I need some advice on how to kill my players. I've been a pretty nice DM but some of my players told me that there needs to be consequences for their stupidity. They said that because I gave them an encounter but I let them weasel themselves out of it by letting them kill the boss, which they decided to split the party and did not take any measure to heal before confronting the boss and I gave them several chances with the excuse that the boss was super confident that he was going to win. So any advice out there for how for a DM who is a little too 'nice' to their PCs.
Let the dice fall where they fall and play the NPCs and monsters based on their personalities. That will do it, especially if the PCs split up. Just let what happens happen.
1. don't ask what their HP is. do not pay any attention to it at all. many DM's ask and then divert enemy attention to another creature. 2. especially with multi-attacks. don't just switch attacks mid attack just because you might kill someone. this is one of the big reasons why many DM's complain how dragons are underwhelming. well no shit sherlock. Just let the full 3-4 multi-attacks land on that 1 target and take them down. even if that means that the PC goes down on the second strike. and has to take 1 or 2 more strikes and thus gets double fail on their death saves right there and then. 3. you are not responsible for their safety at all. they have to make sure to prepare well for what is to come. you as DM are only responsible to ensuring that they have access to clear and transparent information. it is up to the players whether they scout, interrogate, scry or use other methods to get that information in order to prepare as best t hey can. if the players decide not to get information and blindly rush in... well... that is their problem. the bad guys have their own agenda's, resources and motivation to achieve their goals. they're not going to roll over and play nice just because some unprepared fools run into their stronghold. Just be fair about what resources the bad guys have available and then use that to the best of your ability as DM that fits with the bad guys personality and goals. 4. Give your creatures/monsters max health. especially ones the PCs are lvl 3+. so many people use average health and that really ruins combat in a big way. 5. houserule so that on a crit you automatically do max damage of the dice. then roll another dice to add on top of that max damage. Works both ways for your players as well as the baddies. 6. make sure the environment the baddies are in... always works to their advantage. Ledges for higher ground the PC's can't immediately get too. Poison gas the enemies are immune too. etc etc. Making the encounters more interesting and more deadly.
Something that helps me personally is putting myself in the shoes of the thing the players are fighting. Is it a forest beast angry about things invading its territory? Then it’ll either go after the closest or the one that hurt it the most and lock onto trying to take out that target
for humanoid creatures they usually put strategy into their plans, so if one of the party members is easy to get picked off, makes a mistake, etc they’re gonna try to take them out.
basically put yourself into the shoes of the enemy and what THEY would do not what YOU as the DM wanting your players to succeed would do. That being said, that doesn’t mean go out and mercilessly murder them as soon as you can (still make it a good story and such)
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Bardic Inspiration is just someone believing in you, and I believe in you
Make some excuse why monsters would be targeting that one person. They're wearing purple and that is punishable by death, or they are most feared by the members of their species, or they had a previous run in with whatever class/race they are and are targeting them because of that. Don't fudge die rolls to kill them that is evil. If they die it has to be believable and partially on that character.
I've done this before when a character absolutely had to die. I had a pit of lava, wind was blowing, everyone had to make a STR save or be blown in, he failed, survived, stayed in the same room, failed again and got blown in again, and died.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
with the whole multi attack thing, i set up an encounter where my players ventured into an assassins den that was masqueraded as an alchemy shop. they were just like cr1/2 or something like that but they had multi attack and one character decided, "yeah lets just run into all of them when im 17 hp" yeah needless to say he was rolling death saves
I need some advice on how to kill my players. I've been a pretty nice DM but some of my players told me that there needs to be consequences for their stupidity. They said that because I gave them an encounter but I let them weasel themselves out of it by letting them kill the boss, which they decided to split the party and did not take any measure to heal before confronting the boss and I gave them several chances with the excuse that the boss was super confident that he was going to win. So any advice out there for how for a DM who is a little too 'nice' to their PCs.
You're not doing anything wrong per say, the DM's goal is not to plan or arrange for player character deaths, in fact, generally, character deaths tend to be quite disruptive to campaigns and there really is no upside.
That said, the argument "there have to be consequences for actions" is a very strong one because while D&D is a game, specifically a fantasy adventure game, players do tend to have trouble with the suspension of disbelief if the world seems like it should be dangerous but never actually is. I don't know if that makes sense, but one of the basic designs of the human brain is that our imagination is a combination of both the fear and desire for what we imagine to be real.
So a role-playing game is sort of like an extension of pretending something is real and the more visceral and believable we make that at the table, the more exciting it is for everyone and one of the sort of keys to that is the idea that you could "pretend die" and lose everything. That is a very exciting notion and players both secretly crave that risk and fear it because they don't want to "lose their character", but at the same time if there is no risk of it, the blade is sort of dulled.
Players will literally test your commitment to killing them by doing intentionally stupid stuff just to see if you're willing to follow through because they have a subconscious need to know "is there an actual risk to my character's pretend life or not in this game".
Anyway, that is a long-winded way to say, yeah follow through, kill characters, make it brutal, violent and anti-climatic, especially if they do something really stupid and you don't have to "arrange" anything other than simply let the dice do the work. Don't sweat it even for a minute and while its disruptive to have characters die, the thing is that it will happen a lot less, when you show a willingness to do it.
Old school games like 1st and 2nd edition AD&D where considered to be hyper-deadly, but the reality was that player characters died less often in those games than they do today because players where hyper-cautious and paranoid as they knew that it was in fact very easy to die. We have lost some of that in modern games because the games are considerably less deadly, but 5e isn't exactly "not deadly" either, like, you will die if you do stuff stupid enough.
In a way its a lot nicer in 5e because there is already a cushion built into the mechanics of the game to rescue characters that fail or make a mistake, so you really don't need to soften or rig it in their favor, the game kind of does for you.
I've been a pretty nice DM but some of my players told me that there needs to be consequences for their stupidity. They said that because I gave them an encounter but I let them weasel themselves out of it by letting them kill the boss, which they decided to split the party and did not take any measure to heal before confronting the boss and I gave them several chances with the excuse that the boss was super confident that he was going to win. So any advice out there for how for a DM who is a little too 'nice' to their PCs.
Killing the PC's however is another matter. If you want more consequences in how the game unfolds, discuss this with your players, then simply do it. Push combat to the limit, and don't hold back. But keep in mind that if you push too hard, PC's don't just die - the party get's wiped. TPK isn't funny, generally speaking.
Personally, I have a little mini-game that let's a player fight his or her way back from the dead, if they manage to fail their death saves. Which I never get to use, because like you I'm too much of a plushie to ever kill anyone.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Within the same encounter initiative, before the last enemy die, have other enemies show up and enter combat so they never get to stop, rest, or do other actions. Use higher CR monsters that could keep them seperated and not within touch range for some of their healing effect for exemple. I almost TPK my party the other session with a roper unwillingly.
6. make sure the environment the baddies are in... always works to their advantage. Ledges for higher ground the PC's can't immediately get too. Poison gas the enemies are immune too. etc etc. Making the encounters more interesting and more deadly.
This is the answer. Set up ambushes, make escape difficult (eg they had to cross a narrow bridge, or jump a ravine), send the monsters in waves from varying directions, have the monsters incapacitate the characters with traps and spells, or sticky appendages, or grappling, cancel out their magic, illusions that make the characters waste their spells. D&D battle is a numbers game, and battles can take deadly turns quickly. A missed save here, a doubleD there. Don't try to kill the PCs. Just stop yourself from not killing them.
I need some advice on how to kill my players. I've been a pretty nice DM but some of my players told me that there needs to be consequences for their stupidity. They said that because I gave them an encounter but I let them weasel themselves out of it by letting them kill the boss, which they decided to split the party and did not take any measure to heal before confronting the boss and I gave them several chances with the excuse that the boss was super confident that he was going to win. So any advice out there for how for a DM who is a little too 'nice' to their PCs.
Don't kill your players...But you can kill their PCs. Let the outcome be the outcome. If they make a stupid mistake, let it play out. For example, I'm always having PCs enter a room starting a second encounter while the first one is going on. This resulted in a PC falling unconscious by himself. Two things could happen at this point. The bad guys could just straight up kill him or maybe they don't. In my case the bad guys turned him over to proper authorities because he was the one who broke in and was actually committing a crime.
WIth that said, never try to kill PCs. Thats easy to do. You simply have more monsters than the PCs can handle. Instead let their bad decisions take a player or two out.
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I need some advice on how to kill my players. I've been a pretty nice DM but some of my players told me that there needs to be consequences for their stupidity. They said that because I gave them an encounter but I let them weasel themselves out of it by letting them kill the boss, which they decided to split the party and did not take any measure to heal before confronting the boss and I gave them several chances with the excuse that the boss was super confident that he was going to win. So any advice out there for how for a DM who is a little too 'nice' to their PCs.
Decide how the session is going to go before you start and then stick to that.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
Let the dice fall where they fall and play the NPCs and monsters based on their personalities. That will do it, especially if the PCs split up. Just let what happens happen.
Professional computer geek
1. don't ask what their HP is. do not pay any attention to it at all. many DM's ask and then divert enemy attention to another creature.
2. especially with multi-attacks. don't just switch attacks mid attack just because you might kill someone. this is one of the big reasons why many DM's complain how dragons are underwhelming. well no shit sherlock. Just let the full 3-4 multi-attacks land on that 1 target and take them down. even if that means that the PC goes down on the second strike. and has to take 1 or 2 more strikes and thus gets double fail on their death saves right there and then.
3. you are not responsible for their safety at all. they have to make sure to prepare well for what is to come. you as DM are only responsible to ensuring that they have access to clear and transparent information. it is up to the players whether they scout, interrogate, scry or use other methods to get that information in order to prepare as best t hey can. if the players decide not to get information and blindly rush in... well... that is their problem. the bad guys have their own agenda's, resources and motivation to achieve their goals. they're not going to roll over and play nice just because some unprepared fools run into their stronghold. Just be fair about what resources the bad guys have available and then use that to the best of your ability as DM that fits with the bad guys personality and goals.
4. Give your creatures/monsters max health. especially ones the PCs are lvl 3+. so many people use average health and that really ruins combat in a big way.
5. houserule so that on a crit you automatically do max damage of the dice. then roll another dice to add on top of that max damage. Works both ways for your players as well as the baddies.
6. make sure the environment the baddies are in... always works to their advantage. Ledges for higher ground the PC's can't immediately get too. Poison gas the enemies are immune too. etc etc. Making the encounters more interesting and more deadly.
Something that helps me personally is putting myself in the shoes of the thing the players are fighting. Is it a forest beast angry about things invading its territory? Then it’ll either go after the closest or the one that hurt it the most and lock onto trying to take out that target
for humanoid creatures they usually put strategy into their plans, so if one of the party members is easy to get picked off, makes a mistake, etc they’re gonna try to take them out.
basically put yourself into the shoes of the enemy and what THEY would do not what YOU as the DM wanting your players to succeed would do. That being said, that doesn’t mean go out and mercilessly murder them as soon as you can (still make it a good story and such)
Bardic Inspiration is just someone believing in you, and I believe in you
All good advice. I suggest you kill the characters, not the players.
Make some excuse why monsters would be targeting that one person. They're wearing purple and that is punishable by death, or they are most feared by the members of their species, or they had a previous run in with whatever class/race they are and are targeting them because of that. Don't fudge die rolls to kill them that is evil. If they die it has to be believable and partially on that character.
I've done this before when a character absolutely had to die. I had a pit of lava, wind was blowing, everyone had to make a STR save or be blown in, he failed, survived, stayed in the same room, failed again and got blown in again, and died.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
with the whole multi attack thing, i set up an encounter where my players ventured into an assassins den that was masqueraded as an alchemy shop. they were just like cr1/2 or something like that but they had multi attack and one character decided, "yeah lets just run into all of them when im 17 hp" yeah needless to say he was rolling death saves
tesseract335
You're not doing anything wrong per say, the DM's goal is not to plan or arrange for player character deaths, in fact, generally, character deaths tend to be quite disruptive to campaigns and there really is no upside.
That said, the argument "there have to be consequences for actions" is a very strong one because while D&D is a game, specifically a fantasy adventure game, players do tend to have trouble with the suspension of disbelief if the world seems like it should be dangerous but never actually is. I don't know if that makes sense, but one of the basic designs of the human brain is that our imagination is a combination of both the fear and desire for what we imagine to be real.
So a role-playing game is sort of like an extension of pretending something is real and the more visceral and believable we make that at the table, the more exciting it is for everyone and one of the sort of keys to that is the idea that you could "pretend die" and lose everything. That is a very exciting notion and players both secretly crave that risk and fear it because they don't want to "lose their character", but at the same time if there is no risk of it, the blade is sort of dulled.
Players will literally test your commitment to killing them by doing intentionally stupid stuff just to see if you're willing to follow through because they have a subconscious need to know "is there an actual risk to my character's pretend life or not in this game".
Anyway, that is a long-winded way to say, yeah follow through, kill characters, make it brutal, violent and anti-climatic, especially if they do something really stupid and you don't have to "arrange" anything other than simply let the dice do the work. Don't sweat it even for a minute and while its disruptive to have characters die, the thing is that it will happen a lot less, when you show a willingness to do it.
Old school games like 1st and 2nd edition AD&D where considered to be hyper-deadly, but the reality was that player characters died less often in those games than they do today because players where hyper-cautious and paranoid as they knew that it was in fact very easy to die. We have lost some of that in modern games because the games are considerably less deadly, but 5e isn't exactly "not deadly" either, like, you will die if you do stuff stupid enough.
In a way its a lot nicer in 5e because there is already a cushion built into the mechanics of the game to rescue characters that fail or make a mistake, so you really don't need to soften or rig it in their favor, the game kind of does for you.
So in the infamous words of Loki... "kill away!"
Now, that would be very illegal.
Killing the PC's however is another matter. If you want more consequences in how the game unfolds, discuss this with your players, then simply do it. Push combat to the limit, and don't hold back. But keep in mind that if you push too hard, PC's don't just die - the party get's wiped. TPK isn't funny, generally speaking.
Personally, I have a little mini-game that let's a player fight his or her way back from the dead, if they manage to fail their death saves. Which I never get to use, because like you I'm too much of a plushie to ever kill anyone.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Within the same encounter initiative, before the last enemy die, have other enemies show up and enter combat so they never get to stop, rest, or do other actions. Use higher CR monsters that could keep them seperated and not within touch range for some of their healing effect for exemple. I almost TPK my party the other session with a roper unwillingly.
This is the answer. Set up ambushes, make escape difficult (eg they had to cross a narrow bridge, or jump a ravine), send the monsters in waves from varying directions, have the monsters incapacitate the characters with traps and spells, or sticky appendages, or grappling, cancel out their magic, illusions that make the characters waste their spells. D&D battle is a numbers game, and battles can take deadly turns quickly. A missed save here, a doubleD there. Don't try to kill the PCs. Just stop yourself from not killing them.
Don't kill your players...But you can kill their PCs. Let the outcome be the outcome. If they make a stupid mistake, let it play out. For example, I'm always having PCs enter a room starting a second encounter while the first one is going on. This resulted in a PC falling unconscious by himself. Two things could happen at this point. The bad guys could just straight up kill him or maybe they don't. In my case the bad guys turned him over to proper authorities because he was the one who broke in and was actually committing a crime.
WIth that said, never try to kill PCs. Thats easy to do. You simply have more monsters than the PCs can handle. Instead let their bad decisions take a player or two out.