Sometimes the dice are just against you. Just killed my first character on the forums.
5 level ones in a temple. They find a Cyclops. Now before you freak out. It is a very weak one. Made him Ancient, and had been in a fight prior where an arm was removed and his Great Axe sundered. So he is one armed old, wounded and has a great club and his heacy crossbow. I have even dropped his AC by even more arguing that he is fat now so his NA is lower. Mainly used the Cyclops for the fear factor and it fits the temple.
The fight starts he fires it one handed with a huge minus and crits...then confirms with a 20 and does huge damage and explodes the poor monk.
I have had a couple of close calls in my other PbP games but despite my best efforts the dice decreed it so I suppose.
I wonder if this will become a habit...hmm...
Actually had my first kill ever in a PFS game a few weeks back.
One player got Con drained to 0 by a Wraith. I actually had him roll his own Con drain damage the last time and he maxed out. He wound up getting a Resurrection but also killed a second player shortly thereafter. Two shocking grasps by a high level character that did almost max damage twice.
Deflect arrows is one of those abilities that are crappy until a bolt the size of a patriot missle hits you in the eye
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I normally don't try to act upon it when the dice tell me in my head that I need to kill my players.
Player characters, however...
:p
I wonder if this will become a habit...hmm...
Actually had my first kill ever in a PFS game a few weeks back.
One player got Con drained to 0 by a Wraith. I actually had him roll his own Con drain damage the last time and he maxed out. He wound up getting a Resurrection but also killed a second player shortly thereafter. Two shocking grasps by a high level character that did almost max damage twice.
Deflect arrows is one of those abilities that are crappy until a bolt the size of a patriot missle hits you in the eye
Dang, what level was that? The only character I've ever seen die in pathfinder society was a lvl 1 halfling sorcerer with 10 con. I thought the only way to die in it was to run out of time at a convention event.
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Meh, kill 'em all. Gotta keep up the "most adventurers die horribly" thing or the peasantry will resort to ... I dunno, reading or getting involved in current affairs or some such drivel.
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Deflect arrows is one of those abilities that are crappy until a bolt the size of a patriot missle hits you in the eye
Your mileage may vary. I found our monk with a gazillion AC and deflect arrows quite annoying.
When you FINALLY roll a goddamned natural 20, you could see him smurking in advance! xD
Deflect arrows is one of those abilities that are crappy until a bolt the size of a patriot missle hits you in the eyeYour mileage may vary. I found our monk with a gazillion AC and deflect arrows quite annoying.
When you FINALLY roll a g&!!@$ned natural 20, you could see him smurking in advance! xD
It only gets worse when said monk also has invested in the Crane Style tree...
First GM kill ever, my sister-in-law's Rogue rolls a 1 on a perception check before entering a room in a bandit lair. There's groans all around the table as she KNOWS she's walking into a trap OOCly, but her character thinks the coast is clear. She sucks it up and takes it though, and sure enough eats three sneak-attack crossbow bolts to the back, followed by a slit throat the next round.
Any other time, with her bonus, I imagine she'd have seen right through the thieves' hiding place, but it just didn't work out that time.
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Blood for the dice gods! Skulls for the dice throne!
This is exactly why I give my players hero points: so when the dice conspire against them, they have a way to at least not die.
Rerolls or fudge die, but yes, I also allow the deaths to come, once in a while.
Blood for the dice gods! Skulls for the dice throne!
Agreed. They must be appeased.
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There's groans all around the table as she KNOWS she's walking into a trap OOCly, but her character thinks the coast is clear. She sucks it up and takes it though,
See, for someone playing in character I would have moved heaven and earth to save that PC. The PC who rolls the 1 and decides they've forgotten something at the back of the party- that's when the 3 crossbow bolts and the sneak attack are suddenly behind the party too. :-)
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I have this one player who the dice really hate. At first I tried to fudge a bit, but it got to a point I had to tell him "Look, I've been trying to keep you alive, but these dice are getting violent. You will have to be extra careful from now on, so heads up".
He died the following session.
There's groans all around the table as she KNOWS she's walking into a trap OOCly, but her character thinks the coast is clear. She sucks it up and takes it though,See, for someone playing in character I would have moved heaven and earth to save that PC. The PC who rolls the 1 and decides they've forgotten something at the back of the party- that's when the 3 crossbow bolts and the sneak attack are suddenly behind the party too. :-)
Sadly wouldn't have made sense to do it any other way. The bad guys were in the room disguised as dummies; behind the party was an empty hallway with the two bruisers watching their backs. The room was a trap, OOC nearly all the players knew it.
Not a complete loss, though. She followed that character up with a barbarian who ended up becoming one of her favorite PCs of all time.
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The first time I can remember killing 3 player characters at the same time was a while back so dont remember the exact classes of all the characters. They were all about 10th lv. Heres how it went.
Party finds old ruined temple to a forgotten god and proceed to clear it. They eventually come to the alter room. The alter room is huge 50' by 100', with a 60' ceiling, entry at the middle of the 50' wall, alter at the far end of the 100'. Gems ranging from worthless to precious cover the walls and support collums for the first 10'. The alter is also gem encrusted. The players ignore the gems when they finda secret door that led to the main treasure chamber. After defeating the guardian they gather the loot in the chamber and decide to leave.
A couple months later they decide to return and get the gmes from the alter room, so they hire a dozen workers to help pry the gems from the walls. Now comes the bad part.
A little info about the players. They were always smart in combat situations, fighting as a coherent group. And they totally relied on magically produced light.
Back to bad event. They decide to have the workers start down at the alter. The fighter, the bard and the ranger(?) were down with the workers as guards. The fighter/mage and the psion were postioned half btween the hallway entrance and the alter. The druid was in the hallway.
The workers prying gems from the alter of course set of the security measures. Suddenly a deep gong sound and resonanting voice say NOW. A dc 18 dispell magic fills the alter room and all light spells are gone. (note the characters had the Nchaser's Glowing Orb spell as their light sources, one each)Druid out in the hall sees a slight wavering at the entry to the alter room. Checking he finds a foot thick crystal block(hardness 8, 180 hp) filling the doorway. Trying to be helpful to the party in the dark room the druid casts light 30' into the room, which allows the psion and the fighter/mage to see that 4 wraith are the area they are in. The far end the room is still in darkness and the other characters dont know that 4 wraiths are the area they and the workers are in.
To shorten the story some. The wraith killed the workers making it 16 wraith in the far end the room. The 3 party members at the far end held their own for about 7 rounds then were overwhelmed. They could not retreat because the had been divided in 3 by two foot thick crystal walls.
The fighter/mage and psion defeated their wraiths used spells to dig under the crystal wall and crystal door block to join the druid and the 3 of them escaped.
Had they done what they normally would do, i. e. stay closed to help each other fight, this would not have been as bad but they thought the place was safe.
Assumption is the mother of most [redacted]ups.
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A player was trying to save another character, who'd been attacked from an unexpected quarter and was literally on the edge of dying. In game, these characters were foster brothers. He ran right close to the enemy, and the enemy shot at him with an arrow. The arrow critted, and the enemy was using full devestating strike...
Yeah, I took the character from full HP to less than negative con with that one arrow. The dice decreed his death, there was nothing to be done about it.
It was heroic. The party informed the foster mother, there was a funeral, and the poor character's body was interred with full honors and ceremony.
I just had my first PC death last night in my Rise of the Runelords campaign that I've been running for the past year-and-a-half.
[Note to RotRL fans... we're very much off-script. The party crossed the Aspis Consortium, killed an Aspis Gold Agent, and has run off with an item that the Consortium considers their property. They've sent a hit squad to eliminate the PCs.]
So, the PCs are spending the night in an upscale inn. They have been warned that somebody is out to get them, but they decided that since the inn is both pretty nice and in a good part of town, they don't need to post a watch. They have also ponied up for very nice, private rooms.
So, the assassins successfully break into the rooms and sneak up to the PCs while they slept. I gave the PCs two Perception checks to notice (opposed by the assassins' Stealth): once for picking the lock and once for moving into the room. No one detects the lockpicking, and only one PC detects the assassin about to try to murder him-- and he's after the assassin in initiaitive order!
So, three coup de grace attempts, and one PC rolls a "1" on the Fort save. Dead.
The remaining PCs make fairly short work out of the assassins, but the cleric is dead.
(He won't be dead for long, though. The party recovered a single-use raise dead item a few sessions earlier.)
Lol, they killed the cleric. I guess they should talk to the cleric about getting him rais... oh.
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In case it hasn't already been said: [bad German accent] "Kill zem, kill zem all."[/bad German accent]
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When I ran the Age of Worms campaign a few years back, I think I killed about 20 characters.
I wasn't even trying to kill them. I even nerfed some of the encounters, and still they died.
It was a combination of a brutal AP with some really crazy rolls.
One character died because of the 3 nat 20s in a row house rule. I even rolled the last two on the open table, in plain view of every single player.
I'd be pissed as hell if my character died based purely on one or two bad dice rolls.
If I was stupid with him, sure. If, for roll playing purposes, I *had* to be stupid with him (but chose to do it anyway instead of trying to come up with another solution, because I liked the RP) then yeah. Those types of death are ones in which I, as a player, have had some influence. Alternately, a situation in which my character was cold-heartedly throne under the bus by the party to ensure everyone else survival would at least be understandable.
But a battle in which you've done everything right, and the bad guys just happen to crit once and now you're dead? The GM's primary mission at the table is to facilitate everyone having fun. Having my character drop dead in battle before he or anyone else could have done a thing to stop it? That's kind of like the GM making a regular roll outside of battle to make sure the characters don't randomly suffer a brain aneurysm. "Oops, I rolled a 1. Your character drops dead for no particular reason. Sorry, nothing I can do about it."
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I'd be pissed as hell if my character died based purely on one or two bad dice rolls.
If I was stupid with him, sure. If, for roll playing purposes, I *had* to be stupid with him (but chose to do it anyway instead of trying to come up with another solution, because I liked the RP) then yeah. Those types of death are ones in which I, as a player, have had some influence. Alternately, a situation in which my character was cold-heartedly throne under the bus by the party to ensure everyone else survival would at least be understandable.
But a battle in which you've done everything right, and the bad guys just happen to crit once and now you're dead? The GM's primary mission at the table is to facilitate everyone having fun. Having my character drop dead in battle before he or anyone else could have done a thing to stop it? That's kind of like the GM making a regular roll outside of battle to make sure the characters don't randomly suffer a brain aneurysm. "Oops, I rolled a 1. Your character drops dead for no particular reason. Sorry, nothing I can do about it."
That's about the same as saying the BBEG shouldn't get hacked into chunky salsa because a player just happened to roll a confirmed critical hit. There is a particular reason your character died. Your character dodged his vital anatomy in the wrong direction at the worst possible moment and wound up with his skull stove in/ heart shot or stabbed through/ head lopped off.
The GM is not on a "mission" - the GM is one of your social crew about the table having fun along with you and the other players. GMs that are on a mission are GMs to stay away from in my experience. If you think a GM has to operate under a "mission statement", you better be paying the GM money.
It's combat, bad things happen. Most of the time the PCs are victorious. Victory often has a price in blood, sometimes in lives. Unless you're in a campaign with non-standard mechanics for recovering from being messily deceased, death becomes an expense and some down time.
My first response would be "show me the BBEG that can die by one critical hit." But I'm sure there's at least one out there, for variety's sake if nothing else. So instead I will say that it has not been my experience (as in, it has never happened in any game I've been a part of) for a boss to go down in one hit. In fact, I'd say that (generally speaking) bosses are designed to avoid that type of thing.
Regarding the mission thing, I concede your point. My use of the term mission was ill-considered. I will instead revise my statement to say "one of the primary concerns (if not the most primary) of the GM is to facilitate everyone having fun."
Even in the game world, there are penalties for our actions. If a character dies because of one of those consequences, then the player has a growth opportunity where he can improve. If a character dies not because of a player decision, or role play consequence, or story related point, but simply because random chance decreed it to be so? Well that's tough luck chum. That's how the real world is, and life isn't fair. If you don't like it, maybe you should try playing some escapist fantasy game instead.
...oh, wait.
You do have a point, Ms Inclined. I have both had PCs die that way, and killed PCs thusly. I write it off to bad rolls, which do happen. Dead by pissy save roll is a natural and expected death for adventurers.
Yeah, no killing your players due to having bad saves, you hear?
Meh, sometimes characters die. Sometimes it's bad choices, sometimes bad luck. They can just roll up another and not freak out about it, right?
I do try to give players every chance not to die, but sometimes the dice won't cooperate :-(
A GM being fair in the encounter design is not the same thing as the fickle hand of luck hosing your PC at the wrong moment. Saying that the GM is obligated to keep your character alive no matter what ... might as well watch a movie or read a book if that's what you expect.
Now, if you're okay with getting maimed, mutilated, taken prisoner, stripped of all your stuff, tortured for information and/or giggles, and worse ... then you might have a point.
Most often the players that I've seen object to character death would also object to the rest of what goes into logically being captured instead of simply being made dead.
Well, I can certainly understand how my thoughts on the subject would be unusual, but I'd be fine with that. I wouldn't be *joyful* about it, but it would be a good role-play opportunity and I'd be hoping the party could rescue him before anything too heinous happened. Actually, I'd be fine with my character dying IF he was going to get raised later.
The point for me is that I pour a lot of creative energy into my characters. If I'm going to lose the ability to play them, I want to have some form of meaning to it. I'd want to be able to point to a particular choice that I (or someone else) made and say "Well Myst, what do you think would have happened? Maybe next time you shouldn't suggest that the low HP wizard should go first!" Or "maybe the fighter with a low will save should have considered not leaving the evil cleric LAST in the 'to be dealt with' list." Or "yeah, we were totally over-matched. The party should have run away. But golly, he sure went down fighting with everything he had!"
Character death is always a bittersweet experience for me. While I lose the opportunity to play my old character, it's a chance to see how the backup one I've had waiting in the wings will do. To see what unintended personality quarks will pop up during role play, and how the 'new guy' will take on a life of his own. But in saying goodbye to my old character, I'd want something to remember them by other than "was in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Plus, it's important to bear in mind that we're all playing a game. I ask you: how fun would ANY game be if you could lose instantly at any time through no fault of your own or that of another player? Imagine if Risk or 'Sorry!' had a rule where you rolled a percentage die at the beginning of your turn to see if you instantly won or lost the game. Would that add to the fun of the game? Would you want to play such a game again?
I don't see Pathfinder playing in the manner that you're stating. Combat isn't random death by anvil falling from the sky. (Well, not normally...)
Crits can work that way. Which is not to say that crits shouldn't exist, or that bad things shouldn't happen if the bad guys crit.
My objection, my SOLE objection that I've been trying to get a across this entire thread, is against the GM that says "sorry, your character is now dead with no hope of recovery. I realize that you did nothing wrong to cause it, and that it's an extremely unusual and unfortunate incident. But I, as the GM and ultimate moderator of play- in fact, the literal GOD of our shared make-believe world- am powerless to change this completely random and arbitrary roll of the dice. I am undone before this inanimate object whose result it is my job to interpret in the first place. I fully recognize that I am the one who chose to have you guys face a bad guy who could one-shot your character, and that I provided no means of countering this through story or treasure that you might have found. In fact, I'm the one who directed the monster to attack YOUR character instead of someone else. But I am nevertheless not responsible in any manner to mitigate this situation. The dice decreed that this should happen, and I am powerless to oppose them."
Now, if there was a chance to avoid the situation and the characters chose not to pursue it, or if there was some warning given and they failed to prepare, or if the character could be raised again later on, or if the result was ANYTHING but "You are permanently dead through pure random chance" then my objection disappears.
I have yet to play in a game where permanent character death is not a possibility. I think it adds a spice of danger that enhances play. My original point was that if I were playing in the OP's game, and my character died while the GM said "despite my best efforts the dice decreed it so," I'd be rather upset.
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Now, if you're okay with getting maimed, mutilated, taken prisoner, stripped of all your stuff, tortured for information and/or giggles, and worse ... then you might have a point.Most often the players that I've seen object to character death would also object to the rest of what goes into logically being captured instead of simply being made dead.
It depends on the situation and the GM. Back in the AD&D 2e days we suffered a TPK in a long-running campaign and the DM decided to capture us instead. We woke up in a cramped underground cell only to be taunted by a feeble looking goblin jailer:
"I am Cracktooth. You are my prisoners hehehehehe!" etc. It was a wonderful bit of comic relief bantering with this obviously low-status goblin who'd been handed a tiny bit of power over the pathetic captured adventurers and was letting it go to his head. Eventually we killed poor old Cracktooth, escaped the cell and animated his corpse to use as a trap-triggering scout. We slowly cleared the tunnels of goblins, at first using only our few remaining spells and Cracktooth's club to defend ourselves, and eventually found the storeroom where our gear had been stashed.
Low on HP and out of spells, we started slamming unidentified potions (mind, this was AD&D where mixing potions could have serious consequences, but we were desperate). This garnered us a few HP and a couple of useful buffs, and eventually we found our way out of the goblin lair, a bit poorer and a bit wiser than when we fell in battle. I still tell the tale of poor Cracktooth to each new group I game with when the subject of memorable NPCs comes up.
So, being captured can be a good alternative to death if handled deftly by a good GM.
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Hrmmmm ... well, to be fair, when I'm the Screen Monkey, I almost always roll the dice in the open.
For example: "Ok, this [thing] has to roll a natural 12 to hit you. *clatterclatter* Ok, natural 19, critical threat, I need to roll a natural 8 to confirm the threat as a critical hit because of Critical Focus. *clatterclatter* Great, you have fortification at (x)%. *clatterclatter* (a) Great, I rolled your fortification, critical hit averted. (b) Crap, I beat your fortification. Here's the deal-e-oh, as you know, the BBEG *shows picture* is packing a [nasty weapon] with a higher critical damage multiplier. Here's the damage range [xdx+X] because of the confirmation, simplified to (xdx+X) to generate a reliable average damage range. Ready?" "[Player affirms, eyes affixed on the dice tray]" *clatterclatter* "Ouch, (x) total damage on the math, agreed?" [Affirmation]
It is rare that I roll dice other than in the open. Ironically, usually when The Plot demands that the PCs get somewhere along towards The Next Big Clue. Combat is where I don't (often) roll hidden dice. When I do, it's not to hose the PCs per se, it's to either speed things along - "oh look, Bob the Mook whiffed again" - or to remind the PCs that they are heroes in a story of indeterminate conclusion.
My biggest gripe with "entitlement" or "mandate" claims from players to me as the GM is that - as the GM - I'm 'supposed' to do something. As I see it the only thing I am supposed to do is not be a PC-killing tree shredder. (All too often players do this to themselves, or their DICE do it for them. More often the latter...)
For me, while I am a member of the social crew hanging out, having fun and watching PCs kill bad guys and take their stuff, more importantly I am the Referee (to paraphrase Monte Cook's assessment of GMs). I'm NOT out to just rack up a PC death count, I'm providing as neutral as I am personally capable of a 'referee' of sorts between the players and the horriblulous enemies bent on whatever they're determined to do. Sometimes I misgauge things, more often I hit the nail on the head and really give my players' characters a memorable encounter that they go "oh snikeys, we really pulled a rabbit out of the butthatt on that one!".
Mystically Inclined: I agree with you. The dice are there to provide the element of chance, and must be interpreted. However, if I were to save a character from death he should have suffered according to the dice, I change the campaign further toward the narrative end of the spectrum, which I usually don't want. Still, I think it's okay to consider alternatives. Animal companion dies instead, valued magic item shatters, whatever hurts, really. It has to hurt to avoid the narrative shift.
Sissyl, I agree with you completely. Negative things should definitely happen. In fact, the character may suffer a loss that they can never recover from. But that adds to the role-play opportunity and enhances the fun of the game, rather than killing the character.
Turin, there's really not a whole lot I can say, other than to point back to my above post. Even if the dice are rolled out in the open, the GM is still the one who crafted the encounter in the first place. I guess we'll just have to leave it at "I would not be a good fit at your table." :)
I guess we'll just have to leave it at "I would not be a good fit at your table." :)
That's really the core of the matter, when you get to it. Finding a group that has a playstyle along the same lines.
Heck, it's a problem I'm dealing with now, thanks to one of my players being in another group before mine and being much more used to their style, and conflicts inevitably cropping up. (And much worse, the inevitable "Well my other group does it this way..." commentary after every. little. thing....)
Sissyl, I agree with you completely. Negative things should definitely happen. In fact, the character may suffer a loss that they can never recover from. But that adds to the role-play opportunity and enhances the fun of the game, rather than killing the character.
Turin, there's really not a whole lot I can say, other than to point back to my above post. Even if the dice are rolled out in the open, the GM is still the one who crafted the encounter in the first place. I guess we'll just have to leave it at "I would not be a good fit at your table." :)
To be fair, I run and play at a consensus table and almost always GM Adventure Paths, so I craft far fewer encounters than I used to. If the group is interested in mitigating death by accepting painful consequences when they would otherwise have been killed, I'm all for taking it for a spin!
Matter of fact, I'll throw the idea out there to the table when I'm the screen monkey again. Seeing how messed up the heroes can get and push through to victory should be a lot of fun! Besides, when they gain access to regenerate, the worst of most such problems can be made to go away in a short amount of game time.
Thank you for the inspiration Mystically Inclined. My players may or may not thank you for it. ^____^
Sometimes the dice demand it.
Sometimes I tell them to eff off.
Woe to ye that offends the dice gods, casting aside their will!