Death is really boring.
There, I said it. Now, I’m sure you can agree with this when “death” means “PC death”. Nothing stops a story faster than the death of your PCs, so death as an outcome for players sucks. But I don’t want to talk about adventurer death. NPC death is boring too, and far more frequent. NPC death happens all the time with little fanfare or interest. It doesn’t have to be this way, though.
Page 261 of the Rules Compendium says:
When an adventurer reduces a monster or a DM-controlled character to 0 hit points, he or she can choose to knock the creature unconscious rather than kill it, Until it regains hit points, the creatures is unconcious but not dying.
So, any time you drop an NPC, A PC can choose to not have it die. Neat, but still a little boring.
Let’s extend this a touch. One of my GMing tricks involves letting a player choose how an NPC goes down. ”How does he die?” Is frequently heard at my tables. Players often come up with creative ways to dispatch a monster, and become invested as they grab the reigns. We are getting more interesting, but we are still not at “exciting” yet.
What I’m proposing is this: once per fight, let a player make a skill check as a free action when dropping an enemy. If the skill check (let’s default it as hard, but we can shape difficulty to adjust to the situation) is successful let’s give it a specific effect.
Some examples:
- The Horizon Spirit’s Rage includes a religion check when dropping a ghost to put it’s soul peacefully to rest. Dead = Banished.
- Fighting brigands, I can make a diplomacy test to recruit a brigand to my cause, or intimidate to send him of with a threatening message for his boss. Religion might let me convert him to my faith. Dropped = “Holy Conversion”.
- Drop the last enemy in a fight and use intimidate to kick off an interrogation skill challenge immediately. ”Who are you working for?”
- Kill a monster and use Heal to ferret out its weak spots and those monsters of the same type.
- Thievery can give you some random “loot”, for flavor or future story purposes (as decided by the nefarious GM).
- Diplomacy against a threatening but otherwise reasonable villain might turn it into an ally.
Essentially, we are re-skinning death. From extending that we can open our game up and increase immersion. You can use alternate death consequences to hide some of the seams. You don’t really have to even roll if you don’t want to. You could let a player try something instead of killing an NPC with any trained skill they had. Give each player a once per scene use of any trained skill when killing an NPC and see what they come up with.
Really, you don’t even a skill at times. You can tag certain enemies to do all sorts of different things when they drop. You can use enemy death to your advantage as a DM. One of the cultists when dropped flees with its dying breath to pull a lever activating another battlefield hazard. A solo when dropped curses his killer . Think of all the ways that death can serve your story.
What ways have you or could you use alternate effects for getting dropped in your stories?
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I like the “clerics laying spirits to rest” idea. But as far as converting, intimidating, or recruiting NPCs, I can’t imagine why you’d want to make that just a roll. That’s the sort thing roleplaying is all about, in my opinion at least. Also, PC death is actually what makes the game interesting to me (perhaps more as a player than as DM, I hate killing PCs). If everyone at the table agrees they don’t want PCs to die, and the DM actively tries to prevent it, where is the risk? Where is the accomplishment?
This is very interesting! I wonder if it could bog down combat though, but perhaps that’s solved by attaching a rider that only non-minions are options for this type of treatment.
As sexy as the rp component is, I worry that it would add a layer of complexity to large fights that detracts from what everyone else is doing- unless you enter some sort of “conversation-time” independent of the other rounds (and even then, that’s a solution I could see working in pbp but not so much tabletop).
Definitely going to try it out though.
Hi guys!
@mike I think from a DM’s perspective, PC death sucks for a variety of reasons. I’m not really advocating taking away player death though, I’m just trying to expand on NPC death to make it more interesting. I would never take PC death off thee table.
As for roleplaying, think of all the things that you already roleplay after rolling. Rolling dice doesn’t stop RP; it helps foster it. You will know the effect of a hit before you narrate it, and this system would work similarly. Roll, narrate and roleplay the result. This system is actually encouraging roleplaying as I’ve used it.
@egopoisoning at once per PC per fight, I’ve never been concerned with the length of time. Hopefully the PCs are making the game more interesting, which is all it’s about. I’m different than a lot of 4e DMs in that I don’t purposely try to speed up fights. I try to make combats and encounters as interesting and awesome as possible. My theory is if the fight is awesome, no one really cares about the time it takes. If it sucks, any amount of time is too long.
Tell me what you think when you try it!
I love love LOVE this idea. And I agree, actually roleplaying each death would bog down combat immensely. I rather see this is a reward system, rather than a role play opportunity. Much like you reward a player, by letting them describe how they enemy dies, you’re now adding a bit of complexity to the reward, without adding much time, or hindering everyone elses combat experience. In parcicular, I love the idea of a paladin “converting” an unbeliever. SO much cooler than just killing them and much more in character. Obviously these options would have to be contextual. You’re not going to convert a wolf to worship Bahamut. But on those occasions where it does make sense, I love the idea of reskinning death. This will help my campaign immediately, thank you so much!