How would you handle players who get fucking salty when you damage their characters too much?

Assuming you have some kind of campaign world and aren't running episodic adventures, give them the ability to choose their own risk/reward level. The classic examples being dungeons that get more dangerous the deeper down you go, or wilderness that gets more dangerous the further it is from civilization, or some other metric the players can use to make broad judgements about the risk their going into. The more dangerous areas/quests/whatever have larger treasure/XP rewards, so the players can choose between taking greater risks and advancing in level more quickly, or staying safer at the cost of progression.

I remember when I was playing Saga Edition and a player got mind tricked with a nat 20 on the roll. He was pretty much okay with it because he's a decent roleplayer. Also the way the GM handled it was it was a single unpalatable request made reasonable. The Sith guys said "You will help me escape" and the player pointed over his shoulder and said "There are commandos coming here from that direction.", The Sith guy smiles evilly, thanks the player, and then slips away. Mind you this was a guy we had spent the entire last two sessions whittling down his HP then he tries to escape and mind tricked player was the only one who caught up to him.

Now he could have been angry but really it wasn't a situation where he completely lost control of his character's will. That's probably the best way to handle a mind trick situation. It gets a bit more murky when you get into situations of complete mind control or possession.
Pretty much this. Though I can understand if you're in a situation where this might be the only group you can find willing to sit down and play. You're going to have to negotiate something. In my games we've never really had a major player death because the game usually has some mechanic for saving the PC from death (fate points, buying dice, etc). And when that fails sometimes the GM will resort to a deus ex machina or something. I've always had a philosophy of not intentionally killing characters (or by random bad luck roll) unless it makes sense for the story in a dramatic sense. I usually like to challenge the players in a way where they always just barely manage to make it through an encounter which keeps the dramatic tension strong.

>I usually like to challenge the players in a way where they always just barely manage to make it through an encounter which keeps the dramatic tension strong.
I'm interested in your opinion, because your playstyle sounds very different to mine. Do you find dramatic tension like this (in the sense of a drama or narrative) to be more satisfying than the genuine tension (in the sense of actually not knowing whether the character will live or die)? As both a DM and a player?

Get new players.

I've always been big on storytelling as a DM. Perhaps sometimes too much because sometimes I get so caught up in writing a narrative that it gets into railroading territory. I try to avoid this by keeping my ideas vague enough inside my brain that multiple choice paths will eventually lead to the outcome I'm hoping for.

I've never really been explicit about not wanting to kill characters of and I still will grin mischievously behind my DM screen and rub my hands together whenever PCs fall into some kind of deadly trap. I'm in a slightly similar situation to OP in that my players would probably get really mad if I went all out and started trying to killing them off. They're alot more mature about it though and one player has told me specifically that it's not grueling encounters that irritates him but tedious ones. Now sometimes my players will want to for whatever reason go into a complete Deathtrap in which case I usually give them an OOC warning that the path ahead will be especially deadly.

Dude, it's 15 damage, that adds up, don't be That DM.

This has some merit but sometimes the deadly comes to the players and they have to make a choice to risk the fight or retreat to live another day.
Say for example they’ve fought and slaughtered an orc tribe in the forest but a few escaped and the escapees told a bigger tribe with trolls and ogres where the pcs live and they bring a big force to their front door. This stuff can happen and players need to be able to react without sperging out.

???
That's also an oddly specific number.

Do you think your players realise at all that they're only at risk in especially dramatic circumstances? Or at least that they have the general sense that it's hard to die? For me it sucks a lot of tension from the game if I know the danger isn't "real".

Couldn't say for sure honestly because I can't get into their heads. I've worried about that very problem before but as far as I'm aware it never comes up. We usually have fun for the most part. Like I said I'm never explicit that I don't 'want' to kill the PCs if I can help it but they do know about my general philosophy as stated. I certainly don't go into encounters with the express intention of pulling my punches. There still needs to be a challenge and I try to provide that.

I think they come expecting different things. We usually play over the top and overpowered because that's what we all like. They don't necessarily want things to be grueling and deadly all the time, they want to punch bad guys and save the princess so to speak. Most of the time when a possible player death comes up there is usually an out like fate points.

>being a newfag

Have every character they encounter immediately surrender or run from them. Have any hostile NPC show fear and cower toward them.
If they want to feel superior, make them feel superior - they'll either find that they want the challenge back, or really enjoy their power.
If the former, problem solved. If the latter, give them more power. Have the local leaders recognise their accomplishments and give them land, people to rule over and control, servants to abuse - if they sit happily in this, the campaign is over, they have what they want. Make it so that there's absolutely no conflict or difficulty in their lives.
Give them EXACTLY what they want, to excess.

What?

You are not your character.

This, getting salty over a character is fucked up.

Don't play with them.

I start GMing D&D instead of GURPS

kick them out. ttrpg is clearly not their cup of tea

Yes, but I'll point out it's more satisfying when the trolls and ogres were always there on the map, it's the players own damn fault for riling them up, and they could have avoided the situation with better scouting or not allowing the orcs to escape. If an attack comes as a natural consequence of the players' actions and the elements already present in the game, they have no one to blame but themselves, whereas if the players killed an orc tribe and then the DM invented an allied band of ogres and trolls out of whole cloth specifically to come and TPK them I can see why the players might get a little salty, as they never had a chance to learn about the threat and handle things differently. It always feels better to me on both sides of the DM screen when the party COULD have avoided a major danger but fucked up, and it makes learning about the world and making plans more of a priority than just bumbling around from one fight to another.

I kind of understand.

When I make a character, with only a few exceptions where I specifically tried not to do this, I generally make someone that I think is cool and that I like. Sometimes I go as far as to give them some of my positive traits, so I see them as sort of a better version of me.

So if I like the person, or see a bit of myself in them, then I want to see them be successful, or at least not get messed up (since being unsuccessful is a good thing to happen every once in a while for story and character development).

Getting hurt is fine, I've lost hands and eyes and fingers and scars and burns and stuff like that, but I think you should always give the player the avenue to carry on as long as they didn't get themselves into the bad situation completely on their own fault. You can die from stupidity, but even then, I would put a few warning signs along the way so they know.

I see everyone is repeating stuff like kick them out or you're not your character and stuff like that, but it's a natural thing to want to be successful, and it's a natural thing to want the character you're playing as, even if you're aware it's not you, to be successful. I'm aware that Commander Sheperd is not me, but I still don't like seeing Commander Sheperd getting punched by a Krogan. You're forgetting that we still root for the protagonist, in this case the party of player characters.

I get really invested in my characters, which helps with roleplaying realistically and creating a sense of actual urgency and danger when they're i trouble, but that carries with it being actually sad or actually scared when they're in trouble. So perhaps your player was just handling these emotions improperly, and that's all you got to see.

As with most things in life, gaming or otherwise, it's best to talk it out. Tell him that most players don't react the way he did, and ask him what specifically was the issue, and make sure you both see events the same way to avoid miscommunication.

While being invested in your character's success is natural, the thing is that D&D and similar games are designed with the risk of death as a major component of the game. It's the player's task to mitigate that risk. If the DM's doing a good job then any time the player died it's their own fault - if they choose to sneak into a castle to rob it, they are accepting the risk that they'll blow their stealth roll, get shot by a guard, and killed. You can call that "bad luck" but they accepted that risk when they took those actions. They could live a quiet life in a country cottage but instead they choose to expose themselves to danger in the hopes of acquiring experience and treasure. That analysis of risk and reward, often on incomplete information, is at the core of the game. So is trying to gather the information to make the right judgements (i.e. exploring), something often balanced against its own risks in terms of time, exposure, wandering monsters, resource cost, etc.

Players and referees who don't want characters to risk death, who just want to tell a story and punch bad guys and feel powerful, have nothing to be ashamed of, but be open about it. If you want a game where death is impossible or very hard, make it an explicit part of the rules. Don't play a game that's designed to kill and then get salty when you die, and don't DM a game where you pretend the players are at genuine risk and then fudge things so that it's your arbitrary choice, not the dice and the actions of the players, that decides whether characters live or die. Be honest and you'll avoid misunderstandings.

...

This. Obviously

>getting rid of all the stakes and the danger in your games
your sessions must be so fucking insipid

this

>expecting people to know every autistic strawman comic on the internet

>Seinfeld
>Autistic

I don't follow. I could understand if you were calling a Fraiser inspired comic autistic though.