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Hello friends,
As a GM, have you dreaded killing PCs because there might be some rule technicality you overlooked? Want a legitimate death your player cannot feel bad about? Here's your thread:
#1. The Unsound Balcony - A DC15 Knowledge (engineering) or a DC20 (Perception) reveals the balcony is unsafe. There is a 25% chance each round that the decrepit wood of a rotting balcony gives way. PCs must make a DC15 Reflex to avoid taking 1d6 (per 10 feet) points of damage from the fall or rubble.
3) Rocks fall.
4) Party passes through town overrun with plague. Fort DC 15 each day they spend in town.
5) Ghasts>Paralysis>Coup De Grace
There's a reason the Ghast entry on d20pfsrd has a disclaimer.
8) Invisible stalkers while asleep.
9) Hellcats while asleep.
I could list a lot of “CR appropriate” encounter almost certain to kill PCs. The most obvious are stuff like a bunch of invisible wizards who fly over and surprise the party with metamagic enhanced Fireballs, killing them before they can even move. That might be “legal”, but it hardly seems “fair”. Instead I’m trying to recall the ways I’ve killed various PCs over the years. They must be pretty effective methods since they worked. If nothing else they’re play tested.
#12 - A naga crits the PC, who fails the Fort save for poison and takes 10 Con damage (that was back in 3.5, but poison is still pretty nasty in Pathfinder)
#13 - An advanced fiendish violet fungus hits Marley with a natural 20. He fails the resulting save, and the Con damage kills him.
#14 - A colossal crab pops out of the water with surprise and drags a rather annoying Monk into the ocean to be constricted to death. I can’t recall the name of the Monk, but the crab is still infamous as “The BFC”.
#15 - The PCs decide to assault the dungeon stronghold of a wizard several levels higher than they are. Valki the fighter is crushed by a crit from the gargantuan morningstar of an undead cloud giant. After annoying the wizard with counter spells, gnome sorcerer Timba Nifflecow is blasted to death with Maximized Scorching Ray (though he’s later Raised)
#16 - McGuinness the Ranger accepts a kiss from a succubus disguised as a priestess, and one thing leads to another. This was in a new player’s first session. Everybody else had enough metagame knowledge to kind of guess what might happen.
#17 - An invisible Quasit with levels in Master Summoner uses his Summon Monster VII SLA to bring in fiendish dire tigers which pounce the party with smite good, killing Archibald Dunkirk the LG Inquisitor before he even gets a turn (I feel kind of bad about that one since we hadn't played in a while and I thought the PC had a significantly better AC - maybe that was due to judgements and dex bonus though...)
#18 - After being seriously hurt by a shipwrecker crab Nathaniel the Ranger is swallowed whole (or perhaps not entirely whole) by a dire shark drawn to the area by his profuse bleeding.
#19 - Two sea serpents with the advanced template attack the party’s ship at night with surprise. One picks the Pistolero off the stern. She manages to shoot it right through the brain with a crit, but the other scoops her up and disappears beneath the waves.
There have also been a lot of close calls over the years, most of them involving monsters with the Constrict and or Swallow Whole abilities. I’ve died a few times as a PC too. The grappling Monk/Sorcerer Habu Hamash was buried in a collapsing cavern but got Raised. Later on poor Uncle Buckwalter the gnome Cleric failed a fear save, panicked, fell off a high cliff while fleeing, and got eaten by an undead treant. He was replaced by Cousin Larry, an Alchemist of some repute.
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One of my favorite more recent kills was touching a fighter with "Plane Shift" and after failing the will save, rolling a D20 to see which plane he ended up on. Lets just say it didn't take many rounds on the Negative Energy plane before he expired.
To his credit, he sat through the remaining 3 hours of the PFS scenario to quietly collect his chronicle.
Horde of Level 1 Diviners
Bonus to Initiative + always go in the intiative round + barrage of weak fireballs or magic missles from scrolls = lots of damage
Resetting reverse gravity traps; one on the floor, one on the ceiling above it.
Combine a pit trap with a falling block ceiling trap.
Have a tunnel that requires them to be tiny animals to enter. Provide magic items that allow them to turn themselves tiny. Stick a massive amount of treasure on the other side of the tunnel. Place an antimagic zone halfway through.
Disintegration traps triggered by attempting to disarm other traps. If you want it even more lethal, attach a trap to each disintegration trap that seals the room and floods it with water.
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To rephrase the intent of this thread:
What would be the iron-clad, rules-legal means to kill a PC?
Example:
Scenario 21: Falling off a bridge
Adelbart is the victim of a CMB Grapple. In round one the opponent confirms the grapple. In round two the opponent maintains the grapple and selects the "move opponent up to 15 feet" option and tosses Adelbart off the bridge. The GM gives one last Reflex Save to try to grab onto the bridge, and Adelbart fails and falls to his death.
Question: Did the GM need to offer the Reflex save? Or once the CMB Grapple is confirmed, the "move opponent option" casues a quick PC death based on just two rolls 1) the initial Grapple and 2) the "maintain the grapple roll"?
Thanks for comments on this scenario, and the addition of more scenarios just like this to clarify the minimum legal requirements to kill PCs.
C'mon, its fun!
Pax
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Another clarificaiton:
In truth, I have trouble killing PCs. I'm not out to do that, but when the time comes my inclination is to find a +1 here or a hero point there, or even a reflex save, or somesuch other option to help the caracter back from the brink of death.
So, in genuine honestly, what is the cleanest death a GM can give a PC in Pathfinder??
For example,
GM: Bridge over the 80 foot chasm appears unnaturally slippary.
Player: I walk ahead 30 feet.
GM: Please make a reflext save (DC 25)
Player: Natural 1.
GM: You slip, and the fall deals 37 points of damage. Enough to bring you past negative CON score. You are dead.
Is that it? I find myself inclined to allow others who make their save rush ahead and grab him, or allow an extra reflex save to catch the bridge with a few fingers and hold on. But in all seriousness, I feel like a pussy when this happens.
Pax