i mean, there's a reason Natural Spell was nerfed to hell after 3.5E
Printable View
From a duel to the death to sleeping together
still got it
Ack! Why do I have to sleep with you for it?! Can’t you just hex me from across the campsite?
That's a warlock spell, so no
Oh. Well, uh… never mind then, I guess that’s not happening. Drat. And here I thought I still might have a chance of getting in.
I will admit that never getting picked gets kind of discouraging though. More depressing actually. I feel extremely…unwanted, I guess, considering that I’ve been picked to join three RPs, two of which were basically dead on arrival over the course of three years while seeing the same names getting picked over and over.
Well, it's not my place to tell you all things considered, but I think you shouldn't get discouraged, sometimes you win while other times you lose, and for what its worth mAc did comment that your sheet was pretty great
But well picking 10 from 30 people tends to make people disappointed
- - - Updated - - -
Also I'll probably die in like, the first encounter, so theres still hope!
You’ll still have five lives left, though, right? Nothing to worry about yet.
That's not guaranteed if my understanding is correct
I guess we’ll find out.
Good luck out there.
I've been playing with this group for more than a year now and we just had our first player death. Well, actually two in the same battle. One burned instantly in the flames of a great primordial. The other met a similar fate, but actually died because the others were unable to reach him in time.
oof
How did that happen?
We had two deaths in our last session too.
The players, working with a Dwarven Kingdom, were infiltrating a Fire Giant stronghold. Their intention was to slay the ruler of these Fire Giants and stop him from finishing his ancient dragon-slaying colossus. While the Dwarven army distracted the forces outside, the players finally managed to reach this Fire Giant ruler. The deaths happened in this encounter.
Admittedly I juiced up the fight quite a bit compared the book by adding legendary actions/resistance, as well as having the half-finished colossus get involved in the fight. The Fire Giant ruler is basically just a regular Fire Giant statblock RAW so I wanted to make it more interesting, halfway through the fight he basically took on the power of a great fire primordial (which the players failed to stop him from obtaining many months ago) and became a much bigger threat.
The players took it well though, it's not like anyone got mad or anything. Hell, one player basically walked into death intentionally since he thought that's what his character would do. It seems like they enjoyed it, I actually thought it was one of my best sessions. Also ended up being my longest.
I only killed a player for the first time with my recent campaign with my roommates. Of the three - a Paladin, Warlock and Ranger - the Warlock was knocked down a cliff and lost consciousness, followed by the Paladin being taken to 0. The ranger, being an Aarakocra, flew out of melee range of the enemies, including a wolf which obviously had no ranged attacks. So the wolf attacked the Paladin, delivering two failed death saves. The enemies persuaded the Ranger to surrender, but he refused, attempting to attack. So on the Paladin's turn they rolled a failed death save and died. Then the ranger surrendered and was taken captive with the Warlock.
The next session went much better, the Paladin rolled up a new character (also a Paladin, lol) and they were able to escape captivity, defeat their captors, and recover the dead Paladin's body.
In a previous campaign, I'd nearly killed a character in a similar way - it was my former PC from before I took over as DM, but he stayed as an NPC/DMPC in the group to shore up the party's weaknesses (Wizard, Sorceror and Rogue - my Barbarian was a valuable tank and damage dealer). In a skirmish, they were being overwhelmed, and 'my' Barbarian went down. They proceeded to hide themselves behind pillars, leaving the Barbarian unconscious out in the open. So, the two remaining enemies immediately attacked the downed Barb and the group was shocked. In this instance, however, they responded quickly enough to heal the Barb and attacked the enemies, bringing them down.
I am not sure why my players have assumed that unconscious PCs would be safe to the point of downright stupidity (no, an NPC won't just choose to do nothing with their turn if the only enemy nearby is unconscious) but it's always a good wake-up call.
Hm, I can see the enemies in that last situation using their actions to try and see where the players were hidden. Maybe your players thought something along those lines?
It was obvious where they were hidden - it was just somewhere where the enemies couldn't easily reach (they were up on ledge, using their bows to attack). The party ducked behind cover, thinking it would force the enemies to give up their superior position. Would have been a good strategy if they didn't just leave an easy target out in the open.
Hm, I see, I see.
That's not really a given. Most enemies WILL ignore an unconscious enemy in favour of a conscious threat. Moreover, depending on the enemy and the circumstances prisoners can be much more valuable than corpses. In the cases you described though, yeah. A wild animal is likely to indulge itself when in frenzy if its handlers don't restrain it, and using the downed enemy a a hostage to lure the others out of hiding makes perfect sense.
In general though, going for the unconscious guy as a DM is kind of a "dick move". You do it if it wouldn't make sense not to,such as in the situations you described, but having an NPC go "oh so I can't immediately hit the enemy, guess I'll just take my time to stab this guy who is already down and no threat to me whatsoever" is dangerously close to metagaming. Remember, NPC's don't have the concept of "wasted turns". If they're not in range to attack, they will move in range to attack, if they still can't reach then they'll double move. They don't care about action economy, after all. Save that kind of combat savvy for named enemies and the like.
I don't agree. The players fine tuning their turns represents in-world combat experience and a lot of enemies would have that or the instinct to do so. That and in a world where magical healing is prevalent, it would be common knowledge that a downed enemy can still be a threat. The players certainly waste no time in finishing off downed enemies almost every time when the shoe is on the other foot, so it shouldn't seem out of place that enemies do it too.
None of that is news to me, but it really doesn't apply to this situation.
It's not metagaming to make effective use of a NPCs actions, and I'm also not adverse to having them waste actions/take obviously poor actions if it's appropriate. But I don't see it being appropriate in either situation:
*In the first scenario, all players were accounted for. Two were unconscious, and one was deliberately flying out of range of the melee enemies and refusing to surrender. It doesn't make much sense for a wolf to be fighting an enemy and just stop attacking it because it's unconcious.
*In the second scenario, the archers would have had to give up an advantageous position to pursue the party who was out of sight behind cover. These were Yuan-ti, smart enough to know that's a bad idea. Attacking an unconscious ally is a good way to attempt to flush them out of hiding.
Frankly, if anything here is metagaming, it's the players deliberately leaving characters downed or in vulnerable positions because they think they'll be fine and don't want to waste their actions stabilizing an ally, which is at times completely at odds with their character's RP. I don't go straight after downed players, but having the possibility still be there prevents players from making weird mechanical decisions that break character.