Death-The Importance of Endings

[LordVreeg]

So I am sitting here analyzing the last Igbar session.  Cucino, Bard of the Martial School of Song, was knocked unconsious and almost killed.  He and George the Mysteriarch suffered wounds that will leave some serious scarring.  Cucino's player let slip that he had never lost a character in his 20-odd years of gaming, and I was pretty surprised.
I think my ratio is about 31% dead, 55% inactive, and 14% live, active characters for the Celtricia setting.  

For me, death and the threat of death are very important.  When i created the reules I use, it was in part to make the game more dangerous, and to punish stupidity.  I was tired of, "well, I've got 70 HP, and his club only does 2-16 damage, so even if if get hit every round, there's no way he can kill me for at least 4 rounds, even without my armor".

But the discussion I am having is based on my player's comment and reaction to almost losing his character.  How often has Plaer character death visited the your setting?  How common is raising them, or ressurecting them, and hwo hard is this to get done?  My magic system is such that only 4 PC's have ever been capable of raising, and none ever able to ressurect.  
Do your players have to fear death, or do they get that feeling that they have to really screw up for you, the GM, to damage the plotline so much as to kill off their characters.

 :fencing:

[Jharviss]

Interesting timing, 'cause that came up at my session last night.  The group's gotten to sixth level now, so they're feeling important, and they are at the tier of power where they feel they can both afford a resurrection and find somebody to do it.  I had to gently let them know that that's not the case.

I haven't had a character death in one of my campaigns for quite some time. I find character death to be very irritating, but that's not to say that I'm against it.  I actively try to kill my characters, and none of my players would say that I'm not a deadly DM.  They all fear for their lives quite often.  

I was talking to one of my players who just started DMing on the off-weeks.  He had just killed a character then immediately turned around with a dues ex machina way of bringing him back to life.  I was telling him how, by doing that, he has told the entire party that he doesn't want to kill off players and that takes away from the sense of danger in the campaign.  He said that he didn't want to be killing people off left and right though, especially not so early.  Then I told him to do what I do -- almost kill everyone, every session.  I haven't killed a single PC in the past three years.  The only times that PCs die in my campaigns are when other PCs kill them (which has happened in every campaign I've run over the past five years).  But I keep the level of intensity very high.  I make the characters believe they are on the brink of death in every situation, and that their enemies are immensely stronger than them.

Hence, when they all survive and come out alive, there's much more celebration.  The players like to feel like they succeeded against all odds.  It makes them feel like their characters are alive.  I have pulled so many strings to keep players alive.  I always give them an out, but it's hard to find.  And when they do, they feel like they've succeeded.

I don't believe in an enemy curve.  At second level the players confronted a mage who was easily 17th CR.  A couple sessions ago they took down a 12th level lich, and they were 5th level.  Last night they found an old crane who was at least 15th level.  These opponents don't get stronger as the opponents level.  They appear from the get-go, and as the players become stronger the opponents are forced to recognize them as greater foes.  The villain of my campaign, Ravok, is a nice guy who prefers to disable rather than kill.  He's a really great villain because the players can't touch him at their level.  As they gain in level and they are more and more a threat to him, he'll be forced into pulling out greater threats.  Eventually they're going to back him into a corner and force him to fight them with everything he's got, and that will be one epic battle, but he will only be forced into a corner when they are of appropriate level to take him on at his full power.

This is why my villains are typically nice people who don't enjoy murder.  My villains have reasons not to kill and so excersive restraint.  The lich, on the other hand, does not, and he was the first one to be brought down by the players.  They set a trap for him and blasted him to pieces.  They always say that a prepared lich is invincible.  They took him when he was unprepared, and so they were able to take him out quickly and efficiently.  By putting my players in situations like these, the players always feel like they're on the verge of death, but they continue to survive.

The truth is, I'm always looking for a place to kill them.  They're just good enough to keep surviving.  I never have to pull out the "You made a dumb error, now you're dead" clause.

But back to the core of the topic, I do not allow resurrections.  Very few gods in my current gaming world even give their players power of death.  So even if the players can find a powerful cleric, the odds of him being able to cast are slim.  

Also, I do a lot of combat outside of actual fighting.  When people aren't actively engaged, the hit point system in ineffective.  If you're not fighting back, the opponent is going to kill you no matter how many hit points you have.  Sorry.

The campaign I'm running is very plot intensive.  All of the players have intimite ties with multiple PCs.  But if one of them dies, that's their loss.  I'm not afraid to kill one of them off, for I know that it'll be a great death.  DMing without death is ridiculous -- let's kill them all!

[Stargate525]

It's unfortunate that the DM I play with (or used to, I almost always DM now) believed in the revolving door of death. My character died five... no, seven times, being resurrected by a dues ex machina every time (a colony of underwater monks is one notable one).

I'm the opposite way. I like to challenge my players, but they will literally kill themselves instead of run from a fight. I'm trying to wean them off of this revolving door policy, but its been difficult.

[LordVreeg]

Jharviss, my timing was based on that newer player saying he'd never lost a character before in any of the FRPs he's played in.  It blew my mind.  Granted, he's very gifted, but still, 20+ years of playing and no deaths...So when he hit -4 (-40% fort save to survive), he was shocked.  

Story intensive games make it a little harder to kill off PC's, but it sounds like you've done a good job of keeping them honest. I also commend your lack of ressurcation spells.  I'm not saying they should never happen, but by making death a minor impediment, it loses any dramatic influence.

However, no death's in three years.  You must be quite the wonder with the atmospheric stuff to have no deaths in that amount of time and still keep them worried.

[Jharviss]

Players are notorious for never retreating.  As you probably gathered, I continue to put my players in positions where they SHOULD run away.  I think they've only ever retreated twice in the entire time we've been gaming.  Maybe I should have enemies start running away more (that's not true, my opponents are always running away).

[Jharviss]

It's not really atmosphere.  It's the fact that they rarely have a combat in which at least two of them don't drop down to the negatives, and they're typically fighting opponents that do 75% of their hit points in one attack.  

I'v also implimented a rule called Lucky Points.  I divide my campaign into chapters, where each chapter is about 5-8 sessions long, and during this time they get 1 lucky point and 1 unlucky point.  I control the unlucky points and use them viciously.  They can use the lucky point at anytime, but no lucky and unlucky points can be used to negate each other.  The players know that if they didn't have the lucky points, they'd likely all be dead.  

One of my best moments was when the cleric of the party (who's also a strong combatant) was dominated and told to kill everyone in the party.  He waited for an entire session without giving any hint that he'd been dominated, and then turned on the party mid-combat, in a situation where they were already in grave danger.  He nearly killed 3 members of the party.  He casted Hold Person on one of them and coup-de-graced him.  The only reason he survived was his lucky point.  A lot of lucky points were used that session.

Last night one of my players used her lucky point to save an NPC.  That meant a lot to me.  He was tied to a tree and was coup-de-graced by the opponent when the players weren't cooperating.  But he miraculously survived (through her lucky point) because the axe slice was too low and didn't cut through the major arteries.  Wow, that's lucky!

The implimentation of lucky points in such a way has been really successful, and using unlucky points to advance my plot has been a lot of fun too.

[LordVreeg]

Jharviss, I think your lucky points are a form of being honest in what other GM's hide.  I know I have.

I applaud your unabashed plot-driven game.  

[Jharviss]

Well, I typically use unlucky points for obviously mean things.  I once used it to make a player slip on a patch of Grease when they otherwise would've made it.  I've then used it to have one of my players accidently hit another player with a fireball when said player got in the way of the fireball.  (Don't worry, the player that got hit later had his revenge.)

[Kindling]

Well, I have yet to run a game in Reth Jaleract, but due to the very nature of the setting, death would be very possible and very permanent.

In my opinion, one of the main reasons people play roleplaying games is so that they can, in comfort, imagine that they are doing things they normally wouldn't. One of the main things is, taking risks. There IS no risk to, for example, combat, if once you die all that happens is you hanging around in limbo for a bit while your pals get round to resurrecting you.

Take away that risk, you take away a lot of what I see as "the fun" of playing a roleplaying game.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

I think the worst aspect of character death is having to make a new one.  There's nothing like realizing that you have to sit down again for who-knows-how-long making another sheet for someone who's just going to die and force you to go through the process yet again to kill the fun.

Now if the GM is kind enough beforehand to say "Your characters are going to die often" or "It's very likely that your characters will die" or something else like that so that you know its a good idea to make some spares ahead of time then it isn't so bad.

[Tybalt]

I agree with what Silvercat just said. That's an issue for my players as well--they like to spend some time really getting into character, so once they have played say through about four to five sessions they know what they like about playing them and want to keep on doing so.

What I do is give them warnings now and then. My houserules work it this way: I tend to describe the effect upon the pcs rather than tell them how many points they've lost. I remind them now and then that hit points are like 'luck points' in that an experienced character simply has more of a chance of using luck to their advantage. Eventually these start to run out as the character gets tired or mentally worn out. It's really in the range of where a normal person would get wounded or lose their life that hit points become deadly. So they know that if I say "you feel a hot burning pain across your arm" that they're getting into that 15 points and counting stage of things. If I make it plain that they have a debiliating wound they're down to below what the average healthy commoner would have; if they're knocked down barely able to get up from agonizing pain or whatever then they're at death's door. So mortality as an idea is ever present. There are few really high level characters npc or otherwise in my campaign setting--to me a cleric capable of performing a resurrection spell should be rare--and there is only one known artifact that can perform this. So essentially they know that they're gonna die unless they do well.

Of course by now one of the characters, Mereka, is able to perform Raise Dead now--things may change a little in that regard. But you still need a whole body for that and a lot of their opponents want to eat, dissolve, rend apart, or other nasty stuff to their enemies.

[LordVreeg]

I think the worst aspect of character death is having to make a new one.  There's nothing like realizing that you have to sit down again for who-knows-how-long making another sheet for someone who's just going to die and force you to go through the process yet again to kill the fun.

Now if the GM is kind enough beforehand to say "Your characters are going to die often" or "It's very likely that your characters will die" or something else like that so that you know its a good idea to make some spares ahead of time then it isn't so bad.

I have had 2 or three players who really enjoy making new characters.  To me, this is like player masochism, but my system does allow for a lot of real creation-work.  Drives me nuts.

Still, I think this is true for a lot of players.  My current Igbarian group restructure is a result of 3/4 of the group being chased and taken by a Vampyre.   Those player characters are not only gone...they are actually the leutenants of the Vampyre Lord.
But this really did make this group of PC's )and the few new ones) more aware of the proximity of death.  that group had 8 PCs, and lost 6 of them.  So they have been 'served writ', that they might need to make more.

[Thanuir]

There's been some dying. No PCs in the current game. Death is, generally speaking, a boring consequence. It usually closes more things than it opens, hence being more suitable when the game is about to end anyway.

[sparkletwist]

My personal preference is the "I won't kill you unless you do something totally stupid" school of thought. Granted, combat in my preferred style of playing tends to be rather 'cinematic,' and the PCs are given every advantage for the simple reason that they're the PCs and it's more interesting that way.

I haven't run a game in quite a while, though. These days I prefer playing more... fortunately the DM has the same approach as me, or I'd be in big trouble :)

[LordVreeg]

It's unfortunate that the DM I play with (or used to, I almost always DM now) believed in the revolving door of death. My character died five... no, seven times, being resurrected by a dues ex machina every time (a colony of underwater monks is one notable one).

I'm the opposite way. I like to challenge my players, but they will literally kill themselves instead of run from a fight. I'm trying to wean them off of this revolving door policy, but its been difficult.

Wow, that is tough.  I think it is tough dealing with players who are used to being saved.  Both myself and Jharviss have, in different ways, made Raising more difficult.  Would this help if that became more clear?