Hi all,
After playing a few sessions of the starter adventure and experiencing character death (not my character, although my character nearly bought the farm), I was inspired to write an essay detailing some of my observations over the past week.
From all this, I would love to hear some other experiences from real games where character failure has inspired players or made your games more rich.
Please post your game stories and responses.
*********
The Essay
Some Failure, Even PC Death is Good for the Game
Since D&D 5e has launched, I’ve been more consciously attentive to forum posts, videos and podcasts of groups playing the game, especially looking for the way players and DMs deal with failure, both for attacks that knock players unconscious and attacks that kill players outright.
For 5e, first level player characters don’t have a ton of hit points (harkening back to the early days of D&D). This problem is highlighted if they get hit by especially nasty monsters like bugbears or hobgoblins, but it is also a factor when one character is hit by multiple opponents in one round. Of course, there are players who love the vulnerability and the mortality it represents, while others hate it and even feel as if it will turn new players off from the game. Personally, I like the frailty of early level play because it seems to add drama, which often forces players to make more interesting and meaningful decisions.
When players see that player characters go down, actions other than attacking become more viable options. Disengage and dodge become important tactical options to avoid critical blows. Using the terrain to gain cover also becomes more important, and ranged weapon use outpaces melee attacks when it comes to mobility and survivability. The archer or mage, who can step out from behind a rock, fire an arrow or frost ray at a foe, and then duck back behind the rock, is at a great advantage. Even though I do not expect my D&D games to simulate real life combat, these factors do make combat seem a little more real to me. If I were a smarter PC in a savage world, I’d look for advantages and try to avoid trading blows with my opponent if possible. Sometimes, to run is the appropriate option, and “discretion is the better part of valor.”
Interestingly, in the games I’ve watched, listened to or played so far, when a player character is knocked unconscious, the tenor of battle becomes much more ominous. Other players react differently than they normally do. They either get angry at the foes, and try to attack them more ferociously, or they realize how dangerous the situation is becoming, and they seek other options. Sometimes they run. Sometimes they hide. Sometimes they assist their fallen comrade. Sometimes they look for features in the terrain that will give them all advantage (finding a choke point, finding an alternate route to a strategic position, kicking a burning pile of campfire wood in an attempt to send burning embers towards multiple foes, etc.). In these cases, it seems as if the initial failure (PC unconscious and starting to die), becomes a great source of inspiration.
In some of the games I’ve played in and in some that I’ve watched or listened to (WotC live streaming and one particular podcast by Bored with Life) when players go down, people even joke and laugh. The whole experience seems to add enjoyment not misery. Listen to some of the podcasts or watch some of the videos. When PCs go down, people are still having fun.
Once a PC is dying, the death saves become another source of tension in the game. In a number of sessions I’ve played in and watched or listened to, when players have to make death saves, the tension is palpable, especially after the first failed death save. This mechanic is powerful for eliciting emotion and developing the narrative of the campaign.
In those nasty situations where a player character is killed by one blow, the game becomes somber, yet a number of important results occur. Players realize that the world their characters inhabit can be dangerous and unforgiving. Players get a chance to react to the death in-character, affording another opportunity to roleplay. And, for the moment when a player’s PC bites the dust, that player receives complete attention, which rarely occurs in the normal flow of the game when people often talk over each other to make comments or speak in character, or when players get distracted off-turn either zoning out, looking at cell phones or musing about what their character will do next. This shift in mood, and subsequent shift in player behavior seems like another inspirational moment.
To me, all of these failures make the game richer and more interesting.
Here’s one somber moment in our last game session. In this scenario, the party had just engaged with a number of goblins and the leader’s pet wolf. Finally, they knew that the leader, a bugbear, would enter the battle. The noble, lawful neutral, fighter, stepped forward at the mouth of the passageway where the bugbear would emerge even after the wizard had warned everyone that the bugbear had a devastating morningstar attack. The fighter, Mal, readied his great axe and waited. Everyone else was too frightened to be up in melee range, and there wasn’t much room there anyway. The noble seemed to have a proverbial “axe to grind.” When the bugbear emerged, the fighter hacked at it and injured it pretty badly (over 10 points of damage). Unfortunately, the bugbear attacked Mal, and scored a critical hit. The writing was on the wall, instant death. Everyone at the table basically said “oh, man,” out loud.
The fighter’s player even asked, “what now?”
It seemed as if the shock of death was setting in.
To end the encounter, the wizard went on to cast a sleep spell, which could now affect the injured bugbear, and the archer-type fighter put an arrow into the brain of the sleeping foe.
After the encounter, we talked about the moment, and even the player whose character was killed felt as if the death was in some way destined to happen. It actually made the story better. We all looked back at other events that night and saw how the fighter’s character was a noble with a chip on his shoulder; he seemed to have something to prove, and he was only in it for the money. We looked back and saw a number of instances of foreshadowing. In the first fight, a single goblin hit the same fighter with a crit, which forced the fighter to use his second wind. That was a dramatic moment. Another time, the same fighter was shot by a goblin arrow (another crit by the way), and Mal fell unconscious into a stream. As we looked back, we created a heroic story that fit the fallen PC, and we appreciated how the player played the character as well. We all felt a great sense of satisfaction. Even the player of the fighter remarked, “Mal was a hero.” And, in game, the rest of the party vowed to bring Mal’s possessions back to his family when they could. Of course, we also joked about how our PCs would each get a larger share of treasure.
All of this added to our game, and at the end of the session, the DM had the player roll up a new PC so that he was ready to go for our next session. Incidentally, Mal’s death happened at the end of the session, which also became a great climax for the adventure.
Let’s learn from some of the greatest storytellers and writers of all time, Homer, Sophocles, Shakespeare, and countless others. If the story is important, failure has to be part of it. Moments of great joy and success need to be tempered by moments of anguish. Dramatic tension is heightened by the juxtaposition of achievement and failure, seriousness and comic relief.
Let a little bit of failure add richness to your games, and realize that death in a tabletop roleplaying game is not the end. It is part of the adventure; often it is “the undiscovered country.”
- Rhenny
An excellent article.
Well said, my friend.
As the DM in said circumstance, I will say that seeing a character die also comes with a bit of discomfort on my side. I know that there's some tongue-in-cheek ribbing that comes with the "job" as the game master as players occasionally label me as the Moriarty to their heroic Holmes, so when events lead to some tragic outcome, I must endure some rancor for the sake of the game - uncomfortable though it makes me.
It is important, though, that a very real sense of mortality is impressed upon players because the setting their characters are thrust into is one quite perilous. The life of an adventurer should be approached with some trepidation for it is overcoming the natural fears generated by so many horrors in a world such as Toril. True bravery, as they say, isn't a state of fearlessness, but one of overcoming those fears.
When the players can both "fear" for their characters and have them act heroically despite, then I believe Dungeons and Dragons becomes a true platform for the Roleplaying of Fantasy Adventure in a universe of magic and monsters.
As for 5th Edition, I am enjoying the limited view that we are seeing of it so far. Pacing is certainly good, but more importantly, there's more meat on the bones that shape the game. The body of 5th Edition feels like it's more than just Muscle and Brain (Sword and Sorcery), but a complete picture of what the adventurer and the world in which they live is all about. Yes, combat is featured prominently (and memorably!) in many RP sessions, but there's a plethora of dressing around it that makes the environment, as well as the cast of characters that inhabit it, feel more real. I applaud the effort that the designers and contributors put forth to give color and life to the rules that shape this edition so far. I hope it continues as such with each product offered in the future.
Finally, I want to add that I do not think that this sense of mortality and tenuous link to life should dissipate with levels. Yes, the fewer hit points (though, 5th Edition still pales in comparison to the 3 hit point mage of days gone by) of first level make for some scary anticipation when the damage dice are tumbling, but I think that it's probably more important to have that threat be present in the higher levels. Players become more invested in their characters the deeper they get into a campaign, so if you really want them to act with a sense of self-preservation, it's past those early levels that you'll really see strategic thinking involved. It's hard to blame a player from feeling that there's no great loss in having to restart a first level character, but they'll cling desperately to their character's imaginary life once the bond of adventurous memories has given virtual life to their alter ego.
I am really looking forward to seeing the characters' stories unfold in anticipation that the world they are set in continues to be a vibrant, fantastic one perfectly set for both the glorious and the tragic hero.
Excellent analysis. Well written, Rhenny.
No how many times I hear it, I do not find the idea of "you get hit, you die" or "you roll a one. you die" to either be fun, add tension, or even be terribly interesting. I also note that things that work in fiction don't necessarily work in a TTRPG.
-Polaris
@RustedKitsune and @BadMike - Thanks. I really appreciate the feedback.
@Polaris - I appreciate your perspective too. It really underscores how ttrpgs need to appeal to different audiences and playstyles. Like I said, there are some who hate PC fragility and random death. Thankfully, DMs can play with the system to accomodate their player base.
ShadeRaven wrote:
You nailed it...
Nicley done!
Polaris wrote:
Rhenny wrote:
@Polaris - If the DM or a player forgets an ability, it's their own fault. The dice and decisions fall as they may.
RustedKitsune wrote:
Polaris wrote:
Take it one step further and make failure on every die roll interesting. Then you'll really have something.
Excellent post. And very much the point of how special original D&D, and D&D next's return to this philosophy.
@Polaris: That is an example of a bad DM, not a bad game. All deaths are meaningless until we give them meaning. The OP showed how a low-level death from a tough roll of the dice doesn't need to detract from the game. In fact, it enhances it.
autolycus wrote:
Polaris wrote:
Polaris, if I am understanding you right, it wasn't so much the circumstances of your character's death that made you upset (though I'm sure it made it worse...I wouldn't play with that DM either), but the fact that he used a "Save or Die" spell? And on top of that, decided that your character couldn't be raised?
I am not a big fan of Save or Die effects. There should nearly always be ways for the Players to figure out how to save their characters, and "Better roll high" doesn't count as a solution. To me, that is the problem with SoD effects. You have no time. In addition, there seems to be a disconnect between such effects and high damage. While at low levels many people expect (or even desire) monster damage to be high enough to knock out or even kill a PC in one hit, as the PCs gain levels that expectation (and desire) drops away. A 10th level fighter might have 90ish HP; I don't think anyone wants CR 10 monsters to deal 90+ damage in a single hit. And yet that is exactly what Save or Die effects are.
That said, they are ok when used in extreme moderation. Assuming you allow for characters to be raised from the dead. Or assuming you give ample warning and allow the PCs to prepare a defense.
Otherwise, it is no different from saying, "As you walk along, suddenly a meteor strikes. Make a save, you die if you fail, no chance for resurrection."
Now, all that said, this issue (like every other game play issue) depends on your group. I'm speaking here from my own experiences based on the preferences of my players. My players are very attached to their characters, and this attachment only grows as they gain levels. They would (rightly in my mind) feel very cheated if I did something like that above (hyperbolic) example. That isn't to say that my quests aren't dangerous. They frequently fear for their characters' lives. But it is always over the course of an entire battle, not over a single die roll. This lets them react: "Maybe we should try to run or surrender" "Get the wizard out of there!" "I really need some healing guys" etc.
But if your group likes Save or Die effects, go for it. Maybe even raise monster damage so they can kill PCs in a single hit at any level.
Actually the group I was with almost to a man despised save or die spells. One more reason I won't play with that DM ever again.
-Polaris
@Polaris: Short of dictating outcome, it's difficult to completely avoid some element of the unlucky death that comes with a set of rules that base success and failure on random generation.
I am a open dice roller as a DM. The results are there to see. This, however, does create some situations where the outcome is regrettably obvious. I could have applied some Divine Intervention to save the character, but I believe that would have been more discordant to the immersion than the death was itself.
No one ever said DMing was easy. Most of us take great pleasure in the successes of the PCs, especially when there's a particularly difficult task overcome. As Rhenny so eloquently put it (and I paraphrase here), without bitter taste of failure there can be no savoring of success.
iserith wrote:
ShadeRaven wrote:
At the risk of being the Devil's Advocate here....
There are some circumstances were I (as a DM) feel comfortable with the Save or Die Scenario. More specifically, those "encounters" (and by this I mean any interaction between PCs and environment) where the players understand the risk involved.
If the players understand that trying to traverse that hazardous path between towers as driven rain gusts heavily upon the rocky surface, then if they choose to risk it for reasons of their own, the roll or die element is by choice. Perhaps they missed opportunities to avoid said choice. Perhaps I put it in there as a risk-reward decision. Etc. Regardless, if they choose the perilous path, fate is now in the hands of dice.
Beyond that, there are times where the characters will engage in some threat (almost always willingly) that puts them at great risk. That bugbear's morningstar may not have literally been a Save or Die mechanism, but the truth of the matter is that every time the dice bound around the table against such a foe, there's the possibility that Death will be the result. It's a question of whether or not the mechanics make it more or less common coupled with what precautions and protections are taken by the PCs to minimize them.
(PS: Reminds me of how we constantly, as a party, ribbed the wizard in a Beta Group for eschewing Mage Armor to help his defenses so that he could have one more attack spell. He was constantly being battered and my cleric - Nalcon - ended up healing him more often than the should probably have been necessary.)
ShadeRaven wrote:
Given that life and death are just one set of stakes in a near endless variety of stakes that can be set in a scene (or for any given die roll), we do seem to spend an awful lot of time on just the one thing.
Just as an example, might it not be more interesting for the goblins in the opening scene of the Starter Set adventure to steal the wagon rather than try to kill the PCs? Here, the PCs could fail, but it wouldn't necessarily mean their deaths. Any attacks on them would be incidental. This is what I'll be doing when I run it - setting fair conditions for when the wagon will be deemed "stolen" and then spending the monster's actions on stealing rather than killing.
Polaris wrote:
Agreed there.
Although, I do not think there always has to be alternatives to the Save or Die Scenario beyond that of simple avoidance.
There was a movie I rather liked as a kid called War Games (Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy). The moral of the story was nicely summed up by what was essentially the final dialogue between the characters and pseudo-antagonist. I don't want to give away more than that in case it's not a flick everyone's seen (and I think it's probably still worth a watch).
There are instances where the only or winning action is simply not to play. Characters who stick their head into the lions mouth to see if there's a gold tooth sometimes get what they asked for (which can be taken either way). 
Deciding to be an adventurer is willingly taking a risk. From that point on the character knows that death could be just around the corner.
This makes the game better. If the only death that can occur is one that is "meaningful" according to the player holding the character sheet then there is no tension in the game except when the player agrees that it's okay to die. At this point you really aren't playing the game as written. In fact, there are much better games for collaborative story telling where the players control the risk.
iserith wrote:
autolycus wrote:
autolycus wrote:
iserith wrote:
Polaris wrote:
Polaris wrote:
I actually have a counterexample, a couple of situations where, not even failure, but the assumption that we would fail sucked us out of the story and we never really got back into it.
The last 3e game that we played was supposed to take us through the Shadovar trilogy. Now, for starters, these adventures are not very well balanced. What made it even worse was, first, our GM was not very good at improvising and adjusting for circumstances, and second, he was being unduly influenced by one of the other players who had very particular ideas about tactical realism (and also was very bad at Realmslore but thought he knew more than the rest of us). At one point in Cormyr, we were sneaking up on a gang of... something, I think it was Zhentarim (I don't have good memories of this adventure, so I didn't really try to remember the details), and the problem player took a look at the layout of the opposition and declared that it was impossible, so his character left us there and went back to town along with his minion. The rest of us were prepared to go through with it, figuring we could still win with a bit more difficulty, but it was later in the session and we didn't want to start a combat that had just become harder with the absence of 30% of our fighting strength. During the course of the next week, the player managed to convince the GM that if we even attempted it the result would be a TPK, and so he decided to retcon everything we did in that session and do it over again.
Later, in Shadowdale, this same player got poisoned by a disproportionately deadly trap on a psychotic necromancer's bedroom door. We were prepared to run back to town right away to find him an antidote, but at this point he had become entirely disillusioned with the hobby and voluntarily failed all his saving throws against the poison in an utterly meaningless gesture that added nothing to the story (he ended up giving away all his D&D books a few weeks later).
Finally, in Anauroch, we started coming across monsters that we could only hit on a roll of 19 or 20 by our non-optimized characters. At this point, the campaign self-destructed and we never played 3e again.
Now while all this came about primarily because of bad adventure design combined with one problem player, it was exacerbated because the rules assume by default that if you are taken out in combat, you die, and the person adjudicating the rules didn't have the imagination to think of alternatives. It's to avoid situations like this that many new RPGs include advice about failing forward and making death not the default - advice which is not only conspicuously absent from every edition of D&D, but which 5e actively takes a step backward from (since in 4e, the one who dealt the final blow determined whether to kill or incapacitate regardless of what kind of attack they were using, and in 5e this caveat only applies to melee attacks).
Polaris and ChristheS have touched on a concept I've been thinking about.
It goes back to proper framing, but it's also embedded in adventure & encounter design. Challenge Vs Difficulty.
Thinking about it, I even see how a player has different responses to a real chance of death. See Polaris' firefighter or Rhenny's Mal. Going in knowing they have bad odds, but going in informed.
I think there's a series of threads here that interrelate. Difficulty, challenge, framing, consequences, & failure. Maybe we should divvy up and take stabs?
bawylie wrote:
What I like about D&D Next and I hope continues into D&D 5E is that risk continues into higher levels. Our group is 11th level and had a nasty fight against a dragon and a giant the players of the barbarian said, "I got my *&^ kicked! And it was fun!"
It is very interesting to see the tactics used, even at high levels. Characters get pummeled and withdraw. Another character may move up to take some heat off the barbarian. Cover is used and some magic items from 3.5 that allow short teleports come into play. One PC has slippers of spider climbing and goes up walls and onto the ceiling a lot. Which buff spell should be used is a frequent matter for consideration. Do the PCs stay mounted on their griffons or go to the ground comes up now that they have flying mounts.
Even with cone of cold and fly and other deadly spells, the PCs have to remain careful especially when fighting a legendary foe. Or when they teleport circle into a ring of 100 coffer corpses. That was an amazing fight like something out of the Walking Dead, especially with the teleport circle on the fritz and not a viable exit strategy. They were actually scared, not just in character, but as players. They felt for a moment what their characters felt.
"They were actually scared, not just in character, but as players. They felt for a moment what their characters felt."
Practically all my adventure & encounter design is striving for this.
ChrisTheS wrote:
bawylie wrote:
ChrisTheS wrote:
I still remember a game from a campaign I played in about 30 years ago. The DM had set us in a desert searching tombs for something (can't remember that). We had an NPC guide who helped us find one particular tomb. When we first met the NPC, he applied for the job and made us aware of dangers in the desert, including the unseen "nerve runners" that could travel across the sand, swarm upon a creature and kill it with wracking, agonizing pain. Well, during our exploration, we heard the high pitched squeal of nerve runners and our guide was swarmed. He screamed in pain and died on the spot. That freaked us all out. Each one of us at the table started screaming as we had our PCs jump on top of any rock or crumbled wall that we could find. I swear, I pulled my own feet up off the ground while sitting at the table.
I ran a part of my 3.5e campaign where the party had to search a mansion to find a vampire boss and his family. The suspense was palpable. The players spent nearly 3 whole sessions, sneaking around opening doors and coffins not knowing when and where one of the family, or other spawn and minions would show up. Many of my players from those sessions emailed me later to tell me how creeped out they were the entire time they were in that mansion. (Interestingly, I never officially ran or played in a Ravenloft game).
I'm not sure how these relate to PC failure, but I'm sure in those games the threat of failure was enough to keep the pressure on.
I remember one of the first 4e adventures our group ran was Reavers of Harkenwold. The basic premise of the adventure had the party helping the people of a small forest area overthrow an army that had taken over recently. We were still getting the hang of the game at the time, and many fights were much harder than they should have been. One in particular stands out: to gain the aid of the elves, we had agreed to kill a troublesome undead wizard who was living in the forest. The battle was split into two rooms, with the first containing a powerful goblin boss and a few minions. While fighting the boss, one of the players decided to take cover in the next room... where the wizard and his undead allies waited. The result was a devastating battle that nearly resulted in a TPK. (To be honest, it would have except that I fudged most of the rolls.) Two party members were left near-dead, and their players decided to roll up new characters to use until the original characters recovered. One of those two decided he preferred his new character, and he decided that his first character (a rogue who had been dragged along by the others on threat of being arrested for thievery) escaped, later becoming an NPC in our campaign.
There was another memorable battle: the ending. (SPOILERS) The party was relaxing at a tavern with a friend of theirs when a tiefling assassin teleported in and attacked them. Fighting the tiefling was extremely challenging- he teleported constantly, undoing the defenders' efforts, and succeeded in killing the party wizard along with the friend. The party was able to slay the assassin, but the cleric only had time to save one person, and was forced to let the party's friend die. The NPC that had hired the assassin became a very personal and despised enemy of the party, and it made the final fight against him all the more epic.
Lord_Markelhay wrote:
In a game I was DMing, the players were in a scene where they were meeting with an NPC they suspected of being involved in a conspiracy they were investigating. The location of the meet was well within the NPC's domain, such that the PCs were at a disadvantage should something go awry. They were discussing the mysterious goings on with the NPC over wine.
The rogue in the group had a poison that, when imbibed, would cause the victim for a time to feel as if they trusted the first person they saw. During the conversation, the rogue decided to try and palm it into the NPC's drink since she was being cagey about her involvement in the plot. This called for a check to see if he could slip her the Mickey Finn without being noticed. He totally blew the roll. Before I said anything about the result, the player declared - "I drink from the cup I put the poison in as if I mistook whose glass it was." He didn't want guards to be called or the like.
"Yes," I said, "And your trusted friend that sits before you appears none the wiser." Now the NPC - who was at the heart of the conspiracy - had some influence among the people that were hot on her heels...
iserith wrote:
Once ended a long-running 2 PC campaign in AD&D on an epic PC failure.
Years into it, the heroes eventually are out to stop the super BBEG's plan to do world-level nasty things with a powerful ritual spell. They show up, mid ritual, and the BBEG sicks his army of minions on them. Massively cool battle ensues. PCs whittle down forces until only their arch-nemesis anti-paladin lieutenant is standing between them and the boss.
They decide to split up. The wizard moves to stop the ritual while the knight engages the anti-paladin. Knight knows he’s overmatched, but does it anyway hoping to buy the wizard enough time. Wizard begins trying to figure out how to break the ritual.
I had the wizard making a series of checks to unravel the necessary clues and arcane secrets needed in order to properly break the magic circle without screwing it up or making it worse.
Meanwhile the evil lieutenant is kicking the already wounded knight all over the room. Grabs the defeated knight by the neck and is about to drive in the killing blow. The wizard is only half way through his puzzle when he sees his best friend about to die. So the player looks at me. Then looks at his friend playing the knight. Then back to me, and says…
“Screw it. I take a guess and break the circle then move to stop the anti-paladin from killing my friend.”
So I say, “Okay. Roll percent. You’re about halfway through figuring it out, so anything 50% or lower and you guess right. Higher and something bad might happen.”
He agrees and rolls. 00. 100%.
Blew up the world. Literally. Game over. Everyone loses.
It was epic.
ChrisCarlson wrote:
ChrisCarlson wrote:
Here's something I just thought about....
One of my friends watched one of the Chris Perkins, Acquisition Inc. games a while back. My friend remarked about how he thought that the players were playing horribly. To my friend, Jim Darkmagic, and Omin, would often do actions that were flawed and unoptimized.
From my perspective, the actions they took were interesting and motivated more by character than by player knowledge. The players played to their character traits and made decisions based on their characters not their knowledge of the world or the game; at times, the results were splendid.
I really love games where players are encouraged to think more in-character and make "appropriate" decisions rather than "the right" decision.
This also plays into failure being good for the game.
Rhenny wrote:
iserith wrote:
There are a few things that all mix together for how character death gets treated, and my friends and I have experienced a lot. Sorry if this post is kinda long, but I think the different stories and their reactions/outcomes paint a big picture of how death shows up. (if you just want the conclusions, jump to the last few paragraphs).
The first time, my friend and I had a rogue and cleric pair that would adventure togther, and in one part with a some-time DM, they ended up captured by pirates and forced to rob a bank by sundown or the pirates would hunt us down and kill us. After properly scoping out the bank, learning how big the vault stones were, and watching guard shifts, my cleric super buffed his str (everyone may or may not have realized that enh bonuses don't stack ^_^;;), the rogue distracted the two guards at that entrance, then I dropped down and brained one with a critical from behind, sending him - according to the DM - 20ft across the plaza and through a couple feat of stone wall. At which point the guard stood up completely fine, shouted for help, and charged us. Seeing that something very wrong had happened, we tried to get away, and managed to make our climb checks onto the roof (haha, silly platemail guards can't climb!). However, apparently every guard was armed with flasks of alchemist's fire that they lobbed at us, downing both characters. With his last action, my cleric healed the rogue enough that she didn't die outright, but they went unconcious and were captured. They later awoke as they were being brought to execution for trying to rob the bank. The End. Overall, those deaths just sucked, and my friend and I later declared that those events never happened and just continued our adventure ourselves.
Later on, a group of us were playing and our characters had to go back in time to get an item to stop the God of Death from destroying the world. To get through the portal, we had to fight an unfortunately Darth-Maul-inspired Time Demon (that dates this adventure hahaha :P). My dual wielding paladin (yeah.... we weren't really optimized ^_^;;) got off a lucky turn with like 3 crits, but the demon was still standing and delivered the same back, killing him. As his body fell to the floor it crystalized, the npc rogue (who had fallen in love with him) went to pieces, our druid backed up a bit not sure what to do, and our fighter/barbarian was like oh crap as the demon approached him. The demon said "your friends are weak and all is lost. Join me!" Our friend took about half a second before saying "Okay." We all just stared at him. The DM was like "What, really? You do realize that dooms the world and everyone dies, right?" And he was like "Yep." Baffled at the sudden apparent end to our game, the DM retconned the end of the battle and said that the remaining characters managed to pull it off. In the aftermath, he sent the paladin on a series of trials in the afterlife to make sure that he was worthy to be the hero the gods were looking for, and when the trials were completed (very fluffy things, like prove you valor, courage, kindness, etc), he was brought back to life at full strength (with an alignment change to True Lawful Good hahaha).
In another group, I saw character deaths in a couple campaign situations. In one, it was funny when a couple of characters died, so the wizard raised their bodies as zombies so we didn't have to carry them around until we got the gold to rez them, so the players played their zombie characters (the monk was even still mildly dangerous lol). Eventually we were ready to rez them, but had to have them not be zombies anymore, so the wizard commanded them to fight to the death, then blasted the remaining one before we did the rezzing. That was okay. At another point though, the DM had contrived a scenario where a group of us had to ask for info at a local tavern, but the very act of asking into that stuff caused the tavern to try and kill us, and there just happened to be a sorceror twice our level and everyone else had sneak attack, so all the player in the tavern died. They then had to wait around while the other characters did some quests and stuff for a couple of hours until enough gold was gotten to rez them. The dead charries' players just got to sit around. (And even making a new character would have taken similar time - with items and spell choices - because we were like level 8).
In 4e, we actually have one very memorable TPK where we just started a campaign (to try out the new PH3 with psionics) and our heroes were to go and study an incursion of the Shadowfell. We actually had a bit of an advantage cuz my cleric/runepriest had radiant attacks and had gear that gave small resistance to necrotic, fire, and poison damage. When we scouted out the area, we came across some skeletons and surprised them. Suddenly some more came out of a nearby sludge pond and started throwing fireballs at us. While the encounter was theoretically a totally average encounter, between us being melee heavy and many skeletons have a necrotic damage aura, and us rolling like crap and them rolling like DAMN, they killed all of us. Why not run? Well, most of us had armor on, and that lowered our speed, so there was no way to outrun them, and when the one ranged guy decided to run, the fire hurlers toasted him at range. The aftermath left us a little dumbfounded at a) how the heck did we just lose that badly? and b) well what do we do know? Everyone was dead. There was no one to carry on vengeance or whatever. And we purposefully wanted to play the classes we had picked, so it wasn't like new characters would be very different, if at all, from the ones that just died. It was a totaly Bob II, cousin of Bob the Fighter, type moment lol.
Then, during the playtest's first packet, we ended up getting overrun with goblins/kobolds (I can't remember which was in the cave for that adventure). We had been scouting the caves, ended up in a fight, and the sounds attracted the attention of the others there. We even had the ogre on our side (we did some very intelligent diplomatic discussions with it earlier). When the ogre went down and it was obvious we were in over our heads, we were talking about what to do, and again half the party was dead to rights because of speed loss to armor, so we were just going to stay, fight, and probably all die. The DM then said look, just run okay. So we did and he decided that for no intelligent reason, the goblin-kobolds didn't run us down and kill us. That actually made us all feel like crap, cuz it was so obvious how he let us get away and we all knew that we should have died.
Different from all those cases where characters died, we have had far more times when our characters have almost died, but still managed to live. In 3e, we actually had a running joke because we would playe the LotR music in the background, and everytime the music from Moria where Gandalf falls would come on, one of our characters would either be dying to just crit by something. Like clockwork lol. And that always created tension.
There have been a number of times in 4e where we've barely scraped out of situations. In the very first game we played, through the Kobold Keep thing in the DMG, there was an epic battle across a plaza with rooms and stairs and all kinds of spots to move and hide. The kobolds were shifty bastards, and our rogue got separated from the party and attacked by two Guard Drakes (they get more badass if they are near an ally, so two were like o_O). My cleric had to burn action points and all kinds of healing to try and get to him and save him, and the two of them fought bitterly back to back until the drakes died.
Recently, we introduced my wife to the game, and we had a lot of fun exploring an abandoned elven temple/ziggarut (the dwarven fighter drinking a 3000 yr old healing potion and the DM rolling on the 3e rod of wonder table to see what happened was beautiful). While we used spectacular tactics to deal with the kobolds we found - even using stealth and smarts to take out a big number of them and turn a tough fight into a trivial battle - we all totally didn't think about dragons as aquatic, so when we went to swim to an island with treasure, we got caught by the dragon en route. It's breath weapon bloodied the entire party (did more than 1/2 HP) in a single hit, and we all went into panic mode. After a frantic swim to the island, we pulled out the stops moving the dragon around, having people take cover behind objects, and despite being melee oriented, my cleric changed gears and was using magic to grant temp HP and saving throws around (our fighter apparently enjoyed bathing in acid, because he couldn't pass a saving throw if his life depended on it. oh wait. lol). We just barely beat the dragon after everyone had used every source of healing surges we had access to and were down to pitiful HP. It felt amazing when the dragon finally went down lol.
And this is where my big long rant has been going. First, character death can happen, and how it's handled changes everything. If every time a character died was just kinda random and you had to start from scratch and roll up a whole new character (and I knew DMs that made new characters come in at level 1, even if the party was at like 6 or 8 - which was RAW btw), that can be rough, especially given the time it takes to make a new character (especially at high levels - even in 4e level 1 wasn't so bad); I have found though that when a character goes down heroically, or because the player did dumb things, there is a more jovial attitude to it all and that makes creating a new character a bit better (though again, it does take the player out of the game for a time, and there's Bob II syndrome to take into account). Even better though is when character death becomes something the DM can work with for the story - a chance to go into the underworld, or various otherworldy quests, or a deity brings the character back, but at a price (*cough* more quests).
Running is also something I harp on a bit. I would like running to be a viable option. Many posters on these boards who are fans of earlier editions often talk about "just running away." However, RAW, from 3rd ed on that just can't happen. Most things are faster than humans (etc), and everything is faster than a med character in armor, so there is literally no way to run away from them - you will always be caught. And unless the creature has a legitimate reason to let you go, it makes no sense to (if adventurers came into my cave, I sure as heck wouldn't let them get away - they'll just be back, and with more friends!). I've toyed with some interesting house rules for using initiative to move from combat to a chase scene, and having that be like a skill challenge to get away, instead of basing it off of your character's speed, but that's just a house rule, and certainly can't be used if I ever game with another group.
Secondly, something we have noticed is that characters almost dying can be just as intense, if not more so, than characters actually dying. When you character gets brought down to their last HPs and is staring a big monster in the face, that is a tense moment, even if you are still likely to make it out alive. That's one of the things we liked with 4e - if you survived a battle, spending surges can bring you back to good shape, but at the same time we had so many fights where all forms of healing were spent and everyone is panicking just to push through the encounter. By pushing characters to being almost dead, you can retain much of the tension, but you lose none of the immersion from having a character with a lot of thought and backstory, and perhaps even play time, suddenly die and vanish and a new, blank character put in their place. This is where the idea of being ground down to death instead of getting insta-gibbed comes in. Let players die if they do something stupid or try to fight with too few HP, etc, but if one single, random combat roll can take a fully functional character and bring them to dead instantly.... that's a problem.
Third, and finally, it is intersting seeing how much failure = death. I know post from people such as Lawolf mention bringing in methods of failure that don't mean the party is dead, re-roll time. Maybe the heroes ran out of time, or they picked the wrong person to save (or had to choose one where both were important), or things like that. My group hasn't run into that a lot, but that is a big area that should be explored, IMO. Between non-fatal failure options and working to hurt the PCs, but trying to avoid outright killing them (unless they're dumb and deserve to die lol ;P), I think one can have a plenty tough and intense game. Thanks for all your patience!!! ^__^
viper5 wrote:
OrionDariusSilverbane wrote:
Polaris wrote:
Very cool Rhenny. I'd like to hear more stories like this. It also reinforces that yes kids, it is after all, just a game.
cranebump wrote:
Polaris wrote:
Sling617 wrote:
Rhenny wrote:
Rhenny wrote:
ChrisCarlson wrote:
Rhenny wrote:
Leugren wrote:
iserith wrote:
Noon wrote:
Rhenny wrote:
Rhenny wrote:
Ironically, I feel like an outsider commenting on my own game... but I'll give it a shot anyway. :P
There's an advantage to having done this for decades now, but I do believe that there's more encouragement and dedication to the process of thinking beyond what's explicitly labeled in either the rules or the modules that are given as tools for the DM's narration.
Taking the example from above, Rhenny talks about the excitement within the series of failures and successes that lead to his wizard being rather wiser for the experience he had with a rather noteworthy bugbear in the adventure. None of that was scripted or accounted for in the module, but the tenor of 5th Edition feels like it lends itself towards improvisation and unlimited possibility better than, well, perhaps any version before it. I find this quite encouraging myself.
From runaway oxen (stick-ish figures of the highest artform, I might add!) in a rainstorm to tellings of the three little bugbears, 75% of the shared experience of the adventurers was definitely not accounted for in the module. And, perhaps most notably, the death of Mal certainly resonated as it offered up two new branches to the story that will both form important branches to the growing story that grows from this party's experiences. I think the freeform style of acting encourages this sort of thinking - much to 5th Edition's credit.
Just a thanks to those who said kind words or appreciated my story. It was one of my favorite gaming moments and I was glad to share it.
Something I forgot to touch on in my brief synopsis. But when the time came-- they planned out and figured the easiest way to do it was to kill the old knight PC to save the world--the players agreed openly at the table that the original player of the knight be the one to deal the killing blow to his own former character. Afterwards he told me it was quite cathartic when he did it.
ChrisCarlson wrote:
Noon wrote:
We played our next session a few nights ago. No PC deaths, but an NPC we were trying to rescue was dropped from a bridge because we wouldn't surrender. He didn't die outright so we were able to react and ultimately save him. He had fallen unconscious in a stream and began floating down it. We were engaged in combat, but one PC was able to take an alternate route to reach the unconsious NPC. My PC avoided combat and ran to stabilize the NPC too. This was a very tense moment. The DM rolled death saves for the NPC...2 successes, then a crit failure, so he was at 2 successes and 2 failures when we got to him. That was awesome, you can't plan that stuff.
If you want to read the journal, it's in my blog (Lost Mines of Phandelver Spoilers though):
http://community.wizards.com/user/1497701/blog
Also, passive perception and failure to spot sneaky goblins was thrilling since the little devils just popped up and atttacked (luckily they didn't do much harm). All in all, the DM was rolling much worse this session and we were rolling much better.