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What do you, as a GM, do when your PCs are too dumb to live? I recently threw my players a lifeline that by all narrative rights they "shouldn't" have to avoid a TPK by default, but I felt a bit dirty about it.
>Going on expedition, take along 2 NPCs with them, one because he in character knows a lot about the ruins they're heading to, and the second one because they think she's a traitor and want to keep an eye on her.
>Adventuring along.
>Come across a crevasse, too wide to jump, and homebrew system doesn't have the sort of mobility magic to fly or levitate or otherwise cross.
>They manage to fashion a makeshift rope bridge with grappling hooks thrown across and spiking the ends down on their side.
>Not easy to cross, but doable.
>Allow the borderline traitorous NPC character, that I want to re-iterate they were pretty sure was a traitor, to go last.
>She tosses off a level 2 flame spell on the rope bridge when everyone's clambering across and then runs off.
I just. Wut? If she's too dangerous to let out of your sight, why do you act all buddy buddy like that?
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>>50727172
Sometimes players (not PCs) get distracted and need reminders.
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>>50727172
If they're too dumb to live, don't let them live.
Death is very instructive to future generations.
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>>50727200
At least in my experience, it hasn't been.
Death in RPGs does little to deter stupid behavior, because the players are pretty confident that they can just roll up new characters whenever something happens to the last one.
In fact, the groups I tend to go with a lighter touch on tend to form more attachment to the characters going hardcore and punishing all mistakes with "realistic" consequences tends to have them thinking of their characters as just statblocks.
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This physically hurt me. The sheer stupidity... And of course they all went together over that thing at the same time. How did you solve it, OP?
I would have let them plummet and die. Full fucking TPK, lessons learned all around. Christ.
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I used to use DMPCs for this, but if you're doing dee en dee or any similar system like me, I like to use sentient magic items as mouthpeices when I deem it's necessary. The more chiding and sarcastic the better. I can't stand to kill off my current party just because I fucking like them too much.I had no problems letting them kill off the new CE ork that decided to murder one the PCs that's been in since the beginning for the lulz. I basically tipped them off OOC.
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>>50727267
>How did you solve it, OP?
There's a small community of "sages" (It's complicated and plot related, they're essentially incarnations of a very split mind of a guy who had a lot of magical shit going down at once) living under the ruins.
They were "supposed" to access it by a tunnel dug into one of the rooms in the complex, but I just decided that they landed their, cushioned by some magic these guys have and aren't all dead, and will lean on them a lot more than I originally intended to as repayment for saving their lives.
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>>50727294
There, not their*
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>>50727240
Keep killing them. They'll get the message.
Eventually.
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