Golden Deer Pub Community Forums

Good god, awful bout of stomach flu's brought me down all week, despite my stomach being in horrible pain right now, a conversation with my GM for pathfinder made me want to discuss with you guys what you think about killing characters. Should you? When? How? Things like that, now remember, this is for DnD styled games and such. I'd say what my GM did to provoke this train of thought within me, but that would be an absolute wall of text.
I've never really had a character die in one of my Pathfinder/DND campaigns, I always seem to be the players in those. But if I were to GM, I would like to think that characters should only die in two situations, the result of their own hubris, or through combat. In either situation, death shouldn't be a no-revive scenario, certainly a set back, a possible major one, but not a death = character is gone. I'm curious to know what you guys think.

I love the fact that death can be permanent. When I DM I am fully prepared to have a player die for good, but only in the right scenario and never due to a lack of control on my part.

After playing with a group a few weeks ago that Noodles hosted, I started to think about it as well. Mostly because my character would have gotten killed in one shot at a certain point if it wasn't for Noodles' kindness/discretion for the group of players with next to no experience in the game.

Would allowing the character to be revived at half health after the fight in exchange for whatever experience and loot they would have gotten from that fight be acceptable? I'm coming from a video game stance rather than a tabletop perspective and I know that you would need some reasoning for why the character was revived unless the group agrees otherwise, but it's just a thought I had while my mind was wandering.

Dying in RPGs should feel like Tolkien, not Martin.

In Drifter, I basically flip a coin when an NPC goes down to 0 hp to see if they died or not. But I don't do the same for PCs because being taken out of the fight is a big enough penalty as it is. It is only under special conditions where I would consider having them die instead. Like if they have a chance to run or make a last stand, I would warn them that staying would be heroic and that they could die if they do.

my players upon encountering a giant mousetrap in the dungeon: "WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THIS PLACE"

Absolutely nothing wrong with giant mousetraps in a dungeon, as long as it's infested with giant mice and/or rats.

Rodents of unusual size?

not only giant rats but a giant cat

I sure hope your guys didn't kill the fluffy wuffy kitty

nah, the gnome told it about the rats in the next room

more importantly, it was a dire tiger and they are level 3, so they would have been dead if they even tried

Good then, nobody should be allowed to kill the kitties, even if they're evil ones.

I'm planning a new campaign and hoping to have a more consistent group. It's kind of EOIII-y this time, same "big storm, cut off from the rest of the world" aspect but it's on an island and a lot of the technology has been lost too since it has been several hundred years.

There will be more puzzles, like deciphering the ancient language based on maps that share the same words for locations, and finding where stuff is sunken on the ocean floor based on holding an ancient map up to light with a new map. The first series of missions will be them trying to find information on how to build ocean-faring boats, and eventually I want to do a campaign like the sailing bits of EOIII, see how that goes.

Also, I'm doing it classless, with more focus on turning found materials into better weapons and armors, and also no magic, just potions and stuff. They'll start with no armor and wood clubs for hunting and eventually be jacked-out in metal armor with swords and the like, but not for a while. There will still be different builds and playstyles, like field medics and quick hunters and stocky warriors, so things should be interesting enough for the players still, but I think this gives things a more tribal island feel.

What do you guys think of this? I'd love input.

First of all explain how you're gonna do it classless. Are there gonna be any player levels at all, and what will advancing them affect? Are they based on any particular existing class? Is there gonna be magic and how would someone get it? Monster Hunter has the same concept and it has no magic so it can work, but EO3 (and of course Pathfinder) definitely does have magic. I'm definitely interested in how you plan to handle everything.

I'm all about player advancement through gear and abilities rather than HP gain or whatever but I haven't seen many good systems for it, and of course, you'll have to figure out how to properly balance encounters using a new system (since the CR of monsters makes certain assumptions)

As for puzzles, of course take inspiration from existing things like Zelda, but also consider outright lifting things out of old d&d puzzle books. Logic puzzles are also good, like I saw one where dudes have to fight ghosts in a library while simultaneously reading books to get information like "person A did not exist before person E" and then arranging busts of the people in the right order.

As for your map thing, props and handouts make any session memorable, just be aware that they take a lot of work...

Remember to reward the players for every bit of the map they explore, even if the reward is just getting to fill in a square on a piece of graph paper to slowly reveal an island.

If you want to do ship stuff, there are simple and complex ways to do it...my favorite is the advanced system in the Skull and Shackles player's guide, which includes things like pulling into ports to tell stories of your exploits to gain infamy points, which can then be spent to do things like make the ship go faster for a minute at lower amounts, or make it teleport or dive underwater at higher amounts. It's up to you if you want the ship to feel like a replaceable tool, or another character that advances along with everyone else. You'll also have to decide if you want a particular town to feel like home, because if the players travel a lot they might end up just staying on the ship most of the time.

/input