you can't retreat.
However, and getting back to the point - and using another example from SW to illustrate it (namely, fleeing the Death Star) -- if you don't consider them leaving to be running away, that's fine -- however, I think it would be folly to (as the GM) have rewarded the characters for, rather than leaving when they rescued the princess (even at the cost of one of their own holding back the BBEG), turning and trying to take on literally thousands of Stormtroopers and the BBEG who could defeat them single-handedly (as evidenced by the scene in Empire).
If you want to play that way, then fine. But the great majority of players I've played with and ran campaigns for have all told me that they prefer to have consequences for their actions and to feel like they've BEATEN the odds, not had the odds stacked in their favor.
Exactly. It's heroic to overcome the odds and climb the metaphorical mountain. Not so much when you have training wheels that reduce it to a molehill. In the first case, you can celebrate how clever and good you were... In the second, you can celebrate what -- how clever and good the GM was to you?
2) For all those DMs preaching the 'Run away' method of adventuring... he's MY problem.
When do you DO it?
When exactly do you cut and run? When your at half hp? 1/4 hp? Remember the players don't know exactly HOW they are doing against the bad guy... Only the DM has access to BOTH sets of HP and can see when they are outmatched..
Depends on the NPC. For instance, one of the Triumverate of BBEGs the party's out to stop (part of a cult), they've already met. He's a Cleric who, that day, was acting as a undead-making factory. He put up a blade barrier, sent in an acolyte and a Fast Zombie Dragon, and when those were defeated -- Word of Recall. The next time, he was breaking into an area, and when the distraction wore off and he was about to get swarmed -- Word of Recall. They've cost him a whackload of resources, and by killing some of his underlings, political support in the Cult - so now he's really mad at them - but he's still not going to stand there and let them kill him - he's smart enough to only attack when he thinks he has the advantage (and that's the other thing -- BBEGs in my world *will* waste attacks that by doing something you're resistant to -- but they'll probably only do it once).
One of his disciples, however, being promised that dying in the service of everything brings glory to him stayed to the bitter end, getting pummeled, because that's what he thought would make sense. Even though the mission was lost, because the magic item they brought to do it was destroyed. Even though his boss Recalled away...
Contrast: The group of Hobgoblin Mercenaries surrendered and offered ransom the moment their boss recalled away, for instance.
Fanatical NPCs fight to the death, just like rabid wolverines.... But not every BBEG is fanatical (not even raging barbarians).
USUALLY by the time I'm truly scared enough to consider running away... It's too late. I turn my back on the enemy... and he gets free shots on me till I'm dead. MANY times, I can't even justify a round of doing 'no damage' to the enemy to drink that all important healing potion... It's blood and Glory time... Hope for High Damage and low attacks from him, and hope you overcome....
So taking a withdraw action or 5'-foot step to safety and then using spells to obscure vision, increase movement, etc -- those are all off the table? I'm thinking that maybe the issue isn't when you choose to retreat so much as not being tactically prepared for the possibility of retreat.
If you remove the threat of failure and death from the players then you might as well be reading a book. It's dull. Majorly dull.
Hold on, reading books is Dull? Okay, I concede that if you can't get any excitement from reading, than storytelling style gaming is not for you.
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If you remove the threat of failure and death from the players then you might as well be reading a book. It's dull. Majorly dull.Hold on, reading books is Dull? Okay, I concede that if you can't get any excitement from reading, than storytelling style gaming is not for you.
He means that there is nothing you can do that will change the outcome of the book, and while reading a book is fine, playing a story to which you already know the ending to is boring and unfun. I'd rather be at risk of dying at all times.
To the heroic dude...chill out. Heroes are heroes because they succeed at doing the impossible. Where they would succeed, thousands would die trying. Maybe the characters are heroes, but if they all die, they are not THE heroes of the story, maybe they contribute...
One thing that I think is being minimized in this discussion is why *not* to fudge - and for me the big one is this: agency. The Players need to feel that what their characters do matters. Without that, the game is meaninglessI couldn't disagree more. The game is about having fun and telling a story, not random numbers. Fudging has been an accepted practice for DMs since the EARLY days of D&D. If it spoils the game for you and your players, that's fine: don't do it. But I and many, many players have had decades of fun with the OCCASIONAL fudge. It hasn't ruined the game for them or me, and in three decades of gaming, I've only had ONE player complain about it, and that only momentarily.
And, again, if you're a player and you realize that coming up with good tactics is just a waste of time (because you're going to win anyway, because it's "dramatic" and matches a trope) -- where is the fun?
If I want fun from a story someone else is telling, I can stay home and read -- it's much easier to coordinate, too.
If there is no risk of failure (and, to be fair, failure can and sometimes should be something other than TPK) - then where is the fun coming from? You didn't overcome any odds, because there weren't any.
If all you want is purely interactive storytelling, well, there are game systems where there are no dice for just such things....
If you think that this reduces the game to being about random numbers, than, personally, I think you're very much missing the points about research, tactics, effort, good ideas, etc, etc that most of us have been raising.
Having said that, I'm glad your system works for you -- as I said in my original post, I used to do it too. It's just that I reached a point where I realized that doing so was actually taking fun away from them, and we haven't looked back since.
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My role is to challenge the players, not to mollycoddle them. I feel that the best encounters I have ever ran were the ones where the players succeeded by the skin of their teeth. I always smile when I remove a creature from the battle mat and my players breathe a sigh of relief. I even get the occasional "yes!"
If the players can't die then they can't lose. If they can't lose then there's no risk. If there's no risk there's no excitement.
If the only thing that causes your players to feel a sense of loss is the risk of character death, then chances are good you're roll-playing and not role-playing. There should be many, many ways for players to lose without dying. But that does require extra effort on the part of the GM.
You have to get players involved in the game on a level higher than mere survival. And that takes skill. Maintaining "excitement" by making every encounter potentially lethal is the easy way to do it, and doesn't require any real effort on the part of the GM. Any talentless hack can let the dice determine the outcome of the story.
But I know from two decades of experience that first victim of Lethal DMing is role-playing. If players lose characters every few sessions, then there's no point in investing in the character. There's no point in creating a unique and interesting character if its just going to die the first time you have a string of bad rolls and the DM has a string of good roles.
In the twenty years I've been a player in D&D, I've created maybe 50 characters. Some of them were very memorable. Most of them were Generic Fighter #1-20, created because I didn't give a crap about my character because I knew he was going to die, and I was sick of wasting my energy coming up with meaningful characters.
There's very little that makes me hate a DM as quickly as spending a week dreaming up a new character, writing his backstory, drawing a character picture, figuring out how that character ties into the campaign and what his motives are, and then watching all of my hard work get erased twenty minutes into the first session because a dire rat rolled a critical hit.
At some point you're just playing a Pen & Paper version of Rogue.
"Here lies Bob the Fighter, killed by giant rat #2."
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If you remove the threat of failure and death from the players then you might as well be reading a book. It's dull. Majorly dull.Hold on, reading books is Dull? Okay, I concede that if you can't get any excitement from reading, than storytelling style gaming is not for you.
Patronising much?
If I want to read a book I'll read a book. If I want to play a game I'll play a game. The two are not the same thing.
A game is a collaborative effort, not an opportunity for the GM to write a book where the players get no say in what they are doing.
What I meant is that it's dull when a GM is running a book not a roleplaying game. It's not about the GM's vision, it's a collective vision. Character death is part of that.
To all my fellow DM's... TPK and DM saves is it something you allow and if so how often and under what circumstances so as to not break the "suspension of reality"? Just curious how other DM's handle theses situations.
I have very seldom had to deal with a TPK... but generally speaking it would depend a lot on the circumstances and the story involved.
The one notable near-TPK that happened involved 1st or 2nd level characters played by very inexperienced players. They made common newb mistakes in a tough fight (which I as a newb GM probably should not have thrown at them YET). Because of the situation--it was early on in game, they were still learning, and it was going to be a huge pain in the ass for me to have them create new characters at that moment--and because I had a good story reason for doing so, I had the NPC wizard who hired them (who was too old and frail to go out adventuring on his own) happen to be scrying on them at the right moment and teleported them back to his tower before they could be killed (all of them had dropped unconscious but none were actually dead yet). They got a huge reaming out IC by their employer, with a more gentle OOC discussion about party tactics afterwards. They worked much better together afterward, and that kind of thing did not happen again.
There are circumstances where--especially if the party was experienced and still brought the downfall on themselves--sure, I would just say, yep, everybody's dead and no one can afford to raise all of you. But many times, because it's easier for storytelling, I would find a way to rescue them---but also at a cost--maybe they lose a limb that regenerate can't regrow, or they have to recover the thing they were trying to rescue, or their losing the fight has other story consequences that are earth shattering enough. For example, "The good news is you're alive. But the bad news is Dispater now rules the city you're in over the giant gaping hellmouth that appeared where that lovely garden used to be. Oh, and yeah, you are going to have to negotiate very carefully with that horned devil about getting your stuff back." Really, that's actually a lot more interesting than just letting everybody die. :)
The important thing is yes--if you do save the party from TPK, there does need to be a story reason for everyone to avoid their grisly fate. But in my experience, there usually is one. Even, "you all wake up" can be acceptable sometimes, if not overused.
I agree with a lot of what is being said, some great advice and opinions. I believe (as someone said above) that PC's have a chance to become epic hero or just a footnote in history.
I also think, when taking my group into consideration, that the push forward kick in the door style is fun but if no consequences exist for truly bad decisions, the game loses something.
I think 2 hero point per session, that expire at the end and renew next session is a good start. They can choose to take chances and use them for penache acts or to save their PC if something unfortunate happens.I also like to ask how DM's deal with restarts (feels like game flavor is lost) and upset players. I like to think if I made an error and TPK'd a group I would own up to it and make things right.
Let's say though you gave them good avenues and in/out of game warnings and ability to accomplish the mission without TPK encounter or diplomacy but they end up all dead....?
Sometimes I get the feeling that some of the player think they are playing against you and not with you? Anyone else experience this?
I have never had a TPK, but if I did I would ask them would they want to start back from level 1 or from the current level. If they choose to not do a complete restart I make an in-game reason as to why someone else gets involved.
Some players do play against you, but in different ways. I had one player who admittedly says he tries to break his characters. Others have read ahead in an adventure. Some cause problems only by accident or due to a difference in what they expect as a playstyle.I let my players know up front not to do silly things, and then I give examples. I also inform them that certain bad guys use tactics.
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If the only thing that causes your players to feel a sense of loss is the risk of character death, then chances are good you're roll-playing and not role-playing. There should be many, many ways for players to lose without dying. But that does require extra effort on the part of the GM.My role is to challenge the players, not to mollycoddle them. I feel that the best encounters I have ever ran were the ones where the players succeeded by the skin of their teeth. I always smile when I remove a creature from the battle mat and my players breathe a sigh of relief. I even get the occasional "yes!"
If the players can't die then they can't lose. If they can't lose then there's no risk. If there's no risk there's no excitement.
Oh please. Because I disagree with your position I'm roll playing? What utter tosh.
You have to get players involved in the game on a level higher than mere survival. And that takes skill. Maintaining "excitement" by making every encounter potentially lethal is the easy way to do it, and doesn't require any real effort on the part of the GM. Any talentless hack can let the dice determine the outcome of the story.
Who says I don't? You are equating allowing characters to die to be a poor form of roleplaying when in fact it can create some of the best roleplaying moments.
But I know from two decades of experience that first victim of Lethal DMing is role-playing. If players lose characters every few sessions, then there's no point in investing in the character. There's no point in creating a unique and interesting character if its just going to die the first time you have a string of bad rolls and the DM has a string of good roles.
So why have dice? Why run combats? Just say the players win the fights. If the players can't die then they are effectively immortal through a big GM ex Machina.
In the twenty years I've been a player in D&D, I've created maybe 50 characters. Some of them were very memorable. Most of them were Generic Fighter #1-20, created because I didn't give a crap about my character because I knew he was going to die, and I was sick of wasting my energy coming up with meaningful characters.
Free piece of advice don't try to out grognard someone. It doesn't mean anything and it never goes down well. For reference I've been roleplaying for 27 years but that doesn't make my opinion any more or less valid than yours or in fact someone who has started playing last week.
I've created hundreds of characters all of them distinctive and all of them fun to play. Just because some of them died doesn't invalidate them in any way. In fact it's the immortal characters that are the dull ones because there is no risk.
There's very little that makes me hate a DM as quickly as spending a week dreaming up a new character, writing his backstory, drawing a character picture, figuring out how that character ties into the campaign and what his motives are,...
So you want your characters to be immortal, to never encounter risk? Yes I agree there are fates worse than death but by removing death as a possibility you are removing the point of combat itself. That's not combat, that's the Care Bears.
I agree that killer GM's are bad but cotton wool GM's are worse if anything. I'd hate to be in a game where I knew that the character I had in my hands couldn't die because of GM fudging, it's a sign of an autocratic GM who is more interested in his vision than challenging his players. It breaks the illusion of reality and in fact damages roleplaying because the player does not feel in control of their own actions.
For reference I ran through Legacy of Fire and had 4 character deaths and I am almost through Kingmaker and I have had 3 character deaths. Those are not the stats of the killer GM that you assume me to be.
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In 20 years of gaming you've never learned to use tactics (including running away) to avoid TPK?
Why would one use tactics? My GM is supposed to make sure I live. If he allows me to die then I can't be a hero, and he is impeding on my fun. No good GM impedes on fun.
Why would one use tactics? My GM is supposed to make sure I live. If he allows me to die then I can't be a hero, and he is impeding on my fun. No good GM impedes on fun.
In 20 years of gaming you've never learned to use tactics (including running away) to avoid TPK?
In turn, no good player forgets that the DM is wanting to have fun as well, and having to babysit a party using horrible tactics isn't fun.
No, Lilith. In 20+ years of gaming I've never seen running away WORK as a tactic. Almost every character death I've experienced was the truly of either a) being punished by the em for trying something heroic, b) pure em maliciousness or c) getting killed while trying to run away.
I would not cause a TPK if the party tries to escape. I am not going to make a clear escape path for them, but to hound them, and make sure they die anyway is not how I GM. I think you have suffered under many adversarial GM's if all the characters that got killed were under A, B, or C.
Characters should die.
I agree role-playing should never be about GM vs Player, but I want the possibility of death when I play. If I can't die, why bother rolling dice?
If there's no point rolling dice, why build a character?
If no character, why don't we just sit around and do storytime?
I think some of you guys are taking this to extremes - i.e. Malicious GM or Big Softy.
There should be a happy medium.
No, Lilith. In 20+ years of gaming I've never seen running away WORK as a tactic. Almost every character death I've experienced was the truly of either a) being punished by the em for trying something heroic, b) pure em maliciousness or c) getting killed while trying to run away.
+1.
I nearly survived an encounter in Kingmaker that ended up a TPK, but as I was fleeing, a lucky shot in the back knocked me out. In fact, the only thing running away accomplishes in this game usually is a non-TPK, where 1 character survives to tell the tale. This was the standard operating procedure in a Faerun game I was in, where my character would constantly be the only survivor (he's infamous now for it in my group).
Anyway, the point is, simply running away when it's discovered that the odds are too great is also a deadly endeavor, and doesn't stop a TPK, or what might as well have been one.
You have to pay attention to your party's capabilities/hit points/spells remaining/etc. Your party needs to do research on who the enemy is, where the enemy is, and where the exits are.
I believe this is oversimplifying.
I've never had a TPK, but since switching to Pathfinder... I've had more NEAR deaths than I EVER did in 2E. Most were sudden and violent.
How exactly do you 'research' these enemies? Only the BBEG is ever on the radar... everything ELSE in the dungeons are complete unknowns...
example.
Walk into tomb... 6 shadows pop up surrounding you. 1d6 strength damage... I have 10 strengh... Should we all just scream in terror and flee for our lives? 2 hits can kill just about anyone here... running activates AoO rolls... so because you MIGHT die, you chose to give them free shots?
I went exploring some ruin thing... saw a hole in the wall.. Took a look in, got hit with 6 tentacles all constricting... I was at -5 in that first surprise round...
STILL not sure what that thing was....
I stand by the comment that by the time you know you MAY not win... it's too late to run...
Ok, ignoring the ongoing argument and answering the original question: no, I never TPK when I DM. A typical campaign of mine is heavily planned out and delves into the characters' backstories. The trick is, my players don't know this. To them, there is the potential for a TPK. Yes, I fudge die rolls, will suddenly cut enemies HP in half, and various other things to tip things back into the PC's favor, but my players don't know this.
However, I am currently planning a more sandboxy campaign that will rarely if ever touch on PC's backstories, and there will be the possibility of encounters way above the average party level. There will be no fudged die rolls in this game. If the players can't/won't run away, come up with a unique/clever strategy, or get extremely lucky, they will die in this situation. I'm will even be going so far as to suggest they have a second character prepared in case they die.
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No, Lilith. In 20+ years of gaming I've never seen running away WORK as a tactic. Almost every character death I've experienced was the truly of either a) being punished by the em for trying something heroic, b) pure em maliciousness or c) getting killed while trying to run away.I would not cause a TPK if the party tries to escape. I am not going to make a clear escape path for them, but to hound them, and make sure they die anyway is not how I GM. I think you have suffered under many adversarial GM's if all the characters that got killed were under A, B, or C.
I forgot d) the cleric's player refused to play the role of combat medic. That's killed several of my fighters.
But you make a good point - running away only works if the DM lets it work. And I've never encountered a DM who uses the sort of rationalizations that Lilith uses that allowed players to escape. If players can run away, it's because the DM decided they could, not because its actually an defective tactic.
And despite Lilith's insults, I do know how to survive lethal DMs. I just don't always want to play highly tactical survivors who don't take risks. It's limiting, constrictive, and reduces character options. It encourages meta-gaming, power gaming, and makes many classic character archetypes unplayable.
I forgot d) the cleric's player refused to play the role of combat medic. That's killed several of my fighters.
You mean he only used spells to make himself fight better or he just completely refused to heal anyone?
But you make a good point - running away only works if the DM lets it work. And I've never encountered a DM who uses the sort of rationalizations that Lilith uses that allowed players to escape. If players can run away, it's because the DM decided they could, not because its actually an defective tactic.
Sometimes the bad guys, within the rules, just can't do anything to stop you. They may not be fast enough, or you may teleport away, and so on. Low level parties are a lot easier to kill if they try to run though, but I am a lot easier on low level parties though since the battles are more swingy at those levels.
And despite Lilith's insults, I do know how to survive lethal DMs. I just don't always want to play highly tactical survivors who don't take risks. It's limiting, constrictive, and reduces character options. It encourages meta-gaming, power gaming, and makes many classic character archetypes unplayable.
Playing the hero who does not know when to back away should mean you would be more prepared for his death, as opposed to the opportunistic hero who has no issue making sure a fight is on his terms.
Taking risk is always divided into the camps of reasonable risk and unreasonable risk.Now just to make sure I am not reading you incorrectly you are saying that if your concept is the hero who fights against all odds no matter what, and who charges in guns blazing the GM should make sure that you don't die.
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I died 4 times in my game :
- Eviscerated at level 1 by a feral alchemist full-attack.
- Killed by my brother, 4 levels higher than me at level 4.
- Crushed to death at level 7 by a PA/VS x3 critical hit with a Large maul from a giant.
- Vaporized at level 10 by a 8-heads hydra breath.
(I fear level 13.)
Yet I'm still alive and my pals call me Jesus. Low-magic and heavy danger campaign, but powerful magic.
And we still fear death, because the means to come back are awesomely rare or need specific ingredients/competences, like a 1-week ritual from the elven druids where each of them can lose his life from exhaustion, or a drop of golden-licorn blood. And this is for 1 amulet/1 resurrection. We totally lost 3 of our pals on specific occasions, but since the campaign is deeply tied to our backgrounds, the DM tends to make a quest or a recompense for resurrections when it is possible. If not because of RP or situation, well, time to move on with a new character...
So, I guess TPKs shouldn't exist if the campaign is based on your characters' backgrounds - or only as a tool to get on new territories (Dante's Comedie inspired an epic inferno-based campaign after a TPK in a previous game). It seems more suited to sandbox campaigns.
And in the same way stupidity should be punished, a good player with a good character should always have a chance to come back or save against a danger.
No, Lilith. In 20+ years of gaming I've never seen running away WORK as a tactic. Almost every character death I've experienced was the truly of either a) being punished by the em for trying something heroic, b) pure em maliciousness or c) getting killed while trying to run away.I would not cause a TPK if the party tries to escape. I am not going to make a clear escape path for them, but to hound them, and make sure they die anyway is not how I GM. I think you have suffered under many adversarial GM's if all the characters that got killed were under A, B, or C.
This is how I feel too, but this very thing is DM fudging in many cases. Say in Kingmaker my party is fighting trolls at 2nd or 3rd level and having bad luck. They literally cannot retreat if I play the trolls as wanting to kill them, so I would fudge by allowing them to scare the trolls with a torch and pull back, or let them mount their horses and run away in the same turn rather than running to their horses causing them to eat a charge from the trolls.
If we're going by stories of retreats Star Wars is full of DM fiat as well. The rescuing of the princess required DM fiat to find and shootout a grate to escape, not planning, then DM fiat for the garbage masher to start up at that particular moment and be stopped by NPCs at the last possible moment. DM fiat for Luke and Leia when retreating from the stormtroopers across the Death Star, then being let go in the end. I can understand allowing TPKs, or I can understand allowing DM fiat retreats, I don't understand the argument that says a DM shouldn't fudge because the players can retreat, when 9 times out of 10 a retreat requires DM fiat to be an option.
For my part, I was DMing Kingmaker, rolling openly in a troll encounter and had to have an NPC sacrifice themselves and the troll act a little more stupid than usual so that the party wouldn't be killed by a string of bad rolls on their part and crits on my part. After the fight I asked them why they didn't retreat when it started getting bad and they gave me pause by pointing out that the troll is faster than them, mounting their horses takes too much time to let them escape by withdrawing, and that their unmounted NPC allies would be left to die, which in character the characters wouldn't have allowed. I've told them since that I will work with them to let them retreat if that's what they wanted, but that is just as much DM fiat as having the troll attack less wounded PCs, spread the pain around, or target an NPC when I rolled a confirmed crit, two hits, and a rend in one round's full attack after a single confirmed crit and a hit the previous round.
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@Lilith - that would be a fair point if you weren't attacking a strawman and putting words in my mouth. My argument is that allowing the dice to determine the story is at odds with player driven roleplaying - there is no reward for being invested in a character that might get randomly killed with no dramatic reason.
It's not that lethal DMing means roleplaying is impossible, or that lethal DMs are automatically rollplayers, its that lethal DMing is counterproductive to encouraging roleplaying. The more lethal the game, the less reason there is to care about any one character. If your character dies in the first encounter because of a DM critical, then your character was never the hero of the storybook - he was an extra.
@wraithstrike - I think if the player wants to play a heroic character rather than a tactical character, the DM should make an effort to accommodate that player OR be honest and tell them to find a different DM. killing a player's characters until he learns to be tactical is punishing the player for not playing the way the DM wants him too.
...... I can understand allowing DM fiat retreats, I don't understand the argument that says a DM shouldn't fudge because the players can retreat, when 9 times out of 10 a retreat requires DM fiat to be an option.
I don't think retreating requires DM Fiat most of the time. I ran a campaign with a boss monster and the party decided to retreat. He could not have chased all of them down. In this circumstance one player decided to stay behind to hold him off. All that was needed was for the player to hold his attention for one round which was reasonable with the damage the character was capable of. Your troll example falls in line with my low level statement earlier, and I was thinking of that when I wrote it since I also had the troll issue in KM.
I can't think of too many times when retreating is bound by GM fiat. Normally the way out is not blocked. It would normally require GM fiat to keep them trapped(the ceiling caves in, blocking the door for some reason, but only directly in front of the way out).
@Lilith - that would be a fair point if you weren't attacking a strawman and putting words in my mouth. My argument is that allowing the dice to determine the story is at odds with player driven roleplaying - there is no reward for being invested in a character that might get randomly killed with no dramatic reason.
It's not that lethal DMing means roleplaying is impossible, or that lethal DMs are automatically rollplayers, its that lethal DMing is counterproductive to encouraging roleplaying. The more lethal the game, the less reason there is to care about any one character. If your character dies in the first encounter because of a DM critical, then your character was never the hero of the storybook - he was an extra.
@wraithstrike - I think if the player wants to play a heroic character rather than a tactical character, the DM should make an effort to accommodate that player OR be honest and tell them to find a different DM. killing a player's characters until he learns to be tactical is punishing the player for not playing the way the DM wants him too.
I don't think a character should have plot immunity if nobody else does. I think RP'ing is partly about living with your choices. If I play a verbally abusive jerk, and I insult some official(king, mayor, etc), and I get thrown in jail for it then I have no right to complain. If I play the barbarian whose rage means he will not stop fighting I should not expect my hp to get down to 1, and suddenly I can no longer be hit, or the GM reduce the bad guys hp, so I don't die.
I think that is the difference here. I as a GM don't care how you play the game, but my guys won't suddenly drop to an int of 5 or less and not flank because you won't back off. I am willing to help you boost AC and your offense, but one must live with the choices one makes.PS:I don't think being tactical means you are not heroic. It just means you are a different type of hero. I also think heroes can die. I am not saying your playstyle is invalid, but it is more narrative than what most GM's I know will go for. At what point you go from being potential hero to being a hero whether you live or not is for another debate though.
I just wish houstonderek was here. He'd have the thread locked -- and the most agrumentative contributor banned again -- within six posts.
Until then, TOZ's bold post above is about the only part of the argument that's helpful. Some players want to outwit their enemies, and have their characters avoid death through their own cunning, or else perish. Other players want their PCs to kick in the door and go to town without fear of consequences. A good DM needs to take these differing styles of play into account.
I can't think of too many times when retreating is bound by GM fiat. Normally the way out is not blocked. It would normally require GM fiat to keep them trapped(the ceiling caves in, blocking the door for some reason, but only directly in front of the way out).
...... I can understand allowing DM fiat retreats, I don't understand the argument that says a DM shouldn't fudge because the players can retreat, when 9 times out of 10 a retreat requires DM fiat to be an option.
Many times it would require the big bad to have No ranges spells... no Ranged weapons... AND not be faster than the characters.. {sadly MANY monsters are just as fast, if not faster than PCs Especially small pcs and/or wearing armor}
Stupid/animal bad guys would chase down their food and eat it.
Intelligent megaevils would probably not WANT the Pcs to get away, regroup, tell people about their plan, etc...
So yeah... if the bad guys are fighting with intelligent tactics up until the moment the pcs cut and run... I would see that as DMs 'fudging' the battle...
I'm sure there are individual games that are the exception to that... but I disagree that intelligent living pcs, should just 'assume' that turning my back on the bad guy will mean I live to fight another day...
As opposed to the more legit concern of 'if I turn my back and run, I'll die tired..'
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No, Lilith. In 20+ years of gaming I've never seen running away WORK as a tactic. Almost every character death I've experienced was the truly of either a) being punished by the em for trying something heroic, b) pure em maliciousness or c) getting killed while trying to run away.
Once people hit 7th to 9th level and start getting Dimension Door and Teleport spells preventing TPKs by a tactical withdrawal gets increasingly easy. Sure you might be forced to leave a person or two behind in some cases, but that still is a better than a TPK.
...... I can understand allowing DM fiat retreats, I don't understand the argument that says a DM shouldn't fudge because the players can retreat, when 9 times out of 10 a retreat requires DM fiat to be an option.
I don't think retreating requires DM Fiat most of the time. I ran a campaign with a boss monster and the party decided to retreat. He could not have chased all of them down. In this circumstance one player decided to stay behind to hold him off. All that was needed was for the player to hold his attention for one round which was reasonable with the damage the character was capable of. Your troll example falls in line with my low level statement earlier, and I was thinking of that when I wrote it since I also had the troll issue in KM.
I can't think of too many times when retreating is bound by GM fiat. Normally the way out is not blocked. It would normally require GM fiat to keep them trapped(the ceiling caves in, blocking the door for some reason, but only directly in front of the way out).
Maybe it's just Kingmaker then, but in all the fights I've run I've been watching for it to turn bad for the PCs and wondering how to give them a way to escape if it starts getting hopeless. The Troll, and later a Will o' the Wisp, both required bad tactical choices on the monster's part for them to survive. The Will o' the Wisp is fast enough to keep up with a running pony of a smaller character, and they only survived because I let the wizard and sorcerer be protected by the fighter with resist energy while they peppered it with MM, instead of having it go invisible and kill the wizard and sorcerer first and ignore the fighting types who couldn't touch it except on a natural 20.
For the troll I reduced the encounter from 2 to 1 trolls, then let an NPC sacrifice itself and didn't have the troll kill the men doing the most damage, instead spreading the hate around. I'm ok with this, the PCs were still terrified during the Will o' the Wisp encounter and really hate trolls(and owlbears) already, but in both cases playing differently and not fudging the tactics and encounter roll in the troll's case could've easily led to near or total party wipes. For me, fudging random encounters(at least twice ignoring a shambling mound or Will o' the Wisp result when the party was level 1) to allow the PCs to have a good shot of winning or at least retreating while still lose people or dropping to unconsciousness beats wiping half the party of low level players before I've gotten them to the Kingmaking part.
Many times it would require the big bad to have No ranges spells... no Ranged weapons... AND not be faster than the characters.. {sadly MANY monsters are just as fast, if not faster than PCs Especially small pcs and/or wearing armor}
I am not saying the entire party will escape without GM fiat. I am saying the chance of a TPK is small unless it is a low level party. You can move up to 4x your speed, and at least 3 if you do nothing but run. I don't see the entire party TPK'ing in most situations. At higher levels if the bad guy splits the party with battlefield control spells the others might have to teleport out and hope the buddies can make it. Running is not the only way to get away.
If some folks are interpreting "running away" as "fleeing in blind panic" then I think you are missing the point. There are ways to run away successfully. If your party is not planning a retreat strategy then imho your party deserves to be TPKd. There are a number of spells and tactics that are designed to facilitate a retreat. It is a rare battle that my druid goes into without "entangle" handy. My rogue always has potions or wands intended to facilitate retreat. Wizards can fly as well as having their own delaying spells. Summon spells are excellent diversions for a retreat. Short duration effects such as "daze" or "blind" may not kill the BBEG but they can give the party time to retreat. And there is always the option of sacrifice. Some of my most memorable role playing moments have been times when my character has sacrificed themselves for the sake of the party. In one campaign of mine a town is named for a character who nobly sacrificed himself. You can bet that town has special meaning for the player who ran that character.
In most cases a party that can't retreat tactically to avoid a TPK is a party that hasn't planned properly and has no contingency for retreat. I don't have much sympathy for parties like that.
And, of course, in my campaigns the NPCs are equally likely to run away. The group of bandits who ambushed the party in my current campaign each had a means of escape, and when two of their buddies went down, the rest of them ran like hell, and gott away clean. Now the party is hunting them down. That's how things work in my campaigns...
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My argument is that allowing the dice to determine the story is at odds with player driven roleplaying - there is no reward for being invested in a character that might get randomly killed with no dramatic reason.Then your argument, in my opinion, is flawed. Drama is about how characters respond to a world which isn't under their control - which isn't safe.
That's an arbitrary and artificial definition of drama that serves your argument, but doesn't actually have anything to do with any real definition of drama.
Let's compare two scenarios:
Scenario #1: Player Ed spends several weeks researching the trade houses of Venice and uses this research to craft a brilliant realized character with a complex and rich backstory involving the betrayal of his father by a business partner, an assassin cult that murdered his family (he survived only by a fluke of luck), and the years of training and carefully crafting a new identity so that he can rise to power, avenge his father and rebuild his family's fortune. He supplies the DM with a half-dozen potential NPCs who can influence the character's actions, as well as twelve page backstory.
In the first encounter of the first session, the player fails a perception check, loses initiative, and a fluke critical hit by a dire rat attacking in the surprise round kills the character.
Scenario #2: Player John copies Valeros's stats onto a character sheet, changes his name to Taleros, and writes "Taleros was a city guardsman, now he is an adventure." and calls his character done.
story.
In the first encounter of the first session, the player fails a perception check, loses initiative, and a fluke critical hit by a dire rat attacking in the surprise round kills the character.
Now, according to your argument as I understand it, this is "drama." The drama is equal in each scenarios, because the drama is created by how the player responds to a world which isn't under their control (whatever that means).
My argument, which you've yet to address (in preference of insulting me), is that while playing the dice as they fall is fine in scenario #2, if you do that in scenario #1 you're not going to teach Player Ed to be more tactical. You're not going to teach Player Ed to be a better player.
You're going to teach Player Ed to half-ass it like Player John. You're going to teach him to create bland, uninspired characters with no real depth, because the reality is that spending all of the time Player Ed spent creating an awesome, fully realized character who drives his own story only to have it die right out the gate due to a fluke die roll is not dramatic, it's frustrating and annoying.
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So the rat bit through his thigh artery and he bled out in seconds. Stuff like that happen to everybody. It's called life. I will never make my characters immortal, simply because the risk of death is what makes combat fun. If you know that you will not die because you're a hero then what's the point of playing? have the GM tell you the story he has written and go home. It's the same.
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Stuff like that happen to everybody. It's called life.
I thought I played "Pathfinder", where you have average-to-heroic characters living stories and overcoming dangers, and where dying from a rat's bite at level 1 is more worthy of happening to a friendly NPC for drama than to a player whose goal is to someday kill dragons ?
Did they LIE to me ?
(P.S : Yes, a bit of hyperbole here. It seems to me that this is exactly the kind of exaggeration that makes it look like people don't understand what their fellow Path-comrades are really trying to convey.)
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Stuff like that happen to everybody. It's called life.I thought I played "Pathfinder", where you have average-to-heroic characters living stories and overcoming dangers, and where dying from a rat's bite at level 1 is more worthy of happening to a friendly NPC for drama than to a player whose goal is to someday kill dragons ?
Did they LIE to me ?
(P.S : Yes, a bit of hyperbole here. It seems to me that this is exactly the kind of exaggeration that makes it look like people don't understand what their fellow Path-comrades are really trying to convey.)
A dire rat is the size of a dog, and it's incisors are most probably a half a foot to a whole foot long. That thing would kill you. Easily. Especially at low levels, where characters are still in the realm of human-level power.
And, again, if you're a player and you realize that coming up with good tactics is just a waste of time (because you're going to win anyway, because it's "dramatic" and matches a trope) -- where is the fun?
Avoiding a TPK is hardly the same as letting the players "win anyway" all the time. Why does everyone think fudging is all or nothing? It should be limited. Perhaps VERY limited.
Aside from that, the "fun" comes from playing the character who's coming up with the plans,not surviving. Just like finishing Neverwinter Nights is a lot more fun if you don't flop back to previous saves but get through on your own skill, so is defeating a Pathfinder encounter. That doesn't mean I drop my first five hours of NWN when my character dies because it "wouldn't be fun" to continue, it just means I need to try and do better and LIMIT my use of previous saves/respawns.
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So the rat bit through his thigh artery and he bled out in seconds. Stuff like that happen to everybody. It's called life. I will never make my characters immortal, simply because the risk of death is what makes combat fun. If you know that you will not die because you're a hero then what's the point of playing? have the GM tell you the story he has written and go home. It's the same.
I'm not interested in playing real life. The whole point of playing an RPG is because its NOT REAL LIFE.
I mean there is a reason I don't take running leaps off of bridges and land on the top of cars. I might fall off and be run over, and I can't afford the hospital bills.
I'm not really interested in playing RPGs where I can't run and jump off the roof a building and land on the back of a carriage because a bad die roll might kill me. I would rather play a game that rewards and encourages being heroic and having an awesome adventure than play a game that encourages staying home and being safe.
And what's this nonsense about "have the GM tell you the story he has written and go home?" That's actually MORE LIKELY to happen if character death is an ever present threat. If the story doesn't require my character to live to be resolved, then the story isn't about my character. It's about the DM's setting. It's the DM's story, and the individual characters are just place-holders, participants in the DM's story who are, ultimately, irrelevant to the story.
Star Wars isn't the story of the Rebel Alliance's defeat of the Empire, it's the story of Luke Skywalker discovering the truth of his own existence and confronting and redeeming his father. Star Wars doesn't work if you kill Luke Skywalker half-way through Empire Strikes Back and replace him with some other hero.
If the story can be continued and finished despite constant changes to the cast due to attrition, then the story isn't player driven. It's DM driven.
But I understand everyone gets something different from gaming. For me as a player, it's creating a full featured character who gets to interact with an exotic environment. For others its the thrill of victory. I do try to keep all my players' interests in mind when designing and running a session.
One solution is to codify rules for "fudging". In D20 modern, for example, I don't often find the need to fudge because of Action Points. In Pathfinder I don't generally invoke such rules because I do feel death should be closer at hand in the genre.
When fudging the other direction (i.e. saving a big bad to fight another day), Mutants and Masterminds has a rule called GM Fiat. Basically it says, if a GM needs to rewrite a scene for the sake of the story, he should do so. BUT, every character effected by this gets a free Hero Point, which they can later use to defeat the opponent in a crushingly awesome way later on. Once again, though, for Pathfinder I don't feel such things fit the genre well.
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I'm not really interested in playing RPGs where I can't run and jump off the roof a building and land on the back of a carriage because a bad die roll might kill me. I would rather play a game that rewards and encourages being heroic and having an awesome adventure than play a game that encourages staying home and being safe.
There are rules for that. There are also rules for falling damage. Pathfinder reality closely resembles our own when it comes to physics not involving magic.
I encourage heroics and bravery. I generally give circumstance bonuses to those characters who choose to do heroic stuff.But the point is, that pathfinder as written is meant to be played smart, not heroic. Because in most cases heroism means death.
For every hero, there are thousands would-be heroes. Dead people.
And what's this nonsense about "have the GM tell you the story he has written and go home?" That's actually MORE LIKELY to happen if character death is an ever present threat. If the story doesn't require my character to live to be resolved, then the story isn't about my character. It's about the DM's setting. It's the DM's story, and the individual characters are just place-holders, participants in the DM's story who are, ultimately, irrelevant to the story.
It's not nonsense, and i would politely ask you to calm down, and to not be so rude to people who disagree with you. If PCs can't die, then what is the point of playing with dice? Play diceless and tell a nice story. If there is no risk during combat, then what is the point of combat? There is no need to run combats whose outcome is already determined. Just improvise and say who killed whom.
Your character is as relevant to the story as you make him be. If he dies and is not brought back, then maybe he was not that important. Maybe the next character will be the key one. Maybe the heroic death of your character spurns the others to even greater heights of heroism.If the story can be continued and finished despite constant changes to the cast due to attrition, then the story isn't player driven. It's DM driven.
Well, the story is DM driven, with PCs as protagonists. It's the DM who deides what happens outside of the player's influence (pretty much most of the rest of the world) and it's the DM who decides what kind of challenges, NPCs and other things the players will encounter. In the end, it will be the PCs who save the world/princess/village or succeed in some manner, but the GM has brought the story to where it is, with enormous help of the players.
A GM seeks to tell a tale of adventuring, and he tells it alongside the players.
And, again, if you're a player and you realize that coming up with good tactics is just a waste of time (because you're going to win anyway, because it's "dramatic" and matches a trope) -- where is the fun?Avoiding a TPK is hardly the same as letting the players "win anyway" all the time. Why does everyone think fudging is all or nothing? It should be limited. Perhaps VERY limited.
Oh, so then you only do it once? The party has a limited use get out of jail free card? Or do you do it.. just this once.... Oh, well, and maybe this other time.... oh, and...
Where do you draw the line? At what point does the magic "I'm a PC" armour fail? I mean, every time an NPC saves them, or the enemy starts hitting for d6 instead of d12, or completely forgets his tactics - aren't you just teaching the party that not only will they never face anything they can't handle - they also can't lose?
Aside from that, the "fun" comes from playing the character who's coming up with the plans,not surviving.
I agree -- until you realize that the plans don't matter.
I, as a player, have been the one who's sacrificed himself to hold off the bad guys so the party could escape -- that was dramatic, interesting, and while I may not have loved losing the character - it was a moment that was remembered well by the rest of the party. The loss motivated the party, they pledged an Oath to avenge the lost character against the evil Cult, and systematically waged war on them. These things *make* a campaign, they don't destroy them.
[And, again, while I'm advocating not fudging and running combat fairly - I will point out that just because you've been knocked out doesn't mean you won't wake up again. Ransom, torture for information, wanting to eat you later -- are all reasons (some of) you might recover. ]