Tonight I got a harsh lesson in the responsibility of a good DM.  Tonight I was screwing around, and I got one of my player's character killed.  To understand this story, you'll need to know that I use the GameMastery Critical Fumble and Critical Hit Decks.

Here's the situation:  The party has broken the back of the White Talon Clan of orcs -- who are using slaves to run a quartz mining operation - and all that remains is to move through the active mines, kill a few handfuls of orc slavetenders, and tell the former slaves they are free.  So we're in the "mopping up" stage of the dungeon.

After several fights, we've had a bunch of critical fumbles come up, mostly on the monsters side.  Brad points out that there hasn't been a single critical hit all night.  On cue, Eric rolls a critical hit with his rapier and confirms it.  So he draws a card, and it turns out that he's driven his rapier through the back of the orc's throat and out it's cheek, tearing it's mouth open and leaving it spewing blood everywhere.  God I love critical hits.

Anyways, it takes normal damage plus 1d4 Bleed.  Bleed is a new condition.  At the start of a creature that is bleedings action, it takes the stated damage.  The orc had 6 hit points, and Eric did 4 points of damage.  Everyone knew it had 6 hit points, because this was the like the zillionith orc they'd killed, and they were all uniform.

The orcs action comes around, and Eric rolls the bleed damage: 1.  Now the orc is down 5, with 1 hp left.  So the orc swings at Eric, and hits him good.  Now Eric is hurt.  There are two orcs left, the bleeding one and another unharmed one.  The rest of the party, including an NPC I was running, had an opportunity to kill the orc Eric had wounded.  But no one did.  They left it to Eric to kill.  So Eric's action comes up, he attacks and misses.

Everyone is laughing except Eric.  He says "Can one of you guys kill this thing?  Brad, kill this thing!"  Brad instead attacks the last orc with a magic attack, leaving Eric's wounded orc alone, but doesn't kill it.  

So then it's my NPCs turn, and I know I should hit the orc threatening Eric, because Eric is the cleric and you don't let the cleric get killed.  But I really wanted to see the orc die from the bleed.  Since we started using the deck, we'd never seen a bad guy fall to bleed damage.  Instead I hit the other orc, and kill it.  Eric says "Great, now this orc is going to kill me."

I respond "Oh relax, the bleed will kill it next round."

Eric says "Unless I roll a 1, then it'll be disabled and attack me."

I smirk at Eric's pessimism and announce that it's Eric's orc's action, and Eric rolls the bleed damage.  It's a 1.  The orc has 0 hp, and is disabled.  He puts his all into one final throw.  Eric, crestfallen, says "He's going to critical me."

Shaking my head, I roll the die, and rather than roll it behind the screen, I roll it right into the middle of the minis and the combat, all set to say "See, he missed you big baby."

It's a 20.  A critical hit.  So I roll to confirm, reacting so quickly that I forget to roll behidn the screen, and it's a 17.  which everyone know confirms, because these orcs are +6 to hit and Eric's AC is 19.  So I roll damage, it's 24.

Eric says "That's it, Brandar the Elf is officially dead."  Taken to -12 hp.

Brad is practically jumping out of his seat, hollering about how awesome it was that Eric totally called that shit.  But I wasn't enjoying it at all.  I don't have a problem with killing characters if that's what happens, but here's the thing:  I knew it was out of character for the NPC (a barbarian and former slave) to let the cleric go down -- the cleric was the one who rescued him, after he helped the cleric escape from the slave pits himself.  And the only reason the cleric had attacked the orc was to keep the orcs from mobbing the barbarian.

But he didn't defend the cleric, because I, Ken, the DM, wanted to see the orc die from bleed damage.  I wanted to describe it keeling over still slurring threats through it's ruined mouth.  

And then, to compound one bad decision, I decided to roll a die in front of player to prove to him that he couldn't predict the future and was just whining.  And the dice gods, they were against me that night.

I told Eric that it didn't count, and he was still alive, but he was pretty adamant.  He was pretty pissed off because Brad didn't bail him out, and insisted nobody would learn anything from the incident if I hit the rewind button.

So that's where we left it, with Brandar dead, Eric intending to roll up a new character, and me feeling like I fucked up royally.

Bleh.

(Brandar is the elf projecting a magical effect in my icon)

Well, people make mistakes in real life too. I think it makes good drama for an NPC to make a stupid error like that, which he will regret for the rest of his life. "Why was I such an idiot, to let the man who saved me die?" etc. Use it as a plot device to have the NPC stick around (he has to fulfill an oath to atone for his mistake), leave the party, or kill himself.

Quote from: noisms;219061Well, people make mistakes in real life too. I think it makes good drama for an NPC to make a stupid error like that, which he will regret for the rest of his life. "Why was I such an idiot, to let the man who saved me die?" etc. Use it as a plot device to have the NPC stick around (he has to fulfill an oath to atone for his mistake), leave the party, or kill himself.

Hugin, the barbarian, met Brandar after Brandar and his sister were captured by slavers and sold to the orcs.  Brandar's sister had been sold to the duergar who live on level 10 of the dungeon (the orcs are on level 2).  Hugin helped Brandar escape after making Brandar promise to return for him, which Brandar did.  Hugin originally joined the party with the intent of only helping them kill the orcs who had held him prisoner for months (they didn't even work him, they just tortured him for sport), but now he's going to stay with the party until they find Brandar's sister.

In the post-game discussion, we all agreed that  Hugin, Barth (Brad's character) and Golden Axe (Chuck's character, and yes, he's named after the video game) were all full of guilt and shame, recognizing that Brandar died because they were goofing off.  So all of them have sworn an oath to save Brandar's sister.  He failed his mission because they failed him, and so they feel they have a duty to complete his mission for him.

I love my players.  They're awesome guys.

Jackalope

I don't think you were such a bad gamemaster as you imply. Sometimes a PC dies. Could you have saved him? Yes, you could, using the NPC to defend the cleric from the orc. But I can understand why you decided the NPC would attack another orc, the risk for the cleric wasn't apparently that high. Sometimes a baddie has a very low chance to score a good hit against a PC, but he does nonetheless. Or the other way around.

If I was your player, I'd feel pretty sad that I lost a character I like because it could have been avoided if somebody had helped him, but I wouldn't have wanted a rewind, or God forbids, a roll behind the screen (we don't use them ever) for anything in the world. Once you start to do such things, the illusion is broken, I stop believing that there is real risk, that my character might die, and my diversion suffers.

That said, I don't want you to think that I enjoy killing PCs when I GM, or that I enjoy playing with sadistic GMs. Quite the contrary, sometimes I'm a little "mommy GM", I don't like killing PCs, nor the GM to kill my PCs, but when the dice say a PC must die, the result stands. Because once you start saving PCs, where do you stop?

I find refreshing this thread. Very often I feel that in this forum people talk about the sex of angels, and I find hard to relate to that. What Jackalope described sounds like things that happen when we (my group) play, you know, real play. I hope to see more such threads.

Quote from: Claudius;219065Jackalope

I don't think you were such a bad gamemaster as you imply. Sometimes a PC dies. Could you have saved him? Yes, you could, using the NPC to defend the cleric from the orc. But I can understand why you decided the NPC would attack another orc, the risk for the cleric wasn't apparently that high.

That's the thing though, I could post-hoc justify it all i want, but I know the truth.  I thought "Hugin would protect Brandar...but dammit, if I attack with Hugin, the orc will die, and not bleed out.  I'll just attack the other guy."

It wasn't a horrible thing, I wanted it to play out that way because it would be funny and memorable, and the chance that anything would go wrong was a major long shot.  I mean it required a very precise set of rolls to occur.  Eric needed to roll a 1 on a d4, and I needed to roll a 20 on a d20 followed by two rolls of a d10 adding up to more than 12.  The odds of it happening were 1:125!  That's a serious long shot.

But man, sometimes you gamble and lose.  Except, I gambled and Eric lost.  And I gambled for all the wrong reasons.

I don't think you can do much more than apology and make sure it doesn't happen again...

Why did the orc continue fighting at zero hit points instead of running away?

When DMing goes right.

I guess it does raise some questions about the DM running Allies / GM-PCs, rather than letting the players do it... but I don't think letting a PC die in a game is such a bad thing.

With mhensley: uhh, do monsters/npcs ever flee?

They're not pinatas, are they? Or do they stay risking certain death because they're threatening an AoO/pwning his square?

In melee, who the fuck is looking out for his buddy, worrying about a half-dead orc, thinking, "Oh yes, the fucktard rulez of life sez that my bro may be fuxxored if i don't coup de' ville his half-dead sparring partner" ?

Your gaming/reffing/DMing/GMing was fine, I think.

Quote from: mhensley;219076Why did the orc continue fighting at zero hit points instead of running away?

Because running away or surrendering will get it killed anyway, so it might as well fight to the end and take a few enemies with it. See the Taser thread.

-clash

This is precisely why I do not care to run this sort of game any more. I think it's an invidious position to be in.

Quote from: mhensley;219076Why did the orc continue fighting at zero hit points instead of running away?

The players had trapped the orcs at the end of an active mine. Basically he was corned, bleeding to death, and had no chance of survival.  He was bleeding out quick, and I figured that he wouldn't go cower at the end of the tunnel waiting to be killed, he'd try to go out swinging like a proper orc.  Surrender wasn't an option really, since he was spraying blood everywhere and knew he wasn't going to survive more than a few more seconds.

I would not want to play in a game where PC's can't die. Even for stupid reasons, sometimes those times are the most profound. I site your very post as proof.

Yeah. The OP's story strikes me as a good session overall, even if errors were made. The remaining PCs swear an oath to continue to quest of their fallen friend? That's great stuff.

TBH, I don't think you should beat yourself up too much about how you played the NPC; it would have made sense to go after the bleeding orc to save the cleric, but it made just as much sense to go after the other orc since he's still a threat - after all, the bleeder was soon to be out of the combat, right?

Also, look at this another way: because you rolled openly on this one, you've convinced your players that you're the sort of guy who lets the dice fall where they may. This means you'll have a little more leeway to fudge the next time you feel that you need to.