Death's Role
Now that you've established death's role in your game. You can begin to employ it as a mechanic. After all, you have hit points in most games, or a death spiral, or something of the sort. What most GM's should do is explain what dying entails.
For example, in the Acquisitions Incorporated games as run by Chris Perkins, death is escapable. Spoiler warning: After Wil Wheaton's character Aeofel dies, the rest of Acquisitions Inc. were able to go to another plane to save his soul, and pull him back from the afterlife. In Critical Role, spells that resurrect the dead can fail, making the person to be resurrected lose any chance to be resurrected from then on. In games like Cypher system, or Star Wars RPG, dead is just that. Dead. Though, those games tend to have a greater threshold for death. That is, it takes more work to kill a character, unless the circumstance is entirely unsurvivable. "How does it take more work?" you might ask. Systems like that (unless death is all part of the fun like in Dungeon Crawl Classics) tend to use different action economies. My Star Wars RPG character, Dash, has only 14 hit points. Thanks to his training a Makashi Duelist (think Count Dooku) when someone hits him in melee, he can parry it to reduce the damage significantly. This is whenever he is attacked, mind you. However, if he uses this ability, he does take an amount of strain that represents his exhaustion. In addition to his armor which reduces damage further, Dash has a pretty good chance of survival despite having a whopping 14 hit points.
With this example we're given a fun equation:
Chance of (R)esurrection over (M)ortality (number of hit points) times m(I)tigation of damage is equal to (E)ase of death. Now this isn't a concrete equation, its a representation. You math majors, put away your calculators. The chance for resurrection and the closeness to death (hit points) are related at first. Take D&D for instance. By level 10 most people are sporting over 100 hit points. That is a barrage of pokes from several dozen goblins. In real life it could take one. Lethality in real life is more of a binary scale. Of course, repeated harm "stacks" as we nerds would say about anything. However, generally something kills you, or it doesn't. You can be grievously wounded, but you're dealing with homeostasis. The human body, (or living things rather) tries to right itself. They're brilliant systems. If someone was stabbed to death, generally its organ failure and moreso blood loss that is their undoing. The wounds were simply a vehicle for irreversible tip in the balance of homeostasis. Hit points can't reflect homeostasis well. Though they do reflect fragility. The hardest your barbarian can hit someone in a single hit with a normal greatsword in D&D 5th edition is 23 damage assuming Strength is a 24 and you are raging. 23 damage. The most resilient 2nd level rogue (Con of +5, 2d8 HD) possible can survive that (26 hp). If someone was more than twice as strong as the average individual, stronger than a hill giant, most normal people would be dead several times over from such a hit. Games like Dungeon Crawl Classics and Dungeon World relish this mortality.
For example, in the Acquisitions Incorporated games as run by Chris Perkins, death is escapable. Spoiler warning: After Wil Wheaton's character Aeofel dies, the rest of Acquisitions Inc. were able to go to another plane to save his soul, and pull him back from the afterlife. In Critical Role, spells that resurrect the dead can fail, making the person to be resurrected lose any chance to be resurrected from then on. In games like Cypher system, or Star Wars RPG, dead is just that. Dead. Though, those games tend to have a greater threshold for death. That is, it takes more work to kill a character, unless the circumstance is entirely unsurvivable. "How does it take more work?" you might ask. Systems like that (unless death is all part of the fun like in Dungeon Crawl Classics) tend to use different action economies. My Star Wars RPG character, Dash, has only 14 hit points. Thanks to his training a Makashi Duelist (think Count Dooku) when someone hits him in melee, he can parry it to reduce the damage significantly. This is whenever he is attacked, mind you. However, if he uses this ability, he does take an amount of strain that represents his exhaustion. In addition to his armor which reduces damage further, Dash has a pretty good chance of survival despite having a whopping 14 hit points.
With this example we're given a fun equation:
Chance of (R)esurrection over (M)ortality (number of hit points) times m(I)tigation of damage is equal to (E)ase of death. Now this isn't a concrete equation, its a representation. You math majors, put away your calculators. The chance for resurrection and the closeness to death (hit points) are related at first. Take D&D for instance. By level 10 most people are sporting over 100 hit points. That is a barrage of pokes from several dozen goblins. In real life it could take one. Lethality in real life is more of a binary scale. Of course, repeated harm "stacks" as we nerds would say about anything. However, generally something kills you, or it doesn't. You can be grievously wounded, but you're dealing with homeostasis. The human body, (or living things rather) tries to right itself. They're brilliant systems. If someone was stabbed to death, generally its organ failure and moreso blood loss that is their undoing. The wounds were simply a vehicle for irreversible tip in the balance of homeostasis. Hit points can't reflect homeostasis well. Though they do reflect fragility. The hardest your barbarian can hit someone in a single hit with a normal greatsword in D&D 5th edition is 23 damage assuming Strength is a 24 and you are raging. 23 damage. The most resilient 2nd level rogue (Con of +5, 2d8 HD) possible can survive that (26 hp). If someone was more than twice as strong as the average individual, stronger than a hill giant, most normal people would be dead several times over from such a hit. Games like Dungeon Crawl Classics and Dungeon World relish this mortality.
Death Comes
So in these power heavy games how do we make death real?Well if you have decided that you want death to be semi-permanent, proceed with caution. If death is permanent or semi-permanent, that's fine but be prepared for some comments from people who like clerics. Your necromancers, however, will be happy if they like more corpses lying about because undead will be even more taboo and spooky.
However, if resurrection is relatively more easy, don't be afraid to throw death and injury at your players more readily. If it can be healed (with work) why not? One of the coolest things I did to a character was his arm got cut off, but because he was an artificer, and he made himself a really cool magical prosthetic arm.
To utilize injury and death I have a few recommendations:
The Dungeon Master's Guide has some pretty great rules for massive damage found on page 273. These rules allow for creatures to be killed more easily if they take damage equal to more than half their hit points, but other results can happen such as being knocked unconscious, stunned, or an equivalent of dazed. This is one more reason I use exploding damage dice. Massive damage is easier to inflict.
The page before it has a list of potential injuries that a character might sustain, however the suggested triggers for this are on a critical hit, dropping to 0 hit points, or failing a death saving throw by 5 or more. The second one is fine, however, every time someone takes a critical hit, they would have a chance to lose a limb, or an eye, or some such injury. I would stipulate that they might have to make a Constitution save with a DC equal to half the damage they took before rolling on a table after every critical hit, or else your characters will look like the squad of bad guys from Logan. Everyone and their mother would have a prosthetic.
Coup de Grace: Coup de grace was an action in 3.5 that you could take against a "helpless" creature. You automatically hit the creature and it was a critical hit. The creature had to roll a Fortitude save equal to 10 + the damage dealt or die.
To fit this into 5e, as most of our game hacking goes, you could apply similar to an incapacitated creature. (Maybe you'd have to still make the attack roll against a restrained creature). The saving throw DC for a Constitution save is 15 (like Massive Damage). If the creature fails it is automatically dead (or dying if you want a little cushioning between your players and the Reaper)
For killing creatures by surprise, this rule could also be used. A lot of players tend to be unhappy that you can't just take someone by surprise in D&D and almost definitely kill them unless "your numbers are higher than their numbers." You could also use the same rule to knock creatures out rather than killing them.
Reason: Maybe something that shouldn't be survivable happens, like falling into lava, being launched into space, being thrown infinitely because of the a Setting Sun practitioner. (Seriously, 3.5?) As a GM it is totally fine to say something kills someone if it is impossible to survive. Especially if choices have lead to it. Not obnoxious arbitrary rolls (Never make death the result of a natural 1 on a check, I will tear apart "nat 1's" someday soon), but the result of choices. Death is a rational result for a series of choices. Did the dwarf choose to jump into the lava? If yes, than that is a dumb choice unless he is immune to fire damage.
Ultimately, death is reasonable. As a GM, you control death. Do you want a fight to be particularly lethal? Does death sound like a reasonable result for an attack and ultimately speed up your process, thus saving you from a 10 minute encounter with Steve the guard who is the first of many guards? GMs call the shots but what is most important is consistency.
Coming this week and next:
Redefining classes
More Magic Items
A Monk that knows how to throw down
No comments:
Post a Comment