The idea that enemies would go out of their way to attack downed players in the middle of a battle seems odd to me. If you've got two guys swinging swords at you, and you smack one and he falls down and stops moving, do you keeping smacking the one who has stopped swinging (and who might already be dead, as far as you know), or do you switch your attention to the one who's still a threat?
Personally, I feel hitpoints can be realistic, even if we consider each "hit" to be an actual hit, so long as hit points are always low. In, say Call of Cthulhu, a traditional hit points system is used - you are more or less as effective at 2 hit points than at 20. But the thing that I think makes CoC's hit points both realistic and fun is the fact that you never have a lot - you can never tank the hits like an ironclad. For the average character, a few good punches from a good fighter is enough to get knocked out cold or even killed, over a fight, you won't be tanking tens of blows, you'll be tanking maybe a few if you're lucky. Of course, Call of Cthulhu's characters are distinctly not heroic, in fact, the point is that they are relatively mundane people, whereas in D&D the characters are heroes, and should be expected to stay in a fight for a longer period of time, in which case the method you describe in the video works. However, I think it might mean unlearning a lot of intuitive ideas, like the fact that a "hit" means your opponent actually hits you.
PC death can be fun, and sometimes even beneficial to the story or party. In one of my current games, I have already discussed with the DM that my character will die soon. Not because I dislike my character or anything, but to hopefully set a new tone for this chapter in the world we've been playing as usually this DM favors heroes and we, the players, didn't feel like our actions had consequences.
My very first session as a DM: two PC deaths, 3 NPC deaths. All because of player errors and rolls. Walking into that session, everyone, including myself, thought that it would be a great start to a fun and friendly campaign. Everything changed after that and I'm not afraid to kill a PC anymore because of it. I don't find joy in it, but I do find it educational for everyone.
My go-to to keep people from death is ALMOST universally sound (not all the time, but almost every situation can be weaseled out of with it), as being "This person is not a threat any longer, so now the enemy will turn to whoever is still a threat." Really the only times that wouldn't work are times when some of the party is hidden, when they're fighting a particularly vicious wild animal, or when the enemies are personally angry and ready to murder one of the players for catharsis or vengeance. And those three situations can provide some incredibly effective, intense, fearful and dramatic character deaths anyways, as far as I see it.
Random thought to go with the golem knocking someone out. What if, since the golem often times is set to take down anyone who enters, they take someone down to 0 hp straight up knocking them down, it looks around to the closet enemy and decides instead of running to it, it throws the pc at the other causing 1 fail for the thrown pc and 1Dwhatever the hit die is, barbarian is D12, it does 1D12 plus the strength mod to the pc who got hit. This would accomplish 2 things, 1 let the other pc's know this thing will mess us up and toss us around like we are dolls, and 2 get the other guy the hell away making it to the pc's like "you are nothing to me" but in actuality "yo heal this guy"
Most of my players die from the third kind: You die.
But in all of those cases, the reason is that they made a horrible mistake down the road before. I play highly political campaigns where the NPCs do the same thing the PCs do: Plot and engage in propaganda. I'm very aware that this is not everyone's cup of tea, but my group really loves that kind of skullduggery and backstabbing, they love it when their plots come to fruition and they also love to see how the NPCs scheme against them, especially when they manage to uncover it in time (and I usually give them plenty of hints and information to do so).
I was playing a necromancer in a Genesys campaign and died because of someone else’s roll. We had discovered a shopkeepers secret cult room, and had killed him. The guards came, and interrogated us. Necromancy carried a death sentence, so we were trying to talk our way out. My friend, the barbarian, opens his stupid mouth and says “There’s no necromancers here.” and rolls for deception. He rolls 3 Despairs (the equivalent of probably 10 crit failures). They search us, find a bag full of heads on my character, and the DM immediately pauses the game and calls for a break. He’s panicking because he doesn’t want to kill my character (he forgot I had the heads), and he’s trying to figure out what to do. I told him that if he didn’t kill my character, I’d lose all respect for his world. It made sense, and I’ve always felt that the story and the world are more important than my character. I got to act out a cinematic death, where I killed my self and took all the guards with me. I still give my friend a hard time about it, but I’m not mad. It happens. He’s an NPC I pull out in my games, and I like to roll up new characters anyway.
I once altered a pc's shape into a snail and jailed him by putting a circle of salt around him. He died while trying to get over it. It was heartbreaking. :(
I have a reputation as the TPK DM. For some reason my players think I am sadistic and dark. I just feel I am trying to give them an experience as a power fantasy where the stakes are high. The stakes arent high if I stay the hand of fate. Sometimes bad things happen... that is like real life.
As far as how lethal the game should be, take a look at the pregenerated characters in the Tomb of Horrors and realize players in that module were encouraged to have a stack of ready characters and even then, SOOOO many save or die traps!
I just ran a game this weekend. (My 2nd game ever DM’ing.) A new player came with an unexpected character type with a Chaotic Evil Alignment without talking to me first. He wanted to make every move/action questionable and sketchy. I didn’t pull any punches when he tricked the party into going into a room of 3 goblins but landed himself in a room of 4 goblins, a wolf, and bugbear. He also rolled a Natural 1 for Stealth. I didn’t even go through all the hits and just called him dead. He got up, went out to smoke, and came back. I whispered to him on the side “I am sorry.” He whispered back, “I had a blast.” All was good. We will now meet before the next game and he is super excited.
We played with death occuring at -10 hp. When you reach 0 hp (or less) you fall unconscious. And you bleeds! Usually just 1 hp per round, but without help you will soon and automatically lose your life. If someone helps the unconscious and bleeding character and do some bandaging or simple first aid, they can stop the bleeding and hp drain in 1 round.
Works well for several reasons. Before actually dying, the whole party becomes aware of the situation and can choose to help out and perhaps back out of the fight. The rule generally saves lives, while maintaing and perhaps even increasing the overall drama. And then it's simple too.
In my games, players always think that they are in danger. They believe that I don't care about them and I only want to see how will the story progress though the dice and their strategic thinking. Of course I want them to believe that, in reality they are in no real danger and they are likely to die because they try their hardest to die. Like going to the king and spit on his face or something.
this makes every "impossible" encounter seem like they survived it with their skills on taking the right decisions.
The idea that enemies would go out of their way to attack downed players in the middle of a battle seems odd to me. If you've got two guys swinging swords at you, and you smack one and he falls down and stops moving, do you keeping smacking the one who has stopped swinging (and who might already be dead, as far as you know), or do you switch your attention to the one who's still a threat?
ReplyDeletePersonally, I feel hitpoints can be realistic, even if we consider each "hit" to be an actual hit, so long as hit points are always low. In, say Call of Cthulhu, a traditional hit points system is used - you are more or less as effective at 2 hit points than at 20. But the thing that I think makes CoC's hit points both realistic and fun is the fact that you never have a lot - you can never tank the hits like an ironclad. For the average character, a few good punches from a good fighter is enough to get knocked out cold or even killed, over a fight, you won't be tanking tens of blows, you'll be tanking maybe a few if you're lucky. Of course, Call of Cthulhu's characters are distinctly not heroic, in fact, the point is that they are relatively mundane people, whereas in D&D the characters are heroes, and should be expected to stay in a fight for a longer period of time, in which case the method you describe in the video works. However, I think it might mean unlearning a lot of intuitive ideas, like the fact that a "hit" means your opponent actually hits you.
ReplyDeleteThis guy is freaking annoying
ReplyDeleteI need to kill some PCs to teach the players to stop having their PCs do stupid things.
ReplyDeleteAnd its going to happen pretty soon.
PC death can be fun, and sometimes even beneficial to the story or party. In one of my current games, I have already discussed with the DM that my character will die soon. Not because I dislike my character or anything, but to hopefully set a new tone for this chapter in the world we've been playing as usually this DM favors heroes and we, the players, didn't feel like our actions had consequences.
ReplyDeleteMy very first session as a DM: two PC deaths, 3 NPC deaths. All because of player errors and rolls. Walking into that session, everyone, including myself, thought that it would be a great start to a fun and friendly campaign. Everything changed after that and I'm not afraid to kill a PC anymore because of it. I don't find joy in it, but I do find it educational for everyone.
ReplyDeleteMy go-to to keep people from death is ALMOST universally sound (not all the time, but almost every situation can be weaseled out of with it), as being "This person is not a threat any longer, so now the enemy will turn to whoever is still a threat." Really the only times that wouldn't work are times when some of the party is hidden, when they're fighting a particularly vicious wild animal, or when the enemies are personally angry and ready to murder one of the players for catharsis or vengeance. And those three situations can provide some incredibly effective, intense, fearful and dramatic character deaths anyways, as far as I see it.
ReplyDeleteRandom thought to go with the golem knocking someone out. What if, since the golem often times is set to take down anyone who enters, they take someone down to 0 hp straight up knocking them down, it looks around to the closet enemy and decides instead of running to it, it throws the pc at the other causing 1 fail for the thrown pc and 1Dwhatever the hit die is, barbarian is D12, it does 1D12 plus the strength mod to the pc who got hit. This would accomplish 2 things, 1 let the other pc's know this thing will mess us up and toss us around like we are dolls, and 2 get the other guy the hell away making it to the pc's like "you are nothing to me" but in actuality "yo heal this guy"
ReplyDeleteIt's going to be watched by at least dozens of people.
ReplyDeleteWell you weren't wrong
Most of my players die from the third kind: You die.
ReplyDeleteBut in all of those cases, the reason is that they made a horrible mistake down the road before. I play highly political campaigns where the NPCs do the same thing the PCs do: Plot and engage in propaganda. I'm very aware that this is not everyone's cup of tea, but my group really loves that kind of skullduggery and backstabbing, they love it when their plots come to fruition and they also love to see how the NPCs scheme against them, especially when they manage to uncover it in time (and I usually give them plenty of hints and information to do so).
If they ignore it, well, it's unhealthy.
I was playing a necromancer in a Genesys campaign and died because of someone else’s roll. We had discovered a shopkeepers secret cult room, and had killed him. The guards came, and interrogated us. Necromancy carried a death sentence, so we were trying to talk our way out. My friend, the barbarian, opens his stupid mouth and says “There’s no necromancers here.” and rolls for deception. He rolls 3 Despairs (the equivalent of probably 10 crit failures). They search us, find a bag full of heads on my character, and the DM immediately pauses the game and calls for a break. He’s panicking because he doesn’t want to kill my character (he forgot I had the heads), and he’s trying to figure out what to do. I told him that if he didn’t kill my character, I’d lose all respect for his world. It made sense, and I’ve always felt that the story and the world are more important than my character. I got to act out a cinematic death, where I killed my self and took all the guards with me. I still give my friend a hard time about it, but I’m not mad. It happens. He’s an NPC I pull out in my games, and I like to roll up new characters anyway.
ReplyDeleteI once altered a pc's shape into a snail and jailed him by putting a circle of salt around him. He died while trying to get over it. It was heartbreaking. :(
ReplyDeleteI have a reputation as the TPK DM. For some reason my players think I am sadistic and dark. I just feel I am trying to give them an experience as a power fantasy where the stakes are high. The stakes arent high if I stay the hand of fate. Sometimes bad things happen... that is like real life.
ReplyDeletefriendly reminder: in 5e crits double the damage DIE not the damage (both are written in monster stat blocks so this 'mistake' can easily be made)
ReplyDeleteAs far as how lethal the game should be, take a look at the pregenerated characters in the Tomb of Horrors and realize players in that module were encouraged to have a stack of ready characters and even then, SOOOO many save or die traps!
ReplyDeleteI just ran a game this weekend. (My 2nd game ever DM’ing.) A new player came with an unexpected character type with a Chaotic Evil Alignment without talking to me first. He wanted to make every move/action questionable and sketchy. I didn’t pull any punches when he tricked the party into going into a room of 3 goblins but landed himself in a room of 4 goblins, a wolf, and bugbear. He also rolled a Natural 1 for Stealth. I didn’t even go through all the hits and just called him dead. He got up, went out to smoke, and came back. I whispered to him on the side “I am sorry.” He whispered back, “I had a blast.” All was good. We will now meet before the next game and he is super excited.
ReplyDeleteUse an app to track hitpoints. I use FG to track them and my PCs don't even bother, they ask me how many hitpoints they have.
ReplyDeleteBoromir had a lot of hit points
ReplyDeleteWe played with death occuring at -10 hp. When you reach 0 hp (or less) you fall unconscious. And you bleeds! Usually just 1 hp per round, but without help you will soon and automatically lose your life. If someone helps the unconscious and bleeding character and do some bandaging or simple first aid, they can stop the bleeding and hp drain in 1 round.
ReplyDeleteWorks well for several reasons. Before actually dying, the whole party becomes aware of the situation and can choose to help out and perhaps back out of the fight. The rule generally saves lives, while maintaing and perhaps even increasing the overall drama. And then it's simple too.
Matt, I just quoted you in my paper about hit points! Hope that's ok :D Your wisdom had to be used for the good of sience.
ReplyDeleteIn my games, players always think that they are in danger. They believe that I don't care about them and I only want to see how will the story progress though the dice and their strategic thinking. Of course I want them to believe that, in reality they are in no real danger and they are likely to die because they try their hardest to die. Like going to the king and spit on his face or something.
ReplyDeletethis makes every "impossible" encounter seem like they survived it with their skills on taking the right decisions.
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