I can beat you both -- I started playing D&D with the Basic Set in January 1982, which makes it 38 years this month. (I got the game for Christmas but it took me a while to learn and understand it and for my friend and I to start playing, yes, just the two of us at first.) So if there's a prize, I think I get it, at least among the three of us. Now get off my lawn!
Cheers to you fellow oldie, I think we'd be comfortable at one another's gaming table.
100%... I am sure we would be.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Some good comments above, but something missing from the original description is why the players are playing the game. At the end of the day, the players want to have fun. So, if they are playing for combat, sure save the bard. But if they are playing to feel heroic or for dramatic rp, you got to kill them. Otherwise, there won't be any jeopardy involved in future similar decisions. You kill that bard, your players will think for a second before leaping headlong into danger. That leads to some interesting sessions!
I do however believe that it does make for a terrible game when the DM provides plot armor and in particular when the players realize that this is what is happening.
I completely agree. :D It entirely removes all the stakes.
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Rule for drama. Roll for memories. If there isn't a meaningful failure condition, do not roll. Ever. (Perception checks, I'm .... clunk, roll, roll, roll, stop... 14, looking at you... maybe?)
Original question: the bard dies. If she came within 5 of the DC for the jump, I'd give her a save to catch herself followed by a check to climb up, death on either. A 2 just doesn't cut it.
But.
The kid does not die.
The bard might not be able to save herself, but she could, like in a movie, throw the kid across to the party as she plunges into the lava. So while it's still a Thrones death, it's also a heroic one.
I do however believe that it does make for a terrible game when the DM provides plot armor and in particular when the players realize that this is what is happening.
An easy test to determine whether or not you're doing it well is testing your comfort level and gauging the reactions of the players by telling them what you did. Another words, if they knew and understood what measure you just took to save their character to preserve the game, would they be ok with it or would they feel cheated.
I mostly agree with this. I don't believe in plot armor either. But I also know lots of players who would be grateful if they knew I had fudged the dice in their favor, rather than feel cheated.
It all depends on the player. We had a guy once (we did not play with him very long) who -- in Champions, mind you, a game in which very few characters die during combat to dice rolls, just because of how the mechanics work -- if you said that a boss villain was going to attack his character, he would try to convince you to change your mind and have the boss attack a different guy. (You can imagine how the other players tended to take that!) And f you said no, too bad, Overlord is attacking Nucleon anyway, he would throw a tantrum. I mean this literally. He would pick up his character sheet, hurl it across the room, and bellow, "FINE! Let him DIE! See if I care!!!" All before you had even rolled to resolve the attack. Just because you said "he attacks you." (Again, in a game where you almost literally cannot die from even a boss villain attack.)
Before anyone says, "Why didn't you boot him from the group the 1st time he did that?" the answers are (a) we were friends outside of the game, and outside of the game he was not like this, (b) everyone else still for some reason wanted to play with him, and (c) I was not "the DM" -- we rotated each adventure to someone else, so I had no authority to kick him out of the group. Though believe me, I wanted to after a few sessions. We got lucky and the problem was solved when he went to a different high school and we stopped hanging out with him after that.
But my point is -- that guy was so attached to his characters that he literally could not bear it if anything bad happened to them. Even just a villain attacking them. He also always wanted to be the most powerful one in the group, and so he built this very powerful but wildly inefficient characters who were Endurance hogs. And then, oh yes this happened, he would cheat by not subtracting all the Endurance for each maneuver that he was supposed to. Another of the players who was really good at math, started to ask, "How can Nucleon still be using all these powers this far into the combat? Hasn't he run out of Endurance?" The player in question would insist. So when this other player's turn to GM came along, he said, "I've not done this before" (true) "so I need a copy of everyone's character sheet to help me prep" (probably false). He then retained the Nucleon sheet and did his own tracking of Endurance. After a couple of combat phases (rounds) this GM then said, "Uh, if you do that Nucleon is going to be taking Stun as Endurance, because your down to only 3 Endurance."
You cannot believe the argument that ensued. It was not, "Gee I am sorry for literally cheating at a freaking roleplaying game" -- oh no. It was "how dare you, the GM, keep track of my character's Endurance? You have no right to tell me what my Endurance is! You are picking on my character! You are picking on me! FINE! LET HIM DIE! SEE IF I CARE!!!" And so forth. (And of course you don't die from running out of Endurance, though it does limit what further actions your character can take, which of course made him not be "the hero" of that battle, which he could not stand.)
My point with this? You have to know your players. If you are playing with a table full of people like Nucleon's player, assuming you want to keep playing with them, you'd probably better fudge the die rolls. These fancy-shmancy ideas about "teaching players lessons" and "consequences matter" would be absolutely lost on him. He does not want anything bad to happen to his character, ever. If you are at a table with people like this, "letting the dice fall where they may" will rapidly lead to more grief than it's worth. So as someone said above -- know your players. Know what they like, what they want, how lethal they want the campaign to be, etc.
Which is all another way of saying -- make sure you do what you need to do on Session 0 to make sure you're all on the same page. Otherwise, you could have that bard who rolled a two throwing her character sheet across the room and bellowing, "FINE! LET HER DIE! SEE IF I CARE!!" and trust me, you don't want that. ;)
We have to have some basic standards on which we base our assumptions when it comes to the types of players we have at the table, else these conversations/discussions become impossible to have. I mean if someone is suffering from mental problems, the issue isn't the game or how as DM's we run them.
But a person doesn't have to be "suffering from mental problems" to just not want their character to die. Tons of players don't want their characters to die and yet want to otherwise play and enjoy D&D. You don't think that's "enough stakes," I would guess, but your way is not the only way.
Matt Colville's campaign diary #13 (I think) reflects something like this happening. During a session he gave the party of mostly new D&D players (except 1 vet player) multiple clues that they were getting in over their head. They did not heed those clues. The vet player's character died. Upset, he walked away from the table -- just to clear his head and come to grips with having to make up a new character. While he was gone from the table, the other players, all new, said to Matt, "We don't want to play D&D anymore." They had not really understood that characters might die here (rather than just going unconscious) and it turned out, they didn't necessarily want to play in a game in which they could actually die. Colville realized at that point that he had screwed up as a DM by not really straightening this out with his players.
The vet player, Phil I think his name was, came back after about half an hour and walked into the middle of what was basically a mutiny, with the rest of the players ready to pack it up and quit. As a vet player he then had to step in and say, no, guys, this happens in D&D... I'm not really that mad and I will just make up another character. They worked it all out and picked up again the next week and things went fine.
The point of this is though, that those players didn't have mental problems. They just didn't consider it "fun" to "raise the stakes" and get their characters killed. *I* am OK with it if my character dies. But I don't know that you should expect everyone to be, and I don't expect that. And I don't consider them somehow to be "lesser" or "inferior" or try to argue "they aren't getting the most out of their D&D experience" by not wanting to die. That's up to each player and everyone has his or her own thresh-hold.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
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I think a lot of us are saying the same thing. Prior to session one the DM should know what game his players wanted to play. That would have made addressing the situation encountered easy. I don't mean that as a slam on the DM. This is just something you learn with age and experience.
I will say I would never ever want to play in a game where characters never died...but if other people want to do that they can, they'd just better warn me!
It all depends on what players want out of a game.
After all, one could easily imagine a campaign in which the PCs are a team of detectives who go around the fantasy world solving high-profile murders. Although there are, of course, exceptions, in classic murder mysteries, the protagonists rarely end up in direct life-or-death danger (e.g., Holmes, Columbo), and the action of the story centers around the problem-solving of the mystery. In a mystery-based campaign, the stakes are "does the murderer get away with it?" rather than "does my character live or die?" As long as everyone agrees that this is the type of campaign we're running... there is no reason it can't be done successfully.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Warning players that there character might die in a game of D&D is like warning someone that a full house beats a pair in poker.
But surely one does warn a player of this if the player has not ever played poker before and wouldn't otherwise have any reason to know this.
It's not the case that one could automatically know that a full house beats a pair. It depends on what you are playing. After all, there is a version of poker that my friends and I used to play where your goal is to get the worst hand possible, rather than the best. So if you had a pair and discarded it only to pick up the cards that gave you a flush, say, then you'd be hosed.
There are many ways to play these games. Some DMs run very lethal games, and some do not. Warning players that their character can die is appropriate because not every D&D game has that as a base condition, hard as that may be for some people to believe.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Warning players that there character might die in a game of D&D is like warning someone that a full house beats a pair in poker.
But surely one does warn a player of this if the player has not ever played poker before and wouldn't otherwise have any reason to know this.
It's not the case that one could automatically know that a full house beats a pair. It depends on what you are playing. After all, there is a version of poker that my friends and I used to play where your goal is to get the worst hand possible, rather than the best. So if you had a pair and discarded it only to pick up the cards that gave you a flush, say, then you'd be hosed.
There are many ways to play these games. Some DMs run very lethal games, and some do not. Warning players that their character can die is appropriate because not every D&D game has that as a base condition, hard as that may be for some people to believe.
So... should a casino warn players every single hand that a full house beats a pair?
I get for a first timer... (session 0 or session 1), but for every single session?
hard as it may be for some people to believe, but most DMs warn players their characters can potentially die, before you hear the first IC story of the campaign.
I think it's more appropriate to say that if a DM is going to give our characters plot armor and our characters are never going to be in any real danger of dying, that is when the DM must warn the group and have a session 0 conversation about it because he is altering the core rules of the game and creating a house rule. That is what session 0 is for, a discussion about how the DM will alter the game in his own vision. You don't discuss in session 0 that Barbarian rules are going to be as written in the book for example, that is the assumption until the DM says otherwise.
What's the "core rules"? The DMG for instance says:
"Rolling behind a screen lets you fudge the results if you want to. If two critical hits in a row would kill a character, you could change the second critical hit into a normal hit, or even a miss. Don’t distort die rolls too often, though, and don’t let on that you’re doing it. Otherwise, your players might think they don’t face any real risks — or worse, that you’re playing favorites."
That some of us follow that advice doesn't mean we don't play by the rules as the game is written. It's maybe not as hard core or something as you and others prefer, but still - it's by the rules and advices of the game.
I agree that if I decides that in this D&D-campaign I will replace "dying" with another consequence, I would inform the players up front about this. But I'm trying to figure out what my disclaimer should be like for my "standard" games. Perhaps something along the lines of:
"Hey guys. If I happens to roll Yahtzee on that trap you encounter in the very first scene, and that would kill one of you, I might lie a little and say a rolled a little bit less because I don't want to ruin the flow of the game. Also, if I feel the battle is taking too long - that last kamikaze-orc standing would probably die although he was still left with a HP or two. And - sometimes, if I see that you are completely demolishing the encounter I've made - I will sometimes just add another enemy or two to give you a challenge."
It might not work for you, but it works for us. I'm quite sure my group have more fun this way than if we tried the way you prefer. And I really don't see that this is in any way against the way the rules of 5e is written.
I think it's more appropriate to say that if a DM is going to give our characters plot armor and our characters are never going to be in any real danger of dying, that is when the DM must warn the group and have a session 0 conversation about it because he is altering the core rules of the game and creating a house rule. That is what session 0 is for, a discussion about how the DM will alter the game in his own vision. You don't discuss in session 0 that Barbarian rules are going to be as written in the book for example, that is the assumption until the DM says otherwise.
What's the "core rules"? The DMG for instance says:
"Rolling behind a screen lets you fudge the results if you want to. If two critical hits in a row would kill a character, you could change the second critical hit into a normal hit, or even a miss. Don’t distort die rolls too often, though, and don’t let on that you’re doing it. Otherwise, your players might think they don’t face any real risks — or worse, that you’re playing favorites."
The issue at hand is that for some DM's the game of DND has changed too much between editions for the DMG to represent "real DND". It's a bit like Hockey players in the 80's insisting that wearing helmets and pads is not part of "true hockey". I want to say that this falls under the "No True Scotsman Fallacy" but my semantic labels weren't what they used to be.
In the end, what works for some won't work for all and DM's have to judge their game groups and themselves as to what will create a fun experience. And newer DM's just have to look at all of the anecdotes of the veterans to see which best matches their play groups.
For example, just last week, one of my players very cavalierly said "why didn't we just attack the queen?" And this exchange happened: Wizard: Because she's a shape shifted Dragon and we'd die. Bard: So what? I'll just make a new character. Me: What's kind of a crappy attitude. Don't you have any attachment to that one? Bard: Why would I? You're just going to work to kill them off. It's easier if I don't care about them.
For me and the kinds of games I prefer to run, this attitude is the exact opposite of what I want. I don't want players saying "let's be crazy! We can make new characters!" I don't want to pay therapy bills, but I want them to have some emotional investment.
Now, you take that for what it is.. just another data point in the mix of advice about running RPG's. I prefer games that have players invest; some people prefer games where characters are just collections of statistics. Your mileage may vary.
I think it's more appropriate to say that if a DM is going to give our characters plot armor and our characters are never going to be in any real danger of dying, that is when the DM must warn the group and have a session 0 conversation about it because he is altering the core rules of the game and creating a house rule. That is what session 0 is for, a discussion about how the DM will alter the game in his own vision. You don't discuss in session 0 that Barbarian rules are going to be as written in the book for example, that is the assumption until the DM says otherwise.
What's the "core rules"? The DMG for instance says:
"Rolling behind a screen lets you fudge the results if you want to. If two critical hits in a row would kill a character, you could change the second critical hit into a normal hit, or even a miss. Don’t distort die rolls too often, though, and don’t let on that you’re doing it. Otherwise, your players might think they don’t face any real risks — or worse, that you’re playing favorites."
The issue at hand is that for some DM's the game of DND has changed too much between editions for the DMG to represent "real DND". It's a bit like Hockey players in the 80's insisting that wearing helmets and pads is not part of "true hockey". I want to say that this falls under the "No True Scotsman Fallacy" but my semantic labels weren't what they used to be.
In the end, what works for some won't work for all and DM's have to judge their game groups and themselves as to what will create a fun experience. And newer DM's just have to look at all of the anecdotes of the veterans to see which best matches their play groups.
For example, just last week, one of my players very cavalierly said "why didn't we just attack the queen?" And this exchange happened: Wizard: Because she's a shape shifted Dragon and we'd die. Bard: So what? I'll just make a new character. Me: What's kind of a crappy attitude. Don't you have any attachment to that one? Bard: Why would I? You're just going to work to kill them off. It's easier if I don't care about them.
For me and the kinds of games I prefer to run, this attitude is the exact opposite of what I want. I don't want players saying "let's be crazy! We can make new characters!" I don't want to pay therapy bills, but I want them to have some emotional investment.
Now, you take that for what it is.. just another data point in the mix of advice about running RPG's. I prefer games that have players invest; some people prefer games where characters are just collections of statistics. Your mileage may vary.
Same bard that didn’t die before? Looks like the player isn’t exactly trying to keep them alive.
or they hate their char and would rather do something else
Totally different. The hypothetical at the top of this thread was a hypothetical to gauge what other DM's would do with a "should the character die" scenario and to talk about how we as DM's approach death/ fatal situations in our games. The previous dialogue was from an actual game where I found myself talking to players one of whom took the attitude of "meh, I don't care about my character" attitude.
Would he rather be doing something else? I don't know but I do think that our visions of DND are not fully aligned. But there's room to see and he might have just been having an off night. Plus some people see "Serious DND" as "can we outwit the DM?". The DM is the antagonist who is out to kill the characters and the players are the protagonists out to stay alive by carefully planning and counter planning every moment of gaming.
Totally different. The hypothetical at the top of this thread was a hypothetical to gauge what other DM's would do with a "should the character die" scenario and to talk about how we as DM's approach death/ fatal situations in our games. The previous dialogue was from an actual game where I found myself talking to players one of whom took the attitude of "meh, I don't care about my character" attitude.
Just wants to say thanks to @Rorlins for starting this and all others for contributing. Although I really "disagree" with some of you, it's been a lot of interesting views that's made me think about how I'm DM'ing.
Also thanks to @Rorlins for reminding us of the hypothetical point of his first post :-)
The issue at hand is that for some DM's the game of DND has changed too much between editions for the DMG to represent "real DND". It's a bit like Hockey players in the 80's insisting that wearing helmets and pads is not part of "true hockey". I want to say that this falls under the "No True Scotsman Fallacy" but my semantic labels weren't what they used to be.
This.
This is the heart of the matter, and what we have been discussing and arguing about on this thread for 4 pages and on several other threads, frequently without being explicitly stated. The problem some folks have is that 5th edition D&D is not one of the previous editions (most of the time 1st edition AD&D, which seems to be the "baseline," but sometimes they mean the 3 original books or 2nd ed or 3.5th).
The present day, 5th edition, core rulebooks, which as Godrick stated include the DMG, explicitly contemplate and in several places advise low- or non-lethal variants of the game. Chapter 1 of the DMG talks about all the different kinds of games you can run, and points out, for example, that "Intrigue" games may go for several sessions without even fighting a single monster (and thus, by implication, would have reduces chances for character death from die rolls, although not from other things like the King ordering your execution...). Mystery campaigns, the DMG points out, emphasize puzzles and problem-solving in addition to combat (and here again, multiple sessions might occur without having to do combat or even die rolls, depending on what is happening).
Someone who is steeped in, and prefers, the swords-and-sorcery roots of AD&D might find such games not to be fun, but that doesn't mean that playing such campaigns is somehow an inferior form of gaming, which is what has been implied more than once on this and other threads.
Me: What's kind of a crappy attitude. Don't you have any attachment to that one? Bard: Why would I? You're just going to work to kill them off. It's easier if I don't care about them.
And this is often what happens in old-school original D&D. Magic-users with d4 hit points die pretty fast, don't get attached. Colville talks about how they often just re-made the same character with a new number.. Duncan the magic-user dies at 1st level. Make up another one, Duncan II, then he dies at second level, make up Duncan III, and so forth. Such a campaign certainly has the "consequences" for failing saving throws and missing attack rolls against monsters that the old-schoolers seem to love, but by definition, Duncan I-II-III-IV-etc's player is never going to get attached. And indeed, why bother, if Duncan's just going to die the first time a kobold rolls higher than a 3 on 1d6 anyway?
For the current campaign I am about to start playing end of the month, which someone else is DMing, I have made up a bard with a 3-page typed backstory. I have worked on her psyche, her family tree, started writing lyrics (which I will say, NOT sing) for some of her spell-songs, and the like. This has taken hours of work -- fun hours of work. I even went to DAZ Studio (since I have in the past done 3D artwork) and bought a set of leather armor assets and a fantasy environment and used an existing figure to make a 3D rendered art of the character. And then spent time in photoshop post-working it and adding spell FX. I pasted these pictures into the 3 page document. That's a lot of work for a character, and I have formed an attachment for her.
Now, I know that characters can die, and I'm not going to get mad if she dies before level 2. This is D&D, and those things happen. But, if she dies right away, what are the chances I'm going to, in the week between play sessions, have the time or the desire to come up with as extensive a backstory as the druid (say) I make up to replace her? And will I bother paying actual money to DAZ Studio to get more resources to make the druid? Probability of either thing is low, a) because I won't have the months of time I have had to work on this bard, and b) because there is a limit to how many times in a row I am going to start out invested in a character. Now if character #2 druid lives for a while I would probably slowly start filling in more backstory and maybe become inspired to make some DAZ resources. But probably not at first.
Why? Because I picked the bard and made her up as the D&D character that most inspired my imagination. Anything that comes next will be an also-ran... a second-best. I've chosen to lead with my best punch, knowing that may be foolish since low level characters die, but figuring that, if she lives, I will have the joy of playing her for 20 levels. But if my best character idea goes poof 2 sessions in, the odds I'm going to invest quite that much in the next one are going to go down... and they will decline linearly, if not exponentially, with each new character I have to make for the campaign. Just like Duncan's player put thought into Duncan the first time, and then just cloned him with less and less bother and thought through each future iteration, I would probably do the same.
Am I saying "protect my character or else I won't care?" No. But what I am saying is there is an energetic cost to making up and investing in characters, and if you invest a lot and they die very quickly, there is no incentive to keep investing. I'm not talking about a certain character in Critical Role season 2 here, in which he died after 100 hours of episodes. That character got some serious play-time, and was worth the investment of his player (and the audience). But a CR character died every episode and players were on average rolling new ones every couple of weeks, just how invested do you think the actors, or the audience, would be after a while?
There's a balance point that has to be reached, and where it is depends on the player group. This again is what I have been trying to relate. For some people, fun cannot be had unless a PC dies in every play session. For others, fun cannot be had unless PCs never die. But for most of us, the balance is somewhere in the middle, where characters can and do die, but death is relatively rare, and so it is worth investing in each character, because you'll be playing them for a while.
The "I don't bother investing in characters because you'll just kill them off" attitude tells me that this player's balance point and the DM's are not aligned. Time for a player-to-player talk, I suspect.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I agree with what you are saying, but I think something that is getting lost in this thread are that there are different kinds of potential character deaths. At lower level, a fall from a high enough ledge can kill you. I mean 1d6 for every 10 feet can decimate a 1st level character. To me, there's a big difference between a PC being in a bad situation due to a low imitative roll and making a decision to put yourself in jeopardy. At low levels, I wouldn't let bad luck kill a character. Its not fun and comes off as unfair to the player. At the same time, the players know their max HP. If they decide to engage in something high risk (i.e., leap across a pool of lava) their fate is in their hands. Of course, I might make suggestions prior to die roll, but once the die of cast there aren't any mulligans.
Like I said earlier, the DM should establish in session 0 what the players expectations are. The thing to remember is that the game is not for the DM, its for the players. Whether the DM has a good time during the session is irrelevant. If the players didn't, it's not a good session.
Like I said earlier, the DM should establish in session 0 what the players expectations are. The thing to remember is that the game is not for the DM, its for the players. Whether the DM has a good time during the session is irrelevant. If the players didn't, it's not a good session.
I don't disagree with you, but I don't think I've ever been in a situation where the players are really happy and I'm not (or vice versa). Yes sometimes the players are more happy than me, sometimes, perhaps I'm more happy than them. But most of the time my experience is that players and DM both recognize a good session :-)
100%... I am sure we would be.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Some good comments above, but something missing from the original description is why the players are playing the game. At the end of the day, the players want to have fun. So, if they are playing for combat, sure save the bard. But if they are playing to feel heroic or for dramatic rp, you got to kill them. Otherwise, there won't be any jeopardy involved in future similar decisions. You kill that bard, your players will think for a second before leaping headlong into danger. That leads to some interesting sessions!
I completely agree. :D It entirely removes all the stakes.
Rule for drama. Roll for memories.
If there isn't a meaningful failure condition, do not roll. Ever. (Perception checks, I'm .... clunk, roll, roll, roll, stop... 14, looking at you... maybe?)
Original question: the bard dies. If she came within 5 of the DC for the jump, I'd give her a save to catch herself followed by a check to climb up, death on either. A 2 just doesn't cut it.
But.
The kid does not die.
The bard might not be able to save herself, but she could, like in a movie, throw the kid across to the party as she plunges into the lava. So while it's still a Thrones death, it's also a heroic one.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
I mostly agree with this. I don't believe in plot armor either. But I also know lots of players who would be grateful if they knew I had fudged the dice in their favor, rather than feel cheated.
It all depends on the player. We had a guy once (we did not play with him very long) who -- in Champions, mind you, a game in which very few characters die during combat to dice rolls, just because of how the mechanics work -- if you said that a boss villain was going to attack his character, he would try to convince you to change your mind and have the boss attack a different guy. (You can imagine how the other players tended to take that!) And f you said no, too bad, Overlord is attacking Nucleon anyway, he would throw a tantrum. I mean this literally. He would pick up his character sheet, hurl it across the room, and bellow, "FINE! Let him DIE! See if I care!!!" All before you had even rolled to resolve the attack. Just because you said "he attacks you." (Again, in a game where you almost literally cannot die from even a boss villain attack.)
Before anyone says, "Why didn't you boot him from the group the 1st time he did that?" the answers are (a) we were friends outside of the game, and outside of the game he was not like this, (b) everyone else still for some reason wanted to play with him, and (c) I was not "the DM" -- we rotated each adventure to someone else, so I had no authority to kick him out of the group. Though believe me, I wanted to after a few sessions. We got lucky and the problem was solved when he went to a different high school and we stopped hanging out with him after that.
But my point is -- that guy was so attached to his characters that he literally could not bear it if anything bad happened to them. Even just a villain attacking them. He also always wanted to be the most powerful one in the group, and so he built this very powerful but wildly inefficient characters who were Endurance hogs. And then, oh yes this happened, he would cheat by not subtracting all the Endurance for each maneuver that he was supposed to. Another of the players who was really good at math, started to ask, "How can Nucleon still be using all these powers this far into the combat? Hasn't he run out of Endurance?" The player in question would insist. So when this other player's turn to GM came along, he said, "I've not done this before" (true) "so I need a copy of everyone's character sheet to help me prep" (probably false). He then retained the Nucleon sheet and did his own tracking of Endurance. After a couple of combat phases (rounds) this GM then said, "Uh, if you do that Nucleon is going to be taking Stun as Endurance, because your down to only 3 Endurance."
You cannot believe the argument that ensued. It was not, "Gee I am sorry for literally cheating at a freaking roleplaying game" -- oh no. It was "how dare you, the GM, keep track of my character's Endurance? You have no right to tell me what my Endurance is! You are picking on my character! You are picking on me! FINE! LET HIM DIE! SEE IF I CARE!!!" And so forth. (And of course you don't die from running out of Endurance, though it does limit what further actions your character can take, which of course made him not be "the hero" of that battle, which he could not stand.)
My point with this? You have to know your players. If you are playing with a table full of people like Nucleon's player, assuming you want to keep playing with them, you'd probably better fudge the die rolls. These fancy-shmancy ideas about "teaching players lessons" and "consequences matter" would be absolutely lost on him. He does not want anything bad to happen to his character, ever. If you are at a table with people like this, "letting the dice fall where they may" will rapidly lead to more grief than it's worth. So as someone said above -- know your players. Know what they like, what they want, how lethal they want the campaign to be, etc.
Which is all another way of saying -- make sure you do what you need to do on Session 0 to make sure you're all on the same page. Otherwise, you could have that bard who rolled a two throwing her character sheet across the room and bellowing, "FINE! LET HER DIE! SEE IF I CARE!!" and trust me, you don't want that. ;)
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
But a person doesn't have to be "suffering from mental problems" to just not want their character to die. Tons of players don't want their characters to die and yet want to otherwise play and enjoy D&D. You don't think that's "enough stakes," I would guess, but your way is not the only way.
Matt Colville's campaign diary #13 (I think) reflects something like this happening. During a session he gave the party of mostly new D&D players (except 1 vet player) multiple clues that they were getting in over their head. They did not heed those clues. The vet player's character died. Upset, he walked away from the table -- just to clear his head and come to grips with having to make up a new character. While he was gone from the table, the other players, all new, said to Matt, "We don't want to play D&D anymore." They had not really understood that characters might die here (rather than just going unconscious) and it turned out, they didn't necessarily want to play in a game in which they could actually die. Colville realized at that point that he had screwed up as a DM by not really straightening this out with his players.
The vet player, Phil I think his name was, came back after about half an hour and walked into the middle of what was basically a mutiny, with the rest of the players ready to pack it up and quit. As a vet player he then had to step in and say, no, guys, this happens in D&D... I'm not really that mad and I will just make up another character. They worked it all out and picked up again the next week and things went fine.
The point of this is though, that those players didn't have mental problems. They just didn't consider it "fun" to "raise the stakes" and get their characters killed. *I* am OK with it if my character dies. But I don't know that you should expect everyone to be, and I don't expect that. And I don't consider them somehow to be "lesser" or "inferior" or try to argue "they aren't getting the most out of their D&D experience" by not wanting to die. That's up to each player and everyone has his or her own thresh-hold.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I think a lot of us are saying the same thing. Prior to session one the DM should know what game his players wanted to play. That would have made addressing the situation encountered easy. I don't mean that as a slam on the DM. This is just something you learn with age and experience.
I will say I would never ever want to play in a game where characters never died...but if other people want to do that they can, they'd just better warn me!
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
It all depends on what players want out of a game.
After all, one could easily imagine a campaign in which the PCs are a team of detectives who go around the fantasy world solving high-profile murders. Although there are, of course, exceptions, in classic murder mysteries, the protagonists rarely end up in direct life-or-death danger (e.g., Holmes, Columbo), and the action of the story centers around the problem-solving of the mystery. In a mystery-based campaign, the stakes are "does the murderer get away with it?" rather than "does my character live or die?" As long as everyone agrees that this is the type of campaign we're running... there is no reason it can't be done successfully.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
But surely one does warn a player of this if the player has not ever played poker before and wouldn't otherwise have any reason to know this.
It's not the case that one could automatically know that a full house beats a pair. It depends on what you are playing. After all, there is a version of poker that my friends and I used to play where your goal is to get the worst hand possible, rather than the best. So if you had a pair and discarded it only to pick up the cards that gave you a flush, say, then you'd be hosed.
There are many ways to play these games. Some DMs run very lethal games, and some do not. Warning players that their character can die is appropriate because not every D&D game has that as a base condition, hard as that may be for some people to believe.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
So... should a casino warn players every single hand that a full house beats a pair?
I get for a first timer... (session 0 or session 1), but for every single session?
hard as it may be for some people to believe, but most DMs warn players their characters can potentially die, before you hear the first IC story of the campaign.
What's the "core rules"? The DMG for instance says:
"Rolling behind a screen lets you fudge the results if you want to. If two critical hits in a row would kill a character, you could change the second critical hit into a normal hit, or even a miss. Don’t distort die rolls too often, though, and don’t let on that you’re doing it. Otherwise, your players might think they don’t face any real risks — or worse, that you’re playing favorites."
That some of us follow that advice doesn't mean we don't play by the rules as the game is written. It's maybe not as hard core or something as you and others prefer, but still - it's by the rules and advices of the game.
I agree that if I decides that in this D&D-campaign I will replace "dying" with another consequence, I would inform the players up front about this. But I'm trying to figure out what my disclaimer should be like for my "standard" games. Perhaps something along the lines of:
"Hey guys. If I happens to roll Yahtzee on that trap you encounter in the very first scene, and that would kill one of you, I might lie a little and say a rolled a little bit less because I don't want to ruin the flow of the game. Also, if I feel the battle is taking too long - that last kamikaze-orc standing would probably die although he was still left with a HP or two. And - sometimes, if I see that you are completely demolishing the encounter I've made - I will sometimes just add another enemy or two to give you a challenge."
It might not work for you, but it works for us. I'm quite sure my group have more fun this way than if we tried the way you prefer. And I really don't see that this is in any way against the way the rules of 5e is written.
Ludo ergo sum!
The issue at hand is that for some DM's the game of DND has changed too much between editions for the DMG to represent "real DND". It's a bit like Hockey players in the 80's insisting that wearing helmets and pads is not part of "true hockey". I want to say that this falls under the "No True Scotsman Fallacy" but my semantic labels weren't what they used to be.
In the end, what works for some won't work for all and DM's have to judge their game groups and themselves as to what will create a fun experience. And newer DM's just have to look at all of the anecdotes of the veterans to see which best matches their play groups.
For example, just last week, one of my players very cavalierly said "why didn't we just attack the queen?" And this exchange happened:
Wizard: Because she's a shape shifted Dragon and we'd die.
Bard: So what? I'll just make a new character.
Me: What's kind of a crappy attitude. Don't you have any attachment to that one?
Bard: Why would I? You're just going to work to kill them off. It's easier if I don't care about them.
For me and the kinds of games I prefer to run, this attitude is the exact opposite of what I want. I don't want players saying "let's be crazy! We can make new characters!" I don't want to pay therapy bills, but I want them to have some emotional investment.
Now, you take that for what it is.. just another data point in the mix of advice about running RPG's. I prefer games that have players invest; some people prefer games where characters are just collections of statistics. Your mileage may vary.
"Teller of tales, dreamer of dreams"
Tips, Tricks, Maps: Lantern Noir Presents
**Streams hosted at at twitch.tv/LaternNoir
Same bard that didn’t die before? Looks like the player isn’t exactly trying to keep them alive.
or they hate their char and would rather do something else
Oh! no nono....
Totally different. The hypothetical at the top of this thread was a hypothetical to gauge what other DM's would do with a "should the character die" scenario and to talk about how we as DM's approach death/ fatal situations in our games. The previous dialogue was from an actual game where I found myself talking to players one of whom took the attitude of "meh, I don't care about my character" attitude.
Would he rather be doing something else? I don't know but I do think that our visions of DND are not fully aligned. But there's room to see and he might have just been having an off night. Plus some people see "Serious DND" as "can we outwit the DM?". The DM is the antagonist who is out to kill the characters and the players are the protagonists out to stay alive by carefully planning and counter planning every moment of gaming.
"Teller of tales, dreamer of dreams"
Tips, Tricks, Maps: Lantern Noir Presents
**Streams hosted at at twitch.tv/LaternNoir
Some people view D&D as basically a murder mystery. Everyone thinks they’re the protagonist, but sometimes you end up just being Adventurer C.
(OFF TOPIC)
Just wants to say thanks to @Rorlins for starting this and all others for contributing. Although I really "disagree" with some of you, it's been a lot of interesting views that's made me think about how I'm DM'ing.
Also thanks to @Rorlins for reminding us of the hypothetical point of his first post :-)
Ludo ergo sum!
This.
This is the heart of the matter, and what we have been discussing and arguing about on this thread for 4 pages and on several other threads, frequently without being explicitly stated. The problem some folks have is that 5th edition D&D is not one of the previous editions (most of the time 1st edition AD&D, which seems to be the "baseline," but sometimes they mean the 3 original books or 2nd ed or 3.5th).
The present day, 5th edition, core rulebooks, which as Godrick stated include the DMG, explicitly contemplate and in several places advise low- or non-lethal variants of the game. Chapter 1 of the DMG talks about all the different kinds of games you can run, and points out, for example, that "Intrigue" games may go for several sessions without even fighting a single monster (and thus, by implication, would have reduces chances for character death from die rolls, although not from other things like the King ordering your execution...). Mystery campaigns, the DMG points out, emphasize puzzles and problem-solving in addition to combat (and here again, multiple sessions might occur without having to do combat or even die rolls, depending on what is happening).
Someone who is steeped in, and prefers, the swords-and-sorcery roots of AD&D might find such games not to be fun, but that doesn't mean that playing such campaigns is somehow an inferior form of gaming, which is what has been implied more than once on this and other threads.
And this is often what happens in old-school original D&D. Magic-users with d4 hit points die pretty fast, don't get attached. Colville talks about how they often just re-made the same character with a new number.. Duncan the magic-user dies at 1st level. Make up another one, Duncan II, then he dies at second level, make up Duncan III, and so forth. Such a campaign certainly has the "consequences" for failing saving throws and missing attack rolls against monsters that the old-schoolers seem to love, but by definition, Duncan I-II-III-IV-etc's player is never going to get attached. And indeed, why bother, if Duncan's just going to die the first time a kobold rolls higher than a 3 on 1d6 anyway?
For the current campaign I am about to start playing end of the month, which someone else is DMing, I have made up a bard with a 3-page typed backstory. I have worked on her psyche, her family tree, started writing lyrics (which I will say, NOT sing) for some of her spell-songs, and the like. This has taken hours of work -- fun hours of work. I even went to DAZ Studio (since I have in the past done 3D artwork) and bought a set of leather armor assets and a fantasy environment and used an existing figure to make a 3D rendered art of the character. And then spent time in photoshop post-working it and adding spell FX. I pasted these pictures into the 3 page document. That's a lot of work for a character, and I have formed an attachment for her.
Now, I know that characters can die, and I'm not going to get mad if she dies before level 2. This is D&D, and those things happen. But, if she dies right away, what are the chances I'm going to, in the week between play sessions, have the time or the desire to come up with as extensive a backstory as the druid (say) I make up to replace her? And will I bother paying actual money to DAZ Studio to get more resources to make the druid? Probability of either thing is low, a) because I won't have the months of time I have had to work on this bard, and b) because there is a limit to how many times in a row I am going to start out invested in a character. Now if character #2 druid lives for a while I would probably slowly start filling in more backstory and maybe become inspired to make some DAZ resources. But probably not at first.
Why? Because I picked the bard and made her up as the D&D character that most inspired my imagination. Anything that comes next will be an also-ran... a second-best. I've chosen to lead with my best punch, knowing that may be foolish since low level characters die, but figuring that, if she lives, I will have the joy of playing her for 20 levels. But if my best character idea goes poof 2 sessions in, the odds I'm going to invest quite that much in the next one are going to go down... and they will decline linearly, if not exponentially, with each new character I have to make for the campaign. Just like Duncan's player put thought into Duncan the first time, and then just cloned him with less and less bother and thought through each future iteration, I would probably do the same.
Am I saying "protect my character or else I won't care?" No. But what I am saying is there is an energetic cost to making up and investing in characters, and if you invest a lot and they die very quickly, there is no incentive to keep investing. I'm not talking about a certain character in Critical Role season 2 here, in which he died after 100 hours of episodes. That character got some serious play-time, and was worth the investment of his player (and the audience). But a CR character died every episode and players were on average rolling new ones every couple of weeks, just how invested do you think the actors, or the audience, would be after a while?
There's a balance point that has to be reached, and where it is depends on the player group. This again is what I have been trying to relate. For some people, fun cannot be had unless a PC dies in every play session. For others, fun cannot be had unless PCs never die. But for most of us, the balance is somewhere in the middle, where characters can and do die, but death is relatively rare, and so it is worth investing in each character, because you'll be playing them for a while.
The "I don't bother investing in characters because you'll just kill them off" attitude tells me that this player's balance point and the DM's are not aligned. Time for a player-to-player talk, I suspect.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I agree with what you are saying, but I think something that is getting lost in this thread are that there are different kinds of potential character deaths. At lower level, a fall from a high enough ledge can kill you. I mean 1d6 for every 10 feet can decimate a 1st level character. To me, there's a big difference between a PC being in a bad situation due to a low imitative roll and making a decision to put yourself in jeopardy. At low levels, I wouldn't let bad luck kill a character. Its not fun and comes off as unfair to the player. At the same time, the players know their max HP. If they decide to engage in something high risk (i.e., leap across a pool of lava) their fate is in their hands. Of course, I might make suggestions prior to die roll, but once the die of cast there aren't any mulligans.
Like I said earlier, the DM should establish in session 0 what the players expectations are. The thing to remember is that the game is not for the DM, its for the players. Whether the DM has a good time during the session is irrelevant. If the players didn't, it's not a good session.
At least, that's how I feel about it.
I don't disagree with you, but I don't think I've ever been in a situation where the players are really happy and I'm not (or vice versa). Yes sometimes the players are more happy than me, sometimes, perhaps I'm more happy than them. But most of the time my experience is that players and DM both recognize a good session :-)
Ludo ergo sum!