Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Bruunwald 10-06-05, 01:53 PM	Do you ever find yourself feeling that some event has spoiled playing the character for you? Here's what happened: Yellow Musk Creeper sucked my brain out within a point of never coming back. The party dragged me back to this adventurers' guild and they brought me back for a lot of $$$. Though I appreciate what the others did for me, I somehow just do not feel like playing the character anymore. I think I would have been okay, had the character been killed by an orc with an axe and brought back. But for some reason... the brain thing just makes me feel kind of dirty and violated. Even now, two sessions later, I wish the DM had allowed me to draw up another character, as I requested. Or just temporarily, while the main character took a couple weeks off to rest up. Instead, he insisted and now I feel weird with this character every time I think of it. It makes me think of a friend we used to play with, who preferred to let any deceased character simply remain deceased. No resurrection or raise dead for him. When he was done, he was done. So my question is, do any of you ever find that some occurrence has "ruined" the character for you? Some weird damage or death that just affected you differently from the other varieties?
Centauri 10-06-05, 02:10 PM	So my question is, do any of you ever find that some occurrence has "ruined" the character for you? Some weird damage or death that just affected you differently from the other varieties? I did have a weird feeling when one of my favorite characters died. The DM made a really touching scene out of it. Mostly, I'm just posting to say that the rules specifically state that a soul can't be forced to return to life, so just refuse to be resurrected next time the character dies.
Red_Ninja 10-06-05, 02:40 PM	Any significant XP loss that is involuntarily applied to my characters tempt me into simply abandoning them...though I haven't yet done so with any of them...
Bruunwald 10-06-05, 02:50 PM	I did have a weird feeling when one of my favorite characters died. The DM made a really touching scene out of it. Mostly, I'm just posting to say that the rules specifically state that a soul can't be forced to return to life, so just refuse to be resurrected next time the character dies. Well, yeah... It's not really a rules question though. Plus, the character wasn't dead. I was just wondering how people felt about certain fates and what might spoil the character for them.
crossbow 10-06-05, 03:46 PM	You know, it’s funny (to me) that this should come up right now as this is exactly how I want my players to feel if their characters die and are brought back. None of them have yet but they are about to face off against some fairly nasty things in the near future and I want them to be cautious about it. I want them to look at dying and say ‘Gee, you know, that doesn’t seem like such a good idea, even if I can get raised’. So in order to accomplish this, I’m going to kill one of the NPC’s that’s been hanging around with them and then have him raised. I’m going to play him as not quite the same any more. He doesn’t seem to be as good at things as he once was and his memories can be a bit fuzzy in places. I figure he’s lost a level and this is a good way to reflect that price. Bruunwald, If it’s messed with you (the player) this much, think of what it must have done to the character. Play him as you feel him, messed up and not quite the same. Maybe after a few more adventures where he’s functioning less and less well with the group, have him go off an retire somewhere. As a GM I’d much rather see this than a player that shrugs of character death like he’s playing Halo. crossbow
KJW 10-06-05, 03:58 PM	Sometimes a character needs to be retired, because his story has ended. It's like TV series that go on a season too long, in hindsight you wish it had just ended earlier. Same with characters there comes a point when its time to retire the character, maybe go back at some future time, but for now he needs to fade into the background. As a DM I have been describing afterlifes to players who die to better inform them of what they are sacrificing for returning to life. I always think of in TV terms when Buffy gets brought back to life and how absolutely horrid of a thing that is to do to a person, at least to one who goes to the Upper Planes.
Phrennzy 10-06-05, 04:09 PM	This is the perfect opportunity to roll play this out. How would the character react to having his brains sucked out to a near vegetative state? Death Wish? Obsession with the Mind? With Plants? Hatred of plants? He might be damaged in the way a spell cannot heal - a sort of 'Post Traumatic Stress Disorder". This is your chance to roleplay this out. Think of how he would react, and if, after serious contemplation, you don't want to play him, it is possible that his experience results in his incarceration in a mental health facility, suicide, or evil tendencies. But roleplay it out. I don't like the idea of returning from the dead. If a character of mine dies, he stays dead. Unless I can think of a cool roleplay element that I hadn't tried before. Each PC is different, and react differently. Some PCs WANT to stay dead. It makes sense. Other WANT to come back. Tailor your repsonse to the situation based on the PC.
Bruunwald 10-06-05, 04:23 PM	This is the perfect opportunity to roll play this out. How would the character react to having his brains sucked out to a near vegetative state? Death Wish? Obsession with the Mind? With Plants? Hatred of plants? He might be damaged in the way a spell cannot heal - a sort of 'Post Traumatic Stress Disorder". This is your chance to roleplay this out. I did manage to get back to the plant, where I burned it, the area around it, dug up the root and sliced it apart with my companion's axe, then burned those remains as well, then dug up all the area around it. The DM started to wonder why I was digging so much. It just seemed like the thing to do. I guess maybe I'm a bit miffed at him (the DM) because he's the one who treated it as if it were a video game and no big deal to just heal me up and have me go on my way. I offered to let the character convalesce for a time. You know, stare out a window all traumatized. Maybe let me play a friend of his who goes out to rip the plant up and tear the place apart, until I felt the character would be okay to go out again. The DM (who is a dear friend who I love), treated it like, "What? You're crazy. Okay, so he's fine now. Now what do you do?" I guess it comes from his own uber video game habit. Still, the trauma is a good idea. And I think the groundwork is layed with all the plant tearing and burning I did last time. Maybe I'll let my character try to overcompensate and get crazy for awhile. Maybe voluntarily freeze up the next time a plant creature comes along. I'd feel better if there were some longterm side effect to all of this. Getting back to my OP, anyone else have any weird issues that ruined playing a character for them?
boredgremlin 10-06-05, 04:51 PM	For myself the things that really bother me are when a character of mine has to do deal with really lawful characters. If you create characters together its not that big of a deal, players can coordinate things like alignment. But if you do it apart (like we did) then you get issues. For instance i spent some time really fleshing out my current character who is chaotic nuetral. He is fairly wealth obsessed and independent and vengeful. He doesnt trust authorities becuase of his background and prefers vigilantism to police. He is borderline chaotic good if he could get over his selfishness, lol but he wont. Anyway turns out the rest of party is either lawful neutral or lawful good. So in any roleplay situation they all gang up against my guy and we stuck doing stuff that he thinks is retarded. Like dragging a captured bandit all the way back to town for cops instead of hanging him from the nearest tree like the cops are just gonna do anyway. This has pretty much ruined this character for me. Even though i really like the guy i am stuck creating a new one now with a totally different background and personality. This is the stuff that really annoys me about the game sometimes.
scott644 10-06-05, 06:07 PM	Pretty much any time a character of mine is put in a no-win situation by the DM, using the character's nature to do so. I don't enjoy no-win situations; not to witness and most definately not to endure, and to be forced to endure one by somebody who understands this about me is, well, ugly. If my character survives the ordeal (and he usually does), I'm stuck having to reinvent him in my own mind, making the next few sessions rather lackluster at best on my part. Worst such case was playing a (religious) monk in another game system, who had a prohibition against killing. GM pushed and pushed and finally got him into a "duel" with an npc intent on killing him; he barely survived after effectively refusing to make any effort to kill the npc. After that I basically said if he comes around again I'll just kill him and shut that stupid plotline down permanently because it was the internal religious conflict he was playing on. To this day I am convinced he doesn't understand what he did; he still obsesses with no-win situations.
ytookay 10-06-05, 09:26 PM	When you die and someone tries to bring you back to life, you always have the option to choose to remain dead. So, you missed that opportunity to get this character out of the party. But if it happens again, you'll be ready for it.
Bryarr 10-06-05, 11:33 PM	Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a great idea! (wikepedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-traumatic_Stress_Disorder ) Another that would have been great, had you had time to think about and apply it immediately, is conversion disorder. If you want to get back at your DM, really ham it up. Make your character's disorder really get in the way of things (especially his plans!) When he asks you what the problem is, simply explain to him that this is the appropriate psychological response for your character's experiences, and if he didn't to explore such things he should have let you roll up a new character. Then suggest that you'd be willing to do so now. OR Be mature about it, explain your situation to the DM, underlining the fact that you are no longer having fun playing your character. If that doesn't get his attention, either develop PTSD or get your character killed and refuse to be raised. Bry Bry
Order 66(6) 10-06-05, 11:51 PM	I'm with most of the people here. That really sounds like fertile ground for roleplaying. And having PTSD symptoms would be an interesting arc: anxiety, panic attacks, hypervigilance, flashbacks, the whole nine yards. It could create some great roleplay interactions and maybe a little bit of intrigue/tension as your party mates can't help but feel bad for you, and yet realize your mental state is a liability.
weasel fierce 10-07-05, 12:57 AM	Adventurers have ample opportunities to get themselves hurt, maimed or molested. Its part of the appeal of D&D, to me. If a character was crippled so as to be largely unplayable though, I'd propably prefer to start afresh
Red_Ninja 10-07-05, 09:57 AM	the old 2nd ed. ravenloft campaign had rules for horror/terror- I guess there's a new 3.5 book called "heroes of horror" or something like that- either of these books might be of insight to you or your DM if you intend to maintain this character and incorporate his new outlook into the campaign... or, as the original post stated, your PC may be and remain....RUINED
Bruunwald 10-07-05, 12:36 PM	When you die and someone tries to bring you back to life, you always have the option to choose to remain dead. So, you missed that opportunity to get this character out of the party. But if it happens again, you'll be ready for it. The character did not die, as I have said over and over. He was brought to a vegetative state. That's the issue. Situations that make you too uncomfortable to continue playing the character.
Callista 10-07-05, 12:55 PM	Well, I did retire one character after she turned Evil. I don't like playing Evil...
DragonDeadite 10-07-05, 01:15 PM	Well, if you want a good example of a screwed character I've got one. A CN rogue that was bent on the destruction of the Orc race. The first problem came when an orc joined the party and my character went out of his way to try and get the orc killed. (Later my character cried when the orc was killed) The next problem came when the character was possessed by a demon and started killing a few of his partners... and later when he picked up a dagger, just didn't know he picked it up and never knew he had it. Handled it and it talked to him but afterwerds he always forgot it. If that isn't bad enough... he ended up taking some sort of magic item out of a demonic alter and hid it in a tree (Because of the dagger) ended up being with an old hag that the dagger had also possessed... wait... I'm not done yet! Became a henchman of a demon because he picked up a strange medalion that let the demon talk to him and no one believed him because only he could see the demon in the medalion. Really... I'm almost done! He ended up helping someone destroy an entire town of people because he found a rock and the other person gave the rock to a member of this strange town and it killed everyone except the adventurers... let's see... I think that just about covers it. I mean there were a few other minor things, but nothing too major that I can think of. So yeah!! When he died (just about a month ago now) it was reveiled that the character was the unwitting spy of the guy we were up against and that's why things got so hard for the party from time to time so yeah!! If you wanna talk about getting a character messed up, I don't think it can get much worse than that. All these things were supposed to happen to different characters, but because of my characters abilities and how he acted they all just kept happening to him!! I finaly just got him killed in a self sacrificing manor by crossing a bridge and firing at orcs that were firing at them, the orcs finaly killed him and the rest of the party just looked at the character, shrugged, and kicked him over the cliff without even thinking about looting his body. It was a very fitting ending to Varsik the Lil'thief!
Bruunwald 10-07-05, 06:04 PM	Well, if you want a good example of a screwed character I've got one... etc. Sounds like the DM needed another NPC but chose your PC instead!
DragonDeadite 10-07-05, 06:13 PM	Sounds like the DM needed another NPC but chose your PC instead! Hehehehehe... yeah, but it was a fun character, I had a blast with him even if I didn't control him half of the time!! To anyone playing a thief character: After the first item talks to you, make sure you have a partner! (that way the partner gets in trouble first!)
solbergb 10-09-05, 02:24 AM	Oddly.......it would usually be a "good" event that would cause me to retire a character. Something that took away his motivation to adventure. Certainly some religious characters in the hands of their deity might not be so eager to come back, but it can happen at the mundane level too. Somebody notices he's got all the wealth he'll ever need, he's respected, well liked, maybe even has married, had kids etc and wants to be around to raise them. Or she gets a shot at the political power she always wanted, and has to quit adventuring to run the city. Most bad things just make my characters even more driven to succeed, maybe with a new entry on a "grudge to take care of when I have time". Usually they're adventuring because their life isn't perfect, and the kind of progress you make while adventuring either makes them feel better, or advances their long term goals. Ah...I've got one. If my Wood Elf archer is EVER reincarnated he would be EXTREMELY upset and probably quit adventuring, unless he was lucky enough to be reborn a Wood Elf. Although actually, I've vowed to not come back if the person calling me is not actually a cleric and I've been dead more than a few seconds (Last Breath is ok...). Those UMD guys and druids can't be trusted to keep my body the way it should be. If he can't be himself, he doesn't want to be alive. My Half-Orc monk has simlilar feelings but hasn't thought it through (HIS daughter isn't a druid) so might actually find himself in that situation. Although he'd cope ok if he ended up as either Orc or Human...he'd be happier as Orc though, as he identifies more with that side.
High Octane 10-09-05, 03:29 AM	One of my characters had his face nearly sucked off by an animate mushroom with tentacles. Twice. He didnt die, but he never ate or went near mushrooms again. Coincidentally, Im ****** at my DM cause that character just died again, and this time I think it was because of bad calls on the DMs part. It really does take the sting out of death when a character dies and gets resurrected, but remember, that can be the DM being too mean since the characters are dying so often. (unless its due to your own stupidity)
prozacman 10-09-05, 04:19 AM	ooo ooo.. i got one... sorta Recently our party was wandering through.. well.. basically an interdimensional temple of the 9 hells (never do what the odd toungeless traveler suggests.. EVER!) and after spending weeks (in game) wandering around this place and getting trapped repeatedly in various rooms.. my human rogue got fed up and took a running leap into one of many portals in the place... (there were lots of portals.. but no party member understood any of them.. so we avoided them.. for good reason as it turns out) so for what felt like forever to him, he was in incredible pain and couldnt perceive anything... long story short when he came back through the portal he was comatose for several hours and when he came to he was crazy. its not so much that The character is ruined... its just that.. i dont really know how to play him now.. and the DM has basically left the decision of how his insanity manifests up to me... He used to be very happy-go-lucky.. stealing for the challenge... thus far i've just been playing him more seriously.. and violently... but that has more to do with the fact that their going through the plains than that he's nutzo
Tytalus 10-10-05, 06:49 AM	I had a very fun kobold druid 5 once, who, after helping a god-like red dragon (don't ask) was apparently "infused with draconic power". While that sounds cool, it meant that I was forced to take levels in a (obviously not thought-out) prestige class. The PrC was basically equivalent to taking sorcerer levels (with a few minor ability boni). Problem: with my whopping charisma of 8 I couldn't cast a single sorcerer spell :eek: ... and the DM wouldn't budge. Instead of being stuck with essentially a druid5/commonerX, I abandoned the character (he became an NPC) and replaced him. Too bad, I really liked the guy and the party loved him. :weep:
Super Guy 10-10-05, 03:22 PM	Well, definitely, the high magic aspect of the game really screws up the feeling for me sometimes. I mean, it's like a party member heroically sacrifices himself to save the world. How tragic and romantic! Oh, well, actually, hold on we'll just get ya raised, buddy. ... However, it's hard to toy around with that and still leave it equal. It screws up stuff like Death Attack, Instant Death Effects, etc... I did play in a low magic campaign before and it was pretty nice. Why don't you consider that? I rolled three ones in a row on an attack, once, and I guess the guy next to me ran into me and I misfired my bow, slipping the arrow towards my hand. Percentage roll... crippled! It was my right hand. That character had to find a way around it. It helped develop a lot of extra thought and made things like death or injury not just be all "It's okay, let's just get it fixed". I really had a lot of fun with it.
SwiftFox 10-10-05, 11:08 PM	I think Ive only ever played one character who I wanted to stop playing... He was a sea-elf bard in a swashbuckling campaign, who wielded a repeating xbow and wanted to multiclass into arcane archer... unfortunately, the DM had other plans :( I had worked out what feats and class levels I would need to take in order to get into arcane archer as soon as possible, and had written my back-story accordingly, so that it would make sense for my bard to suddenly take levels of fighter, or pick a certain feat. Things started to go wrong when my repeating xbow was stolen by a dwarven child... I did manage to get it back, but not before he had taken it appart to see what made it work. I was no engineer, so I took it to a weapon smith for repair, but the weaponsmith wasnt familliar with elven-made repeating xbows, and couldnt fix it for love nor money. I had enough money, so I tried to buy a replacement... and found one in a seedy marketplace, however I later discovered it was cursed. This was the sort of curse which meant I couldnt get rid of it. I tried loosing it by offering it as a gambling wager, but apparantly it had a reputation attached to it, and cleared the whole tavern on sight... guess who had to reimburse the barkeep for lost revenue :( The cursed xbow's curse was a particularly annoying one for my character... as a sea elf, I would often be required to do combat underwater, however whenever the xbow was submersed in brine, there was a percentile chance that it would summon sharks which would attack me :mad: Otherwise, it functioned as a +1 xbow, so the DM said I should quit complaining and put up with it untill I could find a better way to get rid of it. So I continued playing with this character, however when I gained a level at which I intended to multiclass, the DM announced that I wasnt allowed to, that if I wanted to take a level in another class I would have to train with a professional class trainer, which would take weeks, and the party had just picked up a time-sensitive quest so they were eager to get going and wouldnt wait for me. I had to break from my character-build plan, setting back my prestige class by 2 levels :( Then, I spend most of the quest unconcious, bleeding to death or running away from creatures wth 2+ hitdice more than me, or with DR I couldnt penetrate. The party gets some loot though, and one of the items they gained was a +1 mace that noone wanted to use... so I claimed it, and announced my intentions to smash my *&%&! cursed xbow, which I figured was possible now that I had an equally-powerful magical item to do it with... the rest of te party voiced reservations about this however, and made me climb to the top of a far-away tower to do it... well out of sight of the party, I bring the mace down upon the xbow... and they hear a great thunder-clap, and rush to investigate... I, the xbow and the mace are gone, nothing remains but a smoking patch of floor where I stood... the DM tells me that the moment I broke the xbow, I was transported to the home plane of its creator... the god of the sahuagin, who particularly hates sea-elves, and would torture my character for all eternity :eek: I was so sick of getting jerked around at that stage, I didnt even care. My next character died after less than a single session, and my next character was rolled with stats that were so bad the modifiers when added up came up negative overall, yet the DM wouldnt let me re-roll them, and he made me enter the party 2 levels lower than everyone else, and he crit-hit me about 10 times in the next session... but wouldnt let the players see his dice-rolls, despite never fudging anything in our favor. I gave up at that stage, and quit because it was obvious the DM had it in for me :mad:
Judging Eagle 10-11-05, 04:36 PM	Swift... I'm just so sorry for your ******, ****** DM. The next time you see them. Shoot them. In the gut. With a Cinderblock. For the OP though, no, I've never intentionlly wanted a PC to retire or die, most of the time my PCs (much like myself) are too ambitious, striving and willing to live and survive despite all odds. They tend to get abandoned in a campaign or so, but usually I keep playing them as if they've got everything to live for. ....speaking of which, I should probably take my old 2nd ed party (sadeshi fighter, war wizard, assasin, samurai, and their war elephants/battle hounds/mercenary fighters) and intoduce them as NPCs in my existing campaign...
00_Whupass 10-11-05, 05:15 PM	I am a lot like the friend the original poster mentioned, if a character I am playing dies, I want him to stay that way. Don't get me wrong I love my characters watching them grow and evolve from one adventure to the next, but when they die and get brought back it, he's right it just feels wrong. I also like to consider the effect dying and being ressurected is likely to have on the psyche of the character in question, I think for most early retirement from adventuring would be the best you could hope for, with some of the darker outcomes being insanity, sociopathy, sucide, parinoia, mania, just to name a few I've pondered. Besides I have somewhere in the vacinity of 5 dozen character concepts I want to try stored up in my brain, in making a new character I get to avoid the icky feeling of playing a character who's been raised, and I get to try out one of the smoking hot, character concepts I have festering away in my old brain bucket.
Bryarr 10-11-05, 05:38 PM	I think for most early retirement from adventuring would be the best you could hope for, with some of the darker outcomes being insanity, sociopathy, sucide, parinoia, mania, just to name a few I've pondered. Ok come on. Have you ever played a truly manic character? Its amazingly fun! (Although, your overelaborate, grandiose plans do tend to get others killed...) Bry
Super Guy 10-11-05, 11:27 PM	I played a paranoid character. He wasn't that way when I started- he became that way in-between campaigns, due to some... extenuating circumstances at the end of the first campaign. He also lost basically everything due to these circumstances, and his only reason for existence became revenge. He did what he could to protect HIMSELF before others, so that he could secure that his revenge should be exacted. It was fun, fun fun. One player hated him, but the rest liked him. My greatest character ever. Would've slaughtered a village full of babies if it meant killing his enemy. Hell, would've saved a village full of babies if it meant killing his enemy, too. (Just for information, he wound up being the last surviving party member in the final battle, who put the final stroke on Zenlack that killed him. Of course, Sandor was already at -6 with no way to heal himself [go Diehard feat!] and the temple began collapsing. With his only means of teleportation being dead or used up, he stabbed his sword into the ground, took off his helmet, and knelt down, waiting for his death. Most. memorable. moment. in a campaign. EVER)
Molitor 10-11-05, 11:46 PM	Bruunwald, If it’s messed with you (the player) this much, think of what it must have done to the character. Play him as you feel him, messed up and not quite the same. Maybe after a few more adventures where he’s functioning less and less well with the group, have him go off an retire somewhere. As a GM I’d much rather see this than a player that shrugs of character death like he’s playing Halo. crossbow Exactly how I feel. Well told 'crossbow'!
Jenny With The Lantern 10-12-05, 05:36 AM	Although I don't play often, I DM almost every week and one of the players is my BF with whom I had to have a serious talk not too long ago. For a brief while, I switched to d20 modern instead of DnD, just to have a change from the same-old fantasy (now back though :D). Suddenly, all the players tensed up, didn't dare move their chars into anything that might harm them and were generally.. inactive. It was driving me crazy. So I asked BF: what are you guys thinking? What happened to adventuring and stuff? The answer he gave me surprised me more than a little, but I realised it was also true: I play my character, but my character also has a part of me in it. The d20 modern brought it out more because the character is more like me than a DnD character. If I die, or lose in some other way, it's no longer fun because I feel like I, as a player, also lost a bit. I guess it's like that for everybody. In a videogame, you play a character someone else thought up for you or within the boundaries of someone else's rules. Those rules don't excist in DnD and the character you make is a part of your imagination. So if it loses, you lose a little. (Note: I, as a DM try to put my players into difficult situations, but not ones where they will die. If you're absent, someone will play your character, but if anything bad might happen to it because of that, the DM stops it. It's an unspoken rule between players and DM that they will only die when acting extremely foolish)
Solidcobra 10-12-05, 06:48 AM	Well, generally, if a character is made useless he's no fun to play. Example: Your barbarian permanently lost eight strength. he's now weaker than the wizard. Example: Your wizard lost an arm, no means of restoring it are avaliable and it's three long levels until the next feat so you can get still spell. Three levels of being a commoner with a cool will save. etc. That sorta thing ruins characters. Badly. But death? I see it as the opposite. Death opens up a whole new barrel of roleplaying to do. your character might've been sent to his version of hell, and, terrified, instantly turn to extremely lawful good near-pacifist. Or he could simply be fearful, and thus more cautious. Or he could wake up after having been in a state of bliss, causing him to become more reckless so he might return there. etc. Lots of fun to be had, but it's when people smother roleplaying or don't accept you re-rolling the character that's been permanently made useless that you need to grab those 4d6 and the PHB.