I remember it as coming as a bit of a shock, as I didn't even know that the PC was bloodied, and on a crit, I destroyed any chance of this PC rising to glory again. How did I deal with my first PC death? I'm not going to lie; there may have been some jesting involved. Some laughter. Some dancing. Even some fist pumping.
Yep, buddy. Consider yourself flayed.
Now, you think that this would break me into the joy of killing PCs and watching the negotiations that would follow. "But why would you kill *insert random character name here*? He/She is awesome and was so close to leveling! And I was going to buy him/her a *insert random magic item here* back in *insert random town name here* and make the world a better place!". Crazily enough, I always get a little panicked when my PCs come close to death. What if the PC gets angry? What if they get upset? What if the flip the table and vow vengeance on all DMs for the injustice done to them this day? And some PCs are super sweet, and the look of disappointment that they get can be drowning on an up and coming DM.
So how can I deal with these feelings of "Why can't we all live happily ever after"?
Well, I can always just hold back. Start to make the encounters easier. Tweak my crits to fails. Wouldn't that help? Nope. That would just lead to a very boring campaign with no challenge to the PCs. Bored PCs are annoying PCs, as they start to look for shiny objects to amuse them instead.
Did I say crit? I meant crit fail. My bad.
Well, how about giving the PCs extra alternatives to get out of a particular mess? Like really weird skill challenges or something? Nope. Then the encounter loses the point of being a fight, and starts to mimic that more of a circus routine.
Just do five backflips off the statue, and then the dragon gets scared away by your lack of language skills. That's totally legit.
Well, I can just distance myself from the PCs. I mean, yes they're my friends, but at the table they are my mortal enemies who deserve nothing but the backhand of the StrictDM. Just throw everything out there, and let the gods sort them out. If they can't survive it, then they have the bad character builds. That's their fault. Not mine. Nope. Then they get frustrated, and I get bored with the imminent rising death toll.
Let me just file your character sheet for you in the "There's Still Hope" section.
I think the real answer is balance. And it isn't an easy thing to find. Too much PC death is downright disheartening, and too easy a campaign is too boring for everyone, in my opinion. Eventually, it gets easier for everyone. I'm probably just being a pansy about the whole thing, but I think it's nice that I still have that connection with my PCs. I don't want to become totally cold and not care about how the game effects them. Not until they tick me off anyways....
Back up character sheet; don't leave home without it
Word.
This was both an interesting and entertaining post. I should be trying my hand at DM'ing for the first time in the next few months. Our group is starting a new campaign and rotating between 5 DM's with me being one of them.
ReplyDeleteI only have a player's perspective for now and I have always wondering where that "balance" should actually fall. I have always been a fan of heroic campaigns but our group usually tends to fall short of that. I have been gaming with them for almost 3 years now and I have never gotten over level 5 with a character. This isn't always due to deaths, sometimes the campaigns just fizzle out and we try something new.
I especially liked the closing picture and caption. I got a good solid laugh out that!