My 10th level bard died last night in a Ravenloft-like setting. He was Neutral Good and an Innocent, and wouldn't want to be raised from the dead because of the corruption associated with it. Because he died in some evil sinkhole, it's likely he'd be raised without a soul.
It seems odd, but I found myself going through the 5 stages of grief after the session ended. Probably because I invested so much time and energy into character development (the most I ever did), and because he got dealt a really bad hand over time that he never got to resolve.
Has anyone else ever gone through grief after a permadeath?
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The five stages of grief are not true.
I'll explain, if you read them, know them and believe in them, your grief can follow that course. Despite this proof, the 5 stages are not the same for all people, or across all cultures, and won't always go in the order of the theory, or all of them showing up.
It is a made up simplification, peddled far and wide.
As for grief after permadeath? I remember adolescent anger, rage, crying, complaining, but mostly I just sigh and move on to the next character. I've seen others that are really quiet and angry before they choose to move on. Some get loud and feel entitled that the character should have lived.
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The five stages of grief are not true.
I'll explain, if you read them, know them and believe in them, your grief can follow that course. Despite this proof, the 5 stages are not the same for all people, or across all cultures, and won't always go in the order of the theory, or all of them showing up.
It is a made up simplification, peddled far and wide.
All that said, even though they are not necessarily "stages", they are probably the five most common forms that grief takes in western culture, so still a useful reference point even if the idea of progressing through them is inaccurate.
As for grief in response to character death - I never really get emotionally attached to my characters, partly because I never get to play in a game long enough or often enough to do so. Always the GM, never the player. :(
We'll be starting a new game soon where I will have the opportunity to start a character at young age/apprentice level, and build from there, so I hope to be able to make a PC I can actually invest in to the point where I do feel something in my cold heart when he inevitably gets murdered by an otyugh. In fact, I just killed the GM's character in my game this weekend via a gibbering mouther's engulf ability, which is a horrible disgusting way to go, so I expect some level of retribution. :D
Does it depend on the play style? I can see how a kick-in-the-door campaign would have significantly different effects on the player. If a barbarian with very little character development dies, you just roll up a new one. Plenty of barbarians out in the world.
In fact, I just killed the GM's character in my game this weekend via a gibbering mouther's engulf ability, which is a horrible disgusting way to go, so I expect some level of retribution. :D
Crap... look out for grudge monsters.
Nope. Didn't ever feel that for a character. Partly because even when I did play, I was already bitten by the GM bug and thus never truly got into the player mindset... partly because one of the GMs was a sadistic chap who enjoyed screwing over players (not just me; one player couldn't make a game, had his character mindcontrolled while he was gone, and forced to have sex with another character despite his vow of chastity and fathered a half-fiend child as a result. He was targeted because he wasn't there despite his legitimate reason for missing one game out of many. The most anger I ever felt was when the GM ignored my insistence when he screwed over my final character (before he moved and the campaign ended) that my character wouldn't do a certain action.
So really I suppose it depends on how long your character "lives" for and the amount of time you invest in him or her.
I've been playing Alton for about 2 years, and got him to level 10. He's had some close calls in the past, like getting cursed by a Vargouille, getting hit by a CON damaging poison that he could not save against (the rolls just kept going south), and a coup de grace in his sleep that was later fiat-ed by the GM.
I know one player really felt it, when his favourite monk was killed and turned by hopping vampires.
I'd say the worst death is when our barbarian got possessed and great cleaved the rest of the party... even with obscurring mist up, she had improved blind fight too.
This is why I've started doing trial runs before the game to determine how deadly an encounter is. I quietly altered some spells memorized by the cleric afterward to include a couple Protection from Evil spells so that the Barbarian doesn't get mind-controlled by a certain entity in a certain free module... I'd upgraded her to Mythic and none of the other party members could do enough damage to be effective. (On the plus side, this does give the NPC thief a reason, after that encounter is done, to acquire an enchanted cold-iron weapon of some sort...)
I've only had a character of mine die once and it was the first session he was in... I was an Inquisitor and a friend of mine was a Rogue with Improved/Greater Steal. He decided to steal my guy's Cure Moderate potion because he saw me cast Cure Lights Wounds and figured he needed it more. I don't even remember the circumstances, but later I was fighting something badass, was out of first level spells, and said "ok I pull out and drink my potion."
...yeah I didn't get a heal and got murdered next round. I didn't really care, but the DM and my friend felt super bad about it. Anyway, I don't think I would be all that upset even if one of my long running characters died; it just means I get to try out a new concept/build and I have plenty of those waiting around :D
Eh. I had a character die the other night. One of the first ones in a long while. However, I kind of skipped straight to the "Acceptance" stage, because I went out with an absurdly awesome bang. We were fighting a Megafauna Crocodile, and my 5th level MoMS Monk was trying to front-line it. The croc landed a crit on me, did exactly enough damage to drop me to 0, and got the grapple off, so I was sitting in it's mouth, awaiting being swallowed and dying next turn. As a token of last resort, hoping to kill it, I activated my body wrap of mighty strikes to grant myself bane, and burned a hero point on the damage for my damage roll. I ended up landing a crit in return, and doing a whopping 80+ points of damage, but didn't end up killing it before it could kill me. The following turn it gulped me down and my character died. I was actually really satisfied with the death, because my character went out with a bang, and as a very "larger than life" type character, I felt that he would be satisfied having done so much to take on such a monolithic beast.
I was actually working on making up a new character when the rest of the party got to the next town and forcibly reincarnated me, and the DM told me to keep playing the monk.
Kinda pissed about that actually.
Before the current campaign, we played in Forgotten Realms.
Two characters died, each dying twice before giving them up as dead-dead. One of them had leadership, and the Cohort had a death count of four.
Another player (call him Baldy) lost three characters, with death counts of 1, 2 and 1 respectively.
The other player in our group (call her Woman), the Barbarian, died once as a Faithless, but came back. Later, she failed a will save and killed everyone else.
This campaign? Baldy has lost 2 characters, while Woman still has a zero count. I lost one character, but she was reincarnated and basically dove into a sink hole of ultimate evil to get her soul back. Alton would have been #2, but it's possible he survived because of a misinterpretation of RAW (would have been nice to know last night before the proverbial and theoretical five stages of grief...)
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The five stages of grief are not true.
I'll explain, if you read them, know them and believe in them, your grief can follow that course. Despite this proof, the 5 stages are not the same for all people, or across all cultures, and won't always go in the order of the theory, or all of them showing up.
It is a made up simplification, peddled far and wide.
All that said, even though they are not necessarily "stages", they are probably the five most common forms that grief takes in western culture, so still a useful reference point even if the idea of progressing through them is inaccurate.
As for grief in response to character death - I never really get emotionally attached to my characters, partly because I never get to play in a game long enough or often enough to do so. Always the GM, never the player. :(
We'll be starting a new game soon where I will have the opportunity to start a character at young age/apprentice level, and build from there, so I hope to be able to make a PC I can actually invest in to the point where I do feel something in my cold heart when he inevitably gets murdered by an otyugh. In fact, I just killed the GM's character in my game this weekend via a gibbering mouther's engulf ability, which is a horrible disgusting way to go, so I expect some level of retribution. :D
As the player who had the character that got gobbled up by that gibbering mouther.....Yes Jagyr Ebonwood will be playing in my game this weekend :D
I suppose when I think of revenge, I think of Ken's revenge with a steamroller in the movie "a fish called Wanda" linkI guess I could say what I'm planning but that would spoil the surprise! Anyways, all I really have to do is be patient. everyone has a bad dice night eventually.
I definitely can sympathize with the OP. I really tend to invest in my characters. Partly, that's because one of the main reasons I like RPGs is for the story and character development - every time I create a character I write a fairly lengthy backstory. So for me, characters that I RP are like characters in a good book or other media - when one I really like and come to know well dies, it can be really emotionally affecting!
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Not that I can recall, but then all of my PC deaths are permanent. At the end of the day, it's just a game.
Has anyone else ever gone through grief after a permadeath?
The closest I came was when my L15 CG Mystic Theurge was turned LE by a cursed alter. He was a happy-go-lucky charmer (party face), a devoted family man with an egg on the way (long story), but with his magic and Diplomatic skills could easily become a very nasty Evil Overlord. A real death of the mind.
Not that I can recall, but then all of my PC deaths are permanent. At the end of the day, it's just a game.
And A Song of Ice and Fire is just a bunch of books, but that didn't stop my wife from aching in pain when
Of course, she also cried at the end of
A well told story can elicit an entire spectrum of emotions.
It depends on the personality of the player, and the type of game they're involved in. If they really get attached to a character in the length of the game, of course they'll be upset. If they haven't really gotten invested in their character's story and the story of the game, of course they won't be.
That's not to say there aren't exceptions.
That said, for me it depends on how much work I put into the character, circumstances of death, and how long I've been playing him/her.
Extremely elaborate background with recurring npcs and villains, I'll probably be a little depressed for a few minutes.
Death due to party stupidity (which is an epidemic in my group), I'll most assuredly be seething in a quiet rage until I return home.
Death due to bad rolls, much frustration will be vented for a moment or so.
The game's a kick-in-the-door-and-kill-em-all with little plot and much beer and pretzels to be had, I'll sigh at the time that'll be wasted rolling up a new guy, and roll up the new guy.
I have yet to have a character die that I've felt really attached too. My most recent was in 3.5, super spikey dwarf (full plate, spiked shields, armor spikes, RAWR!) winds up getting a death slime dropped on him... Anyone remember what happens with slimes when they're pierced or slashed?... GM used my character to turn one slime into two to deal with the party, while spikey was drowning and taking acid damage in slime. He died, all my loot was melted, and my dwarf no longer had any hair... I still think that GM had a grudge against my character, despite the fact that he encouraged me to build it -_-....
Aside from some suspicions toward the DM, I was rather upset about it, but since the build was moving farther away from what I had originally envisioned (spikey grappler), I was rather okay with it. GM pushed me to using twin heavy spiked shields, and basically let me play the 'moving spiked wall trap' in the corridors, like in the old side-scroller games. It was fun, buuut... couldn't really split the Grapple-specialization that I had built for, with the twin-shield specialization that the GM strongly encouraged (read: rambled on about in a 'DOO EEEET!' fashion)...
Really, it depends on HOW a character goes out.
For instance, I was once playing a paladin who with his group was facing a flying Bulette (as the GM had noticed they look like beetles and decided they should fly). It was flying through the air and heading toward the group... so I take out my Bastard Sword and say "I Set For Charge." The GM asked "are you sure you want to do this?" "Yup."
I was brought to -53 hit points as it got four full claw attacks and a bite, and I didn't kill it. But I went out in a blaze of glory and absolutely loved every single moment of it.
Really, isn't that the most important thing? To have fun? So what if my character died... he went out spectacularly. And to this day, when someone goes "set for charge" that Paladin is brought up and reminisced about. Really, someone doesn't ever truly die until they are forgotten. My Paladin... has been immortalized. For now. ;)
I'm still grieving for one of my characters. He didn't actually die, but I felt like he got the short end of the stick. Mostly because we were playing an incredibly story heavy World of Darkness game, and my character's personal story arc had come up, when suddenly everyone except for me, the GM and one other player became incredibly unreliable. So eventually the GM just canned the whole game, and I never got to find out what happened to my werewolf. Did he ever find a place he belonged? Did he form his own pack? Was he able to rescue his love from the tyrannous ruler of the brutal Scandinavian empire that Canada had become in our game's alternate timeline? Not a clue. And it honestly upset me a bit, because I'd put so much effort into his character development and backstory.
That's because of the lack of closure. I've had a couple real-life friendships go on hiatus because the other person vanished from the net or moved away and the like. So you never got to say goodbye.
If I were you I'd talk to the GM about it and work together to create an ending story for the PC. Not even solo-roleplaying... just working together to craft a thematic end for that tale.
I was disappointed when my Arcane Trickster died horribly recently. In the end it's just a game and my new storm druid is pretty awesome.
Annoyance if I made a character that has been heavily invested in the setting. All those contacts and accomplishments are gone and I have to start from scratch.
No doubt this is why campaigns can end after TPKs/near TPKs, it is just too much a hassle to stat up higher level characters.
Has anyone else ever gone through grief after a permadeath?
Yes, I have.
my group can get rather heavily invested in our character. In fact, in a plot developing arc, one of our character's goat familiar was killed, and that alone set off a series of character altering paths for both the mage who's familiar it was and everyone else. And a hanfull of sessions later when an oracle helped the mage commune with her lost familiar we were all emotional, and the player was nearly in tears.
It depends on the game, some games run longer then others, and some characters mean more, but if I lost any of my current characters, I'd definately feel grief over it. Though now adays character death is rare in our games, as we use a sort of hero point system almost explicately to prevent it while keeping the relative difficulty of adventures fairly high.
That's because of the lack of closure. I've had a couple real-life friendships go on hiatus because the other person vanished from the net or moved away and the like. So you never got to say goodbye.
If I were you I'd talk to the GM about it and work together to create an ending story for the PC. Not even solo-roleplaying... just working together to craft a thematic end for that tale.
I've spoken to him about it. At the moment we're both still hoping to get the game running again at some point, it's just a matter of if we have to find some new players (the game had a fairly open format for characters to be added when needed) or if we can somehow get the old group back together.
But yeah, worst comes to worst I'll be writing something up myself, a partial campaign journal and epilogue for the character. I plan on him becoming a recurring NPC for some of my other WoD games though. It's a fairly common thing in my groups games. Several major NPCs used to be PCs at one time or another.
In the event of a TPK, our group has resolved to do a "Sons of" campaign. However, considering that at least two of our party members are chaste, it would have to be more of a 'spiritual successor to' campaign instead.
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I've never had grief for a character.
What did once hit me surprisingly hard, was when my character had to kill his horse.
Broken leg, several other injuries, middle of no where, and even his heroically high heal skill would not enable the him to get the horse stable enough to walk it back to civilization. The only kind thing to do was to kill the horse mercifully and quickly, and for some reason that really hit me hard. (non-pathfinder system. We had the equivalent of CLW, but it wouldn't have fixed the broken leg.)
I almost cried when one of my party members died. It was the first death of the campaign and I don't know why but it shook me a bit. Hrm. Then it happened again when my rogue got eaten by a demon.
What did once hit me surprisingly hard, was when my character had to kill his horse.
Not surprised. Most of the time, horses, pack mules, teamsters, etc. are just in the background. When a GM turns it on the characters and sics a manticore or other beast on one of these guys that have no chance of surviving, and the frenzy of combat becomes that much more intense.
What did once hit me surprisingly hard, was when my character had to kill his horse.Not surprised. Most of the time, horses, pack mules, teamsters, etc. are just in the background. When a GM turns it on the characters and sics a manticore or other beast on one of these guys that have no chance of surviving, and the frenzy of combat becomes that much more intense.
Horses in our games never last long enough to form emotional attachments.
Horses in our games never last long enough to form emotional attachments.
According to a friend, a guy he used to play with named all his horses "Glue" followed by a numeral. I can see why he did that.
Horses in our games never last long enough to form emotional attachments.According to a friend, a guy he used to play with named all his horses "Glue" followed by a numeral. I can see why he did that.
I played an evil Teleporter with Augment Summoning in the last campaign. Anytime someone with above-animal intelligence (elves included) attacked my horse, they would pay back any damage or death in flesh. I'd make sure to take them alive, then summon a devil with the command "make him suffer." At level 10, it would be the longest 15 rounds of their lives.
Then if necessary, I'd just grab a couple of onyxes out of my pouch, animate the horse, and go on my way.
O.O
while I do not feel too bad about my own characters dying, it just absolutely crushes me when I get another player's character killed by own dumb decision and/or bad luck
I spent about two weeks getting ready for a campaign where I had created a human Internal Alchemist (level 1, mind you)who used alchemical tattoos instead of extracts. I was about to multiclass into Monk so I was already suffering from MAD super hard.
So first session in the Reign of Winter adventure path and we are pitted against a Cleric of Norgorber who proceeds to killing me and our kobold samurai while our paladin tries to storm the house. The samurai begins to get his brain melted by channel energy, and I am barely on my feet. We are both sweating bullets because we just spent about five hours a piece on design and decisions.
So yes, I can relate to emotional attachment even after a single session because my character survived that hell for his first level of monk and the first step to being awesome.
Just as an example on how PC death/TPKs can end the game, there was a Reign of Winte rgame on these boards where the PCs effectively wiped against the cleric at the hunter's lodge. Sure they could make new PCs, but then they would have to trudge all the way back, do encounters to build xp and treasure and then engage a freshly rested/reinforced cleric. That was..just to much a hassle so everyone just agreed to end the game.
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In fact, I just killed the GM's character in my game this weekend via a gibbering mouther's engulf ability, which is a horrible disgusting way to go, so I expect some level of retribution. :DAs the player who had the character that got gobbled up by that gibbering mouther.....Yes Jagyr Ebonwood will be playing in my game this weekend :D
I suppose when I think of revenge, I think of Ken's revenge with a steamroller in the movie "a fish called Wanda" linkI guess I could say what I'm planning but that would spoil the surprise!
How much for a scroll of Energy Resistance (Steamroller)?