Player Character Deaths

[leopardpixie]

Not a death. but a change in alliment should have happened!

OK... I have one and I\'ll beat James in telling you.
We had a group of 5 adventures. There is a portal. The paladin steps through first. He sets off a trap that has been set, by a rogue, who is still the room and invisible. Mean while we have came through the portal. DM behind his screen roles a die then picks up a bunch of dice and roles them. The paladin in dragon scale armor is the toughest looking of the bunch so the rouge decides to backstab him. I forget what potion he was using but we could not reverse it with our spells. So we all see and hear the paladin yell out in pain. So now we know that there is another person in the room. Out of no were the paladin said, “I’m going to spread floor on the floor.” The DM replies, “Where did you get that?” Paladin, “I bought it in town.” DM, “Ok if you say so, but it will only cover 1 square.” The paladin dumps is loan flour bag in the floor. Nothing… The paladin yells out in pain and frustration, “Some thing is killing me and I can’t see it.” …The battle continues up the stairs into another room. Paladin to DM, “What color is oil of fiery burning?” Dm, “red-ish –orange.” The rouge in our party has been watching this fight drag on, and watches where the hits are being placed on the Paladin, The rouge jumps in to that square and grapples the Rouge. Paladin says “I’m going to throw the oil of fiery burning on them to see what’s been hitting me.” Rouge yells out “if you do that I’m letting him go and I’ll help kill you.” Then after the Paladin wants to torture the invisible rouge who has now been tied up and visible since the spell wore off. Tell me if that is not grounds on Loosing his paladin-hood.

 

[Drake Farstrider]

Oh that so is grounds for loosing his Paladin-hood, the momnet he uttered those words, Boink alignment shift. Paladins walk a fine line when it comes to keeping alignment, one false step and they fall.

 

[Naukhel]

I\'ve never thought of Paladins in quite the same way as many do.
To me, a Paladin is a holy warrior of a god, and not necessarily just a /good/ god.
Don\'t neutral gods have their own holy warriors like Paladins?
Sure, people refer to evil paladins as \'anti paladins\', but that doesn\'t really work, to me.
One could argue that the Ranger is the \'Paladin\' of nature gods.

A paladin is generally good, certainly, but saying something, or thinking something, doesn\'t count for an alignment change straight off. Paladins are still, after all, human. The rogue in the example given was certainly torturing the paladin, since he didn\'t seem able to kill him cleanly. Retribution for like treatment, to my mind, wouldn\'t be cause for an alignment change.

 

[NecroN]

My record though only proud of it because of the game is 56 Player deaths in one session.

Now the game was Paranoia (old West End edition pre-crash) and it was at the Windsor Gamefest (a great con that the Windsor Gaming Society used to put on every year).

7 players each running 6 clones none of them made it to the mission breifing. I was attempting to run a varient of the module Hill Sector Blues. There is a section with an electrified grid that acts as a road magnetically propelling vehicles along it. PCs tram broke down... didn\'t get past that point.

Now it was paranoia so this in itself was still one of the best game ever and we had some of the most fun that day... but it was 56 deaths by the end of the day and the PCs never found out what mission they were on.

 

[ipaintminis]

ok ok...

I will say it right off the bat. I go into negative hitpoints practically every time we play.

Face it, I\'m a wizard. d4 hitpoints, i\'m an elf, low constitution. i have 86 hitpoints. I am level 23.


i go to about -2 all the friggen time. then everyone laughs at me because, yet again, becca does something silly.

take the last time we played for example.

TAB plays a paladin and Stef plays a cleric (they both are needed to keep me alive) and this portal of UBER NASTINESS is thrown in our path. being that both the paladin AND the cleric are LG, duh, they both go in the portal. And i am all about using high level magic to whoop up on some high end monsters.

so we go to hell. *who guessed that one eh?* and its all because this STUPID gnome we had to friggen babysit decided to pop into the portal.

we come out on the other side, in hell, to see 2 pit fiends wadeing in lava, one of which....has the gnome....(classic segway, you really gotta give papa props for that one.)

thus mom, the \"good\" one goes to save the gnome with boots of airwalk. and is only able to get to the gnome and grab him before her turn is up.

later on in the adventure....

ive casted a fly spell so that i can help and stefen has some sort of cleric spell that lets him fly

i decide its a GREAT idea to help with the fighting.

all of my spells die (STUPID STUPID spell penetration.

i get severally beat on and am down to 5 hit points. do i run away? do i heal myself with the potion of cure serious? NOPE!!! because then i wouldnt have enough time to cast my brilliantly laied out plan...

....you ready for it.....


riptied.

unleashing a powerful jet of water IN A LAVA FILLED AREA!.
would have been cool.....if i hadent fumbled.....

the water hit the lava...what happens when cool water hits something hot? thats right....steam.


7 HP worth of steam.


that puts me at -2 and i loose my flyspell. i am rapidly falling into a pit of burning lava.

but of course mom saves the day and picks me out of thin air and heals me....like always.


-----

i have to count on 2 hands the number of times ive gone into negatives.

 

[TAB Studio]

Oh but this little ditty leaves so many small facts out....

 

[Drake Farstrider]

I had a dwarf fighter that seemed to be always running around at half hit points or lower and was always in the negative. 10 to 1 odds, He loved it. Cleave, cleave cleave, they are all dead. lollol

 

[Itchy]

Well, i\'ve never personally played a character that died or even came close. The closest i\'ve come to death is when a hyena tryed to eat me while i critically punched it\'s mouth to death. to Todd

 

[DM of Doom]

Originally posted by ipaintminis
...so we go to hell. *who guessed that one eh?* and its all because this STUPID gnome we had to friggen babysit decided to pop into the portal.

...thus mom, the \"good\" one goes to save the gnome with boots of airwalk. and is only able to get to the gnome and grab him before her turn is up.

i get severally beat on and am down to 5 hit points. do i run away? do i heal myself with the potion of cure serious? NOPE!!!

...the water hit the lava...what happens when cool water hits something hot? thats right....steam.

7 HP worth of steam.

...that puts me at -2 and i loose my flyspell. i am rapidly falling into a pit of burning lava.

but of course mom saves the day and picks me out of thin air and heals me....like always.

Well, the Gnome they had to \"babysit\" was one of the surveying team sent to lay out their stronghold, and was pulled through the portal by the pit fiend.

Funny side note was that TAB\'s paladin had the gnome, she had to fling it to a nearby rock outcropping to fight properly. I\'ve heard of dwarf-tossing, but Gnome flinging is a new one for me...

And those 7hp of steam? The whole party enjoyed that, not just our Elfie \"Battlemage\". This weakened their cleric\'s HP (which he was having a hard time healing on account of opportunity attacks from the fiends.)

So Emeu (TAB\'s paladin) snatches the unconscious Elf and lays on hands to revive her. She hustles up to ride the paladin piggyback.

Then the pit fiend (being immune to fire) drops a quickened fireball at point blank range, the Halfling cleric drops, losing his airwalk spell, and lucklily gets snached up by Emeu as well.

Once you\'ve tossed a Gnome, a Halfling is a no-brainer, so off he went to the rocks.

Two rounds later it occurs to Emeu that while Ana (the Elf) has been lobbing Polar Rays and such (which fail due to Spell Resistance) she has yet to cast \"Fly\" and get off her back.

Elf-tossing was imminent as Becca caught on, cast fly, and dismounted...

The Riptide spell wouldn\'t have been such a bad idea if they hadn\'t been in melee. Or if TAB hadn\'t (several rounds before) already mentioned the downsides to the Wall of Water suggestions made earlier...

lol

 

[Sithtainius]

Originally posted by leopardpixie
OK... I have one and I\'ll beat James in telling you.
We had a group of 5 adventures. There is a portal. The paladin steps through first. He sets off a trap that has been set, by a rogue, who is still the room and invisible. Mean while we have came through the portal. DM behind his screen roles a die then picks up a bunch of dice and roles them. The paladin in dragon scale armor is the toughest looking of the bunch so the rouge decides to backstab him. I forget what potion he was using but we could not reverse it with our spells. So we all see and hear the paladin yell out in pain. So now we know that there is another person in the room. Out of no were the paladin said, “I’m going to spread floor on the floor.” The DM replies, “Where did you get that?” Paladin, “I bought it in town.” DM, “Ok if you say so, but it will only cover 1 square.” The paladin dumps is loan flour bag in the floor. Nothing… The paladin yells out in pain and frustration, “Some thing is killing me and I can’t see it.” …The battle continues up the stairs into another room. Paladin to DM, “What color is oil of fiery burning?” Dm, “red-ish –orange.” The rouge in our party has been watching this fight drag on, and watches where the hits are being placed on the Paladin, The rouge jumps in to that square and grapples the Rouge. Paladin says “I’m going to throw the oil of fiery burning on them to see what’s been hitting me.” Rouge yells out “if you do that I’m letting him go and I’ll help kill you.” Then after the Paladin wants to torture the invisible rouge who has now been tied up and visible since the spell wore off. Tell me if that is not grounds on Loosing his paladin-hood.

What Tiff fails to mention here is that the Paladin is Aasimar (planetouched humans with a celestial in the family tree) and the rogue is a Kender from Dragonlance (although the game was set in FR) so sneak attacks, attempts to find attacking rogue (who used his dust of disappearance when the Pal activated the trap (place was a hideout of the Cult of the Dragon) Tiff lights up the room with a pillar of flame or something, but only after she tells the group to get out of the room while she does it, and well, so does the rogue battle moves up into the main room of the closed shop, and now the Kender starts trying to figure out where the rogue is.....does so, and grapples him, even with his size penalties...

now, while he\'s wrestling with said rogue, the pal turns to me and asks the now infamous question....to which the Kender\'s player tells me that if he tosses it on them, he\'s gonna let go of the rogue and they\'ll both beat his ass lollol

so no tossing of firey potions....rogue is subdued and tied up, and THEN Pal wants to kill him.....

I shoulda stipped him of his powers right then and there, but I was still laughing too hard lol

 

[sniffles]

I haven\'t had many PC deaths. One GM hates starting new characters, and another always has an uberplot going. But we had a short-run campaign a few months ago that got off on the wrong foot. Luckily it wasn\'t an omen.

PCs descend into a pit looking for a dragon\'s lair - 5 level 12 characters and one NPC. At the bottom of the pit are 4 doors. One is a portcullis with an invisible sentry who keeps taunting us. Our dwarf rogue notices a rag tied over a sigil on the portcullis. He takes a peak but can\'t see what it is. Sets off the sigil, which hits the warmage, but she\'s got a circlet on that lets her take 20 on one save or something once a day, so nothing happens to her.

PCs poke around a bit and finally decide to try to take out the invisible sentry so they can get through the gate. Warmage casts cone of cold at him to try to make him visible. We can see him for a sec, but not well enough. He\'s not frozen. He whips the rag off the sigil while most of the party are standing within range of its effect. Save vs. death. 3 party members drop dead.

It was our first session, in the first half-hour of play.

lol

 

[Baltius]

I find as a DM that killing players off is very disrupting and should only be done when there is nothing that can be done to stop it. That said I did kill off an entire party one night. They went into an area that was fairly easy on the top level but significantly more deadly on the lower levels. They insisted on splitting up multiple times and continued deeper and deeper despite many warnings about traveling alone from me. Two of the characters found their death by a couple of Frost Giants, two died by a group of Drow that were directing the Giants and the final two died by the Beholder boss at the lowest level. Each of these encounters would have been handled okay by the group but they had no chance piecemeal. So we spent the entire next session rolling up new characters.

 

[sniffles]

Originally posted by Baltius
I find as a DM that killing players off is very disrupting and should only be done when there is nothing that can be done to stop it.

Yes, killing off *players* is very disruptive. Sort of brings the campaign to a halt, doesn\'t it?

Maybe you should stick to killing off characters and then the police will leave you alone? lol

 

[Itchy]

Don\'t worry about the police sniffles... i have good saves so the mace they spray into my face will only do 1/2 damage

 

[Sithtainius]

it would also help if you happen to have a bag of limitless doughnuts handy..... lol

 

[NecroN]

Tale of the Ranger\'s Folly.

Okay for some reason this is my third time posting this... it\'s driving me nuts.

Earlier there was a post about killing off PCs for wandering off on thier own.

This happened in one of my games... in an event we now call The Tale of The Rangers Folly.

This will be the short version as I have typed this out twice already today with no results.

PCs in a dungeon, low level. 1 player is a ranger, he thinks he is immortal (as should most 2nd ed Rangers fighting 1/2-1 HD monsters.

Player is not a huge fan of dungeon crawls and gets bored and heads off alone. The entire party cautions against it. I know the player isn\'t a fan of the crawl so I cator to them for a bit.

After a while switching between groups getts annoying frustrating boring. So I try to lead him back to the party using in game tactics (calls for help, crumblin walls, etc).

The player refuses to re-join the part even after they plead with the player. Player strikes off on thier own again after re-joining to much disapointment to myself and the other players.

The Ranger wanders into a room with 4 Carrion Crawlers. Now I didn\'t place this to punish them, it was keyed from the start, just the player chose the wrong door. Since they were not co-operating I ran the encounter totally straight up. The 2-3 lvl rng was no match for 4 CCs and quickly got paralyzed and eaten.

The rest of the group found the rangers bones and equipment (and all the loot they gained while going at it solo) later in the session.

The bard in the group immediate states that they are writing a ballad about the brave but stupid ranger and calls it \"The Tale of the Ranger\'s Folly\"

To this day you will hear the tale invoked at my table. Whenever a player decides they should head off on their own, at least one player with pipe up with \"Remember the Tale of the Ranger\'s Folly\".

 

[Baltius]

Yes, killing off *players* is very disruptive. Sort of brings the campaign to a halt, doesn\'t it?

Maybe you should stick to killing off characters and then the police will leave you alone? lol

I do find that killing off the players can be much more rewarding than just doing in their characters though.lol

 

[Drake Farstrider]

You know though, sometimes you have to kill off a character just to remind everyone of the dangers involved.

 

[NecroN]

Warhammer and Paranoia

I have always been in favor of systems that basically give the characters multiple lives.

In this way they really can see how dangerous the world can be and their is nothing scarier to a player then being on your last Fate Point or Clone.


Dark Sun was also good for this as you made 4 characters. This was great for two reasons.
1) when a character died you always had another (of similar xp level).
2) you would run the campaign with multiple characters, not at once mind you, but one session you would play the gladitors at Tyr, the next the dessert runners who run goods through the Silt Sea. It was great for keeping things interesting.

 

[Godlikebuthumble]

Why would it be scary to be down to your last clone in Paranoia? Ain\'t that the point of it all?
As the Rulebook itself states at one point:
\"If you\'ve been playing for 45 minutes, and everyone\'s still with clone #1, something\'s wrong.\" The point is not to survive, but to have fun while dying!