PC Deaths

[BigSteveUK]

A question for the DM's out there, how do you go about handling PC deaths & why?

1.Luck of the dice, if you get killed that's life.

2.Wait for grand finale, so they can go out a bit more heroically.

3.Hardly ever and then only ever to progress the story or serious climatic moments.

 

[Neeklus]

Personally I find all three reasons listed as good enough explanation as to a character death. Sometimes the luck of the dice isn't with the players, or if they're particular stupid or brazen they will die. This atleast will instill a sense of fear or risk into the players and will let them know that they are not invincible or protected by the divine.

Writing the death of a character into the campaign can sometimes add a sense of gravity, remember however that some characters can be built up over weeks, months even years of playing, and to deprive a player of such an investment can be disastrous. Always make it clear to them in private or during the session what will or might happen.

 

[Evil_Trevor]

None of the above

If a game is to be challanging then charater deaths are a possiility

If you want to develop characters and build a game plot ( and group) then you need to keep the same characters around.

I would not deliberatly plot or run a scene where I knew a character was going to die. Occasionaly the dice go against a character or they (the player) do something stupid even then I try to help by giving them 'intuition' rolls of the "you have a bad feeling about this" type but in all fairness sometimes someone dies.

 

[Vincent791]

I try to be fair, I read sometime in the DM guide that you should try to avoid putting the players in a death situation.

But if they look for trouble they will find trouble. I'm not gonna clean their messes, I try to run the world as a living thing, cause and effect.

 

[slaughterj]

Let the dice fall where the may, that's what fate points are for!

 

[High Lord Dee]

I have been struggling with party continuity elements in Hyboria (see other post). It kind of ties into your question because the answer for both will be the same.

I am planning on having my players create at least two characters at first level. Develop the storylines, roll stats, etc. That way, in the event of an untimely death of a character, they can seamlessly be brought into the adventure with a minimal interuption in valuable game time. These characters will be virtual. The secondary characters will develop at the same pace as the primary characters. Normally, I penalize a player by bringing new characters in at a full level below the surving original party but I plan on having death as a very real threat in Hyboria. Otherwise, IMHO, this would not be true to Howard and the whole Conan setting. In fact, I look forward to it :twisted:

Once, we had planned a gaming weekend back in my college days. Several players drove up to school to play in an all-weekend 24 hour RPG binge. One of the characters was vaporized in the first hour of the session due to bad decision making. The DM did not allow new characters into the campaign and so his weekend ended. Unfortunately, he shared a ride with another player that did not make bad decisions and was stuck there the whole weekend. (Ruthless DM!)

I also plan on asking the players to create characters from different regions so that as the party evolves and begins exploring Hyboria, some of the characters will go different directions to keep good story lines. The Players will not be penalized. It also gives the players an opportunity to learn about the other cool classes in Conan without having to lose characters to death effects. If you elect not to do this, do not be afraid of whacking a character from time to time. There is really no other way to create the fear of death in a RPG. Just sit back and enjoy the experience.

P.S. No, I am not that ruthless DM that forced the poor guy to hang out all weekend while everyone else played if that is what you were thinking 8)

HLD

 

[Thoth Aw C'mon]

A question for the DM's out there, how do you go about handling PC deaths & why?

1.Luck of the dice, if you get killed that's life.

2.Wait for grand finale, so they can go out a bit more heroically.

3.Hardly ever and then only ever to progress the story or serious climatic moments.

There certainly are situations that call for the fugding of the die, for want of a better phrase, but only in very rate situations. For example if a particular character needs to survive in order for the final, big dramatic event in the very next room to be triggered, and the die indicates that he's about to take a dirt nap, then many GMs may decide for the good of the adventure narative to fudge that roll. Thats why God in his infinite wisdom invented GM screens. Now I know a lot of hard-ass GMs are going to go bananas about that concept, but hey, the object of the game after all is to have fun. Making good decisions in situations like this is a big part of being a GM.

Having said that, again this is something for extreme situations, needs to be very rarely used. This can easliy become a bad habit as a means of bailing out inept players in order to continue the game. Letting the die fall where they may, and letting a character die, may help make players better players in the long run. Hopefully they'll learn from their mistakes and be better prepared, more thoughtful, more careful, etc with their next character..

So personally, with the very rare exceptions, I prefer a GM that lets the die fall where they may and lets crits be crits. As a player, the mortality of your characters contributes a lot to the fun of the game and your sense of accomplishment when you finally defeat the baddie or the maze or whatever antagonist you're up against. In an adventure you're making a lot of decisions that may cost your character his life- thats exciting! And if your character dies, remember the good times, learn from your mistakes, and reach for a blank character sheet.

If you're often able to skate by on fudged rolls, a lot of the drama, excitement, and sense of accomplishment is taken out of the game. And as a player you can usually tell when this is happening.

 

[MadDog]

Let the dice fall where they may ! Who said the Hyborian age was fair !

Mad Dog

 

[Yogah of Yag]

My motto is: "The GM doesn't kill PCs--the dice do."

or...

This is your brain.
This is your brain on dice.
[*clattering*]
Any questions?

 

[Boreas]

I've always been able to justify characters living, or dying, with
the roll of a die with the same word many people use disparagingly
when confronted by a conversation like this...
...LUCK

People in the real world have good & bad luck...eg players who
for one evening roll so many crits it makes a GM's eyes water...or
so many fumbles they change dice. (Hey - we've all seen it happen)

So - why not transfer this into the game by way of your monologue.
Describe a character as having a run of good or bad luck - use
the gods, use training = making your own luck, use biorythyms...
whatever works for you.

Heh - I'm sure that after reading this many posts, you'll come to
one decision or another - good luck to you I say! :wink:

 

[BigSteveUK]

I will be honest I am a fudger, I am not particularly comfortable with slaying PC’s. I tend to run high fantasy campaigns were the players are the heroes. I personally like heroes to go out with a bit of a bang. They tend to die, only during finales or big, encounters or through stupidity, I never save idiots. My only game with a fairly high death toll is CoC. I am very tempted to play a much harder Conan game and may just roll the dice in front of the players.

Thanks for you intelligent and informative responses, again.

Cheers,

Steve

 

[BigSteveUK]

I like High Lords idea about creating backup PC's, I feel that could work well, especially if you split the party up and run it almost separately, then let them hook up again at different points. Like having your backups characters save your players from prison etc. You will have to tell me how well it works HLDee

Steve

 

[Raven Blackwell]

Considering my fatality rate among my players my view has always been "Death happens. Get over it and start to roll up a new character. And let's be careful out there." (*) 8)

(*) Obscure Hill Street Blue reference. Man I am old.......

 

[Oly]

"If a game is to be challenging then character deaths are a possibility"

I disagree with that. It's true that character deaths do make for a challenging game full of threat. However if you think that the worst you as a GM can do to a character is to kill them then you're just really not being imaginative enough.

Killing a character ends their story, throwing a really nasty twist at them instead keeps the story going and keeps it interesting.

After all Conan should have died many times, instead he looses his "army" and gets nailed to a tree or some such fate.

I do feel that there must be a consequence to bad luck or planning, it just doesn't have to be death to be nasty. As said there's much worse you can do to them.......

 

[Sutek]

A question for the DM's out there, how do you go about handling PC deaths & why?

1.Luck of the dice, if you get killed that's life.

2.Wait for grand finale, so they can go out a bit more heroically.

3.Hardly ever and then only ever to progress the story or serious climatic moments.

I think the real first step is to explain how deadly the game is to the players first. Maybe they would rather you increase the Massive Damage threshold so they can keep thier characters longer. That's not a huge consolation on your part as GM. Perhaps giving them a fourth fate point that can only be use in case of death. That maintains the threat of demise, but puts a great deal of power in the players' hands. 3 fate points is really enough to get them through most basic adventures and even some of the more challenging scenarios, IMO.

On the one hand, they have to realize that they can die. Doing dumb things or taking unncecssary risks can get you killed - that's the facts. That said, if they fail to make a spot check for a deadly trap that could get them killed - you know, a one-hit wonder of a trap or something - then I'll give them several ways to get out of it.

As a player, I always hated dying because I simply fell in a pit or some other instantly deadly thing that my party and I simply didn't try and roll to find because we're preoccupied with other factors, usually story based. I'd say that if the PC is going to be in deadly jeopardy from instant death, but he's put himself in harms way out of interest in the story...let it go, or give him that extra benefit of the doubt.

Going down in combat or being careless or frivilous is another matter.

I had a player in a COC game that got very frustrated with a doctor at a sleep clinic and decided to break in to the clinic under the dark of night. Somehow he failed to take into account that he could just enroll in the program or schedule and appointment with the doctor, both options that were laid before him quite obviously. Eh...so he wanted to play the tough guy investigative reporter...I'll let it slide. Now, he knows that during the day there are at least two goons with guns, so those guys might be trouble. He also has low skill in picking locks, but is surprise when the records room and chief of staff's office is locked. He's broken a window to get in, silently enough, but forgetting that people will notice the broken glass in the morning - glass in a window leading to the room where the patient records were stored, which he'd been asking about the previous day. He was so surprised that cops showed up to arrest him for B&E.

Now there's no death there, but I could have had him shot by a clinic goon. I avoided it because I wanted to teach himn a lesson (how poor role playing choices can backfire) without doing him harm. He got it.

 

[urdinaran]

I usually go with option #1.

My player are pretty smart, so I don't have to worry about them doing stupid things. So far, no one has died due to burning Fate points (twice, they are almost 4th level); I think that's pretty good. When I ran the same group through a Midnight campaign, 2 out of 6 died at the end.

I have warned them of the deadly reality of a Conan campaign, so they know. I do not try to kill the characters, but the way I see it, death is always a possiblilty; If I take that element away, the game becomes less exciting and they don't have to try as hard.

 

[High Lord Dee]

I usually go with option #1.

My player are pretty smart, so I don't have to worry about them doing stupid things. So far, no one has died due to burning Fate points (twice, they are almost 4th level); I think that's pretty good. When I ran the same group through a Midnight campaign, 2 out of 6 died at the end.

I have warned them of the deadly reality of a Conan campaign, so they know. I do not try to kill the characters, but the way I see it, death is always a possiblilty; If I take that element away, the game becomes less exciting and they don't have to try as hard.

Our group will be coming out of Midnight into Conan. I am curious? How do you compare the two settings (Quality, Rules, Setting, Storyline, Magic, etc.)?

HLD

 

[urdinaran]

I really had fun running Midnight. I liked what they did with the magic system. If you like it, you'll love Conan.

My only problem was the very over-the-top "the darklord won" thing. Also, the changes to each class in order to offset the lack of magic are good, but Conan does it better. Probably because in Midnight they kept the same d20 spells, whereas in Conan they have totally new spells.