Quote from: AsenRG;1019662Sure, it can be, but your comparison was about dungeon crawls vs superheroes. And either way, it doesn't seem to be the deathless kind of campaign:).
And my swashbuckling and wuxia campaigns easily feature PCs losing limbs. While playing "Errol Flynn-style tales of daring-do".
Also, I'm really not interested in a game where PCs can't die, unless we're playing Nobilis, and even there that's just hard to happen.

My broader point here is that the tone of the campaign as set by the GM and players determines whether or not death at certain junctures is appropriate. Obviously tastes vary, I'm just saying that precisely because tastes vary that there is a such thing as an inappropriate death in some circumstances. It may not suit your preferred style of play, but it still exists.

Quote from: Skarg;1019655Good question.



Excellent answer. These are the sorts of thing I consider when resolving such situations, too.


And I would add, for all my frequent posts about wanting realistic fair consequences and so on, this sort of assassin question (also see extremely deadly ambushes and some other issues) is one which gave me pause even after 8 or so years of GM-ing and got me to think and realize that this is more the level at which I would choose to apply at least some level of nerfing to avoid slaughtering PCs for a more pleasant game. That is, I will tend to choose to have a powerful enemy of the PCs hire squads of fighters to attack the PCs, even though I know as a GM there are some nasty clever things they could do instead that might tend to be very effective and not give the PCs much chance to do a lot about it, such as a master assassin, and/or coating weapons in deadly poison, and/or poisoning their food, and/or using certain magic spells. But I try to restrict such choices to the level of the types, abilities, and methods of the NPCs, and the weapons, magic, and so on readily available in the world. It's also one reason I tend to like ancient/medieval settings, rather than ones with reliable accurate guns, because shooting people with guns tends to be a really efficient way of killing people and not giving them much chance to escape, which overall tends to seem less fun to me, and I'm not willing to use game mechanics that make things not behave like the thing they supposedly are.

I ended up just deciding to go follow through on it. The enemy was an assassin, so it would render them a toothless danger if she couldn't ambush people.

However, I did do all the rolls and so forth.

The actual situation played out both better than I expected and easier on them than I had planned.

Ever heard of Leomund's Tiny Hut? It's a wizard spell that produces a room-shaped force field bubble that lets people you choose on casting enter or leave at their will. Everyone else can't enter. So it's great for casting at night and having the forcefield protect everyone. There's no need to have a watch or worry about random encounters.

This is where it gets beautiful. One of the PCs had been separated from the party. The assassin knows this, and has a Disguise Self spell. She approaches the party disguised as the PC, and I had the player of that PC play this part out, posing as the assassin pretending to be the PC. The rest of the party invites the assassin into the forcefield and to join them so they can all go to sleep.

Cue the assassin waiting for everyone to fall asleep, and beginning the assassination!

However, since they were all basically sleeping together, it meant they could get up and start to fight, heal each other, etc. The assassin put her target to 0 hit points six different times, but each time the other party members immediately healed him. So in the end the assassin fled and the party was fine.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019675The assassin put her target to 0 hit points six different times, but each time the other party members immediately healed him.

This sounds too generous to me. After the first heal the assassin should have drawn a second dagger and used bonus action for CDG - which I guess is only 2 failed death saves in 5e, so still survivable.

Always send 2 assassins.

Quote from: Dumarest;1019232Eh, would you make a player roll dice to get the drop on a sleeping goblin?

Probably. Depends on how much detail was already extant in the situation and how much detail the player gave me outlining how their PC assassin was finding, stalking, setting up, and attacking their target. But as the GM I don't especially want to have to invent lots of detail about exactly how the NPC assassin decides to find, stalk, setup, and attack the PC. For the NPC assassin I'd far prefer to abstract most of the how based on some die rolls.

Quote from: Skarg;1019655And I would add, for all my frequent posts about wanting realistic fair consequences and so on, this sort of assassin question (also see extremely deadly ambushes and some other issues) is one which gave me pause even after 8 or so years of GM-ing and got me to think and realize that this is more the level at which I would choose to apply at least some level of nerfing to avoid slaughtering PCs for a more pleasant game. That is, I will tend to choose to have a powerful enemy of the PCs hire squads of fighters to attack the PCs, even though I know as a GM there are some nasty clever things they could do instead that might tend to be very effective and not give the PCs much chance to do a lot about it, such as a master assassin, and/or coating weapons in deadly poison, and/or poisoning their food, and/or using certain magic spells. But I try to restrict such choices to the level of the types, abilities, and methods of the NPCs, and the weapons, magic, and so on readily available in the world. It's also one reason I tend to like ancient/medieval settings, rather than ones with reliable accurate guns, because shooting people with guns tends to be a really efficient way of killing people and not giving them much chance to escape, which overall tends to seem less fun to me, and I'm not willing to use game mechanics that make things not behave like the thing they supposedly are.

Thanks for sharing this Skarg. I agree with what you said here.

Quote from: Dumarest;1019232Eh, would you make a player roll dice to get the drop on a sleeping goblin? As long as it's the same both ways, I guess, but I don't see why you'd need to roll at that point.

There's always a chance you strike badly.  Maybe not much of a chance, but a chance.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1019784There's always a chance you strike badly.  Maybe not much of a chance, but a chance.

Lots of amateur assassins in your games, eh?

No, the gods are bastards and Lady Luck is a fickle whore.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019675... However, since they were all basically sleeping together, it meant they could get up and start to fight, heal each other, etc. The assassin put her target to 0 hit points six different times, but each time the other party members immediately healed him. So in the end the assassin fled and the party was fine.

Um, yeah ok though that's also why I don't play campaigns where there is trivial healing and revival and resurrection, particularly not that can be cast over and over in combat. It mostly removes the risk and consequences and actually ups the ante on what effects there are from danger, which ironically can actually end up being more deadly, especially when the players are encouraged to take on more and more dangerous opponents.

I guess the assassin didn't realize they had so much healing magic? Or can she also get resurrected and collect on her contract six times for killing the target six times.

Quote from: Skarg;1019813Um, yeah ok though that's also why I don't play campaigns where there is trivial healing and revival and resurrection, particularly not that can be cast over and over in combat. It mostly removes the risk and consequences and actually ups the ante on what effects there are from danger, which ironically can actually end up being more deadly, especially when the players are encouraged to take on more and more dangerous opponents.

I guess the assassin didn't realize they had so much healing magic? Or can she also get resurrected and collect on her contract six times for killing the target six times.

She didn't know until she saw it, at which point she changed her priority to taking out the healers -- but there was 4 of them out of a party of 7. So she ran.

But next time she'll try to jump them alone.

And yeah, in 5e, as long as you get 1 hit point healed, you immediately pop up with no lasting effects as if you were never downed. So you can keep getting put down and get up like a yoyo, I always thought that was stupid. Perhaps I will houserule that. But they would definitely died otherwise.

I started to play from Warhammer, sometimes I met people with whom I played "party" and remember one ... Their characters never died ... It's too, I remember how they died, but they forgot about it right away :/
How to buy Rocket League crates?
This is a great racing game that rewards RL players with crates and items. I have been playing Rocket League for a long time, this is the second part of the game. I know a lot of tips and tricks about playing Rocket League. I really like velocity crates, I will buy them a lot, because they are cheap :-)
buy velocity crates - buy Rocket League Crates
Velocity crate is now cheap, but with the new upgrade there will be new crates with new content (new items) and then their price will jump. Currently the latest are velocity crates, so you can buy velocity crates as well as other crates to Rocket League

Quote from: Skarg;1019813Um, yeah ok though that's also why I don't play campaigns where there is trivial healing and revival and resurrection, particularly not that can be cast over and over in combat. It mostly removes the risk and consequences and actually ups the ante on what effects there are from danger, which ironically can actually end up being more deadly, especially when the players are encouraged to take on more and more dangerous opponents.

I guess the assassin didn't realize they had so much healing magic? Or can she also get resurrected and collect on her contract six times for killing the target six times.

Heh.  Getting dropped to 0, then bouncing back up with full functionality the second you get any healing is one of the silliest aspects of 5e.  Turns the game into a total farce.  Doing the Lost Mine of Phandelver, had a PC bounce up twice and on the second recovery from healing just said "This is fucking retarded, shouldn't I at least need a Short Rest or something?"

Easy to fix, but still silly.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019814She didn't know until she saw it, at which point she changed her priority to taking out the healers -- but there was 4 of them out of a party of 7. So she ran.

But next time she'll try to jump them alone.

And yeah, in 5e, as long as you get 1 hit point healed, you immediately pop up with no lasting effects as if you were never downed. So you can keep getting put down and get up like a yoyo, I always thought that was stupid. Perhaps I will houserule that. But they would definitely died otherwise.

6 times seems incredible. Assuming she had tried and failed to take out felled PC with a massive damage CDG*, I'd have had her flee after the second or at most third time it happened. I'm also amazed they couldn't kill her in 6+ combat rounds.

*Eg if PC was healed up to single digit hp she could maybe take him/her down with one d6+3 & poison 7d6/DC 15 save for half shortsword blow; then use poisoned dagger Sneak Attack auto-critical CDG with (edit) second attack, doubling all damage dice for (using MM assassin): 2d6+3 (sword) + 8d6 (sneak attack) plus DC 15 CON save for 7d6 poison, halved on a save, with insta death if total equals PC max hp. (edit) Or I could be really mean & say the assassin gets 2 attacks normally & can use an off-hand bonus attack too, allowing 2 auto crits = 4 failed death saves = dead.

Certainly the PCs IMC learned to greatly fear the MM-statted CR 8 Black Sun Assassins, and certainly never let themselves get into a position like the PCs in your game.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019814So you can keep getting put down and get up like a yoyo, I always thought that was stupid. Perhaps I will houserule that.

For my online 5e game I went with negative hit points, and no "heal from 0", so a PC at -14 needs 15 healing to get to 1 hp.

Running Stonehell tabletop with low level PCs though, I'm finding that the default rules work well with the mixed-level (1-4: 3 1st, 1 3rd, 2 4th) PC group; without easy healing there'd be a pile of dead PCs in most encounters. And the final battle Sunday was very dramatic when half the PCs went down in round 1 to the Orc charge, including the 4th level Bard Trystan who was their only source of spell healing! Things looked grim and I was thinking "uh oh, TPK!" - but then the Fighter-3 elf warrior maid Hatala swooped in, Action Surged & shot an orc off Trystan with her X-bow while also administering a healing potion to him in the same round. Then the lightning trap in the room went off again, searing two of the orcs, Trystan used his healing word to bring up another PC, and the party were able to turn the fight around.

(Mind you, I love it that I nearly TPK'd a 6-PC level 1-4 party with 6 orcs!)

Meh. Hit Points are "silly" (and also an extremely useful abstraction). If 5e didn't have the confluence of healing options all over the place, the bounce-back-up rule, the no-overflow-unless-it's-2*maxHp rule, and clerics having routine access to a bonus-action healing spell, I doubt we'd all focus on the 'dropped to 0, then bouncing back up' part.

I rabidly dislike it from a verisimilitude point-of-view in that it encourages very foolish IRL behavior (continuing to whack at a downed opponents while there are people actively trying to kill you still on the field of battle). And I think it leads to fewer single-PC deaths, and thus greater chances of TPKs (because you take on greater challenges, and tempt fate for a truly catastrophic SNAFU).

My take-away from mAcular Chaotic's situation is 'why couldn't the assassin do 2*max hp, suffice that the PC was auto-killed?' And that I think is a place where 5e breaks down at higher levels, and/or the DM needs to put in a house-rule about if you're sleeping and the assailant can just slit your throat/decapitate you, then you die no need to deal with hp (cue link to that passage from Gronan's book notes about not needing rules for coup de grace).

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1019835And that I think is a place where 5e breaks down at higher levels, and/or the DM needs to put in a house-rule about if you're sleeping and the assailant can just slit your throat/decapitate you, then you die no need to deal with hp (cue link to that passage from Gronan's book notes about not needing rules for coup de grace).

I don't think it's at all easy IRL to break into someone's house while they're sleeping and slit their throat without them waking up. I'm a light sleeper and unless I've had a lot to drink I often wake up from sounds in the night. Short of a high level assassin creeping in, I'd definitely wake from a home invader coming in through my door or window! I definitely think rolls are appropriate unless the victim is truly helpless - either literally unconscious (not just sleeping) or else bound & trussed. Inebriated victim should make it easier but still not auto-kill.