Are all Paizo games so lethal?

[bwatford]

24 minutes ago, Malkavian Grin said:

Secondly, yes I sometimes fudge damage rolls against PCs because I am afraid to kill player characters. I'm the type that likes to draw a player into the story by bringing some of their background elements into the ongoing game. Gives them a feeling of being connected. But what happens when that person dies?

Most of the time death becomes a moot point after the first few levels as spells are gained to overcome it and hit points pull out of the one shot, lucky crit, fireball me, range.

[iantruesilver]

True. The effects of death do become a bit less permanent after the initial levels, I agree. Though that being said, I still stand in the camp of "PC death shouldn't be necessarily a GM goal", more that it should simply be treated as a "oh that happened, that sucks, now what" plot device.

[Kistler]

I guess I think of it like "they really have to earn it". So if they're acting reckless and not respecting the obvious danger, rushing in, splitting the party etc, i wouldn't hold back.

If there's any chance i misinterpreted something or any kind of ambiguity I'd err on the side of not killing them as much as possible.

And then there are just then normal combat things, like spells with the Death trait or desperate battles against hard enemies who roll well. Sometimes you just let the dice fall as they will. I'm not going to fudge dice, but they better use those resources like hero points.

Letting your players know the game can be deadly and encouraging them to be prepared is a good idea. A wand of healing in a critical moment can save the day.

[athedia]

Most PC deaths I have seen in Pathfinder are very much caused by players overestimating themselves, not necessarily from combat. This includes dying to fall damage because they decided to do a risky jump mid-air or trying to solo a big fight instead of informing the team. It is surprisingly hard to kill more experienced players. Most notable near death in one of my games has been when the one variant multi-class character with the Lich curse had not informed the party and was already knocked out when the cleric started healing. That ended up with everyone learning how slow natural healing was.

Also to note that I try to play my enemies smart, a knocked out character isn't fighting them so they rarely coup de grâce. Plus even if the entire party is wiped they might be brought back somewhere for questioning, robbed and left for dead, or just left for dead.

I don't like fudging my rolls, I go by the phrase "the dice tell a story" even if isn't one I anticipated. But I also am not above sometimes making suboptimal choices for the enemies as a GM, it isn't a turn based tactics game between me and the players.

[Roughtrade]

 

4 hours ago, Kistler said:

if they're acting reckless

One problem with PC death is that Players almost never run away. Watch almost any action movie. At the beginning, the main characters are often at a disadvantage. Out numbered, caught by surprise or whatever. Sometimes it is part of the story to run away, but PCs are overconfident and -especially at the beginning of an adventure where they have all their hit points and no one has expended spells- think they can handle anything.

I was watching one of the Fast & Furious movies, don't ask me which. I can't tell them apart. My roommate had it on and I watched some of it while having lunch. Anyways, the gang was in some jungle getting a Macguffin out of a plane wreck. Only they could get it out because of biometric nanite magic or something. As soon as they had the widget, the bad guys show up in force and all the heroes start running away (okay, driving away) in different directions.

And this is where most written modules of any company or game system often fail. In the movie, the heroes had an objective. Get the widget away from the bad guys. Killing was secondary and only a means to keep the thing out of enemy hands. Most APs do not give PCs this sort of objective. Shadowrun, GURPS, Mutants and Masterminds. It doesn't really matter, the story arc/plot line of published adventures are almost always, get this thing and kill that guy. So, of course, the PC mindset is going to be Kill Everything that Moves.

Between plotlines that focus on killing enemies and the standard "If it lives, you don't get XP" attitude of most game systems, it isn't really any wonder why "Murder Hobo" is the most popular Player mode.

4 hours ago, iantruesilver said:

"oh that happened, that sucks, now what"

Capture. Imprisonment. Stripped of items and left for dead. Even when a Player is incredibly stupid, I don't let them die. I don't consider it cheating. I often consider it "I don't want to slow things done while Donny makes a new character".

On the Gripping Hand, if someone dies doing something super heroic and awesome, I will let it. The rest of the Players can try to recover the body, but if someone pulls off Horatius at the Bridge (or Executioner at Gjallerbru for those who prefer more modern references) then I do not deny them their seat at the tables in Valhalla.

Player Death should never be meaningless.

Your Mileage May Vary.

Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.

[Kistler]

4 minutes ago, Roughtrade said:

Player Death should never be meaningless.

100%

[Roughtrade]

The Amber Diceless RPG has some great advice for Players and Game Masters. Eric Wujick wrote it in a rambling sort of style, he really needed better editors.

Anyways

One of the things ADRPG stresses is asking yourself what is the purpose of your combat. In the old gaming group I had back east, one of our maxims was "If you are at a point where your only objective is to kill someone, then you already lost."

Why am I fighting this guard? Does he have something I want? Do I just want to delay him so someone else can get away? Do I need to silence him so he doesn't shout for help? Or do I just need to get past him somehow? Because if all I need to do is distract him or get past him, then I can bring out some strong whiskey and try to get him soused. I can try to interest him in a game of three card monty. I have multiple choices.

If more games had objectives that were something other than "Murder that guy" then Players might make less lethal choices.

[athedia]

34 minutes ago, Roughtrade said:

Player Death should never be meaningless..

That can depend on the system. For example I do also play and run Shadowrun and part of the deal there is sometimes runners just get unlucky. They get shot, they get trapped on corporate grounds, they get their brain fried trying to hack a Meta-link. But part of the setting is that in the grand scheme those deaths don't matter. The other characters might mourn but the Johnson will still pay out, the corporations will continue and there will be another fool ready to risk their life for nuyen.

 

Wasn't addressing that earlier since this thread is focused on Pathfinder, but yeah sometimes a meaningless death fits with the tone of the world.

[Roughtrade]

18 minutes ago, athedia said:

but yeah sometimes a meaningless death fits

Going to agree to disagree.

SR ... Life is cheap. Death is commonplace.

But Players are the heroes of the story and should never die needlessly.

 

And to tell the truth. If you really want to hurt players, kill their friends. That's what movies do.

[athedia]

7 minutes ago, Roughtrade said:

Going to agree to disagree.

SR ... Life is cheap. Death is commonplace.

But Players are the heroes of the story and should never die needlessly.

 

And to tell the truth. If you really want to hurt players, kill their friends. That's what movies do.

Lets first not kill players, kill characters :P

 

Also maybe quote my full line there where I am saying if it fits the tone of the world.

[Roughtrade]

1 hour ago, athedia said:

Also maybe quote my full line there where I am saying if it fits the tone of the world.

I quoted the part needed.

It was one line above if anyone besides yourself got somehow confused.

It never fits the tone of the world to have a PC killed by random dice.

As I said.

1 hour ago, Roughtrade said:

Players are the heroes of the story and should never die needlessly.

If you disagree, that's fine. But being snarky won't change my mind about it.

[Malkavian Grin]

15 hours ago, bwatford said:

Most of the time death becomes a moot point after the first few levels as spells are gained to overcome it and hit points pull out of the one shot, lucky crit, fireball me, range.

This only applies if you are playing a system like d&d, which i do not. Most other rpgs aren't set up in the same way with different action economy and available character options.

What you're describing is the superhero-fantasy quality of modern d&d which i abhor for it's poor ability to tell more than one kind of story.

(I say this semi ironically as i am currently elbow deep in running a star wars saga edition campaign...)

Most of the stuff i play nowadays keeps death a very real consequence. Lots of them don't have levels.

[athedia]

17 minutes ago, Roughtrade said:

I quoted the part needed.

It was one line above if anyone besides yourself got somehow confused.

In my opinion, what you left out of the quote changed the meaning of the line. I was not confused, I simply do not like my opinions being misrepresented.
 

17 minutes ago, Roughtrade said:

It never fits the tone of the world to have a PC killed by random dice.

As I said.

1 hour ago, Roughtrade said:

But Players are the heroes of the story and should never die needlessly.

I do fundamentally disagree here. To use Shadowrun as an example, your character is not a hero in any way shape or form. They may be the protagonist but they are a mercenary for hire. They may take actions to try to make up for what they do but it's a cyberpunk setting. No one gets out the other side clean, if they make it out at all. Now they are a protagonist but that doesn't offer protection.

Now this thread is specifically about Paizo games. But I also think characters dying is still fine for story, in fact one of my favorite moments in a game came when Reincarnate was used on one of my characters. Which is another point for games Pathfinder. Death is at the end of the day, relatively cheap. If you want to be brought back you usually can.

17 minutes ago, Roughtrade said:

If you disagree, that's fine. But being snarky won't change my mind about it.

Also I wasn't really being snarky about the players vs characters line. I was saying it jokingly but I do feel a little uncomfortable equating the two. It is really important for me to remember that even if our characters are feuding or dislike each other the other player and I are having fun together.

[farothel]

In the games I GMed I had this rule: if the players did stupid stuff, I wasn't going to protect them (for instance, if in shadowrun you do a full frontal assault on a military base while you know there's multiple machine gun posts there, you die). But if they did their very best, came up with good tactics, I'm not going to let one or a few bad rolls kill the party. Those will cost them resources (whatever they might be in the system), will give setbacks and whatnot, but it won't kill them.

 

As to pathfinder (both 1E and 2E), I don't think it's a very lethal system, except on the lowest levels. There one crit can easily kill a character, but as soon as you're above a certain level (5-6 I think, might vary from party to party) it often becomes quite survivable as long as you do a few things.

-employ tactics. Flanking, using vulnerabilities (we've had alchemists drop enemies with splash damage due to weaknesses to certain types of damage, with the rest just protecting said alchemist from retaliation), using terrain and yes, withdrawing if needed.

-know what your party can handle and what not. If a party doesn't have an arcane spell caster, don't throw something against them that can only be damaged by arcane spells. This is an extreme example, but encounters can be severe, but they should still be doable. And if not, make sure that the party knows up front that withdrawing is something they should do at some points (as in most APs, encounters are tailored to the level of the party, so if you're going to deviate from that as a GM, warn your players up front).

-if you play a system with healing abilities (like pathfinder), make sure that everybody has a potion or something, even if it's just to bring back the cleric so he can take over the heavy healing. In PF2, where the medicine skill is something very useful between encounters, make sure that more than 1 character has it. That way if one character drops, there are still options. The other characters might not be as good as the primary healer, but they should be good enough to at least have a decent chance to bring the main healer back. Having multiple characters trained in medicine (not more, even without any of the feats) should be enough to make sure that characters survive.

 

In our PF2 group, we've had encounters where people got dropped to 0 HP, but we always managed to get them back. And we played it online using Foundry, so there was no dice fudging (the GM also rolled open). As I said, there were some close calls due to bad dice rolls mostly (we have played together as a group for 15+ years, so we know each other and we always use good tactics), but I've never had a TPK there and as said, due to having more people with healing, we always managed to get people back up between encounters.

 

The only TPK I've ever had was in L5R, the last session. And there it was a good thing and a very good ending of the campaign with us managing to block the evil plot and heroically dying in the process, going to the Realm of Honoured Ancestors as reward. But in that system dying heroically for the Empire is considered good and character creation reflects it (it's easy). The system is brutally lethal, but you know that up front and both players and GM should be aware that character dead is possible and plan accordingly.

[gatorized]

If the PCs should never die, why do they have hit points?