"YOU'RE DEAD!"
Sooner or later, nearly all Player Characters are going to meet a grisly end. Or not.
Several factors dictate the
Mortality Rate of a D&D campaign:
- The DM's appetite for lamenting and weeping (AKA the Mercy/Cruelty Dichotomy)
- What edition of the game your campaign is using
- How unlucky the players are
- The rules governing character death
There are probably other minor factors, but the above four are critical. Like "That ogre just rolled a natural 20 on your face!" critical. While some might contend that the second factor and the fourth factor are so closely related that they might as well be the same thing --
I beg to differ. Read on.
SADISTIC ASSHOLES
Dungeon Masters come in all shapes and sizes, all ages, all sexes, all ranges of ability and experience, and each one varies in antipathy to the PC. This antipathy (or lack thereof) is most clearly visible when death is on the line.
The scene: Oglaf [11th Lvl Master Shepherd] and his trusty companion Zytrax the Calculating [9th Level Spellchucker] are in deep guano. After successfully defeating its Crystal Golem guardians, they have forced their way into the Cloud Fortress of the Golden Demiurge. The golems hit them hard and left them weakened, but the pair are relentless. They're desperate for a certain artifact that they believe will be the key to the liberation of the Zarthians from their oppressive Varkashian overlords. And the Demiurge has got it somewhere in his sky-fastness. Lo! While scouring an unassuming wall for secret doors, Zytrax inadvertently activates a trap. The room begins to fill with a noxious vapor that concentrates before the adventurers and assumes the shape of massive green skull. Rather than flee, the adventurers choose to stand their ground. Several rounds of combat ensue. It goes poorly for the players but rather well for the vaporous skull. Hit points are chip-chip-chipped away by the monster's damage dice. Then poor Oglaf is reduced to -4 HP while his companion desperately fights on...
What to do? Assuming that in Oglaf and Zytrax's campaign the rule is "ZERO HP = DEATH" the judicious DM would be obliged to declare the Master Shepherd dead as a doornail. That's just the way it goes right? That sheep-lover knew what he was getting into the moment he said "Hey, let's go storm the Demiurge's digs and find that awesome artifact." He gambled and he lost.
Antipathy = 0.
That is the purist approach to refereeing PC death, and it's the one that I've seen least often.
More often than not, the DM is a softie. He's painfully aware of just how dear old Oglaf is to the player who created him, who put all that time into him, who drew all those maps of his village and named every ram, ewe and lamb in his flock. Boo-hoo. Time to fudge some dice.
Antipathy = -20.
But sometimes you get those dudes who actually DELIGHT in seeing the PCs bite it, one by one. They go out of their way to create fatalistic scenarios like the one described above, because they want to rack up as many dead PCs as possible. Hunting season is on, and they're looking to put some shepherd heads on the walls of their dens. Death comes hard and fast in these sorts of campaigns, and only the cunning survive for any amount of time. Probably not long.
Antipathy = 5000.
This Mercy vs Cruelty thing is an important ingredient in the Flavor (with a capital "F") of a campaign. It's the difference between a gritty world where an imminent demise is lurking in every shadow...and a world where even the most powerful monsters roll over when the PCs make threatening gestures. It's been said before, and I'll paraphrase it again:
It's the looming threat of death that makes the game entertaining. Note that I didn't say "interesting" -- there are lots of things of interest to see/do/maim in a D&D campaign, but without the dreadful knowledge that your PC could bite it -- could actually cash in his chips -- then it's just an "interesting" game of wish-fulfillment and frolicking with imaginary creatures. In a word:
Lame.
THREETARDATION
"What do you mean my character's dead? I just spent two fucking hours filling out this seven-page record sheet."
And this is why new school rules will never successfully emulate old school feel. I can't blame that hypothetical player for being pissed off. It's not like he can just whip up a new PC. PCs stopped being whipped-up sometime around 1st Edition. More rules -- specifically rules that regulate player character abilities -- means that the character creation process is going to be longer. Like those
Swords & Wizardry guys say: "Rulings -- Not Rules". It's an admirable philosophy, especially in the instance of character death.
Don't get it twisted -- I like neat rules as much as the next guy. In fact, I play around with them myself. But the temptation to ADD RULES is in direct conflict with GAME FLOW. The ever-increasing complication of the official D&D rules is the only illustration of this principle that's really necessary. As the rulebook gets bigger --> character sheet gets bigger --> character creation time gets longer --> player gets more pissed off when his character bites it.
We could pick nits and gnats and deny the cold, hard realities of Rules Escalation I've described above. Or we could move on.
"SOMEBODY SAVE ME!"
Like Rod Stewart said:
Some guys have all the luck. I've known dudes that were literally incapable of rolling a bad set of character ability scores. Or even an average set. It's incredible to watch it happen, and it's grounds for some of the weirdo dice superstitions you sometimes hear about (or have the misfortune of seeing). And then there are the dudes (like me, occasionally) that can't roll nothin' but horrid numbers. My ability rolls fail (I can live with that), my hit dice rolls fail (sucky, but I can manage), and my attack rolls are in single digits (I'm doomed). Chance can be a real bitch.
I'm not sure what the point of this section was, but it gave me the opportunity to quote Rod Stewart for the first and last time ever.
DEATH'S DOOR
There are a bajillion variations on the rules covering character death. Some schools say ZERO = DEATH, while others contend that ZERO = SLEEPYTIME. "Good news: You're not dead, you're just totally unconscious and bleeding to death." This is a heavily house-ruled area, so I'm interested to hear what you guys think. What are your death rules? What does it take to actually kill a PC? Please comment and share your hard-earned wisdom.
