Dramatic death scenes?

[Yqatuba]

Do you give dramatic death scenes to monsters/npcs? I would only for important ones like "boss" monsters, as doing so for every enemy would slow the game down too much?

[Chromantic Durgon <3]

I do it for the last mob of a fight unless it was a very nothing fight.

[Jhaosmire]

I've been putting more and more storytelling onto my Player's platters, and liking the lesser burden for me. Let them tell you how they defeat a monster, especially the last of a horde or the Big Bad.

You say it feels like it would slow your game, but really the game goes at whatever pace you want it to. Are dramatic moments what your Players are looking for? If so, epic death scenes seem to be the dessert platter of your RPG banquet.

One of my favorite moments in my game is when the Players beat the first Big Bad, ending the story arc; they spent forty five minutes discussing how the death should play out, after striking that final blow. I could tell they felt accomplished, and it was grand.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

Doing deaths like Fist of the North Star is the way to go, brutal, gory and fast deaths for mooks and other minor challenges, impactful and meaningful and detailed for named characters worth a damn.
Extra points if it's super manly and you shed a manly tear for a valiant opponent. Lots of talking before/during/after the fight is optional.

[MrCharisma]

Jhaosmire wrote:

I've been putting more and more storytelling onto my Player's platters, and liking the lesser burden for me. Let them tell you how they defeat a monster, especially the last of a horde or the Big Bad.

This is how we've been doing it for a while. For either an important enemy or the last enemy standing, the GM says: "Tell me how you kill it."

It lets the players add a little personality, and generally gets everyone get a little more creative. I think it's helped us outside of describing murders as well, as it's encouragement to describe your actions and think about the environment around you.

[The Shifty Mongoose]

I have a few players who either don't like describing gore, or who want antagonists to surrender. I can understand both of those.

So usually, I have to make up names and sob stories for the identical goons who thought they could take these heroes on and win. Sometimes, they later see those same goons getting sent to the gallows or off to patrol the inhospitable border. When they kill their foes, it tends not to be dramatic and sorrowful; considering the AP I'm running, most major villains die insisting they're right and denying what's happening, right until they get knocked out of the air and fall to the ground in a broken heap.

The fights are hectic and panicky, so anyone who dies tends to do so in an undignified way.

[Cevah]

I rarely GM, but I think any kill that a normal hit would kill but gets a crit gets considered. If the creature had single digit HPs, they definitely get overkill descriptions.

I do similar for skill check natural 20, and sometimes for a Natural 1 on an attack. [Describe the miss in humorous detail, but no mechanical effect.]

Plot importance will influence the length of the description.

/cevah

[Tim Emrick]

In my games, the most important NPCs and monsters get the most attention when their turn is up, and so also get the most attention when their time is up for good.

The PFS scenario I ran yesterday was a good example. The Big Bad got thoroughly hosed by the PCs, and both I and the players had fun hamming up his ignominious end.

Spoiler for #3-08 Among the Gods:

The party included a bones oracle who, despite his own highly questionable interest in the undead, is a devout Pharasman. This PC played through Among the Living and Among the Dead with me, which made him feel more and more vengeful towards Zyphus's cult, so this was his big moment for payback. In the final showdown, he used Command Undead on Harvestman Quint's ghouls, beat Quint in the contested Cha check for conflicting orders, and sicced the undead on him. The oracle then cast silence on one of the ghouls to prevent Quint from using spells. After a couple rounds of maneuvering and a whole lot of whiffing on both sides (even Quint's channels proved feeble), a ghoul finally managed to tag the evil cleric, who rolled a nat 1 vs. paralysis. The bloodrager pregen coup de graced him quite messily with an earthbreaker, and I let that player describe it as a very brutal form of playing golf. The oracle then collected what was left, just so he could stab all of the pieces himself.

[Daw]

It's a matter of tastes and all, but this can seriously up the Ick factor of your table. Revelling in the humiliation and death of your foe. I should think karma insists on your meeting up with the little girl crying for her daddy. Thinning the line between drama and sleaze is iffy, but we are living in the age of thinning lines, aren't we?

[The Shifty Mongoose]

Well, if you want to mutilate random Aspis goons, then sure, have the other surviving remaining Aspis goons give you looks of shock and disgust. If you, say, describe how you kick a barbazu so hard its corpse lands back in Avernus and splatters into the respective lemures it was made out of, that's less bad.

Personally, I'm not into gratuitious gore, but a brutal death scene could either end up being a revel in carnage, or a reminder about how any death can be disturbing. In general, I'd rather trust GMs & players until that trust is broken.

[Heather 540]

Depends on if a dragon getting hit by over 400 damage in a single turn is considered dramatic. I JUST now did exactly that. My hunter and companion both crit several times and activated 4 AoO chains in one turn. My GM said I grabbed onto its face and shoved it into a blender.