There are DMs on this board RIGHT NOW that never kill any of the PCs "unless they're obviously asking for it!"

>There are DMs on this board RIGHT NOW that never kill any of the PCs "unless they're obviously asking for it!"

I killed a PC on his first session with us. your move

I had a DM who tried to kill my PC for most of a campaigm, best DM I ever had

Entering my game is asking for it.

I keep a list of how many characters my campaign has taken so far. It's passed 23.

I killed a PC just fer lookin' at me funny.

I killed off the snowflake PC of my own brother one time. He did not enjoy it.

To make matters worse, it was during a solo game.

>Just 23.

I killed different 37 PCs with the same module. In 5e.
26 of those deaths were 2 players who went at the module alone and INSISTED that I did not scale back the difficulty to suit the lack of players and re-rolled completely new characters every time they died.

I always kill everyone on the first session no questions.

I don't kill PCs ever.
I just don't stop the dice from doing so.

in my last game a player did two things that were so dumb that got him killed both times, the DM retconned both of them
another player's character died, so he made a new one that also died
both of his characters came back from the dead multiple times and he got to play both
meanwhile I got my only character erased from time, and never existed in the first place, because I got a nat 1 on a forced roll when I wasnt even in combat, and no it was only my character, no other PC had to make that roll
I don't think that the DM was biased or anything, but he was just too nice to the other players

No you die you die.

And level 6 and above people have divine ranks and so good luck finding a god cool enough to res you.

: - ) ALL

Depends on the tone of the campaign and how well I think the players would handle it. If they're attached to their characters, I'm not gonna go out of my way to kill them off just for the sake of doing so.

Saying "rocks fall everyone dies" is easy OP.

Dropping a sphere of anihilation onto a party is easy OP.

Putting them into a dark room with a disintegrate trap if they look at a silver doorknob is easy OP.

What makes games fun and interesting is if there's a sense of fair play. Which isn't always easy in a lot of games since a lot of games have weird or shitty combat that becomes rocket tag.

4e is about the only game where its guidelines and rules generally bring about fair play. In all other instances you're actively trying to hold yourself back from killing someone over arbitrary reasons or letting them get away with murder.

What you call "unless they're obviously asking for it" is a simple narrativist device meant to guage when it's called for that a character would die.

Ive never killed a PC, but to be fair I've only DMed three times with a lot of new players (and I actually want them to come back). I would totally kill an experienced players PC, though I would not go out of my way to do so (the necromancer casts magic missile on your unconscious body! You fail your three death saves!)

Everyone in my pathfinder campaign got so high level their builds kicked in and now they are too OP to die from anything not way over their CR, or specifically tailored to rape them. Also two of them had 3pp stuff and both were OP (although one is breaking the rules so I'll be retconning some stuff in the battle we left off in the middle of last time). But yeah the kineticist snuck up to a demon invisible last session and shot it in the mouth. This was clearly a very powerful creature. I said repeatedly that his char was getting a bad feeling from it. Welp, invisibility dropped and the demon cast blasphemy with his readied action to do that shit as soon as someone appeared (the guy had already killed 2 nearby sentries so everyone knew there was an invisible guy in the vicinity, plus the demon had seen the door in front of him literally open and close). So basically this character was paralyzed and ready to be coup de graced. I turned it into a count down thing instead. She still might die, though. They caught up to her. I feel like I should have the thing summon another hezrou, with another blasphemy to really fuck their shit and start killing people. Which was my original intent for the blasphemy. I dunno why I held back since I kinda wanted a lot of the party to die in this adventure. It's time to thin the herd a bit.

I stick to the dice. I don't go for their throats as a DM specifically, the setting and NPCs already do that. What I do is run the world and stick to the rules. I like the PCs, and I often find myself cheering for them, but it happens I bite down and just go with it. I feel bad about it, but it makes the group apreciate their choices and their consequences a lot more when the danger is real.

I don't go for the throat, and players have a multitude of ways to avoid their fate prior to actual death, but sometimes bad things happen; bad luck, or miscalculation.

I allow what I call "Will to Live" for PC's and major NPC's. Without going into rules details, they get to come back but somehow much worse off. Permanently wounded in some way, uncontrollable nightmares/flashbacks, a new phobia, or a serious new enemy who will not be happy to hear they're still alive. Even something as straightforward as bargaining with a devil and having it shove your soul back in your body for a time (and a price).

I settled on a "soft" usage limit of one time per long campaign arc per character.

>Continued
Oh, and I forgot the latter part of "Will to Live": if you say you do NOT have the will to live upon your death, you may die gracefully and all that entails and create a new character. The option of death is a fine one, and you net an extra "Fate" point (fairly rare/scarce in this, not a narrative campaign) for your next character in exchange for accepting your fate.

I think this is a happy medium, and allows people to hold on to their characters if they really want to see how their "story" keeps going (and how it develops with their new complications). Also, provides room and reward for the simple joy of playing a new character.

Might not be to everyone's tastes, but my group seems to enjoy it.

I like hardcore games with a fate point mechanic. Something they can burn permanently to negate a character death. So they can fuck up once, but after that they're going raw dog

What do your players do after you've killed them? Start again at level 1? Make a new character at a similar level?

I feel like my DM goes pretty easy on us, but death means starting back at level 1. It's been 5 months and no one has died yet.

The good DM does not kill the PCs, the good DM offer opportunities for the stupid and reckless PCs to kill themselves.

Last time I played in 5e I got sniped by bandits and failed all my saving throws. The DM just resurrected me after the fight. It felt cheap and like there was little risk to be had in his world

>go into first game ever
>know my character is unoptimized as fuck
>claim they'd be the first to die
>none ever did
>DM leaves
>new DM picks game up
>never killed a PC either
>game died from player fighting
>DM solo game with DM
>have my PC be questgiver/guide
>I kill my fucking PC
>DM said I was too harsh on my own character and that they died a little unfairly
God damn it, if the dice says the idiot should be dead, then by every deity in the book that motherfucker better need more than a Cure spell to stand up again.

Depends on the genre you play

This.

on the one hand, play the dice where they land and punish players who fail to think their actions through enough
on the other hand, high PC turnover rate encourages min-maxing the characters to die less often, and treating them like expendable pawns, since its hard to get attached to something you know will be taken away from you

My favorite game doesn't even have rules for death. It's impossible to die in this game.

ouright saying "you die" fucking nope, enough with the random boulders and bottomless pits
present your players with a challance which will punish them for doing something stupid or just rushing
hell this one time i wanted my players to meet a paladin after a battle against a necromaner who had time to get spooky
the result? i had to have the paladin come in early and barely rescure them and him self, turns out getting stuck on a staircase with zombies swarming both sides is a dangerous way to be

am i a bad dm for attempting to prevent a wipe? we are the most of the players had some 1-5 hp left and it was level 4 party

I killed three pc's in the last four sessions.
One got his ass psychic-raped to death. He would have survived (probably) but the third party member elected to not get involved for character reasons.
Next session a different guy got beat the fuck to death by a rock tentacle monster because he decided to melee the thing. Only came through it because he burned a fate point.
Last session the party was on its last legs, so one grabs a krak grenade and throws himself on the last rak'gol to ensure it gets taken out and the others survive.

Honestly, I think that's a completely fine style of play.

Our group rarely does PC deaths. Most of our player deaths either came as a result of some sacrifice from the player's part (like a PC killing themselves to summon an ancient god), with warnings that were well choreographed beforehand, or just from important battles where the stakes are high. We don't really do deaths from a bad skill check or a bad encounter with some mooks.

Maybe we're just casual as fuck though. Either way, it works for us.

A DM shouldnt decide who dies, the dice should.

I've killed over a dozen players and never gotten any complaints from them

Depends on the game, I guess. If it's one where the level of your character doesn't change much, back to level one.

If its in a game where tooling about with a bunch of level 10s means your level 1 character is going to get taken out in one hit, same level. Or if you want to be a hard ass, a level or two lower than the rest of the party.

You mean..player characters right?

>killing PCs for dice reasons instead of doing it for plot reasons
Anybody who does this is That GM

>disallowing PCs getting killed despite combat rules dictate so
no user you are that gm

>what is rule 0

>circumenting basics of combat rules with rule 0
okay so lets say someone reach the point where they would normaly die, how do you handle that?

I make all rolls for things that could hurt the characters or hinder their progress hidden.
Hell, most of the time I only roll to make them nervous about shit, I don't care about the result on the dice.
I just don't understand the idea of saying "yeah, so you rolled poorly three times in a row, so all your effort and investment in this character and/or campaign stops here and now".

i get it, you are the opposite of a roll-player however it seems a little heavy handed and how does your players react to this?
we both aggre dying to bad rolls sucks though but at the same time im under the impression a real chance of defeat must be present at all times

...

>user, your character can't die. he's important to the plot
>Said plotline hasn't even started yet

Ive been trying to kill these guys off for the last few sessions but they're too smart for me. Any tips tg?

First day of 5e AL and I killed the entire party on the first encounter with kobolds, so much for the claim, "We're 3e Vets, we got this."

My only rule about not killing players is not to have an enemy attack an unconscious PC while some of the party is still conscious. If they go straight from conscious-to-dead in a single hit, that's fair game. If they're hit by the splash damage of a fireball while they were already unconscious, that's fair game. If everyone is knocked unconscious during battle, then the coups de grace come out and that's fair game.

Sure, sometimes it makes more sense for a bandit to take an extra action to make SURE the guy that just collapsed is dead before focusing on the next target, but then someone gets up-in-arms about how "the bandit had no reason to attack me when there were other threats around" and "you're just picking on me, you've always had a grudge."

And you know what? I do, fuck you greg and fuck your shitty stormwind fallacy bullshit, learn how to make useful characters instead of acting smug and subversive. But you're damn sure I'm going to have a layer of plausible deniability between my personal motives and his (frequent) character deaths, so I follow that one rule.

My DM refuses to kill player characters at all. It's annoying, especially since sometimes we've party wiped.

ROCKS

> thinking killing pcs is the worst thing you can do to them
> not making them hold on for dear life as the character loses all the hold dear through their own choices

The whole point of engaging in combat is that it's a risky alternative to solving your problems. It's quick and permanenly ends some grievances, but it's dirty and random and you might end up losing more than you gambled.

If there is no way to die unexpectedly in combat and death is strictly plot-related, players just become anime-tier murder machines.

>Removing all tension from adventuring so you can force your party through your special story
Nah, YOU were the That GM all along.

>"We're 3e Vets, we got this."
That's actually an assured statement that they're going to fail.
>Dude we're GREAT at building broken characters! The game will basically play itself for us!
>Wait, I only get like 5 choices? Well, that's still fine, I'll just use my system knowledge to lock all opponents in forever
>Hey, I tripped this guy. Why can't I cheese the rules and stunlock him forever? Why does the wizard only have 2 spells? What the fuck is going on here?
>Oh my god we died!

Yeah, I revied their sheets, the Bard had an 8 in his Con. I scaled things back from then on out, but that night earned me a rap as a player killer DM.

I run Delta Green.

Any mission that doesn't end with fewer Agents than it began means I fucked something up.

>Removing all tension from adventuring so you can force your party through your special story

But that's pretty much what Killer DMs tend to do. The characters die off all the fucking time, the players no longer give much of a shit about their inherently disposable characters, and the plot the DM has written plays out as they'd planned at the start. There's no tension because character death means nothing in a game where player character lives are cheap.

I just killed a PC in my last session. He got caught in a trap and didn't get out before it exploded. I did let him give out his emotionally charged last words before he died, though.

I would love to be able to kill a PC. Can't even kill NPCs that have so much as a name. I did that once, and 3 of my 4 players got incredibly upset (one even started crying) and ended the campaign on the spot.

I have one of those players... only he also rolls good all the time, the fucker.

I'm gonna sick a dragon on him next game...

>he thinks it's okay to cheat the players from being able to play the game
Fudging the dice should be reserved for when you, as the GM, screwed something up. It shouldn't be used for railroading.

>I don't know what railroading is, but Veeky Forums has taught me it means "anything the GM does thatI don't like"
typical

The GM is deciding the outcome of an event in advance, and then forcing that outcome on the players when what happens should be up to them. If you think that's not railroading, then your definition of railroading is wrong.

Looking directly at a Hound of Tindalos after having seen what that does is PRECISELY asking for it though

yeah

rocks fall is a stupid way to kill character

That's why the superior technique is to quantum ogre the shit out of everything

Are you assuming every player always wants to die, or are you claiming is dice rolling a skill? Because otherwise what you said makes no sense.

I'm saying that if there's no chance that they will die, then they're not actually playing the game.

That's even more irrelevant to the point you were trying to prove.

you sick fuck

...

I don't want to kill player characters because I know how shitty it feels for your guy to die. There's only one time where I issued a TPK and that's because the players got into a situation with no way out.

I've been a DM for nearly a decade (on and off) and think I've only killed 3 or 4 player characters. I have fudged rolls to prevent player death.

Yes, I'm weak, but I always felt the game was going so well and that a character death would only stop the flow of the action that everyone was enjoying.

I'll change one day, I swear!

>start a new campaign in a premade with level 1 characters
>playing a 6HP Rogue(Prosecutor) with no armor, just fancy clothes
>party member with 15 AC and 7HP loses initiative against a ghost, literally the first enemy of the game, and gets oneshotted on the first turn
I mean he didn't come to the table with a character and spent two hours writing one delaying the session, so I almost want to say he deserved it, but god damn

The complete opposite of that happened when PCs started dyign in my group's shared setting.

Everyone started putting way more emphasis on strategy and prioritizing staying alive than ever before. If someone goes down, the entire group scrambles to save that one guy and retreat before the situation starts snowballing against them.

Once those death save dice start rolling, everyone puts their SHIT GOT REAL face on.

We share DM duty, but we all agree to roll in the open for attack and damage rolls during combat, and that whatever happens, happens.

We're playing a game, not sitting around a table just tailoring a story. The narrative evolves organically from the rules, not the other way around.

I'm not saying it's the only way to play RPGs, but it's definitely the way D&D was specifically designed to be played.

Death is generally a good consequence to have on the table, but I feel like it's the most boring possible consequence for failure in most situations, at least storywise. Surely I can think of some way to continue the character's story while still making them feel like they fucked up.

You could always do Dark Heresy approach. About to die? You can always burn a fate point(assuming you have any left to burn). You'll still suffer consequences like losing an arm or a leg(and the said fate point - keeping in mind that while your SPENT fate points are refreshed every session, replacing a BURNT fate point is a rare occurrence), but your character will still be alive.

Of course, it requires a rather specific levels of magic and/or technology to work well, since you don't want to encourage the players to just roll a new character because theirs was crippled to the point of uselessness, and you also don't want it to be trivial to just regenerate the lost limb with no consequences, but apart from that I feel like it's a good compromise between having consequences without making death too common.

I literally don't get the "most boring outcome" excuse. It's not boring, it's just momentarily frustrating to the player losing the character, but it's a hell of shake up when a character suddenly dies.

I find the opposite, trying to come up with bullshit ways for saving a character from the brink of death all the time, to be the boring way to go about it.

We get too concerned over emulating genre tropes, and end up getting too attached to our characters thinking that they should always behave like fictional character from movies and literature, with infinite plot armor, evading death at every corner.

But RPGs rise above pre-determined narratives exactly because of unexpected outcomes. If the character's lives are only at stake when it's narratively convenient or climatic, then it's the complete opposite of unexpected.

My PCs tend not to die because they don't make stupid decisions. Most PC deaths in my games come from decisions like:
>Instead of negotiating, sneaking, or anything else they just ran through the front door and attacked an entire military base.
>Not checking for traps, multiple times in the same dungeon.
>Attacking town guards when they come to break up a fight.

I prefer making things challenging but fair, difficult but not ridiculous. I like to use death as a "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" thing, unless the players do something like a heroic sacrifice, my players quickly learn that they're not invincible and that they have to put actual thought behind their actions.

I don't necessarily coddle them, but I also know that first session character deaths are stupid too. I think there's an important balancing act between the two lines of thinking. It's why I like games with edge or fate mechanics, seems like they fit that middle ground well

Seems hard to get complaints from them when they're dead.

His dice is crooked. Sneak it away and replace it with a similar one.

share it

>Absolute novice to TTRPGs in general really struggles to make a character. Had to walk him through the entire process while he had a vacant look on his face, and he openly hating making the character from a gameplay perspective
>Once the game starts, he actually really gets into it, roleplays and voice acts his character, gets to grips with the basic mechanics, and generally makes sensible choices.
Think it's a good idea to apply kid gloves to him to avoid us both having to go through character creation again?

I only purposefully kill player characters if the players are being incredibly stupid

Like a level 4 character waltzing into the capital city hall through the front door,
yelling that they are taking over, and telling the elite guards to go fuck themselves, right to their face

I make them roll up a new character that is as different to their old character as possible, sometimes in a different system if they deserve it.

>doing it for plot reasons
Oh yes, it feels so good to die because the gm though "huh, you know what this plot needs? less of your character"
That feels fucking great.

A guideline, not an excuse.

Go play a freeform if you don't want to actually use a system, you disingenuous cunt.

I killed off 4/5ths of my party on their first session. Taught them the hard way that guardsmen can't charge headlong into every enemy and survive.

>You just smoked us out in a turn! What the fuck was that!?

>The Hive Tyrant was supposed to be a set piece. But you decided to charge at it.

Granted, probably could've telegraphed it better. But it's a fucking Hive Tyrant.

I suppose, if you've got a group that can maintain that level of "oh shit, we better get our act together", then it can work. Unfortunately, the last game roleplaying game I played with a DM that took pride in killing off player characters couldn't maintain that attitude for long - the players cared about the story, to some extent, but their characters were little more than playing pieces that could get discarded without there being any risk to the story going on.

I like there to be the risk of character death in games like D&D, as a player and a DM, but it's got to be handled right - the narrative evolves organically from the rules, I agree, but too many Killer DMs ignore the narrative consequences of character deaths, and players eventually come to respond accordingly. People will say that it's shitty for a DM to save characters because it's just the DM pushing their story on the players, but if you've got a DM who doesn't adjust the story when characters die, it's the same problem. Neither of the extremes is that much better than the other if what you're interested in is a shared storytelling experience with the added spiciness of mechanics and random elements.

>It feels bad when I lose at things :(
>So I make sure they never lose! :)

Wow user, you're almost there. You'll be figuring out the nuances of GMing in no time.

>the players cared about the story, to some extent, but their characters were little more than playing pieces that could get discarded without there being any risk to the story going on.
You mean the normal, sane, non-psychopath approach to playing a GAME? How dare they realize the game is about playing a game and not unhealthy escapism fantasies.

I've been Dm'ing a year long campaign and the only player who died, was killed by another player.

I ask everybody to remember what the actual definition of a "game" is. There has to be a failure state or it doesn't work.

Happy I'm not at your table. Two things I can't stand. No fucking risk, and PCs being allowed to attack each other.

I ran a short campaign that ended with all of them save for one dying. It wasn't how I intended it to end but that was just the way it ended up.

It wasn't D&D though so maybe that doesn't count...

Yeah I work on telling good stories.

My groups have been together 14 years, 5 years, and 3 years now.

I feel like I might be doing something right.