Player Character Deaths

[kcdusk]

How have you been handling PC deaths in your games?

1. if a PC dies in your game, no matter how new or valued they are to you, are they dead dead? Or do you give them some chance for them to return?

2. If you are playing T2K solo and a PC dies, have you ever re-done rolls to give a second chance? Or made that game action instead become "referee in training trying new stuff" to keep a PC alive?

[Homer]

We’ve always done dead is dead. Encourages prudent actions. Referee usually avoided obvious party kills like an entire six member PC group in a 113 taking a catastrophic kill by adulterating damage. But, small arms, etc was played straight.

We played a Merc campaign where the PCs were key expat members of a reinforced ranger infantry platoon (PL, PSG, FO, MEDIC, SLs) with host nations NPCs rounding the unit out. We played recon/raid/ambush type missions using the last battle rules and leaning heavily on the 2ed air/naval module for methods of infil (Referee started using more and more helo infil after the first couple lengthy static line jump resolutions!). PCs ended up doing more controlling and directing than they did fighting, which kept PC casualties reasonable, although entire fireteams did become casualties on occasion. On at least two occasions, PCs were killed either by repeated poor tactical sense (FO went stationary on the only tall building and caught a tank round) or just bad luck (entire squad with SL lost when infil helicopter shot down and fireballed). In both cases, players were allowed to roll up replacement characters as “new hires”.

[Raellus]

As a ref, I was pretty merciful. Most of my players put a lot of thought and effort into creating and playing their PCs, and I felt considerable guilt at just the thought of killing any of their characters off.

That said, without at least a chance of perma-death, a game's stakes are lowered and a lot of suspense is lost. So, my unofficial policy basically became, "three strikes and you're out". The first two potentially fatal rolls were either downgraded or hand-waved away. However, in a bit of a Catch 22, I felt a guilty fudging rolls.

In the future, I think I will use a house rule like D&D 5e's Inspiration mechanic, or Karma points or something like that that a player could use to negate a PC-killing roll. Someone created a "Bravo Zulu" optional rule for 4e that essentially works like that. I have the one-page PDF of it and, IIRC, it was a fan-made, free-to-share type deal, but I'm not 100% sure on that so I don't feel comfortable posting it here.

In my solo 4e campaign, I decided not to fudge rolls at all. It really did heighten the anxiety and suspense of combat scenes. It also made it immensely satisfying when my party medic successfully treated a critical mortal wound preventing another PC from dying.

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[Desert Mariner]

Someone created a "Bravo Zulu" optional rule for 4e that essentially works like that. I have the one-page PDF of it and, IIRC, it was a fan-made, free-to-share type deal, but I'm not 100% sure on that so I don't feel comfortable posting it here.


It's been posted before:
https://forum.juhlin.com/showpost.php?p=90037&postcount=54