3 comments on “Killing Characters

  1. I end up DMing most of the time, but I definitely do kill off characters. It’s not like I DM with the sole purpose of killing people, but I do not pull punches and if someone who should know better plays less than smart(or if a new player makes REALLY bad choices) then they tend to not live very long afterwards(oh! I especially hate LG characters that do really ridiculous things in the name of their alignment). I can’t remember how many characters I kill, but it tends to be at a rate of 1 per session if I am DMing something. It’s not my fault. If they didn’t want so many character deaths then they would develop teamwork and put a little thought into their decisions. Although I do allow for resurrection if they have the resources and the carebear part of me sometimes gives discounts. 😛

    When it comes to playing I have rarely experienced character death. I think most DMs tend to have problems killing characters and I usually have a cautious play style and focus on team work and survival. I have lost characters and it doesn’t feel great that it happens, but I usually have a greater respect for a DM who is willing to do it since it adds more of an element of danger to games that makes adventuring feel dangerous. Also when I die, I look at it as a chance to try something new. 🙂

  2. I’ve tended to be behind the GM’s screen more often than not, and I have a line of bodies behind me. I’m not a vicious GM and I usually talk to my players about how gritty and dangerous they want the campaign to be. More often than not, if I fudge a bit it’s in the sake of player survival. That said, if a player is doing something dumb I have no problem striking their character down for it.

    On the player side I’ve lost more characters than I can count over the years. Most of the time it’s not a big deal to me. Some I have regretted losing though. Some have even been set back to have their concept re-used at a later time if I really liked them.

    One campaign in particular I seemed to have the worst luck in. It was an Oriental Adventures campaign (D&D 3.5). I first played a staff-wielding excorcist, One of those anime standards. Large, loud, boisterous and a bit of a drunkard. Unfortunately he ran afoul of an ogre with a reach weapon after only two sessions. The next character was a martial artist. They too fell to someone with a reach weapon after only two sessions. My third character in that campaign was an archer who was very good at climbing and sniping from long distances….

  3. As a GM I have killed a few characters, but almost always due to the player overestimating his or her abilities. Also sometimes it was malicious because I couldn’t stand a player and wanted him to leave a game. I am a bad person.

    In return, I have also experienced several character deaths as well. The most prominent was probably my Adept in a Dark Heresy campaign. He was the guy who poked everything and read every book the party came across, which is generally not a great plan in Dark Heresy, and he slowly built up quite a number of Corruption and Insanity points. Eventually, the party came upon a shrine to Khorne, and the Adept examined a big blood red brass suit of armor. A few moments later the party turned around to see their friendly little nerd decked out in a suit of spikey Khorneate armor, licking blood off of a sacrificial altar. All of the huge combat bonuses the armor gave my Adept did not make up for the fact that he was still a weedy little librarian, and he was brutally beaten to death with an Arbite’s truncheon while ineffectually slap fighting said Arbite and shouting, “Blood for the blood god!” When it was over I shook the Arbite’s hand and started rolling up another character. Before I had finished the entire party was killed by a daemon and we all decided to play Rogue Trader next time.

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