Have You Ever Condemed A Party Member To Death

[GM 1990]

Have you ever had to do this to save the party? Not a heroic Gandalf "run you fools" moment, but more like "we can't save that person, but can save ourselves - we have to leave them".

If you've played RoTRL you may be familiar with this encounter. Minor spoiler if you haven't from our game tonight.

After going through a door and down a small hallway, we entered a room with a sunken water filled area, and were immediately attacked by some kind of giant crab. Since we'd already been through a bit of meat-grinder, Paladin only had 1 LoH left, I had 1 Grease spell, Summon II, and my bonded item spell, the ninja was out of ki, and ranger was full hp. It won Ini, successfully grabbed and began constricting the paladin -and- ninja on its first round. Ranger attacked with bow, hit for small amount of damage; Ninja missed, I cast grease trying to get the paladin free, it made its save, paladin missed . It continued to constrict and rolled max on both. My GM brain started quickly realizing....this is going to be a TPK....based on damage it was auto-dealing, both ninja (1hp) and paladin(11hp) were going below 0 on its next round, and me (wizard) and ranger would quickly follow. So I yelled - try to escape - and run or we're all going to die. Ninja succeeded escape artist, landed in the water but GM allowed him to scramble over edge and get out of range with move action. (technically GM could have AoO'd him, but really would have just been murder at that point, our tails were between our legs). I cast grease with bonded item, successfully freeing the paladin who's ini was right after mine, and we ran up the hall preparing to bar the door when the ranger came though.

....this is when I realize, I forgot the grabbing death-crab was going before the ranger in order. As we're yelling to run, it grabs her, -crits-, doing something close to 30 damage and starts up the hall with her in one claw and the other just looking for someone else to grab. At which point, I slam the door and yell for everyone to lean against it. if we don't we're all dead - yes it sucks, but option b is worse, and this is not a fight we can win at this point I had more hp left than the whole group combined...and I'm the wizard. So 1 or 4 deaths...what's it going to be?

Out of character my wife (paladin), 8 year old (ninja), 10 year old (ranger), and 12 year old (GM) are all looking at me with this disbelief - you're really leaving her to die? Hey...it isn't real life here people. All the same, I was getting a little teary eyed - PC death still sucks, especially when you basically pulled the gallows lever on them.

...epilogue.

What I didn't know was about to happen when I made that call, is on her action she tried animal empathy to come the creature, rolled a nat-20, and GM decided that was enough for the crab to calm down having chased the rest of us from its lair, leaving her setting somewhere under 5hps, but alive. It didn't change the fact that we'd made a decision to leave her to death to save the rest of the group, but we were of course happy she was alive.

So - have you ever had to sacrifice a fellow PC w/o their full consent for the greater good?

[Bill Dunn]

We don't generally think of it as sacrificing someone for the greater good. It's avoiding everyone dying and, thanks to the circumstances, someone can't make it. The game's sometimes like that. Most of us are understanding when we get left behind in those circumstances.

[Spastic Puma]

Skulls and shackles spoiler:

In skulls and shackles, our party ninja was caught snooping around Arronax during the opera. With him separated from the party and everyone else undercover, we could do nothing as he was beaten and questioned by arronax's guards. Eventually, through some ninja skill, he managed to escape.

We eventually met up with Arronax and talked plot info, but our ninja still held a grudge after being so badly beaten. Later that day, the ninja used his hat of disguise to attempt to impersonate arronax's dead son as a cruel prank. When the pirate lord saw through the ruse, he brutally murdered the ninja in the streets. Needless to say, as pirates we were quick to disassociate from our now-dead friend. Arronax apologized and offered payment. We accepted the gold and forgot the whole thing happened.

In retrospect, it seemed a little heartless how we handled it. However, sometimes your party members make some seriously dumb decisions.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

Sometimes it's best to cut your losses while you're ahead (or in this case, not 6 feet under), even if it means permanently losing valuable resources.

It's important to not think of it as a matter of being heartless, it's about trying to not create more heartbreak than what is to be expected.

The GM gave a lot of lee-way in how the situation was handled to prevent what is a TPK, much less a PC death. If the GM was playing by the rules, your Ninja would already be dead before you even decided to cut your losses and run off, making your decision the smart thing to do.

Let's also take into consideration that the GM rolled pretty damn high (and you guys rolled pretty low) on all of your rolls, which plays a significant factor in how this played out. The only saving grace was the Ranger rolling a 20 on his Animal Empathy check; if it was something that was even a few numbers less, he probably wouldn't have succeeded, and got killed then and there too.

Not to mention that you guys didn't bother to rest when you were so low on resources to deal with such a powerful threat. One Lay on Hands? A couple wimpy spells with Cantrips? A No-Ki Ninja? Sounds like you guys were down and out from the beginning. That's no condition to be fighting anything, much less exploring.

So really, you made the right call. You just should've made the call of "Let's run and not fight" well before you guys actually got into a fight. This also makes things such as scouting ahead (so you actually know a mindless giant crab is there) very important, because if that's the case, you can very easily set up camp and watches and regain your resources well before you're equipped enough to deal with such a foe.

Or, as the Ranger did, perform Animal Empathy checks to coerce the giant crab into not slaying your party, allowing you to proceed further. The lack of scouting ahead to deal with such an enemy really cost you guys; the element of surprise is extremely powerful, and can turn the tides of battle when you cut their entire attack force in half in one round.

[doc roc]

I was in a game once where a player got found out for cheating on an ability. This had been going on unnoticed for months. The player said it was a rules 'misinterpretation'..... he was killed off in the next encounter.

[Sundakan]

There's also no way you could have predicted Wild Empathy being used that way, since your GM either forgot how it worked, or was REALLY nice about allowing it to avoid a character death.

Wild Empathy only works on Animals or Magical Beasts, not Vermin. Crab are Vermin, so it wouldn't have worked at all.

And even if it did work, it works just as Diplomacy, which at a minimum takes 1 minute (10 rounds), and is generally unable to work against actively hostile creatures.

As far as you knew, the Ranger was screwed. He was saved by a well hidden Deus Ex Machina.

[memorax]

Condemed to death to death as the op says very rarely. In both groups I have run and played the players tend to look after each other. Let players kill themselves even after giving plenty of warning both as a DM and player yes. One can prevent a group TPK when possible. One can try and prevent a player from doing something dumb and dangerous. Usually they ignore any advice and get what they deserve imo.

[Serghar Cromwell]

Nope. Every death my group has had was either in the middle of a battle due to unlucky rolls or intentional team killing.

Except for that one time a level 1 monk wandered off into the tundra by himself and picked a fight with a polar bear.

[GM 1990]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Sometimes it's best to cut your losses while you're ahead (or in this case, not 6 feet under), even if it means permanently losing valuable resources.

It's important to not think of it as a matter of being heartless, it's about trying to not create more heartbreak than what is to be expected.

All valid points (some of it we did but I left out for a bit of brevity), but you hit the 2 big contributors. Low resources, and fickle dice. I'll add a 2 others, young GM; possibly mis-matched CR.

Getting ourselves in to deep is a bit of playing style I think. I've never liked the idea of the 15min adventure day. I husband my spells like their hero-points so we can try to clear as much of the dungeon (this early part of the AP has a lot of dungeon crawling) as possible w/o having to stop or leave and go rest and wonder what (should, but often doesn't) happen while we're gone. This was definitely over extending - but we knew the worst spot in this level and weren't going there w/o resting. Classic "last room? sure one more"....bad call. I still wanted the party to rest right there, bar the doors and let the ranger's new friend protect us if we got attacked. But group call was head back to Sandpoint so we did.

The GM (my 12yr old son) didn't realize how bad the encounter was going until afterwards, when I showed him the math and probabilities. If it had been me I probably would have had the crab toss them both into the water after the 2d round...give them a chance to run. As it was, he was having it chase us up the corridor..I was worried we still weren't safe since it could bash the door. Thankfully a timely nat-20 solved it.

Lastly the CR may be off. Its listed as a CR5 encounter and we're APL4 (4 PCs at 4th plus ranger has a pet Firepelt Cougar...another timely nat-20 earlier in the AP). But the environment is stacked against PCs. Deep water, and only a short 5' wide ledge to fight from (no flanking, and very little standoff for ranged attackers).

The Crab was AC20 (CMD=23),51HP 2x claw at +10 BAB (1d4+6, Grab, Constrict), +14 CMB for grapple.

It only needed 6 or higher to gain grapple on 2PCs (and constrict); and after that with the +5 bonus only needed 2s or better on its grapple checks to do 14-20 (17avg) damage per round on 2 PCs. That's 2 or 3 rounds and 4th level PCs are unconscious, and still in grapple.

On our side, we needed 12s or better (14 or better once grappled) to hit AC20, 17s or better to escape a 23 CMD once grappled (Ninja could roll 13 on escape artist).

The math seems to indicate its an encounter where you are almost guaranteed at least 1 PC death with just average rolls on both sides. I could have used SM II for a water attacking creature (would have got flanking and added action economy), but even if I'd started casting immediately, that would have come on line too late at the damage rate the crab is putting out. We better not risk another frontal assault - that rabbit is dynamite

Really the whole thing was a good teaching point. As players we rarely think we can lose, its good sometimes to escape by your tooth-hair.

[GM 1990]

Sundakan wrote:

There's also no way you could have predicted Wild Empathy being used that way, since your GM either forgot how it worked, or was REALLY nice about allowing it to avoid a character death.

Wild Empathy only works on Animals or Magical Beasts, not Vermin. Crab are Vermin, so it wouldn't have worked at all.

And even if it did work, it works just as Diplomacy, which at a minimum takes 1 minute (10 rounds), and is generally unable to work against actively hostile creatures.

As far as you knew, the Ranger was screwed. He was saved by a well hidden Deus Ex Machina.

Good points.

Being a home-game we run more loose with the rules, and although I keep masterwork tools and the d20pfrsd open on the laptop we try to move combat along fast and avoid stopping to dig up specifics.

As Darksol stated, it was more about trying something out of the box at that point (vs just smash it again) and the nat-20. Cool for story, not by the book though.

[Sundakan]

Didn't say it was a bad thing, but on-the-spot houserules like that are impossible to predict. Basically, you made the best choice based on the information you were given. You no more could have predicted the Wild Empathy attempt would work than if the Ranger suddenly found a Vorpal sword on the ground and rolled a 20.

[Exguardi]

Condemning party members to death was the preferred survival tactic for most of my Rappan Athuk players. Nothing worse than a TPK and losing all the valuable intelligence gained about the megadungeon.

[Queen Moragan]

At the start of our KM campaign while we were traveling to Oleg's, the GM gave us a werewolf encounter the first night. We were all first level and there was maybe ten NPCs traveling with us.

The werewolves, there were two of them, dragged off one or two of the NPCs and one PC. No one dared to do anything about it. I think they picked off one or two more NPCs during the next couple of nights, then the remaining NPCs kept to the road when we reached Oleg's.

The new PC met us there having arrived from the other direction. Oleg had some silver arrows he sold to us, so we went out looking for them. We eventually did find one and managed to kill it, but not before the new PC was bitten.

He failed every save he tried, a couple with natural ones too.

We ended up tying him to a tree and waiting for him to change, when he did we used silver arrows to kill him and put him out of his misery. Then we burned the body and the tree.

We named that section of the Narlmarches, Knozka's Stand, after him.

We used that occasion to create our first law, that Lycanthropy was hereby outlawed, and anyone found to be a lycanthrope would be burned at the stake.

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

We actually terminated one of our comrades in Wrath of the Righteous after we found out he was working for the opposition. He had a major change of heart after his resurrection though... not for the good, but for vengeance after his former boss.

[Rub-Eta]

No Sir, I have not condemned a party member to save the rest of the party. I have, however, condemned the rest of the party to save a character. My character.
We were exploring the Mwangi Expanse, standing on a punt, punting our way through the rivers. My fellow party-members jumped off of the punt to slay three rhinos, their horns are worth a lot they said. To that I said 'Nay' and away with the punt I went. After four rounds of punting the punt forth, I was too dedicated to my cause to turn around and help. One man down, the party was not enough to stand up against the three rhinos.
It was glorious.

[DaemonArcher]

Well, I DM a RoTR campaign and I must say everyone of my players are guilty of this. Not a single session goes by without subterfuge and knives in the dark. They gloat in their infighting, the commonfolk run for their lives and the players love it. last victim was an inquisitor poisoned by his comrades and the cavalier bashed away the healers and punched the dying man to death.

EDIT: They are because of these actions not necessarily evil. Because the biggest threat to varisia and themselves are, er, themselves

[Mathmuse]

Sundakan wrote:

There's also no way you could have predicted Wild Empathy being used that way, since your GM either forgot how it worked, or was REALLY nice about allowing it to avoid a character death.

Wild Empathy only works on Animals or Magical Beasts, not Vermin. Crab are Vermin, so it wouldn't have worked at all.

And even if it did work, it works just as Diplomacy, which at a minimum takes 1 minute (10 rounds), and is generally unable to work against actively hostile creatures.

As far as you knew, the Ranger was screwed. He was saved by a well hidden Deus Ex Machina.

We forgot about the vermin restriction ourselves, when I played a gnome ranger in Rise of the Runelords.

My gnome taunted the giant crab via his gnome racial Speak with Animals spell, maybe aided by Wild Empathy, so that it chased him while the other characters took shots at it. Everyone had forgotten a crab counted as vermin rather than animal, so that should not have worked. Usually, vermin are smaller.

Later my gnome ranger took the Vermin Heart feat, partly to explain away the mistake (i.e., pretending he could speak with vermin all his life), but mostly for a side quest involving giant spiders.

As for sacrificing another player character, some have chosen heroic deaths to save the rest of the party, but it was always the PC's choice or calculated risk.

[Bandw2]

and here I was hoping this was a thread about GMs putting PCs to trail and giving them the death sentence...

[LittleMissNaga]

Tried to. Post-adventure, an ominous devil-phantom thing gave us a nasty offer. One of us could give up our life and soul to it, and if we did, it would revive some children we'd failed to save from a similar fate earlier. Basically take their place and wind up dead as dead can be, tormented for all eternity. Surprisingly, everything we could think of indicated that this deal was exactly as advertised. It was just horrible. Paladin said she'd do it.

Wizard made some knowledge check, them turned on some short-range telepathy magic and warned her that her decision was going to get her perma-killed, and we'd be unable to raise her. Paladin understood this, but felt it was worth it to save those innocent souls, even at the cost of her own. I don't think anyone else agreed, but the adventure was done, so she wasn't screwing the party by depriving us of help mid-dungeon, and this was a personal decision. If this was how her character was going to end, so be it.

Wizard didn't agree. He dominated the paladin and forced her to change her mind. At that point pretty much the whole table burst into various avenues of screaming about how a PC shouldn't dominate another PC, he should've let her make her own decision, etc. by the time the volume settled, Wizard's player commented offhand "I'm sorry, but your characters are still convenient for mine. If you act like a moron, he's going to force you to be sensible, and there's honestly nothing any of you can do about it."

Some people grumbled, the guy who actually had the authority to kick him out of the house and say "Don't come back" said nothing, Paladin's player had pulled out her laptop at some point during the screaming and was now playing minecraft and ignoring everyone, and I honestly just wanted to join her, having given up on the screaming frenzy myself when I'd seen that nobody was listening to anybody else, and resorted to staring at old text messages on my phone.

GM shakily tried to smooth things out with an optimistic "Well... I think we're playing [other game] next week, let's pack up for now." I don't think we're going to be playing next week though. I don't want to anyways. I wish our Paladin could have just gotten her sacrifice moment. That would have been a great way to end a storyline, especially compared to this.

[Graywolf777]

Well, it wasn't so much for the good of the party, more to save my own skin...

A few years back I was in a 3.5 game where the Dm wanted us to level quickly, so was running level inappropriate encounters in order to do so. Needless to say this led to far more character deaths than actual leveling.

I was playing a wizard in the second session, due to the fact that my original character had died rather messily in the first session after trading critical hits with a cave bear.We had two new players and one of them decided to play a goblin rogue.

Now this rogue quickly turned into one of the most irritating characters I have ever had to deal with. I have never before been in a game where we at one point turned a party member upside down, shook him and had possessions from the rest of the parties characters actually fall out.

Anyway,we eventually end up raiding this cave that is suppose to be a Dragon's lair. While exploring a side passage we run into a pack of gargoyles, and we get our butts kicked. Around the second or third time that I suggest running, and no one listens, I retreat back to the main corridor.

...And see the dragon moving down the corridor, presumably coming to investigate the racket that we're making.

So I yell out to my teammates that the dragon is coming. At this point the goblin rogue comes hobbling out into the corridor. We were using random crit tables in the game and he had taken a critical hit that had twisted/busted his ankle, reducing his movement down to a five foot increment. At this point, I looked at him and said "Hey, what has two thumbs and can run faster than you? This guy!" at which point I cast expeditious retreat on myself and didn't stop running until the spell wore off. The rest of the party got out, and I the goblin even managed to survive somehow. Never messed with my character again though.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

LittleMissNaga wrote:

Tried to. Post-adventure, an ominous devil-phantom thing gave us a nasty offer. One of us could give up our life and soul to it, and if we did, it would revive some children we'd failed to save from a similar fate earlier. Basically take their place and wind up dead as dead can be, tormented for all eternity. Surprisingly, everything we could think of indicated that this deal was exactly as advertised. It was just horrible. Paladin said she'd do it.

Wizard made some knowledge check, them turned on some short-range telepathy magic and warned her that her decision was going to get her perma-killed, and we'd be unable to raise her. Paladin understood this, but felt it was worth it to save those innocent souls, even at the cost of her own. I don't think anyone else agreed, but the adventure was done, so she wasn't screwing the party by depriving us of help mid-dungeon, and this was a personal decision. If this was how her character was going to end, so be it.

Wizard didn't agree. He dominated the paladin and forced her to change her mind. At that point pretty much the whole table burst into various avenues of screaming about how a PC shouldn't dominate another PC, he should've let her make her own decision, etc. by the time the volume settled, Wizard's player commented offhand "I'm sorry, but your characters are still convenient for mine. If you act like a moron, he's going to force you to be sensible, and there's honestly nothing any of you can do about it."

Some people grumbled, the guy who actually had the authority to kick him out of the house and say "Don't come back" said nothing, Paladin's player had pulled out her laptop at some point during the screaming and was now playing minecraft and ignoring everyone, and I honestly just wanted to join her, having given up on the screaming frenzy myself when I'd seen that nobody was listening to anybody else, and resorted to staring at old text messages on my phone.

GM shakily tried to smooth things out with an optimistic "Well... I think we're playing...

To be fair, from what I can tell, the Wizard was playing in-character, and didn't really do anything wrong; the player played his Wizard as if there was more than just "the adventure" (which was already "done"), and that's commitment. I don't think he should've went to the lengths that he did, if only out of how I would've personally tried to handle the situation, but still, he has the same validity of not wanting the Paladin to die (or succumb to the obviously evil and rotten deal) as the Paladin who wanted to make the sacrifice. I believe the GM realized this, and decided not to intervene based on that factor.

In my personal opinion, the Paladin would be foolish to trust, much less take the deal, of a Devil Phantom thing, even if it would be to save souls of the innocent (not all of them, I might add, only some; the rest would still be condemn all the same). Faith in a deal might be one of the Paladin's selling points, but is also perhaps a Paladin's one true weakness, something that the Devil Phantom would certainly use to fulfill its own ends (such as condemning the Paladin's soul to one of the 9 Hells, have him transform into some Demonic Anti-Paladin, and then come back to kill the party).

Remember, that if he dominated the Paladin, the Paladin would not carry out obviously suicidal options (such as by saying "Yes" to the deal), but if he would do something against his nature (i.e. try to say "No" to the Devil Phantom, of which he's vehemently expressed his desire not to do), he would get another saving throw with a +2 bonus. So, if the Paladin had a bad roll, I highly doubt the Paladin would fail a second time.

And that's assuming the GM doesn't rule Dominate Person to function as a Charm sort of spell, of which Paladins are immune to.

---

On a more cheerier note, one of our PCs wants to actually die, so he can create a Warpriest, since we always joke about the first PC that dies has to make a Warpriest (as one of our players joked about Warpriests being the best class ever created).

[Combat Monster]

Once, during shadowrun. Because my PC had shown disrespect to another in the group who he was tight with, a street samurai melee sort attacked me. He waited until a raid by the police had just kicked off to make the attempt. Well he ended up sucker punching me, getting me caught and throwing a big wrench into the whole run.

Needless to say even after I managed to work my way out of it, he still wanted to act like a big bad tough guy and risk the group and the mission because of his dislike for me.

I ended up sniping him.

[Helic]

Once, due to lycanthropy. It was basically impossible to remove at the time (no 12th level cleric, no wolvesbane), so we ended up executing the infected PC.

[Snowlilly]

A few times, just in my current campaign.

• Group attacks paladins - I choose to be a non-combatant, eventually convincing the barbarian to surrender. Both evil party members died.
  
• Group accidently summons demon - one person failed their initiative check (this has happened twice)
  
• Party member activates giant construct, between himself and rest of group.
  
• Personally killed the party member that was insane and killing unarmed civilians..

[Daw]

Let's see
In Cyberpunk, My cyberpsychologist PC red tagged two party members, had them stripped of all cyberware, injected with anti-enhancement nano, and installed into long term braindance therapy. They had shot up a shopping mall for fun.

A Druid I ran sided with the monster (Fey) he was negotiating with when some of the party decided that they could preemptively take out the Fey the Druid was "distracting."

OP, not sure you didn't teach your daughter an unfortunate lesson.

[Air0r]

once in Anima: Beyond Fantasy the most powerful party member was compelled to kill the rest of us. we were at the time in a room designed to close and lock from the outside to seal a great evil (and indestructible from the inside). Round 1, he drops three of our five leaving me and him. Same round I choose to not engage, but to instead walk out the door and flip the switch that closes the door. My character proceeded to go become a blacksmith.

Edit: this took place after the boss battle by the way.

[Tyinyk]

No, I'm one to fight tooth and nail to save my allies at any cost, assuming they're not evil dickbags (Which they usually aren't.)
It's gotten ME abandoned and killed a few times, though. There's one player in particular who won't risk his character fighting if he's at half health, even when doing so would mean we'd win the fight.