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I am running Reign of Winter, and my players encountered event D.
Environmental conditions: I decided to make the snow chest deep (costs 20 ft. to move 5 feet) per an earlier event. Partially, this was to give the players cover against the pixies. The other aspect, is that it is heavily snowing, bestowing a 20% miss chance. For the most part, this doesn't play any major role in the battle.
I had 4 players at the time: a Catfolk Alchemist, Tengu Inquisitor, Kitsune Rogue, and Aasimar Paladin. The former 3 are noobs who are learning the system, but the latter is more skilled.
The players entered the scene, saw the bird fetishes, and started talking about them. The paladin used Detect Evil, and noticed that there was evil afoot. The Paladin decides to fly forward, away from the party. At this point, combat starts.
During the first round of combat, the monsters used their impressive stealth skills to hide in the upper canopy of the trees. The paladin further flew around isolating himself from the players. The players prepared for combat, one stealthed around, another used his perception to search for enemies, and the last double moved to move 3 spaces in the deep snow.
A note about the enemies that is important:
The enemies are only really aware of the location of the Paladin at this point, so they attack the threat they know about and deal consistent damage to him on the 1st and 2nd round of combat while using snipe (-20 stealth) to remain hidden—I was surprised when it was working, and I wasn't even counting in the penalties to perception due to weather effects and distance.
On the 2nd round the Paladin decides to fly further away from his allies and hide in a tree. The enemies reposition using stealth.
On the 3rd round the paladin sees one of the enemies and attacks it with his light crossbow. It does some damage. The the attacked enemey makes itself more obvious and uses Dancing Lights to create move false trails.
On the 4th round, the paladin is low on HP (around 3 left) and decides to retreat from the enemies. How does he retreat? Does he fly to his allies? Does he go to the ground and hide? No. He decides to call the retreat and fly off-screen with a full-round fly (running while flying I guess). His fly speed is 20 ft., the enemies have a fly speed of 60 normally. The enemy shoots him again.
Luckily, the Catfolk Alchemist has a climb speed, so he climbed up one of the trees and pegged the the injured enemy with a bomb. This incapacitates this foe, so I have one of the other enemies fly down, grab the fallen enemy, and flee the battlefield.
On the 5th round, the Paladin decides to continue full-round fly, gets shot again. By this point he has 2 HP left.
On the 6th round, the Paladin realizes that maybe he isn't going to out fly the enemy. So he sees and shoots at it with his light crossbow. He misses. He gets shot again.
On the 7th round, the paladin misses his attack, shots shock and knocked out, and promptly coup de graced by his diminutive enemy.
Is this kill unfair? From my perspective, the Paladin made loads of terrible decisions. I also started thinking that the reason he was acting this way was because he viewed himself as the "Hero" of the story while the other characters were the supporting cast.
After his character died, he decided to quit the game. He packed up his stuff, and left the game store.
Of course, when he left, the other players just carried on as though nothing happened, and enjoyed the rest of the game night.
What do you guys think?
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I think when you consider the long game, everything worked out for the best. A bad player exited themself, and other players who did not have a prima donna attitude had fun.
Pretty much what Drahiliana said. I mean, he made a shyt ton of bad decisions, decided to fight in a way which put himself at a huge disadvantage (a 1v3 gunfight where he doesn't have cover, is a big shiny target, and where he isn't an optimized ranged combatant), and instead of fleeing towards his allies he kept flying in a way that allowed the enemies to keep shooting him for 7 rounds.
Yeah, he deserved to die. And yup, he should have just asked to roll a new character. But he left and the group had fun, so a good ending all around.
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At low levels I take player skill into account with how much leeway I give them, but before I go any further I can't say you were objectively wrong. He may have just been expecting a different game than you were running.
He could also have had real life issues stressing him, and the character death just made him want to go home.
He likely assumed that leaving the map was a "safe space" since many GM's might have let him go, but he should have retreated toward the party anyway just so he would be there to help them.
I would have given him the "Are you sure you dont want to go that way(back to the party)?" hint.
Also many players feel like it is objectively bad form to coup de grace a PC. I don't agree, since different tables have different ideas with what is ok for that table's social contract.
As for the detect good/evil spells, you are correct.
edit: I do not find you to be at fault, and it may be good that he reomoved himself now vs later in the campaign.
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Sometimes people are offended by coup de grace attempts when it seems like the enemy is wasting combat actions on a downed character. I.e. When the GM seems to want to kill the players more than the enemy wants to win. I don't think this is the case here as the paladin had spent 3-4 rounds flying away in conditions which effectively created a separate combat.
Make sure the other players know that they don't have to drop out of the game if their character dies.
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Sometimes people are offended by coup de grace attempts when it seems like the enemy is wasting combat actions on a downed character. I.e. When the GM seems to want to kill the players more than the enemy wants to win. I don't think this is the case here as the paladin had spent 3-4 rounds flying away in conditions which effectively created a separate combat.
Make sure the other players know that they don't have to drop out of the game if their character dies.
*resisting the temptation to make a bad Black Leaf joke*
Agreed with Drahliana. This was a very favorable outcome for all involved (except the paladin), and it ended well for something that could have gone much uglier.
He made a lot of tactically poor decisions and suffered for them. A little prodding for decisions might have been in order if his paladin had a decent wisdom score (as often a player is not as wise as their character), but otherwise he learned through a fantastic teacher; experience.
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If the Paladin's player was new to the game ...
He was a veteran as best as I could tell. Maybe he was newer than I thought, but he had decent system mastery.
Were the enemies bigger and could have carried the paladin off, the one who 1v1ed him at the end might have dragged him off to the boss of the first half of the book, but it boiled down to finish him off or leave him to die on his own while not being threatened by anyone else. Them killing the paladin made more sense to me.
The enemies are trying to win and survive while acting in their pre-written tactics. They're going to act intelligently if they have intelligence.
There is one thing that makes me paranoid, though:
The players haven't killed any of the fey that have attacked them so far. Enemies have more or less been able to escape.
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I wouldn't say it was unfair, but you were definitely playing a cut throat, no mercy type game. If you want to play a super deadly game, then that is fine, but maybe that wasn't his thing. They were evil pixies so hunting down and murdering the guy makes sense from a roleplaying perspective.
You chased down and murdered a player who was trying his best to flee the encounter, when there was more dangerous targets, and higher priority targets around, that you could have easily switched target to. So you could of definitely went easier on him. If it was me, I would of switch some of the pixies to the other targets but it is what it is.
I also disagree when people say the paladin made a bunch of bad choices. He actually made the choices you would expect smart players to make. When he was attacked, he went and hid behind cover and when wounded he retreated. Which is better than most people who often don't use cover very much, and many people do not retreat when wounded.
You say he should of ran to the party, but from the sounds of it he just ran the in the direction away from the threat, which is the safest direction to run. The party didn't have a cleric by the sounds of it, so what does running to the party do? They couldn't have saved him. They couldn't coup de grace him, but they could of just shot a few arrows into his unconscious body and he would of died all the same.
(1) Encounters are designed for the party, not the individual. Knowing that there were 4 players, he flew off away from the party. That alone puts anyone on notice that they are in a 1v4 situation.
(2) It was snowing heavily, limiting the movement of everyone else. He FLEW ahead at full speed. This puts him on notice that nobody can come to his aid.
(3) When, surprise surprise, he gets attacked, he doesn't bring word to the party. He tries to get into a shootout, 1v3, with a paladin. Flying around without cover. Surprise surprise, he loses the shootout.
(4) His attempt at flight was obviously a very poor one. Because he flew in a way that did not allow him to actually get away. And again, did not prove him cover. If he flew to the party, at the very least they could have tapped him with wands of cure (whatever) wounds. Instead, he flew away from them and continued to try to fight.
(5) He finally goes down away from the party. The enemy take 6 seconds to finish off someone whom they know can (a) heal himself and (b) is dangerous. The enemy acted intelligently.
(6) He didn't stick around to see what would happen. In a home game, many GMs would be more than happy to leave it to the party to find a way to bring him back to life. Or for him to roll a new character. Instead he rage quit.
All in all, he got what his actions warranted.
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I also disagree when people say the paladin made a bunch of bad choices. He actually made the choices you would expect smart players to make. When he was attacked, he went and hid behind cover and when wounded he retreated. Which is better than most people who often don't use cover very much, and many people do not retreat when wounded.You say he should of ran to the party, but from the sounds of it he just ran the in the direction away from the threat, which is the safest direction to run. The party didn't have a cleric by the sounds of it, so what does running to the party do? They couldn't have saved him. They couldn't coup de grace him, but they could of just shot a few arrows into his unconscious body and he would of died all the same.
The problem is the Paladin made himself a prey animal separated from the flock. There were other players such as the Alchemist who was enough of a threat to make their enemies retreat. So if the Paladin had run back to the party, there was a good chance the Alchemist might have done enough damage to discourage the fey again.
ROW's encounters are TOUGH. You either succeed as a group or you leave your frozen corpses as a memorial to bad decisions. Outrunning a threat is not an option when you only have half the movement speed of your pursuer.
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*resisting the temptation to make a bad Black Leaf joke*
A quick google finds grape diseases and shops selling cannabis smoking gear. What?
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I haven't run this campaign, nor sadly have I read it. What level are the characters at this stage. Also, what level are the baddies. I ask this because of the use of detect good and detect evil.
Both of those only work on things over a certain level I believe (level 5?) It could well be that using that incorrectly actually changed the entire tone of the fight in all honesty.
Paladin notes there are baddies and responds by scouting ahead. If he couldn't detect them, he wouldn't have been so far ahead when it all went down.
Pixies are detecting good to find out the goodies are coming. If they cant detect good, they don't respond the same way as well.
Of course, all of that is dependent on level.
Other than that, death is part of the game. If players know that enemies are evil and happily kill people, they learn to be more cautious. If that means you lose a character or two early in, sometimes that's what it takes.
However, not all players want that style of game. Some truly do want the experience of being the hero all the way through a campaign. Surviving odds no matter what. It's important that both parties (DM and Players) are aware of what they want or expect before games begin. If there's a difference of opinion, this is when you need to work out the compromise, rather than when the first death occurs.
If that's been sorted and you still have a player walk, then its all on them and their maturity when they walk.
(1) Encounters are designed for the party, not the individual. Knowing that there were 4 players, he flew off away from the party. That alone puts anyone on notice that they are in a 1v4 situation.He didn't really fly away from the party though. By the sounds of it, he was just a little ahead of them, until he ran away. In which case he was running away, so you expect most people to run away from the enemy.
(2) It was snowing heavily, limiting the movement of everyone else. He FLEW ahead at full speed. This puts him on notice that nobody can come to his aid.Him being a little ahead and scouting stuff out is a pretty reasonable action. Because he can move the fastest, it makes sense for him to be the one scouting. He had a fly speed of 20, while everyone else was moving 5 feet. A 15 foot distance isn't flying off on your own. Even if he was like 30 feet ahead of them, that isn't flying off alone. That is well within the standards of what is normally considered near by.
30 feet, the distance clerics can heal people with their channel is considered very close. It is common in a normal fight for people to get even further away than that from party members. I would be hard press to say he flew away from everyone until he is at over 60 feet away.
It didn't sound like he flew that far away, until he was retreating, which he was running at full speed to save his life.
(3) When, surprise surprise, he gets attacked, he doesn't bring word to the party. He tries to get into a shootout, 1v3, with a paladin. Flying around without cover. Surprise surprise, he loses the shootout.He said that the paladin's first action was to fly into the tree, which is getting cover. So he had cover. Also between flying into the tree and flying to the party which is out in the open, the tree makes more sense. Why would you fly into the open? How is that safer?
If he wanted cover with the party, he would have had to dive into the snow....
Round 1
"During the first round of combat, the monsters used their impressive stealth skills to hide in the upper canopy of the trees. The paladin further flew around isolating himself from the players. The players prepared for combat, one stealthed around, another used his perception to search for enemies, and the last double moved to move 3 spaces in the deep snow."
Round 2
"On the 2nd round the Paladin decides to fly further away from his allies and hide in a tree. The enemies reposition using stealth."
To put this in context. He has a 20ft movement. He flies ahead. That's fine. I agree with the idea of scouting ahead. But then when combat starts he further flies away from the party. And on the third round, he puts himself in a position where there is no way that anyone in the party can help him.
Rounds 3-7
He gets in a shootout with an enemy who are ranged specialists. He figures out very quickly that they are much faster than him (40ft run vs 120ft). He doesn't even bother going back towards his party to fight as a team, and even in retreat decides to act alone.
All in all he made bad decisions for 3 rounds. Instead of diving into the snow and into the embrace of potions/wands of curing wounds, he continued to make himself an easy/dangerous target.
I mean, think about it from the point of view of the pixies. The party can't reach you if you don't want them to. You've got 60ft flight. But they can hurt you. Rogues/inquisitors/alchemists can all reach out and do some hurt. If you turn to fight them, then the flying paladin can just heal himself and come back and hit you from the flank.
Or, you chase him down. He's fleeing away from his allies. They can't catch up. He can't run away. And given how slow they are moving, once you deal with him you can easily come back and take them out.
The pixies acted intelligently. The player didn't. The player died. Most of my experience comes from playing Warhammer Fantasy RP, where enemies can and will kill you, and where acting stupid does get you killed. To me, the GM's actions were the right thing to do.
Maybe the paladin player was expecting heroic high fantasy where enemies act stupidly for the purpose of not killing PCs? If so, I can see why he'd be angry at the GM for not forgiving his tactical errors. But from where I stand, the right thing was done.
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I wouldn't say it was unfair, but you were definitely playing a cut throat, no mercy type game. ... They were evil pixies so hunting down and murdering the guy makes sense from a roleplaying perspective.
I love cutthroat games. If you make stupid decisions, you can get isolated and killed very easily, and honestly, you'd have no one to blame but yourself.
You chased down and murdered a player who was trying his best to flee the encounter, when there was more dangerous targets, and higher priority targets around, that you could have easily switched target to. So you could of definitely went easier on him. If it was me, I would of switch some of the pixies to the other targets but it is what it is.
The sprite that went after the paladin could have decided to attack the party, but he already had his quarry on the ropes. I had two of the pixies quit the field entirely (one was incapped, the other grabbed him and ran), so the other players were probably more dangerous than the paladin.
I even explained the scenario to the Paladin, and by his own words he agreed that, were he in the enemies situation, he would have done the same thing.
I also disagree when people say the paladin made a bunch of bad choices. He actually made the choices you would expect smart players to make. When he was attacked, he went and hid behind cover and when wounded he retreated. Which is better than most people who often don't use cover very much, and many people do not retreat when wounded.
This completely ignores the "moving away from the other players and isolating himself" parts. This is a team game. You win or lose together, but he decided that he didn't need his team. Work as a team or die alone in Pathfinder. He decided to fight alone, so he died alone.
You say he should of ran to the party, but from the sounds of it he just ran the in the direction away from the threat, which is the safest direction to run.
If all of your friends are dead and you're pretty sure you can outrun whatever the danger is, yes. If your entire team is right there and could help you fight the enemy, no.
The party didn't have a cleric by the sounds of it, so what does running to the party do?
Been higher priority targets for the enemies. The Alchemist could effectively 1-shot them with a bomb on an average damage roll, but they need to get in range. I banned full casters from the game. I highly encouraged 2/3 and 1/2 casters, but the only person who played someone with healing that he could give to anyone else was the Inquisitor and that is because I made that character for the completely new player. When they hit level 2, their healing will double. In 10 - 15 point buy games, I always ban full casters: they simply outshine the more complex classes due to extreme ease of optimization. It has worked very well in the past.
They couldn't have saved him. [The enemies] couldn't coup de grace him, but they could of just shot a few arrows into his unconscious body and he would of died all the same.
The enemies would have prioritized the other player characters if the paladin ran to them after being KOed.
For the most part, the enemies were relatively unaware of the other PCs right up until a bomb seemed to fly out of the snow and blow one of them out of the sky.
Had the other players yelled at or taunted the enemies, they likely would have attacked everyone instead of the guy painting a massive target on himself.
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Running would be a bad decision even if it wasn't dangerous to him. The Paladin is the only obvious frontliner for this group and he abandoned his position. Even if he had escaped he left his three companions to fend for themselves. His actions would make sense if he was a panicking commoner, not as an adventurer.
I haven't run this campaign, nor sadly have I read it. What level are the characters at this stage. Also, what level are the baddies. I ask this because of the use of detect good and detect evil.
The players are all level 1 by this point. They encounter the following monsters.
Both of those only work on things over a certain level I believe (level 5?) It could well be that using that incorrectly actually changed the entire tone of the fight in all honesty.
Clerics and Paladins both start with faint auras, but other divine casters typically don't unless it says they do. Aligned creatures (anything that isn't true neutral) develops a faint aura when it has 4 or more Hit Dice.
Paladin notes there are baddies and responds by scouting ahead. If he couldn't detect them, he wouldn't have been so far ahead when it all went down.
I decided to give the enemies auras so the paladin could see sense where they are and, if he spent 3 rounds concentrating, he could pinpoint each of them.
Pixies are detecting good to find out the goodies are coming. If they cant detect good, they don't respond the same way as well.
Detect good never turns off for the enemies.
... its all on them and their maturity when they walk.
Yup. It might sound cruel, but when someone decides to walk, I do everything in my power to make sure he or she gets all of his or her stuff and is good to go as soon as possible. If someone walks, I'm not going to try to get the person to come back. He or she made a choice, and I'll respect it.
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I looked up those Winter-touched Sprites.
Shouldn't the staggered effect have knocked him out of the sky, and accidentally saved him?
What sort of Paladin can't go toe-to-toe with a CR 1/3 Fey? Why did the player not just beat the thing up? Iomedae would not be impressed.
However -
I gather from googling that *spoilers* that encounter is only the second in the whole AP. The group can only have been playing for an hour or so, so I do understand that the player would not be used to his brand new 1st level PC, nor his party, nor team dynamics. I also get. Why he packed his bag and walked away - hoping to play an AP and getting killed at the very start of book one (especially after building such a Mary Sue PC - an Aasimar Paladin with a fly speed at 1st level, really?)
So I get why he'd be upset and he had no way of knowing whether he had a killer or lenient GM at that point.
Still terrible play from him though.
I love cutthroat games. If you make stupid decisions, you can get isolated and killed very easily, and honestly, you'd have no one to blame but yourself.
I banned full casters from the game. I highly encouraged 2/3 and 1/2 casters"
I love your playstyle and wish I could join your group.
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Shouldn't the staggered effect have knocked him out of the sky, and accidentally saved him?
He made his save every single time. I was so disappointed. You hear that winter-touched sprites? I am disappointed!
What sort of Paladin can't go toe-to-toe with a CR 1/3 Fey? Why did the player not just beat the thing up? Iomedae would not be impressed.
The enemies were attacking from about 40 feet up from him and shooting him to death. The idea of him using cover came up. The enemies just relocated to negate his cover, then started shoothing him again.
(Especially after building such a Mary Sue PC - an Aasimar Paladin with a fly speed at 1st level, really?)
OMG IRK? He's a furry, and basically created his fursona using the Aasimar. He was a horse man with wings. I could have deneighed his character, but he might have whinnyed about it.
So I get why he'd be upset and he had no way of knowing whether he had a killer or lenient GM at that point.
I'm very "by the books" when it comes to mechanics. I do fun and silly RP, but the mechanics are brutally and the NPCs and Creatures are dangerous.
Granted, if he was fighting normal fey, they probably would have just taken all of his gear, and tied him down Gulliver's Travels style or kidnapped him. Winter-touched fey are EVIL with a capital E. I mean, they just spent a day killing all of the birds they found and making fetishes of them.
Them killing the paladin made more sense to me.I don't see why. There were still active threats in the area.
Not once he was 90 - 120 feet away from them.
I wouldn't say it was unfair, but you were definitely playing a cut throat, no mercy type game. If you want to play a super deadly game, then that is fine, but maybe that wasn't his thing. They were evil pixies so hunting down and murdering the guy makes sense from a roleplaying perspective.
You chased down and murdered a player who was trying his best to flee the encounter, when there was more dangerous targets, and higher priority targets around, that you could have easily switched target to. So you could of definitely went easier on him. If it was me, I would of switch some of the pixies to the other targets but it is what it is.
I also disagree when people say the paladin made a bunch of bad choices. He actually made the choices you would expect smart players to make. When he was attacked, he went and hid behind cover and when wounded he retreated. Which is better than most people who often don't use cover very much, and many people do not retreat when wounded.
You say he should of ran to the party, but from the sounds of it he just ran the in the direction away from the threat, which is the safest direction to run. The party didn't have a cleric by the sounds of it, so what does running to the party do? They couldn't have saved him. They couldn't coup de grace him, but they could of just shot a few arrows into his unconscious body and he would of died all the same.
Tactically it makes more sense to finish an enemy off. An enemy with 1 hit point is just as dangerous as one with 100 hit points, and in PF, unlike real life it just takes one healing spell or channel to bring someone back into the fight.
Running to the party/friends means he is not fighting alone, and that means he might live. Running back to the party has saved PC's and extended the life of NPC's several times in games I have been a part of.
Not once he was 90 - 120 feet away from them.I disagree. Stabbing a downed enemy gives the other enemies time to maneuver against them. He can bleed out just fine on his own, especially with falling damage.
It ultimately doesn't matter, he decided to quit the game the moment he fell unconscious. The environmental conditions meant that the players might have seen the direction he'd flown in, but they would be unlikely to actually pinpoint him, but let's sake for sake of argument that they were able to see him perfectly and had LOS through the trees. Let's reduce the penalty for movement from chest high snow to waist high and just make it difficult (10 movement per 5 feet instead of 20). Lets also say the PCs make their acrobatics checks to full round run. The fastest person would only be able to run 60 ft. in the conditions.
The enemy (I'm trying to avoid spoilers here) would have been able to finish him off no problem. I didn't even factor in the fall damage. Hell, I even ignored the miss chance for his attacks to give him the best shot, but it is what it is.
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It ultimately doesn't matter...
Then why argue with my disagreement?
TOZ Don't forget the high snows reduced the speeds of everyone else. With a move speed of 5 ft they had a minute easy before they had to worry about anyone else.
CdGing is still a waste of time and actions.
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Not once he was 90 - 120 feet away from them.I disagree. Stabbing a downed enemy gives the other enemies time to maneuver against them. He can bleed out just fine on his own, especially with falling damage.
That would depend 100% on the type of enemy. Goblins for instance would probably start eating the paladin the moment he deropped, even with enemies right next to them. They are portrayed as that crazy in Golarion.
Evil Fey may actually delight in killing isolated opponents, taking the time to desecrate his corpse and use it as a fetish to frighten the other enemies in their areas.
120 feet through deep snow, forest and poor visibility. The other characters probably wouldn't even be able to find them. In that situation, I would absolutely have evil fey make sure the opponent was dead then use their abilities and stealth to toy with the rest of the party. It's a deadly encounter in all honesty, if you play the baddies super intelligent. Which is what you're suggesting they do to allow the paladin to bleed out and go back to find the others.
However, again this comes down to the game style completely and knowing what to expect. As long as everyone is clear up front, then all good.
It ultimately doesn't matter...Then why argue with my disagreement?
For the sake of argument. You offered a disagreement, and while the outcome doesn't matter, you offered a point of view and both of our understandings of the subject and only be strengthened by argument.
Basically, something can be argued even if it doesn't matter in the end. :)
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Paladin falls.
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Taku, I think you ran everything fine. Short of giving the players tactical suggestions or suggesting some ideas are just bad.
With new players, I do give hints if an idea is particularly bad.
However, you said this guy had experience in what he was doing. You even gave him advantages and changed things slightly to better use his powers. He didn't take any of those options, and died.
My take at this point is he either hardens up or leaves. Looks like he left.
Enjoy the rest of the campaign mate.
It ultimately doesn't matter...Then why argue with my disagreement?
TOZ Don't forget the high snows reduced the speeds of everyone else. With a move speed of 5 ft they had a minute easy before they had to worry about anyone else.CdGing is still a waste of time and actions.
Not everyone fights like a general, especially chaotic fey.
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Fey aren't the coup de grace type, they'd rather take their unconscious New play thing back to whatever passes for a lair and "play" with it for a few days or however long until it dies.
Which I believe is the point TOZ was trying to make.
I personally don't believe in enemies using coup de grace, escape stories are so much more fun.
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The paladin acted like an utter fool, and the GM did them a s%#!ton of favors.
Also, for those who don't know, these are not standard fey. In Reign of Winter, you encounter multiple fey who have been magically corrupted to serve the BBEG. They don't play with their victims. Elsewhere in the adventure, you find a farmer they just flat-out murdered for trying to get his stolen farm animals back.
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Fey aren't the coup de grace type, they'd rather take their unconscious New play thing back to whatever passes for a lair and "play" with it for a few days or however long until it dies.
Which I believe is the point TOZ was trying to make.
I personally don't believe in enemies using coup de grace, escape stories are so much more fun.
Reign of Winter changes a lot of the basic assumptions. Winter Pixies are not your standard pixies, they're literally a cold-hearted murderous bunch. The AP is very much a gritty survival adventure path.
I know a group that's playing it now.. they call themselves "It's Amazing We're Still Alive." They've had one perma loss so far... they're alchemist and the hideous pig creation that was his pet.
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I'm very familiar with Reign of Winter, my point stands.
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Fey aren't the coup de grace type, they'd rather take their unconscious New play thing back to whatever passes for a lair and "play" with it for a few days or however long until it dies.
Which I believe is the point TOZ was trying to make.
I personally don't believe in enemies using coup de grace, escape stories are so much more fun.
Really....
There are many types of Fey, and some of them are very, very cutthroat-strew your innards around a tree-type of fey.
The first scenario of the Kingmaker campaign has a whole tunnel system filled with Fey who have no hesitation with killing you and feeding you to giant centipedes.
Later in that same campaign, there are Fey sent to the world to deliberately hunt down and kill the "invaders"
Again, general perception does not regularly survive encounters with the enemy in Pathfinder campaigns written by Paizo.
Something corrupted by an evil entity that has them killing birds and nailing them to trees for fun, sounds like just the type of thing that would do the same to a bigger animal if possible.
Run your games your own way, certainly. However telling others their interpretation of how a critter should do stuff is not particularly useful (unless that person is specifically asking for advice on that very topic.)
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Especially when you have a GM gloating about how cutthroat he is and how much he disliked the player's character.
This is pretty bad hyperbole.
He allowed the character, encouraged use of the characters abilities, provided advice and options for the character to use powers effectively and survive. That's a very tolerant GM. He didn't hate the character, despite the fact that this was a very powerful build for first level at 15 points. He did, in fact, empower the players choices and let the guy run with it.
He also hasn't gloated about being cut throat. He mentions enjoying that style of game, but he also then explains every decision he made and his reasoning for it.
I have yet to read anything from the GM where he laughs about killing the character, nor has he spouted off about how killing characters is the best, nor listed number of characters hes killed. Those are gloating behaviours.
Can I say I also enjoy playing in and running gritty, tough and cut throat games. I have run games for a great many people and none of them walked when they lost a character. Some of those players lost characters at much higher levels than this guy, after a great deal more time and investment went into it.
Every time, I go through the process of explaining why and how the event unfolded and every time the players unanimously agree it makes sense.
Sounds like this guy walked, even after he agreed that he himself would have done the same thing.
I think some folk are being pretty harsh here.
At least now though, the OP has some different perspectives on the situation and also some different ideas on how to handle things for future.
The GM gave the PCs cover and concealment, then had one of the sprites retreat with the body of its comrade. They were being pretty damn generous.
I figure if the Player doesn't have fun in your group, they should try to find a game that suits their style better. It seems all the other players are having fun. I recommend the Paizo Forums or Roll20 for digital games to make things easier for them.