Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Any D&D/D20

Shadowrun

World of Darkness

Palladium

Other (feel free to post about it)

[Dorsidwarf]

If there’s an epic tpk you could always work with the player to find out where his story would have gone and have him survive as an NPC, party starts over with fresh characters but might be able to rerecruit him if they run into him.




Or turn “unable to die” into some sort of monkey paw curse for the character

[GiglameshDespair]

If they die, they die.

If there's no risk there's no point even bothering with combat.

[Draignean]

If they die, they die.

If there's no risk there's no point even bothering with combat.

If they die, offer a convoluted and painful path to resurrection.

If you don't inflict pain on your players at every opportunity, there's no point even bothering to DM.

[Trekkin]

If they die, they die.

If there's no risk there's no point even bothering with combat.

You erroneously conflate a lack of PC death with a lack of risk. Provided you can make them care about something other than their own lives, threatening that thing gives you a motivating risk without the attendant paperwork and player idleness of PC death.

[MrRoboto75]

So, what is the limit of Find Steed allowing you to cast any of your spells cast only on yourself also on your steed? Can I cast Sunbeam, and have two beams for the price of one?

Only spells that target only you. Sunbeam can target as many creatures as are in the line.

Sadly, the infinite tower of centaurs cannot be used to create a synthetic sun.

If only I could be so

Grossly Incandecent

[GiglameshDespair]

You erroneously conflate a lack of PC death with a lack of risk. Provided you can make them care about something other than their own lives, threatening that thing gives you a motivating risk without the attendant paperwork and player idleness of PC death.

I doubt every fight can threaten all that they hold dear but not their own lives without getting really, really contrived.

[MrRoboto75]

How do people rate giving a PC plot armor in a campaign?

They have HP.  That's about it.

I kinda dislike how 4th and 5th make it near impossible for characters to actually die.  They may fall in combat, but they never stay down.  And then they pop back up like loony tunes when the encounter ends.

On the other hand I accept that in Mutants and Masterminds plot armor is totally the default.  All damage is by default non-lethal and can only knock people out.  But that fits the whole comic book genre.

I wonder if I should allow a deus ex machina in the event of a TPK?

Its alright if its the climatic final boss fight or whatever and isn't a total ass-pull.  But honestly it should happen before the TPK actually happens, if the party is totally on its last leg and defeat is soon.

Last game I played in, one of the characters took in a pet worm in like session two.  It was a tiny maggot of sorts with a tiny human face and vague necromatic energies.  He kept it on his person all game and went out of his way to describe how he took care of it.

In the final dungeon as we got deeper the evil/alien magics poorly affected his worm.  We were losing the final battle pretty badly up until the worm evolved pokemon style into gyarados a purple worm and tried to strangle a dragon.

Speaking of which, I had two character deaths (one resurrection) in that game.

[Mephisto]

I kinda dislike how 4th and 5th make it near impossible for characters to actually die.  They may fall in combat, but they never stay down.  And then they pop back up like loony tunes when the encounter ends.

4th, maybe. I only played a few sessions.

5th? Most definitely not. If the DM lets the party take an uneventful short rest in the middle of a dungeon after every boo-boo, that's on the DM, not the game.

[Draignean]

How do people rate giving a PC plot armor in a campaign?

As I said before, the job of the DM is to cause the characters grief and pain in order to keep them interested in bettering themselves and the world. So plot armor should be applied when keeping the character alive is more interesting to the story or generates more suffering than just outright murdering them.

Killing players keeps everyone ready and on edge, saves them from getting complacent and can make them plan and scheme much harder than normal. You need to let players die when they do something stupid or when they intentionally take the reckless high risk path.

However, there's a lot to be said for creatively sparing people. Changing the last blow to non-lethal damage so that the big-bad knocks the character unconscious and then gates out with them as a captive can create a far greater complication for a party than just executing them on the spot. In one of my campaigns, the ninja trying tail winged-serpent samurai with five levels and a size class over her epically failed their move silently check and ended up trying a direct confrontation. The rest of the party was busy herding the contents of a village into the woods before the could be enslaved or massacred (depending on which clan of the winged-serpent folk got there first) and the result of the battle was kind of a foregone conclusion. In that case, I had the winged-serpent dodge everything the ninja threw at it, give a nice mocking speech about how it didn't even want its servants to have to debase themselves to cleaning the blood of such trash from its blade, and just had him sunder the Ninja's weapons, knock them unconscious with the back of their sword, shatter both their legs, and just leave them to die.

Yes, the ninja should have died. However, by letting them live their character gets a personal grudge and the party gets a better understanding of the kind of enemy they're facing. Not to mention they had to find a way to fix the Ninja's legs since I made the damage too extensive to be fixed by standard healing.


When about to kill a player, ask yourself this question: Is there a way that them surviving would be worse for the party/more interesting for the story? If so, strongly consider nudging things in that direction.

[IcyTea31]

I doubt every fight can threaten all that they hold dear but not their own lives without getting really, really contrived.

Oh, it's easy: mind control their friends and families and make them fight against them. Make it so that they're able to save some persons and/or valuables from a burning building, but not all. Or even use the simple but classic hostage situation.

[GiglameshDespair]

Again: every fight and it's going to get really contrived.

I'm not saying it can't be done. Quite the opposite. But not every battle can have their friends and family kidnapped, mind controlled, or stuck in a burning building.

Sometimes when a skeleton stabs you to death, you're just stabbed to death by a skeleton.

[Trekkin]

Again: every fight and it's going to get really contrived.

I'm not saying it can't be done. Quite the opposite. But not every battle can have their friends and family kidnapped, mind controlled, or stuck in a burning building.

Sometimes when a skeleton stabs you to death, you're just stabbed to death by a skeleton.

You don't need mind-controlled friends and family to establish that if the PCs fail a given fight they irrevocably fail their objective. You just need all your fights to have a point to them beyond XP and loot and violence.

Not that fighting for the sake of fighting is bad, mind you, and if that's your bag than a risk of PC death makes sense. It's just not the only way to do violence in games.

[Dorsidwarf]

I kinda dislike how 4th and 5th make it near impossible for characters to actually die.  They may fall in combat, but they never stay down.  And then they pop back up like loony tunes when the encounter ends.

4th, maybe. I only played a few sessions.

5th? Most definitely not. If the DM lets the party take an uneventful short rest in the middle of a dungeon after every boo-boo, that's on the DM, not the game.

This is very important in my opinion. Short rests after every encounter should be discouraged, especially during more dangerous areas/important times. Don't harass them constantly, but if they try to take a nap after combat in a densely-populated dungeon then have the dungeon inhabitants take the fight to them instead of quietly waiting in their boxes for their turn

[Mesa]

As I said before, the job of the DM is to cause the characters grief and pain in order to keep them interested in bettering themselves and the world.

If you don't inflict pain on your players at every opportunity, there's no point even bothering to DM.

I know I'm on Bay12 which is home to the most sadistic gamers on planet Earth, and maybe I'm just bad at picking up sarcasm, but to me that feels like a surefire way to completely desensitize your players to all that "pain and suffering" and actually make them stop caring.


You really need thes ups and downs, a sense of ebb and flow if you want to avoid that sort of burnout IMHO. Easy victories and low-risk periods have as much of a reison d'etat as periods of struggle and stress. There's a reason most movies, stories and games which try to make you care about the world and characters don't put you through constant pain and suffering at literally every opportunity - some do it more than others, yes, and that helps set their tone, but even they give you some respite before proceeding to the ass-kicking.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The correct style of DM is the one that best satisfies the table, including the DM themselves. If the player group craves hyperlethality and being spanked over and over again, then have it. The only problems are when a DM tries to enforce a style that is radically incompatible with the group and won't relent when signs of dissatisfaction start.