Should a DM ever kill a player? Should a DM ever wipe a party,

>>49814617
Generally killing players is frowned upon in most civilized societies.

Killing characters is fine if they did something stupid enough to get themselves killed.

>>49814617
Dont kill your players. Even if you mind wipe them afterwards.
Goddamn alphabet agency operatives.

>>49814632
You know what I meant

It depends on a lot of factors, the DM and player attitudes, the character being played, the choices that were made, the rolls that were made etc.

The simple answer is that if rule zero isn't violated and the players/DM value the tension of the threat of death more than any benefit to keeping the character alive you should kill them if the rolls lead to that.

It's all situational

Depends on the setting

Yeah. What's the point if there's not a real threat of death?

I think PC death can be good for the story in certain situations. If a character dies in combat and it makes a good narrative, sure.

If you're passive aggressively trying to kill a character off because you don't like them but refuse to talk to the player, then no.

>>49814748

In which setting is it acceptable to kill players...


...actually if the aztecs had had TTRPGs they'd have totally have had ritualised games where the players were killed off.

>>49814697
>>49814722
Here's a situation: party is fighting a Lich who has paralysing touch which causes a character to slump over almost in a death like pose. None of the party realises that the character isn't actually dead but just paralysed. Nobody passes the perception check. They bury the body and the character subsequently dies from starvation or dehydration of suffocation

Is that taking it too far? Have I become "that DM"?

>>49814617
You'd go to prison.

>>49814770
You're painfully unfunny

>>49814771
Wouldn't the player know and get checks to make our something

>>49814690
Oddly enough, all we have to go on is what you typed.

> THIS ISN'T ENGLISH CLASS
No, it's worse. We aren't grading you, just trying to communicate.

>>49814857
Not what the bestiary says. Says players have to pass a perception check of DC 20 or Heal 15 to notice the player isn't actually dead

So what do I do?

>>49814876
I mean the player that is playing the character

>>49814868
Could you be any more of a pedantic asshole? Not even samefagging but seriously you knew what he meant.

>>49814876
Let him die, have him rise from the grave as an undead hero/evil. Alternatively make him a ghost so he can yell at other players.

>>49814876
Another solution, give one of the characters a hunch that the player is actually not dead. Have them haul his body until they find a decent healer.

>>49814876

You could have a passing npc possibly save the character (perhaps they came to fight the lich and found he had already been destroyed) and try and tie him in to the next plot.

This should only be done if you feel like saving the character is worth it over the possibility that players might start feeling like there's no way to lose and that their actions don't matter. Ideally you already know what the your players would prefer, but if not you can try and ask them in a roundabout way.

Something like "Hey there's a way that your character isn't dead but I don't want to feel like I'm handholding you guys, what do you think?"

>>49814876
You could also point out that the rest of the party is hopefully unlikely to just leave their friend's corpse in a tunnel. During transport of the supposed corpse, they could get extra attempts to realize that they're not dead.

>>49814959
This. Have him come back as a bad guy seeking revenge. Makes an interesting plot twist.

>>49814617
I DM at a College club, we have 2 DMs so the house rule is, if you die you go join the other DMs group.

I am not going to lie, I have killed the autistic guy and hoisted him off on the other DM

>>49815428
Fucking lol ain't nothing wrong with that, wish I could do the same

Depends on the system and the group.

Some groups fully expect to go through a few sheets and in that case kill the smug fuckers.

Some say they're up for it but are not. These are dangerous people, recognize them and find a balance between challenge and ruining the fun of the game.

Some SYSTEMS have such involved character design that even if players are normally up for corpses a dead character means a checked out player.

Its an art, not a science.

>>49814876
That DC's retarded, but >>49815030 is a good point.

>>49814771
I'd have given them a, "Guys, are you sure you want to bury your friend in cursed ground favored by the lord of the undead? His bones might not rest easy...." hint at least.

If there's no chance of getting killed, I'm not interested in playing.
And go shove your "dramatic death" somewhere the sun don't shine.

>>49814617
Depends. If they aren't pussies that cry and bawww and nag on you to get back their character to life, yes.

If they are, you should find a proper group.

Do none of the DM's of the people in this thread roll in the open? If the dice decree that one of our group die, there isn't anything our DM can do about it.

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>>49814617
>>49814770

To lend my two cents:
I am slightly more than half-way through running the Great Pendragon Campaign. The game pretty explicitly states that the players are meant to just be heroic mortals, this combined with my own tendency to do nearly all rolls out in the open has led to quite a few deaths in the time I've run the game. In fact I think that nine player characters have died directly when in the hands of the players in the 50 years the game has been going on.

So it depends on the game and the setting. My players knew the game was going to be of a more "realistic" tone, and that whether through aging or battle they were going to die someday, so death is tragic, and it has both made people lament in sorrow and get incredibly pissed off at me. So in my case it is okay for me to kill my players, because death is an important part of the game. Although wording it like that makes it sound as though the DM is murdering the players on purpose. To be clear I have never fudged it to kill my players, they have always died from going against overwhelming odds, doing something stupid, bad luck, or pissing off something much more powerful than them. But I have always let the dice fall as they have, and sometimes my players accomplish heroic deed against all the odds and sometimes they die. Its just how the game goes.

It is fine for a DM to kill players, or even the whole party, if it makes sense within the context of the world and the actions the players have taken.

>>49815834
Eh? All the dramatic death does is giving you 1d6 seconds to act before you actually die.

>>49814617
Entirely dependent on the theme genre(?) of the campaign. If it's heroic bullshittery a death should only happen as a heroic sacrifice or as an overwhelming "this guy means business" fight. If it's silly nonsense, the death should make them laugh ala Monty Python and the bridge scene from Holy Grail. If it's grimdark edgy bullshittery then death should be as common as getting some kind of skin infection during the appropriate period.

Killing them and then giving them a quick sidequest to revive/resurrect/get them back from another plane/etc is a great idea IMO. I don't do this intentionally because there's always some annoyance just at the word death, even if it's not permanent. But everyone has fun and it's no problem when it isn't permanent. It just adds a new wrinkle to the story.

You don't even have to make this all up yourself. IIRC there are already several different rules ready to go to make this work.

>>49815960
well if the dice demand thier deaths sure, but as the DM you can call for more or less checks depending on how much of an asshole you feel like being

If the adventure is presented as a deadly one, and the system is one in which death is possible, death should generally be on the table.

I mean, yeah, if you kill your players in a situation where they're traveling from a safe place to a safe place along a safe route with no indication that preparation is needed or harm is possible, you're probably doing it wrong.

On the flip side, if you *don't* kill your players in Paranoia, you're also doing it wrong. There's a role that the system and situation play in this kind of thing.

In general, if the players have been told something is deadly, it should probably be deadly.

>>49814902

The meaning can be inferred easily because we can causal infer whether player or character is actually mean from the context. But we're on 4chan, so we're going to be pedantic and revel in the absurdity of unintended implication. And the annoyance expressed in the various (You)s that follow are entertaining to the trolls.

>>49820195
That last bit was assuming you're playing any D&D from AD&D1 to the present. YMMV with other games.

>>49820460
>we

Yes. Though you should make the possibility clear before you start, warn them about the system's lethality or the dangers of low levels and poor builds etc.

Plenty of systems you almost have to go out of your way to actually die and then there's fate point mechanics to cancel it out, so it's just polite to warn your players the safeties are off.

>>49815489
I like to do a one-chance system without telling them. When they die, trump it up and see their reaction to it. Then reveal the ruse - they weren't dead, just paralyzed. Or they had a magic item they were clutching. Or something.

>>49814771
They didn't check the pulse? How high does your perception need to be to go "Oh, let's check his pulse, maybe Dave is in a coma."

As to answer the original question, talk about it with your players. I kill an average of 1.13 PCs every year and I'm pretty okay with that and so are my players, with the exception of one. Funnily enough about half of these are from one player who takes this shit in stride and probably makes the toughest characters.

>>49814786
for you
I giggled

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>>49814771m betting you've already placed him in the ground, give the player an option, either he wakes up and can attempt to escape being buried alive, he is dug up by a few grave diggers/some secret society that he now owes or he am become death, seeking revenge on his allies and becoming the new revenant big bad until you get a better replacement

>>49814617
In my group, the goal is to have a good time by trying to see a character's story through. We've had characters die heroically, accomplishing their goals. We've had characters die in meaningless and unsatisfying was that only served to remind us of the terrible waste that is death, and how fate may ultimately find us irrelevant. We've had characters have parts of their stories carried on by others or discovered. We've had characters who have completed their reason for adventuring (or even given up on their reason for adventuring) and become NPCs without dying. We've also had characters hauled back to the mortal coil from death, both willingly and against their will.

The point for us is that, death can be an end to that character's life, but not necessarily their tale. We've actually had a game where a PC died, and the other characters felt obligated to continue his personal quest of self enlightenment (he was a monk), to the point where many of us ended up with alignment shifts and levels in classes we did not expect (the Ranger straight up started following monk vows)

It's not for everyone, but I find it interesting. Let them die.

If you never kill a PC, it can only get bad.

This was in a 3.5 game rather than PF, but the general theme is the same regardless. This one guy in my group, he's never gone below 1 HP. never been knocked unconscious or anything.

Several times, he has taken the hit that would generally kill other people, and by a miracle survived with 1 hp. However, each time it happened they get bolder, and bolder.

If you don't curb that at some point, it leads to recklessness, and DM fiat can only fudge so much stupidity without outright saying you win.

The question isn't whether you should or shouldn't, but how often and why.

>>49814617
In a serious game, only if its' deserved. Poor planning, not taking things seriously, etc. etc.

In a casual game death can be hilarious when its' arbitrary so generally just go with the dice. The players are also less likely to be attached and invested in characters in a casual game I find.

>>49814617
>ever kill a player?
Pretty sure that murder.

>>49824623
meme

>>49814786

I was actually more hoping for a derail on aztec ttrpging, are jaguar warriors paladins or more straight martial fighters? etc...

(the obvious queston like "what's the aztec version of dungeon?" is easy and fits into the aztecs being complete toltecaboos, plus there's jungle to fight through which is fairly "randomised dungeon" in quality and has more justification for random encounters.)

>>49814770
>In which setting is it acceptable to kill players...
Paranoia.

Even asking those questions shows that you're in the wrong mindset. You shouldn't set out to put PCs into a situation where death is certain, but PC death should definitely be a thing that happens. You might argue whether it should only happen when it's dramatically appropriate or the players fuck up or if the GM should roll in the open and let the dice fall as they may so even a random encounter may cause death if the players get really unlucky, but PC death absolutely should NOT be something that's out of question(unless you're playing something like Toons).

TPKs should obviously be rare, but if the dramatic fight against the BBEG at the climax of the campaign doesn't carry the risk of TPK, you're again doing it wrong. In general(does not apply to Paranoia and some other games), though, TPKs happen in two cases: Either it's a dramatic fight where, if the PCs fail, ending the campaign would be appropriate(like the aforementioned climax of the campaign), or someone fucked up badly. Either you fucked up as the GM, whether by underestimating the encounter, or by not giving the players enough hints that they should run away, or the players fucked up by doing something obviously stupid even after you asked "are you sure?".

>>49814617
Yes to both, if the characters did something stupid/risky that had as a realistic consequence, death.

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>>49824623

>>49814868
>not able to understand basic implication
A U T I S M
>>49814902
>falling for obvious bait
A U T I S M

>>49824623
Yay, a normal person.

Depends on the system, and the tone of the specific csmpaign.

I don't kill D&D adventurers much, but I eat only war parties like they were a bag of salt and vinegar chips.

>>49814756
If death is the only possible negative consequence you can think of, you're not very creative.