Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Dichotomy 08-29-05, 02:55 PM	If you would like specific background on how this situation arose, look here (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=488997). PC is waiting outside the city, with the sword that he took from the paladin he killed. The VIPs in the city are really angry. The city is big, so they are plenty of relatively powerful NPCs. A group is formed to get the PC. They scry the PC, and PC fails the save. Invisibility sphere, followed by a teleport to like 1,000 feet from the PC, then silence cast on a stone. The posse sneaks up on PC, throws the silenced stone away, and tells the PC to drop his weapons. PC does nothing. The order is repeated. PC says nothing, but moves some. The wizard in the posse casts disintegrate, and PC dies. In my opinion, the PC died because he was utterly stupid. It was obvious that the posse had some power, since they so easily found and surprised PC. It was obvious (I think) that they were there because of what PC had done (killing the paladin) and what they thought PC had done (killing the Marquess). Given the above, they believed PC had force and was willing to use it. Therefore, they assumed that any action he took that was counter to their orders would endanger their lives. So they took no chances. He resisted, and he was put down. I am not going to change that outcome. The PC died. He was later reincarnated. And all the PCs have been cleared of killing the Marquess (and subsequently quested for killing the paladin). My question is this: should I give the PC a break on the level loss from dying? Does it make a difference that in the life of this campaign (28 sessions, from level 1 to 9) that player has had 4 PC deaths while the other two players have had none?
GreyLord 08-29-05, 03:02 PM	With such power why couldn't they paralyze him temporarily, or hold person on him? Or are you saying evil people are angered because the death of a Paladin? If they were that powerful there were multiple ways I'd think they could have disabled him before instantly going for a disintegrate...In my opinion.
Illion the Red 08-29-05, 03:06 PM	If the PC died of his own stupidity all four of those times, then maintain the level loss. Otherwise, the penalty for stupidity goes away and you should expect much more of this behavior.
Dichotomy 08-29-05, 03:14 PM	They were operating under the premise that they could not allow him to act. Therefore they wanted to be able to drop him with a single act. That implies a spell. The charm-line of spells are alright, except that whole +5 to the save if you are threatening the person. Hold person, perhaps, except that it allows a save every round. It is also relatively low level, which means that the save is more likely to succeed. Finally, in a world where you can have zone of truth (or other such spells) cast at your trial, why would an innocent person ever resist arrest? The posse wouldn't have killed him (without trial) if he complied (which was obvious because they ordered him to surrender instead of just killing him first). Essentially his resistance was seen as evidence of his guilt in murdering the marquess. The posse was afraid of him. They weren't going to mess around. Does that make sense?
crossbow 08-29-05, 03:23 PM	It makes sense to me. Stupidity should always have an apropriate 'reward' in my opinion. The only problem I see is that you and the players have let him do this four times now. I don't know about anyone else but getting someone raised gets expensive fast. Unless he's really valuable to the party, I'd be looking for his replacement. Preferably someone with some common sense.
Dichotomy 08-29-05, 03:28 PM	Well, this is only the first time that a PC has been raised in any fashion. The first 3 of this player's PC deaths resulted in him just making new characters.
Bruunwald 08-29-05, 04:23 PM	If the PC died of his own stupidity all four of those times, then maintain the level loss. Otherwise, the penalty for stupidity goes away and you should expect much more of this behavior. I'm in agreement with this advice. However, I'm against the reasoning behind it given here. At least in principle. Here's why: A fair DM uses NPCs and the world around the PC to react to a PC's behaviors. He doesn't make a habit out of punishing players or characters. He plays the NPCs who might want to punish a character for a known offense. But being a stupid player is not a known offense regarding the character. The DM does use the player's behavior as a gauge, but he also has an obligation to treat the character as the player should: per stats, alignment, rank, position, etc. But more importantly, the DM is not the player's daddy. He needs to treat the players (even bad ones) like grown ups. That means no real-world punishments for bad decisions. That's a real issue on these boards because for some reason, we as DMs keep advising one-another to disrespect our players. A DM is a person refereeing a game. He has no business punishing anybody in the real world for being stupid. We all have a right to be as stupid as we want, so long as we aren't disruptive. Disruption is different. That we can mediate. But a player is stupid? So what? It's no skin off our noses and none of our business. So to me, there are better solutions than punishment. One would be to ask the player to play characters more in line with his playing style. Another would be to determine whether the player's constant dying is disruptive to the game, and in extreme cases, asking him to bow out of the game. Otherwise, the game's mechanics are punishment enough. That's why, I do agree with this, in the sense that I think the ruling should stand. You made a ruling, and you should stick to it. But not out of any misguided sense that you are teaching a real person a "lesson" here. That's bogus and not your business. I also agree, however, that the NPCs might have jumped the gun. If they had access to disintegrate, then they had access to much less destructive ways of catching this guy. I sense a bit of frustration in the OP. If the DM reacted so harshly due to his own personal dislike for the player or character, he might want to consider changing his ruling. Or, he might consider asking that player to leave before the problem escalates.
Dichotomy 08-29-05, 04:39 PM	I sense a bit of frustration in the OP. If the DM reacted so harshly due to his own personal dislike for the player or character, he might want to consider changing his ruling. Or, he might consider asking that player to leave before the problem escalates. I certainly did not mean to imply any malice toward the player. He and I have been good friends for over 10 years. I do not think that I killed the PC for any reason other than that it was what I thought the NPCs would do (the reasoning noted in my second post). I also do not think the player is stupid, rather that the action he took was stupid. Basically, my problem here revolves around the fact that I made the situation such that there would (most likely) only be one way to not get killed: do what they told him to do. I thought that it was reasonable to structure the situation that way, given what the PCs (and that one particularly) had done leading up to it (see the thread linked in my first post for more detail). My question essentially boils down to me wondering whether the PC should have the level loss, considering that I made it such that there was only one (likely) course of action he could take that wouldn't get him killed. I am waffling on this because while I DID make this situation one with only one solution, that solution is both what I thought he SHOULD have done and what I thought he WOULD have done.
GreyLord 08-29-05, 05:07 PM	I certainly did not mean to imply any malice toward the player. He and I have been good friends for over 10 years. I do not think that I killed the PC for any reason other than that it was what I thought the NPCs would do (the reasoning noted in my second post). I also do not think the player is stupid, rather that the action he took was stupid. Basically, my problem here revolves around the fact that I made the situation such that there would (most likely) only be one way to not get killed: do what they told him to do. I thought that it was reasonable to structure the situation that way, given what the PCs (and that one particularly) had done leading up to it (see the thread linked in my first post for more detail). My question essentially boils down to me wondering whether the PC should have the level loss, considering that I made it such that there was only one (likely) course of action he could take that wouldn't get him killed. I am waffling on this because while I DID make this situation one with only one solution, that solution is both what I thought he SHOULD have done and what I thought he WOULD have done. Well, look at it this way. If cops shot people for moving, unless that person was looking like they were going to attack, they get in big trouble. For example...Rodney King moved and the police didn't even kill him and look at the reaction. The thing I'm saying is that they probably had better ways to capture the guy for a fair trial. Shooting...aka disintegrating a guy for simply moving is more of a chaotic act bordering on evil. Now perhaps he drew the sword and moved threateningly at them, in which case it's more of a neutral or maybe even a good act (self defense), but disintegrating because he hasn't responded to demands. Did they know he wasn't deaf? Did they knew he could see or hear them? If it wasn't player punishment, unless the law is lawful evil, or a chaotic neutral to chaotic alignment it seems as if their methods were a little extreme unless there are things not being told. That's why I thought it was extreme. Perhaps the character did more than move? But simply moving...if he was moving to escape, some spell to prevent that is more likely to be used then disintegrate I would think. Unless of course they were beholders...but then I could swear beholders might not be beholden to a paladin. :embarrass
Dichotomy 08-29-05, 05:21 PM	Well, look at it this way. If cops shot people for moving, unless that person was looking like they were going to attack, they get in big trouble. The thing I'm saying is that they probably had better ways to capture the guy for a fair trial. Shooting...aka disintegrating a guy for simply moving is more of a chaotic act bordering on evil. Now perhaps he drew the sword and moved threateningly at them, in which case it's more of a neutral or maybe even a good act (self defense), but disintegrating because he hasn't responded to demands. Did they know he wasn't deaf? Did they knew he could see or hear them? I agree. In the real world, if cops act the way the NPCs acted, it would be horrid. But, as I noted earlier, in the DnD world at trials (at least important ones) if a person is actually innocent, they WILL be acquitted (unless there is some ulterior motive). Truth-determining spells would show that the PC did not kill the marquess. Therefore, being that the PC met and had a good talk with the ruler of the city before this, the PC should have no reason to fear being apprehended. The only reason he would fear apprehension is if he was guilty. And that is the reason the NPCs killed him. His resistance led to the inference that he was guilty (and a scary guy). Obviously this type of reasoning does NOT hold in the real world. But I think it has some validity in a world where truth can be accurately determined.
Bruunwald 08-29-05, 08:01 PM	I certainly did not mean to imply any malice toward the player. He and I have been good friends for over 10 years. I do not think that I killed the PC for any reason other than that it was what I thought the NPCs would do (the reasoning noted in my second post). I also do not think the player is stupid, rather that the action he took was stupid. Basically, my problem here revolves around the fact that I made the situation such that there would (most likely) only be one way to not get killed: do what they told him to do. I thought that it was reasonable to structure the situation that way, given what the PCs (and that one particularly) had done leading up to it (see the thread linked in my first post for more detail). My question essentially boils down to me wondering whether the PC should have the level loss, considering that I made it such that there was only one (likely) course of action he could take that wouldn't get him killed. I am waffling on this because while I DID make this situation one with only one solution, that solution is both what I thought he SHOULD have done and what I thought he WOULD have done. It's doubly interesting to me, because I once threw in a similar situation for a different reason. I surrounded the party with good-aligned soldiers who were misinformed, and demanded their surrender. Now, because the party were all good-aligned themselves and because I knew they cared about the townsfolk, I trusted them to throw down their weapons. This may seem like railroading, but it really wasn't my intention. It was one of those rare situations where you know the people well and trust them to help you with the plot by going along for the moment. Unfortunately, we had a very disruptive player in the game, who took that moment to "test the DM" (those were his words!) to determine if I would actually kill his character. He refused to allow his dwarf to lay down his axe, and instead declared that he would fight to the death (against innocent farmboys drafted as town guards!). This went on, with a couple of us asking him if that was really his character's decision or just him trying to mess with the DM (as he stated). Finally, one of the other players convinced him he was not being true to the character and that metagaming was ruining things, and he relented. But he was a complete ass after that, using it as one more feather in his disuptive player cap. But the question was, did I (who usually left many ways out of any situation and played a lot off the cuff) railroading and really at fault? In my case, no, I don't think I was at fault, purely because the player actually stated his metagame intentions. If he had been in a different mood, I don't think he'd ever even have noticed. In your case, the player didn't have any way to know your plans (as it should be). But in this case, your plans involved a kind of ultimatum. Do one thing right or die. I am against that sort of thing because it smacks too much of the Tomb of Horrors, where the module was great, but there were some arbitrary instant kills that made little sense, and so were largely unfair. Still, that said, I think you ought to stick with your ruling. Once a ruling is made, it is important to stand behind it, since that's the basis for your authority. It's then necessary to play it out according to the rules. However, go ahead and make it up to the guy in some other way. I have a DM who is kind enough to apologize later for weird calls. I am sure he sneaks a little something into the game for me here and there, to make it up, as well. But this is really unnecessary. To me, it's just nice that he acknowledges the weird ruling at all.
Dichotomy 08-29-05, 08:08 PM	Well, the point has somewhat become moot... My session tonight just ended early. That PC suffered a full attack from a hill giant.... :rolleyes: