How willing are you to Kill your PC's?

Indeed. If there is one thing I don't do, it would be to save the players from the dice. Hey, it's war, people die, you know!

. They don't gain any inalienable "right to survive" by being able to make a case for having played rationally.

I never fudge die rolls anymore, and roll my dice openly to avoid the temptation to.

I will always make a decision on this subject based upon the narrative. If it produces a more interesting story then player characters will die...

It's not about "narrative armouring" of the PCs, though, just as it is not about arbitrarily killing them through a random dice roll. At least not for me.

Kage

Konrad von Richtmark wrote:Indeed. If there is one thing I don't do, it would be to save the players from the dice. Hey, it's war, people die, you know! . They don't gain any inalienable "right to survive" by being able to make a case for having played rationally.

I never fudge die rolls anymore, and roll my dice openly to avoid the temptation to.

Well, if the groups get to combat, only thing I do to help them is that I don't give righteous fury to enemies. 12-14 damage from one hit (no ST carapace for my players so far) is much enough for most of the players. Also, lack of fury gives the enemies enough damage to hurt (some lucky bastards may even have frag grenades) but it helps to avoid unnecessary player deaths, because my games are rather combat-heavy and getting 2-4 new recruits into the group in each case is not what I want (yes, I make the players start with rank 1 rookies if they get their guys killed, with some additional experience).

Well, 12-14 damage from one hit shouldn't kill anyone. In normal circumstances, you'd have to suffer -7 critical damage to die. No way a starting character at full wounds would go down to that from one such hit.

Our group likes it lethal. We've not got to actually play DH yet, but our experiences from WFRP are very much that making combat more lethal for everyone (for example, by halving everyone's wounds) adds to the game. It makes getting first strike on your enemies (by whatever tactical ploys) vital to success. It makes it possible to take down enemies by sniping. It actually makes it possible to keep people at bay by pointing ranged weapons at them.

Konrad von Richtmark wrote:Well, 12-14 damage from one hit shouldn't kill anyone. In normal circumstances, you'd have to suffer -7 critical damage to die. No way a starting character at full wounds would go down to that from one such hit.

Our group likes it lethal. We've not got to actually play DH yet, but our experiences from WFRP are very much that making combat more lethal for everyone (for example, by halving everyone's wounds) adds to the game. It makes getting first strike on your enemies (by whatever tactical ploys) vital to success. It makes it possible to take down enemies by sniping. It actually makes it possible to keep people at bay by pointing ranged weapons at them.

I prefer crippling my players over killing them. Losing one's arm hurts, but you don't need to get new character up to the speed of story, because instead of fresh recruit you have old fart learning to use bolt pistol instead of bolt gun. Of course the servants of Inquisition may get bionic replacements, but it often takes a lot of money from the group or the crippled character has to really shine for some time to get the Inquisitor pay the spare parts. Also, it's much more satisfying to have one-armed Veteran than yet another Conscript.

Maybe I should lower the Wounds-stat of the characters, but balance this by making the Critical tables longer. For example, I could take 3 wounds away but make the criticals go 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 instead of the old 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. There are 10 steps in each, so all I'd need to change would be the numbers in "critical damage" of critical tables.

A 'player' comes to the table and EXPECTS to have their character to be tested. My question is;

How creative are the GM's when their players are SORE about why they died?

He He...

My GOD, this game is CTHULHU times a million!!!!

I'm somewhat hesitant, as one of my players gets really attached to their characters and the rest do roleplay well and enjoy their characters. I've fudged one or two die rolls, just slightly in their favour. I did however MASSIVELY fudge an encounter because they were plain stupid but it was their first session and many of them were still in the "Kick down the door, slay the monster, take the loot" D&D mode. It was the SPOILER encounter at the end of Maggots in the Meat in the skymill, they blazed in and tried to take on everyone there. They were bound to be killed but I made it so that they just slipped out of it alive. SPOILER Aside from that , many of their encounters come as challenging yet not fearfully close to death. It's been getting closer, though.

Last session I got to use the critical damage tables on a player for the first time in a while. I forgot how much I enjoy them, so I think there may be more deadly fights happening soon.

In the words of James T Kirk

"Let Them Dieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"

mAd eAgle wrote:How creative are the GM's when their players are SORE about why they died?

Hasn't happened to me, my groups pretty much expect character fatalities to happen. They've come to see it as a chance to get to try out something new. If a player expects me to artificially keep his character alive just because he is too fond of it to let it go, that player doesn't belong in my group.

I've actually had the inverse problem once: One of the players in a WFRP campaign I ran suffers from chronic ADHD. Meaning, he quickly loses patience with characters when they don't work as expected, or simply fail at what they try to do. At one point when his character lost a fate point (walked alone on a forest road, crappy perception further reduced by wearing a helmet, got ambushed by several beastmen that were scripted into the adventure), he got fed up with his character and wanted to roll a new one. I had to stare him down by wondering aloud just how he intended to integrate a new character into the story at the time.