Yeah – This happened in a Campaign I recently did. The plan was just to kill the gangers as the bar fell down. Instead the gangers supposedly Killed one of the party. I ignored the roll as it was the first session (Both for me as a GM and with this group) and retconned it so he just lost a hand.
She’s at neg 15 after taking 29 damage, which meant she only had 14 to start… what level are their characters? I figured this to be a mid level game, given there were returning characters, but with health that low she has to be either level 1 or 2.
Similar thing happened to my character recently. We were infiltrating a Drow stronghold (a heavily modified Dragon Mountain) and came upon a few archers. My character, who was acting very much like a warrior despite being a Spellsword, ran in first. The Drow fired. My wife, the DM, called out: “Critical… Critical…”, and my head dropped. 66 total damage. Fully healed, my character had 44. Yeah, he was dead. Luckily our Cleric had Raise Dead, but the level loss still hurt pretty bad.
Wow… we have competent baddies here. I like this. At first I didn’t see why they aimed after the forge hand and not the mage as their prime target, but after reading up on the class and seeing where they are going through…I can say they made a wise decision. will the bandits lose? probably. however they made our heroes journey more difficult.
Well, I read up on a class from 3.5 that comes close to what the forge hand may be based on, and based on context clues on where they are headed, and currently the foes they are facing, and potential traps that may have been set, then I simply deduced what a forge hand could do and its significance. A bold move that may turn out wrong, but I’m confident in my suspicions for now.
This is why you generally have the fighter on the front line right behind the thief in a tunnel so there is less chance of the casters getting hit…. Also if the wizard acts and is an air elemental he can probably do some sort of air shield to deflect the arrows except for the nat 20…….
Ouch! this reminds me of the last game i ran, their fighter got hit with a few major blows, i wasnt keeping track of the combat, by the time it was over, she only had 1 HP left, the sorc had 4 and the rogue was still at full, but had his hands full with the Lizards Chief’s minions (his raptor took a lot of damage though, one of the reasons they found it dead later)
I, too, look forward to the release of Karthun, I gotta say man, between the comic and your setting, you’ve been an inspiration!
And to be fair, the first character of hers that he killed was at the end of Dungeon Run, going up against the big bad boss. I don’t think it’s would come as a surprise for one or more characters to go splat.
To tell the truth, I think Sam made some kind of a dick-move here. You don’t kill off a PC in the first round of the first encounter of a game session. That’s a big no-no. And since Sam is experienced as a GM it’s kind of disturbing as well.
…I’m inclined to forgive it as they are all experienced role players who have been in high stakes games before. That or his judgement is impaired because of the pain pills. Either way, I wouldn’t call him a dick.
I DM the same way… Which isn’t surprising considering who I learned from. The dice fall the way they fall. I don’t want to kill PCs, but if they get themselves in a situation like the one above, we’re rolling the dice, come what may.
I don’t spare my players the wrath of their ill decisions either, but that’s exactly the point. THEIR decisions. If THEY decide to stomp through the door into the lair of a red dragon, they’ll get what’s coming for them. But the group here didn’t decide to go into the mines. Sam did. Sam told them after the exposition “that’s where you start” – boom one of you is dead. And with this in mind it’s just poor DMing. I don’t say that he would have to fudge the rolls (even if it isn’t such a bad idea to do for the sake of the plot) but he could have let the attackers hit three different PCs at least for the first attack, or adjust the AC up for an obvious not frontline PC, because she would have stood behind a more buffed companion or something. This way it wouldn’t result in one of his players having nothing to do the whole evening.
As a player, I don’t bow to plot. As a GM, I don’t either. If there’s an encounter, there’s an encounter. If the PCs fail their perception and get ambushed, they get ambushed. If the attacks hit, they hit. If the damage kills, it kills. That’ snot a mistake on Sam’s part. That’s being a neutral arbiter of the rules – which I prefer in my game masters.
And when it comes to the bad guys, play them accurately. If they got brains, ‘geek the mage’ is a viable tactic. As far as I’m concerned, he played it straight – and that’s what I want in a GM. I don’t want the GM being soft on me.
There is a huge difference between not being soft and hazarding the consequences of an early PC kill. Sam did the latter. He knows the average HP of the casters (or should know them) and can determine how much damage would be so much risk, that they could be easily killed. Either he ignored that, or he even aimed for that. In an encounter the players couldn’t avoid, right at the beginning of the adventure. That’s like saying: “I don’t want you in my game.” but in an even more rude way than that.
It’s nothing of the sort. It’s the game master being neutral, and running the NPCs based on their intelligence. If the NPCs have any degree of sense, they aim for the highest threats to their group: the mage and the cleric. If the NPCs get a lucky roll, it happens, so be it.
Yes, but there’s still a problem, and you mentioned it yourself – they have two major targets. And yet all three of those archers attacked Jeanie’s character. Not one attacked the mage.
More to the point, this isn’t a competition like the Dungeon Run – this is a regular game, where everyone’s her to have a good time. Sam didn’t *have* to be neutral. He could have fudged the rolls. But he didn’t.
And I tend to have more of a good time if I know the GM’s being neutral. If the GM starts fudging, then I have less fun, because it cheapens the victory. I start to feel that my victory wasn’t from my skill and luck, but from the GM helping me. That’s not fun at all – if the party can’t succeed under its own merits, it doesn’t deserve to succeed at all.
So you’re saying you’d be okay with your brand new character getting killed off in a surprise round of the first combat of the night? I know I wouldn’t.
Also, what about my other point? The guy leading the attack orders his guys to attack Jeanie and Trevor’s characters, and yet all three attack Jeanie. It’s a bit hard not to read that as Sam picking on her.
“Okay”? No. “Accepting”? Yes. I’d be like ‘damn it, ah well, time to make another character.’ It happens. I’m not going to hold it against the DM or anyone else.
As for the attack orders – considering this is storytelling, we may not have seen the attacks on Trevor. As it stands, though, it very much can be ‘shoot this one until they die, then shoot the other one’, which I think is a lot more tactically sound. Gang on one target until they’re dead, rather than just injuring both.
Fair enough. Just understand that not every player would be as cool with that as you apparently would. Some might get pissed off, leave, and refuse to play with that group again. And that that kind of behavior doesn’t necessarily reflect badly on that player. Also,I wouldn’t be surprised if Sam caught some shit from the other guys for this.
Regardless, the Karthun stories seem to bring out division in the readers. Not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
Yes, and I’m totally OK with this. What I wouldn’t be Ok with is the fact that the DM set this encounter up this early in the game and with no chance for the gamers to somehow be prepared for or even avoid it.
Forgehand has 14 HP. A bow does 1d8 dmg per hit in vanilla (Longbow in 3.5 and bow in next at least). BUT with 3 times d8 dmg it is easy to kill of a PC with only 14 HP, even without a crit. And at this point of the story, I just think that this kind of encounter, set up in a way the players can’t prepare against/avoid it, is not good storytelling.
It would be totally Ok if it wouldn’t be forced onto the players. If they themselves would have chosen to wander into the pits without preparing, their fault. If they don’t look out for enemys, their fault. If they choose to barge in head on, their fault. But it wasn’t their call to begin with. Sam put the PCs there and seemingly decided that they don’t pay attention to their surroundings.
He basically put the PCs right at the trigger of a trap, that he knew could easily kill one of the casters, himself. And that’s not Ok. This way you take the decision away from the players and punish them for your own decisions. Now tell me in which group is that a viable course of action?
I don’t see it as anything beyond a normal encounter.
1) PCs are going into a mine shaft.
2) GM sees the encounter.
3) GM decides the people in the encounter are setting up an ambush. Checks their Stealth.
4) GM asks for Passive Perception.
5) All the PCs but one blow it.
6) GM checks the Intelligence of the enemy. Has one call out an attack on mage/cleric.
7) The dice fall where they may.
If it were a pack of goblins, or kobolds, or anything else, it’d be pretty much the same result. What is the encounter? Can the enemy use the terrain to their advantage? Is the enemy smart enough to pick their targets with care?
Yes, it’s a trap. But that’s just the NPCs using the terrain to their advantage. So why not?
True, but the encounter should also be scaled to suit the level of the party – a lvl 2 party doesn’t stand much of a chance against a fully-grown Red Dragon, for example.
That’s not quite the case here, but those bandits or cultists or whatever don’t need to be armed with weapons that can fairly easily one-shot one of the players. It’d make just as much sense if they were armed with daggers or short swords or whatever. For it to be a good challenge, there has to be the possibility of failure, but there should also be a good chance of success as well. What happened to Jeanie should be the exception, not the rule.
I disagree. I tend to tweak the encounter to the party’s strengths and weaknesses, but not the actual threat itself. I’d be more than willing to have a second level party go up against a red dragon. They would need to think of how they would approach it. If they don’t think they can combat it, they might go for diplomacy instead. It really depends on the party, how they approach problems, and what I think they’re capable of. (I am more than willing, for example, to throw an 11th level party against the Tarrasque. I don’t expect them to win, but I don’t expect them to throw themselves under it’s jaws and claws, either.)
As for the bandits – they’re armed with what you’d expect ambushers to have. A good ranged weapon (long bow, short bow, crossbow, heavy crossbow), and probably a short sword or long sword for melee (probably short sword). It isn’t the GM’s fault the bad guys got some good rolls. It happens. (I have been known to roll 3-4 20’s in a row during a combat – enough to rip a PC party apart). It’s just like with the next strip – one of the PCs rolled crap. It happens.
That’s not poor planning on the GM’s part – that’s the GM making a realistic encounter, and the dice going his way. That’s a very deadly combination, but that’s nothing to be, in my mind, upset about. 🙂
So 3d8 damage stands a decent chance (about 34%) of killing a 14hp character? So what? You’re completely ignoring the odds of it being 3d8 damage! If those guys needed 15s to hit, say, that would be a 2.7% chance of all three hitting. That makes the chance of them one-shotting Breck around 1%. That’s really long odds. If that little risk frightens you, then a table playing by “let the dice fall” is clearly not the place for you.
It’s nothing of the sort. It’s the game master being neutral, and running the NPCs based on their intelligence. If the NPCs have any degree of sense, they aim for the highest threats to their group: the mage and the cleric. If the NPCs get a lucky roll, it happens, so be it.
Who says that’s a no-no? Let the dice fall where they may. The GM picks the target, rolls the dice. If the attack hits, it hits. If the damage is lethal, it’s lethal. That’s how the game plays.
That’s one way the game plays. Different GMs and groups have different styles. A DM shouldn’t be chided for not being a killer DM anymore than a plot-centric DM should condemn someone else for being an “it’s all up to the dice” DM.
The events of this comic weren’t the result of bad decision-making or failed Perception checks, it was the result of insufficient passive Perception scores and DM exposition and die rolling. I believe that was Animus’ original point… there was really no chance for the players to make any decision that could have led to this “death.”
Of course, it’s all moot, because I’ve come to trust Brian to tell a good story, so I’m sure he has a reason for this comic playing out the way it did. Personally, I can’t wait to see what’s next.
Let me stop you right there. I’ve never said anything like that. I think Sam is a great GM, but even the best GMs can sometimes make poor GMing decisions. And I think that this was such a time.
I’m not naming specific people. Just an attitude in the discussion which annoys me. And yeah, I don’t see this as a bad decision. I see this as the GM looking at the tools the NPCs have, and using them properly. The PCs aren’t being particularly stealthy, they’re not taking any care to conceal their presence, so what happens, happens.
Well, maybe we have just different foci on the game. I play because I want to play out a good story with my friends, not to hack&slay through a nuber of encounters, and for this I kinda need the PCs to have the chance to participate and not being killed off the first 5 minutes into the game.
I’m not interested in story, I’m interested in exploring the world and seeing what it has to offer. Hack and Slay isn’t my interest either, but if my character is going into harm’s way, I fully expect there to be dangers, and I want the game master to run the threats seriously. This means death could happen in the first round of the first encounter – that’s fine. If I didn’t want my character going into danger, I’d not have the character go out into the dungeons or what-have-you.
If there’s no threat, there’s no reward. If the GM holds back, I’m going to be disappointed.
Guys, death happens. They knew that they were going against a dangerous and well funded cult about to bring their god into a host, why would they pull any stops?
People die, sometimes the dice simply do not like you, and fudging rolls this early in the game detracts not only from the lethality from the setting (which sam is likely trying to hammer out), but from the importance of the story.
Saying he pulled a dick move or that Jeanie is never playing with him again is just silly on the face of it. The GM is impartial and if a player doesn’t want to play after losing a character to some bad die rolls then that’s on them which I don’t think Jeanie would do. She plays lovecraft games, she’s likely very used to death.
Same thing during a Fallout campaign me and my friends had. One of the PC’s stumbled into a room full of evil Rangers and they ventilated him with lazer guns.
Assuming that Sam is using D&D or D&D variant rules (a reasonable assumption, IMO), the first two levels are just plain lethal, especially if the DM/GM rolls high.
Damn…well…time to make/bring in the back up? What? You guys don’t bring two characters just in case like me? I guess that says something about the games I play in.
One guy I used to game with refused to make a back up character, on the grounds that it would give his current character a bad case of death. He was a slightly superstitious sort.
I’m excited to see how Sam handles this. I’ve been that DM before and this is more of a golden opportunity for giving a tough choice to Jeannie in regards to how badly she doesn’t want to lose her character. In a setting like Karthun with the veil to the land of the dead being so wonky, it could mean she has some interesting options.
Losing a character the first round of the first encounter is going to make me a lot less invested in the next character when their identical twin shows up with a slightly different name.
We actually had a session one death into identical sibling character be one of the only ones to survive the entire rest of the campaign (levels 1-9). There was actually some good roleplaying from it, too. Exceptions to every rule, I suppose.
The first character I ever played, unbeknownst to me at first, was immortal similar to “Capt Jack Harkness” the GM used this as a plot point. He was originally going to use it to explain away times I expected to miss sessions becuase scheduling. Even though I could grow back from being smeared… It hurt.
Oh, or maybe later the party checks the Forgehand’s body, only to find that a conveniently placed shirt of Mithril chain saved her life! Or maybe the arrows were accidentally replaced with rubber ones, and she was never really dead!
xD
I mean, while I mostly agree with the whole “she’s an experienced player and she knows this is a very real possibility” argument, it IS rough to put the necessary time into creating a new character only to see them get killed in the first seconds of the first encounter.
well… to be fair in D&D next it isn’t as nearly as time comsuming to create a PC from scratch as it was in 3.5. But still, it isn’t a decision I would have made as a DM.
What LaHaise was referring to was the limit break thing that the characters used during the last Karthun story, and that did just fire off with a nat 20 without the need for a confirmation roll. In regards to that, maybe its something only players can do.
Bail, I remember back in my day, we didn’t have no pansy critical threats. A 20 was a 20, and that’s the way we liked it. *waves cane*
I’m assuming that’s only for PCs and important (read: named) NPCs. Having random mooks be able to pull off that kind of shit would make it feel less special.
This page has reminded me. Is there a good way to kill off a character without making it obvious to the group as a whole that the player specifically requested that their first character get killed?
“A dragon suddenly flies over and shits on you. You die a horribly slow death by suffocation as your friends try to dig you out from under a ton of dragon poop. Wait, you weren’t popular with them, were you? No… the shit pile is now your eternal grave.”
Actually, no. In 5th Ed. your charator goes to zero and you roll a d20 to make a 10 saving roll, or fail it , once per round. 3 saves you stabilize, 3 fails you die. Additional damage counts as 2 fails. any heal/stabilize, saves you.
Heh, I was thinking along those same lines when I first read this comic as well… it could just be that Jeanie’s not used to 5th ed rules yet and Sam needs to clarify the situation.
It depends on your HP Ben. If you go negative equal to or greater than your con (Level 2 is probably looking at about 11-25 depending on Con) you die. So say she has 11 hp and goes to -18. Unless she has a 19 Con, she immediately dies.
Where did you get that from? Karthun is a setting, so it uses most of the same mechanics as whatever game system they’re using. Yes, there’s the special rules for crits, but why make new rules for PC deaths?
I just had this happen in the first session of a campaign I’m running to a first-time player’s Paladin. Nat 20 against him and a roll on the old crit chart out of Dungeon yielded a crushed skull. I fudged it and had the NPC Paladin who was guiding them make a God-call to heal him before he died.
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HOVER-TEXT: Pouring out some Mountain Dew for Forgehand Breck…
Yeah – This happened in a Campaign I recently did. The plan was just to kill the gangers as the bar fell down. Instead the gangers supposedly Killed one of the party. I ignored the roll as it was the first session (Both for me as a GM and with this group) and retconned it so he just lost a hand.
Well…Karthuun does not fuck around.
I like it more and more. Cant wait to get my hands on the book once its done.
But shes some sort of hammer wielding caster, Doesn’t that put you in the rare “Not wearing Cloth Armor Mage” category?
Or is she doomed to always pay lip service to the mother?
I think that Nat20 did quite a job on her…
since it seems that Sam took some parts of D&D next into his game it might be just a background-bonus.
Remember the previous Karthun Campaign they did? Natural 20’s act in the same manner as a Limit Break from the Final Fantasy games.
The Mother claims another! The Mother claims another! The Mother claims another!
TPK! TPK! TPK!
NTPK. NTPK. NTPK.
She’s at neg 15 after taking 29 damage, which meant she only had 14 to start… what level are their characters? I figured this to be a mid level game, given there were returning characters, but with health that low she has to be either level 1 or 2.
She was level 2.
Either that or 20 health is the system maxina
Ah, gotcha. Thanks for the clarification!
Hey, the wizard acts this round. There’s no telling what sort of voodoo he’s got on hand.
Who do?
you do
Do what?
remind me of the babe
Pants, magic pants!
No go do that voodoo that you do soooooo weeeeelllllllll!!!!!!
(Blazing Saddles reference)
That’s HEDLEY!
Similar thing happened to my character recently. We were infiltrating a Drow stronghold (a heavily modified Dragon Mountain) and came upon a few archers. My character, who was acting very much like a warrior despite being a Spellsword, ran in first. The Drow fired. My wife, the DM, called out: “Critical… Critical…”, and my head dropped. 66 total damage. Fully healed, my character had 44. Yeah, he was dead. Luckily our Cleric had Raise Dead, but the level loss still hurt pretty bad.
I’ve found “stinking cloud” and “gust of wind” to be invaluable when dealing with caves.
Wow… we have competent baddies here. I like this. At first I didn’t see why they aimed after the forge hand and not the mage as their prime target, but after reading up on the class and seeing where they are going through…I can say they made a wise decision. will the bandits lose? probably. however they made our heroes journey more difficult.
I was wondering how you read up on it? Did some people get the book earlier or sommat?
Well, I read up on a class from 3.5 that comes close to what the forge hand may be based on, and based on context clues on where they are headed, and currently the foes they are facing, and potential traps that may have been set, then I simply deduced what a forge hand could do and its significance. A bold move that may turn out wrong, but I’m confident in my suspicions for now.
What was the class if you don’t mind me asking?
This is why you generally have the fighter on the front line right behind the thief in a tunnel so there is less chance of the casters getting hit…. Also if the wizard acts and is an air elemental he can probably do some sort of air shield to deflect the arrows except for the nat 20…….
Whoa, that escalated quickly.
I mean, that really got out of hand fast!
*Waiting for some sort of handwavey shenanigans or such*
Ouch! this reminds me of the last game i ran, their fighter got hit with a few major blows, i wasnt keeping track of the combat, by the time it was over, she only had 1 HP left, the sorc had 4 and the rogue was still at full, but had his hands full with the Lizards Chief’s minions (his raptor took a lot of damage though, one of the reasons they found it dead later)
I, too, look forward to the release of Karthun, I gotta say man, between the comic and your setting, you’ve been an inspiration!
Ooh, damn. That’s never an encouraging way to start a game.
So, Jeanie’s never playing in Sam’s games again, right?
Dude’s killed two of her characters now… 😉
Ah, but maybe she’s only mostly dead.
Does Karthun have its own Max the Miracle Worker?
And to be fair, the first character of hers that he killed was at the end of Dungeon Run, going up against the big bad boss. I don’t think it’s would come as a surprise for one or more characters to go splat.
To tell the truth, I think Sam made some kind of a dick-move here. You don’t kill off a PC in the first round of the first encounter of a game session. That’s a big no-no. And since Sam is experienced as a GM it’s kind of disturbing as well.
…I’m inclined to forgive it as they are all experienced role players who have been in high stakes games before. That or his judgement is impaired because of the pain pills. Either way, I wouldn’t call him a dick.
I didn’t say Sam’s a dick. He normally isn’t. But even persons who aren’t dicks normally can still make dick-moves at times. This was such a time.
Sam didn’t kill her. The dice did.
I DM the same way… Which isn’t surprising considering who I learned from. The dice fall the way they fall. I don’t want to kill PCs, but if they get themselves in a situation like the one above, we’re rolling the dice, come what may.
I don’t spare my players the wrath of their ill decisions either, but that’s exactly the point. THEIR decisions. If THEY decide to stomp through the door into the lair of a red dragon, they’ll get what’s coming for them. But the group here didn’t decide to go into the mines. Sam did. Sam told them after the exposition “that’s where you start” – boom one of you is dead. And with this in mind it’s just poor DMing. I don’t say that he would have to fudge the rolls (even if it isn’t such a bad idea to do for the sake of the plot) but he could have let the attackers hit three different PCs at least for the first attack, or adjust the AC up for an obvious not frontline PC, because she would have stood behind a more buffed companion or something. This way it wouldn’t result in one of his players having nothing to do the whole evening.
As a player, I don’t bow to plot. As a GM, I don’t either. If there’s an encounter, there’s an encounter. If the PCs fail their perception and get ambushed, they get ambushed. If the attacks hit, they hit. If the damage kills, it kills. That’ snot a mistake on Sam’s part. That’s being a neutral arbiter of the rules – which I prefer in my game masters.
And when it comes to the bad guys, play them accurately. If they got brains, ‘geek the mage’ is a viable tactic. As far as I’m concerned, he played it straight – and that’s what I want in a GM. I don’t want the GM being soft on me.
There is a huge difference between not being soft and hazarding the consequences of an early PC kill. Sam did the latter. He knows the average HP of the casters (or should know them) and can determine how much damage would be so much risk, that they could be easily killed. Either he ignored that, or he even aimed for that. In an encounter the players couldn’t avoid, right at the beginning of the adventure. That’s like saying: “I don’t want you in my game.” but in an even more rude way than that.
It’s nothing of the sort. It’s the game master being neutral, and running the NPCs based on their intelligence. If the NPCs have any degree of sense, they aim for the highest threats to their group: the mage and the cleric. If the NPCs get a lucky roll, it happens, so be it.
Yes, but there’s still a problem, and you mentioned it yourself – they have two major targets. And yet all three of those archers attacked Jeanie’s character. Not one attacked the mage.
More to the point, this isn’t a competition like the Dungeon Run – this is a regular game, where everyone’s her to have a good time. Sam didn’t *have* to be neutral. He could have fudged the rolls. But he didn’t.
And I tend to have more of a good time if I know the GM’s being neutral. If the GM starts fudging, then I have less fun, because it cheapens the victory. I start to feel that my victory wasn’t from my skill and luck, but from the GM helping me. That’s not fun at all – if the party can’t succeed under its own merits, it doesn’t deserve to succeed at all.
So you’re saying you’d be okay with your brand new character getting killed off in a surprise round of the first combat of the night? I know I wouldn’t.
Also, what about my other point? The guy leading the attack orders his guys to attack Jeanie and Trevor’s characters, and yet all three attack Jeanie. It’s a bit hard not to read that as Sam picking on her.
“Okay”? No. “Accepting”? Yes. I’d be like ‘damn it, ah well, time to make another character.’ It happens. I’m not going to hold it against the DM or anyone else.
As for the attack orders – considering this is storytelling, we may not have seen the attacks on Trevor. As it stands, though, it very much can be ‘shoot this one until they die, then shoot the other one’, which I think is a lot more tactically sound. Gang on one target until they’re dead, rather than just injuring both.
Fair enough. Just understand that not every player would be as cool with that as you apparently would. Some might get pissed off, leave, and refuse to play with that group again. And that that kind of behavior doesn’t necessarily reflect badly on that player. Also,I wouldn’t be surprised if Sam caught some shit from the other guys for this.
Regardless, the Karthun stories seem to bring out division in the readers. Not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
Yes, and I’m totally OK with this. What I wouldn’t be Ok with is the fact that the DM set this encounter up this early in the game and with no chance for the gamers to somehow be prepared for or even avoid it.
Forgehand has 14 HP. A bow does 1d8 dmg per hit in vanilla (Longbow in 3.5 and bow in next at least). BUT with 3 times d8 dmg it is easy to kill of a PC with only 14 HP, even without a crit. And at this point of the story, I just think that this kind of encounter, set up in a way the players can’t prepare against/avoid it, is not good storytelling.
It would be totally Ok if it wouldn’t be forced onto the players. If they themselves would have chosen to wander into the pits without preparing, their fault. If they don’t look out for enemys, their fault. If they choose to barge in head on, their fault. But it wasn’t their call to begin with. Sam put the PCs there and seemingly decided that they don’t pay attention to their surroundings.
He basically put the PCs right at the trigger of a trap, that he knew could easily kill one of the casters, himself. And that’s not Ok. This way you take the decision away from the players and punish them for your own decisions. Now tell me in which group is that a viable course of action?
I don’t see it as anything beyond a normal encounter.
1) PCs are going into a mine shaft.
2) GM sees the encounter.
3) GM decides the people in the encounter are setting up an ambush. Checks their Stealth.
4) GM asks for Passive Perception.
5) All the PCs but one blow it.
6) GM checks the Intelligence of the enemy. Has one call out an attack on mage/cleric.
7) The dice fall where they may.
If it were a pack of goblins, or kobolds, or anything else, it’d be pretty much the same result. What is the encounter? Can the enemy use the terrain to their advantage? Is the enemy smart enough to pick their targets with care?
Yes, it’s a trap. But that’s just the NPCs using the terrain to their advantage. So why not?
True, but the encounter should also be scaled to suit the level of the party – a lvl 2 party doesn’t stand much of a chance against a fully-grown Red Dragon, for example.
That’s not quite the case here, but those bandits or cultists or whatever don’t need to be armed with weapons that can fairly easily one-shot one of the players. It’d make just as much sense if they were armed with daggers or short swords or whatever. For it to be a good challenge, there has to be the possibility of failure, but there should also be a good chance of success as well. What happened to Jeanie should be the exception, not the rule.
I disagree. I tend to tweak the encounter to the party’s strengths and weaknesses, but not the actual threat itself. I’d be more than willing to have a second level party go up against a red dragon. They would need to think of how they would approach it. If they don’t think they can combat it, they might go for diplomacy instead. It really depends on the party, how they approach problems, and what I think they’re capable of. (I am more than willing, for example, to throw an 11th level party against the Tarrasque. I don’t expect them to win, but I don’t expect them to throw themselves under it’s jaws and claws, either.)
As for the bandits – they’re armed with what you’d expect ambushers to have. A good ranged weapon (long bow, short bow, crossbow, heavy crossbow), and probably a short sword or long sword for melee (probably short sword). It isn’t the GM’s fault the bad guys got some good rolls. It happens. (I have been known to roll 3-4 20’s in a row during a combat – enough to rip a PC party apart). It’s just like with the next strip – one of the PCs rolled crap. It happens.
That’s not poor planning on the GM’s part – that’s the GM making a realistic encounter, and the dice going his way. That’s a very deadly combination, but that’s nothing to be, in my mind, upset about. 🙂
So 3d8 damage stands a decent chance (about 34%) of killing a 14hp character? So what? You’re completely ignoring the odds of it being 3d8 damage! If those guys needed 15s to hit, say, that would be a 2.7% chance of all three hitting. That makes the chance of them one-shotting Breck around 1%. That’s really long odds. If that little risk frightens you, then a table playing by “let the dice fall” is clearly not the place for you.
It’s nothing of the sort. It’s the game master being neutral, and running the NPCs based on their intelligence. If the NPCs have any degree of sense, they aim for the highest threats to their group: the mage and the cleric. If the NPCs get a lucky roll, it happens, so be it.
Who says that’s a no-no? Let the dice fall where they may. The GM picks the target, rolls the dice. If the attack hits, it hits. If the damage is lethal, it’s lethal. That’s how the game plays.
That’s one way the game plays. Different GMs and groups have different styles. A DM shouldn’t be chided for not being a killer DM anymore than a plot-centric DM should condemn someone else for being an “it’s all up to the dice” DM.
The events of this comic weren’t the result of bad decision-making or failed Perception checks, it was the result of insufficient passive Perception scores and DM exposition and die rolling. I believe that was Animus’ original point… there was really no chance for the players to make any decision that could have led to this “death.”
Of course, it’s all moot, because I’ve come to trust Brian to tell a good story, so I’m sure he has a reason for this comic playing out the way it did. Personally, I can’t wait to see what’s next.
That exactly.
True, different groups do have different styles. I’m just annoyed at people thinking Sam’s being a ‘bad GM’ – he isn’t.
Let me stop you right there. I’ve never said anything like that. I think Sam is a great GM, but even the best GMs can sometimes make poor GMing decisions. And I think that this was such a time.
I’m not naming specific people. Just an attitude in the discussion which annoys me. And yeah, I don’t see this as a bad decision. I see this as the GM looking at the tools the NPCs have, and using them properly. The PCs aren’t being particularly stealthy, they’re not taking any care to conceal their presence, so what happens, happens.
Well, maybe we have just different foci on the game. I play because I want to play out a good story with my friends, not to hack&slay through a nuber of encounters, and for this I kinda need the PCs to have the chance to participate and not being killed off the first 5 minutes into the game.
I’m not interested in story, I’m interested in exploring the world and seeing what it has to offer. Hack and Slay isn’t my interest either, but if my character is going into harm’s way, I fully expect there to be dangers, and I want the game master to run the threats seriously. This means death could happen in the first round of the first encounter – that’s fine. If I didn’t want my character going into danger, I’d not have the character go out into the dungeons or what-have-you.
If there’s no threat, there’s no reward. If the GM holds back, I’m going to be disappointed.
Guys, death happens. They knew that they were going against a dangerous and well funded cult about to bring their god into a host, why would they pull any stops?
People die, sometimes the dice simply do not like you, and fudging rolls this early in the game detracts not only from the lethality from the setting (which sam is likely trying to hammer out), but from the importance of the story.
Saying he pulled a dick move or that Jeanie is never playing with him again is just silly on the face of it. The GM is impartial and if a player doesn’t want to play after losing a character to some bad die rolls then that’s on them which I don’t think Jeanie would do. She plays lovecraft games, she’s likely very used to death.
…still waiting for there to be some kind of relevance to “well thats nice, except technically you were already dead.”
Karthun’s big on rewarding those who pay attention to lore, I’ve noticed.
…Where have we heard that? It doesn’t ring a bell at all.
0-2 for Jeanie in Karthun lol
Whoa. Did they just take a wrong turn into the Tomb of Horrors????
TPK! TPK!
BLOOD FOR BLOOD GOD!
Same thing during a Fallout campaign me and my friends had. One of the PC’s stumbled into a room full of evil Rangers and they ventilated him with lazer guns.
I don’t think there’s much to be said, or done.
Assuming that Sam is using D&D or D&D variant rules (a reasonable assumption, IMO), the first two levels are just plain lethal, especially if the DM/GM rolls high.
Damn…well…time to make/bring in the back up? What? You guys don’t bring two characters just in case like me? I guess that says something about the games I play in.
One guy I used to game with refused to make a back up character, on the grounds that it would give his current character a bad case of death. He was a slightly superstitious sort.
I’m excited to see how Sam handles this. I’ve been that DM before and this is more of a golden opportunity for giving a tough choice to Jeannie in regards to how badly she doesn’t want to lose her character. In a setting like Karthun with the veil to the land of the dead being so wonky, it could mean she has some interesting options.
Losing a character the first round of the first encounter is going to make me a lot less invested in the next character when their identical twin shows up with a slightly different name.
NOT IN MY HOUSE, SIR.
We actually had a session one death into identical sibling character be one of the only ones to survive the entire rest of the campaign (levels 1-9). There was actually some good roleplaying from it, too. Exceptions to every rule, I suppose.
The first character I ever played, unbeknownst to me at first, was immortal similar to “Capt Jack Harkness” the GM used this as a plot point. He was originally going to use it to explain away times I expected to miss sessions becuase scheduling. Even though I could grow back from being smeared… It hurt.
Oh, or maybe later the party checks the Forgehand’s body, only to find that a conveniently placed shirt of Mithril chain saved her life! Or maybe the arrows were accidentally replaced with rubber ones, and she was never really dead!
xD
I dunno. In this one I’m looking at Jeannie’s face. That is not the face of someone who accepts what hit them as “just part of the game.”
I mean, while I mostly agree with the whole “she’s an experienced player and she knows this is a very real possibility” argument, it IS rough to put the necessary time into creating a new character only to see them get killed in the first seconds of the first encounter.
well… to be fair in D&D next it isn’t as nearly as time comsuming to create a PC from scratch as it was in 3.5. But still, it isn’t a decision I would have made as a DM.
So, I was wondering – that was a crit, in Karthun, doesn’t that trigger some sort of exceptional effect?
Natural 20 doesn’t automatically mean a critical hit, but a critical threat, which needs to be comfirmed with another attack roll.
What LaHaise was referring to was the limit break thing that the characters used during the last Karthun story, and that did just fire off with a nat 20 without the need for a confirmation roll. In regards to that, maybe its something only players can do.
Bail, I remember back in my day, we didn’t have no pansy critical threats. A 20 was a 20, and that’s the way we liked it. *waves cane*
*Bah, not bail. Bloody autocorrect
I’m assuming that’s only for PCs and important (read: named) NPCs. Having random mooks be able to pull off that kind of shit would make it feel less special.
I love the idea that it’s literally named characters that can do them, including blind tom the beggar.
Damn… I saw a first session death once. The player was NOT happy.
This page has reminded me. Is there a good way to kill off a character without making it obvious to the group as a whole that the player specifically requested that their first character get killed?
I suspect that if the moment of death is good enough, the other players won’t care.
“A dragon suddenly flies over and shits on you. You die a horribly slow death by suffocation as your friends try to dig you out from under a ton of dragon poop. Wait, you weren’t popular with them, were you? No… the shit pile is now your eternal grave.”
I’m not seeing the natural 20, I’m seeing the 21 and 22. There’s some hefty modifiers going on here
Karthun uses a hella powerful crit system, I guess its only natural that npc’s also have access to it.
Actually, no. In 5th Ed. your charator goes to zero and you roll a d20 to make a 10 saving roll, or fail it , once per round. 3 saves you stabilize, 3 fails you die. Additional damage counts as 2 fails. any heal/stabilize, saves you.
Heh, I was thinking along those same lines when I first read this comic as well… it could just be that Jeanie’s not used to 5th ed rules yet and Sam needs to clarify the situation.
Or it could be they aren’t playing 5e? Karthun started before 5e was a thing, why would you assume they’re using those rules?
It depends on your HP Ben. If you go negative equal to or greater than your con (Level 2 is probably looking at about 11-25 depending on Con) you die. So say she has 11 hp and goes to -18. Unless she has a 19 Con, she immediately dies.
Let me alter my statement, she is at -15 meaning she had 14HP so forget my average post. If she has less than a 16 con, that outright kills you.
only problem is that they’re playing Karthun rules. 0 hp = Dead. period.
Where did you get that from? Karthun is a setting, so it uses most of the same mechanics as whatever game system they’re using. Yes, there’s the special rules for crits, but why make new rules for PC deaths?
I just had this happen in the first session of a campaign I’m running to a first-time player’s Paladin. Nat 20 against him and a roll on the old crit chart out of Dungeon yielded a crushed skull. I fudged it and had the NPC Paladin who was guiding them make a God-call to heal him before he died.