I see a lot of discussion about pc death and tpks. I am curious, over the years, how many characters that you actually cared about, have died? In my case in over thirty years of gaming, I remember about half a dozen. Please feel free to describe the circumstances as well, if you are of a mind to.
The guys I have lost take on a fonder sheen in death than they did in life, usually.
Morgan the drunk bowman who kept rolling 1s... He died in the lair of a phase spider. His Halfling companion rolled his corpse down the hill and dragged it back to town. Later he was Resurrected as a very sober ftr 3/cleric NPC. He was more fun before he died.
Hm... Come to think of it, there was another archer I lost. But he was a superhero. His team was fighting bad guys in a moon base. First he shot off a smoke arrow which meant he couldn't see. Then he shot an explosive arrow into the same area... Piercing the hull of the base and sucking everyone in the room out into the vacuum. RIP. His telekinetic partner was able to save herself and the brick didn't need life support, but the rest of the team dead. Hilariously.
I had a blind monk in 3e. No more need be said there.
The LG cleric who stupidly played with the deck of many things and drew the minor death...
More but those are the most memorable ones.
Below fourth level? Too many to count. Dozens. We used to run something like the DCC funnel, where a couple of us would make up 5-6 characters each and the ones left after a session or two were the keepers. Fourth level and above? Probably five or six. Highest level PC I had die was a level 9 Ranger (torn apart by trolls in the Dark Tower).
Keep in mind I've been the DM more often than not. My players probably have a much higher body count.
Yeah, I don't really count things below about 3-4th Level, since I usually didn't care much about them until that point... But, if you were really invested from the get go, they would count.
Only one irrevocable - Zana Than, human Ironborn Ftr-6, she died leading the attack on an Orc fort - killed by an Enlarged Ftr-6 orc champion, who took her to around -23 hp in one attack routine. It was a Midnight game, and she was the last of the original 1st level PCs to die. I was really fond of Zana, still miss her.
Four major ones, some of whom I've described in other threads here. The bard who died and was Reincarnated and ended up a Gnoll and had to retire and the Mage who died, was Reincarnated as a otter, and died again are the two most memorable ones.
I play a magic user so Im pretty used to characters getting offed. Comes with the robes and pointy hat.
15 - 30 in the past 12 years, perhaps a few more, a few less. But to be fair - since I was 16, I've GMed about 5 games for one I've played, on average.
Like the others I've lost too many low levels to count, and that includes CoC characters who tend to have short lives anyway. Two more experienced characters stand out though:
Osric Skalmandari, a 6th level AD&D cleric. Killed in White Plume Mountain. The party was beat up too much and we were retreating out to rest and recover when two Efreet suddenly appeared at the exit. We simply didn't have enough left to defeat them, TPK.
Ju-Jeng Peng, a Hero System - fantasy Martial Artist. Technically he wasn't killed, but a Mage Guild learned his body had been taken over by an evil spirit being. They decided to take a bunch of body parts for testing and experimentation: an arm, a leg, an eye, etc. A minor deity owes him a favor though so it's plausible he could be restored to full health. Last seen in a greatly diminished mental state, sitting on a pier doing some fishing.
And there were several times when a TPK came real close, like one wounded man left standing fighting with his bowie knife close.
Quote from: Doughdee222;753919Ju-Jeng Peng, a Hero System - fantasy Martial Artist. Technically he wasn't killed, but a Mage Guild learned his body had been taken over by an evil spirit being. They decided to take a bunch of body parts for testing and experimentation: an arm, a leg, an eye, etc. A minor deity owes him a favor though so it's plausible he could be restored to full health. Last seen in a greatly diminished mental state, sitting on a pier doing some fishing.
You could say his possession....cost him an arm and a leg, then?
They are legion, they haunt me in my dreams, the armies of the dead.
:P
Quote from: Rincewind1;753931You could say his possession....cost him an arm and a leg, then?
Yes indeed. And more. Damn those evil spirits. Peng was strong on offense, weak on spirit defense.
I don't think I've ever had a PC die.
Part of it is that I've GMed about ten times more often than I've played, part of it is that I've almost always played in campaigns that were far more about character development and RP than tactical wargaming, part of it is that I've only been in a handful of D&D campaigns ... as opposed to EPT, Runequest, RM, TFT, GURPS, Champions, Bushido, various homebrews.
I usually GM, so I've killed many more than I've lost. But the numbers are low, after almost 30 (sigh) years of gaming.
As a player, I've lost a first level thief in basic D&D (just had to try to pick a lock - that's what thieves do, right?) and a very high level bard in the final encounter of PF's RoR. And that's it, even after playing in six other campaigns, some of them fairly long-running.
As a GM, I've killed about a dozen PCs, most of them in my last campaign, which was set up after the West Marches model, with deliberately high risk of PC death. It had a certain charm, but the players resented making new characters because it took so long (this was in E6 PF).
I think all the long-running campaigns we've played (I've mostly played with the same 3-5 people for all these years) had a low incidence of PC death. During our run of RoR, we've had two PCs die (before the final encounter, when all but one died). My first homebrew AD&D 2 campaign similarly had three deaths in the span of three years of weekly games.
Quote from: Ravenswing;753966I don't think I've ever had a PC die.
Part of it is that I've GMed about ten times more often than I've played, part of it is that I've almost always played in campaigns that were far more about character development and RP than tactical wargaming, part of it is that I've only been in a handful of D&D campaigns ... as opposed to EPT, Runequest, RM, TFT, GURPS, Champions, Bushido, various homebrews.
That too is why my losses are so low as well, both gm'ing and system specific. However, I lost many more in Runequest (1st Edition) than I lost in D&D, though in both cases I exclude those just started characters (which would push the numbers into double digits).
I never had a lot of losses when I started playing because my DM at the time let players start with a significantly larger amount of hit points to help make lower levels less lethal. Despite that I still lost probably about half a dozen characters, usually by trying something stupid.
When I switched to 2nd ed and a new dm there was a period of a few months where I just couldn't keep a character alive cuz I was used to having more hit points at lower level.
I think the most embarrassing character death I had was a character trying to jump over a spike pit trap and completely botching the dex roll.
Quote from: Doughdee222;753919Osric Skalmandari, a 6th level AD&D cleric. Killed in White Plume Mountain. The party was beat up too much and we were retreating out to rest and recover when two Efreet suddenly appeared at the exit. We simply didn't have enough left to defeat them, TPK.
Ah, Nix and Nox. Voice of Keraptis: "You're not thinking of leaving with my treasure, are you?" Classic old-school goodness - put a couple Efreet at the dungeon entrance/exit as the party tries to leave. I bet Nix and Nox have been responsible for hundreds of TPKs.
Quote from: dragoner;753933They are legion, they haunt me in my dreams, the armies of the dead.
:P
Same here. When their haunting gets too loud, I just threaten to cut off their rum ration and they quiet down.
Quote from: jeff37923;754125Same here. When their haunting gets too loud, I just threaten to cut off their rum ration and they quiet down.
They are actually quite handy for the NPC file; waste not, want not.
Quote from: dragoner;754129They are actually quite handy for the NPC file; waste not, want not.
Yep. This has proven to be a big dividend in my fetish for keeping copies of the sheets of PCs in my campaign; I've liberally resorted to them for use as NPCs.
This actually drove the plot of the last few sessions of my main group. The PCs wanted to toss out the Grand Master of the local mages' guild chapter, the election was coming up, so they decided to cajole a local master wizard to run ... said wizard being a PC from twenty years ago, and whom I'd had around as a NPC the last few years. As it happens, that wizard's player is one of my current players, and Andrew cheerfully agreed to run Master Bolan the last two sessions in place of his current PC to slog through the election.
Quote from: Ravenswing;754289Yep. This has proven to be a big dividend in my fetish for keeping copies of the sheets of PCs in my campaign; I've liberally resorted to them for use as NPCs.
This actually drove the plot of the last few sessions of my main group. The PCs wanted to toss out the Grand Master of the local mages' guild chapter, the election was coming up, so they decided to cajole a local master wizard to run ... said wizard being a PC from twenty years ago, and whom I'd had around as a NPC the last few years. As it happens, that wizard's player is one of my current players, and Andrew cheerfully agreed to run Master Bolan the last two sessions in place of his current PC to slog through the election.
Funniest thing at the beginning of my last game before this one, during chargen, a player showed me a character and they said they hated them. I said "fine, roll up another" and took that one straight into my NPC file, used him in the game shortly after. It would have only have been more humorous if he had said: "look, I rolled you up an NPC!" Saved me the trouble, and I am not sure if the player ever figured it out.
Quote from: dragoner;754129They are actually quite handy for the NPC file; waste not, want not.
You are right, they are. Unfortunately, I hadn't encountered that idea early on or else I would have a huge file. For now, it is small.
Quote from: jeff37923;754336You are right, they are. Unfortunately, I hadn't encountered that idea early on or else I would have a huge file. For now, it is small.
I must have started early on, because I have a fairly big file, even a loose-leaf binder; some of it comes from me liking chargen as a minigame. I have seen some people agonize over making characters, I usually, just roll 'em up, and play them.
To character death in game? Not many
I've lost more characters to having to leave a game or a game ending after only a few sessions than to actual character death.
Quote from: dragoner;753933They are legion, they haunt me in my dreams, the armies of the dead.
:P
This right here. I got to where I just started numbering them like a borg...1 of 9, 2 or 9....
Quote from: YourSwordisMine;754437I've lost more characters to having to leave a game or a game ending after only a few sessions than to actual character death.
That prods me to a thought which'd make an interesting spinoff topic: what characters have you gotten to play in a campaign other than the one in which they were generated?
ot
Quote from: Ravenswing;754572That prods me to a thought which'd make an interesting spinoff topic: what characters have you gotten to play in a campaign other than the one in which they were generated?
Alot when I played 2e. You see Marcie and myself were in the group and we were 22-25 and she had kids I didn't at the time. You following me yet?? I took her characters over all the time. ( I was usually dead because my character had bad stats or I just didn't care) It taught me how to really play magic users and love them because I had no other choice. Because she was good and if I didn't get serious it was bad news for me in and out of game.
They were my friends and I was only there to round out the group at first. I couldn't have cared less about the game then. It's when I learned the Bard was 2e's version of 3e's Codzilla and Druid. They were practically unfair. Which I wouldn't have known unless I was forcibly drafted like I was.
I played a lot of CoC and Traveller...so lots of death came with the territory. And we later played lots of Stormbringer and Cyberpunk 2020 so lots more dead characters.
I doubt I ever made it through a CoC campaign with the same character.
As for D&D? Not as many. Certainly lost my share of OD&D PCs at low levels, but nobody in the 3e/4e era that I remember.
As for Champions? Never lost one. In fact, I doubt I've ever lost a character in a superhero game. Came close in Champions from some bad luck Ranged Killing Attacks, but never died to my memory.
But we did play lots of Robot Warriors, the mecha version of HERO and I definitely had several robo-pilots who got splattered with an unlucky cockpit hit.
Quote from: Marleycat;754454This right here. I got to where I just started numbering them like a borg...1 of 9, 2 or 9....
Never got quite that far, but I did name one "John Doe" and he lived! Became quite high level towards the end.
Quote from: dragoner;754587Never got quite that far, but I did name one "John Doe" and he lived! Became quite high level towards the end.
It's probably due to my preferred games (horror) and my disinterested playstyle in Dnd when I started more then anything else. Honestly back then I was just there because my friends begged me I was there for the social aspect really, still am mostly.
I absolutely love games like Whispering Vault, Kult, Neliphim, Unknown Armies, CoC, Warhammer, 40K, Onyx Path stuff.... Dnd is secondary to me but it's what my friends and the majority know. And I just have no time anymore like when I was 20. I mitigate the issue by running the game most times but I won't even attempt that with Dnd because I'm too freeform and White Wolf style for it to work well.
More than I can remember.
One Traveller character died in character generation.
A 5th-level halfelf rogue in Eberron died from a displacer beast (my fiancée suspects the GM killed the campaign deliberately).
A few 4E Encounters characters died but that's encounters.
Though in my fiancée's Pathfinder game we did have a player who had a character die from a giant Earth Elemental. Though this player was a bit of a wild child...
Quote from: Jame Rowe;755202One Traveller character died in character generation.
...
I've lost hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Traveller characters during character generation, but I used software for most of them, so at least it was quick. It's a stretch to say I cared about them. Though I would have played any of them had I the chance.
Despite GMing a lot more than playing, I tend to be get more than my fair share killed. I'm not foolhardy, but I do play personalities, and I don't play every character as if they know every trick my previous one did, so I can and do lose them to "stupid" but in character reasons.
I don't kill a lot, but as a GM I actually feel worse about the PCs that I kill in the first session or two than the ones with a lot of sessions behind them. It's like they never had a chance to shine :)
I haven't played Trav as much as others here, but over the years I must have made a dozen characters or so, and none of them died in character generation. Maybe I just got lucky?
I've lost some, but Traveller's "death in chargen" is somewhat mythical, unless you are rolling up a scout, then the chances go up.
Quote from: dragoner;755775I've lost some, but Traveller's "death in chargen" is somewhat mythical, unless you are rolling up a scout, then the chances go up.
In classic, the odds of failing a survival roll in the first term (and it only gets higher with each additional term):
Navy ~28%, ~8% with Int 7+
Marines ~42%, ~17% with End 8+
Army ~28%, ~8 with Edu 6+
Scouts ~58%, 28% with End 9+
Merchants ~28%, ~8% with Int 7+
Other ~28%, ~8% with Int 9+
That's a bit higher than "mythical" to me, unless you mean that many Refs preferred the "injury instead of death" optional rule. Then I agree, since it's actually impossible to die during character gen for those players.
Quote from: Brander;755809In classic, the odds of failing a survival roll in the first term (and it only gets higher with each additional term):
Navy ~28%, ~8% with Int 7+
Marines ~42%, ~17% with End 8+
Army ~28%, ~8 with Edu 6+
Scouts ~58%, 28% with End 9+
Merchants ~28%, ~8% with Int 7+
Other ~28%, ~8% with Int 9+
That's a bit higher than "mythical" to me, unless you mean that many Refs preferred the "injury instead of death" optional rule. Then I agree, since it's actually impossible to die during character gen for those players.
Cool breakout, never really stated it out, but by mythical, it seems to have taken on larger than life proportions, notice the drop when you make the grade.
Quote from: dragoner;755810Cool breakout, never really stated it out, but by mythical, it seems to have taken on larger than life proportions, notice the drop when you make the grade.
Thanks. Yeah, having that bonus was huge.
Quote from: Brander;755814Thanks. Yeah, having that bonus was huge.
The standing joke for what should be on a Traveller t-shirt is "I survived chargen", esp if putting a scout logo on it.