DM vs Player

[Wippit Guud]

Anyone have a DM just outright kill your character with no real explanation?

I suffered that fate with a LN half-orc cleric of Hextor. Night encounter, so only 2 of 7 people awake, and he wasn't one of them. No armor, no nothing, fast asleep. Dead in one coup-de-gras. And then the assassin ran away.

He claims he rolled randomly to see who would get hit. I claim he was being vindictive in wanting to just kill a character for no reason.

 

[Bagpuss]

Bad DM'ing in my opinion, did he even give you a listen roll or something like that to wake up? Or what about the PC's on watch they should have had some rolls. But IMHO unless your party was daft enough to not set any watches when they knew there were assassins after them should the DM kill a character in their sleep.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

That seems overly harsh for a random encounter.

Does the DM do this sort of thing very often?

Did it pan into an epic plot device... has anything cool happened with your dead character - back as a ghost, interesting afterlife, etc.

Were you or your character disrupting the game... I guess a cleric of Hextor could be problematic, depending on what you were up to? Had he talked about it before?

 

[Wippit Guud]

I don't recall the awake characters making rolls.

Yes, that particular DM does that very often.

No, no plot device, he just died. And no one in the part tried to raise him.

Character wasn't disrupting the game, at least anymore than a cleric of Hextor would disrupt a game. The two rogues setting up a thieve's guild and not have the paladin find out was way more disruptive.

 

[Bagpuss]

I don't recall the awake characters making rolls.

Yes, that particular DM does that very often.

No, no plot device, he just died.

Perhaps, its time to tell the DM to stop being a dick or just leave this game, since you seem to have another game available.

The guy doesn't seem to be running a fun game.

 

[Joachim Pieper]

Of course, if the PCs want to sneak into someone's room and stab them in their sleep, you would expect him to apply the rules eactly as he did. I'm not saying I condone the blatant slaying of PCs for no reason, but I do find it a fine line to tread as a DM. Why should the characters have special protection simply becasue they are PCs? I sometimes feel as a player that I've survived something I shouldn't have, and if it happens often, it gets tiresome...


Cheers.

 

[Bagpuss]

Of course, if the PCs want to sneak into someone's room and stab them in their sleep, you would expect him to apply the rules eactly as he did.

So if a player wanted to sneak into a camp and kill someone you would let them do it with no opposed skill checks?

 

[Joachim Pieper]

Of course not, but with a decent move silently you wouldn't expect to be thwarted as a player. It would feel like a deus ex - "He wakes up just as you are poised to strike, roll initiative."

All I'm saying is that I find it a hard one to run as a DM. For a start, you have to imagine that you don't know where the PCs are, when clearly you do. There are other factors, but in general I feel a bit guilty when a high-level assassin does his job on the party, because they inevitably say "no fair, I was sleeping." That, of course, is precisely the idea.

 

[Numion]

I don't know .. I once had an assassin CdG half of the group before anyone woke up. I gave them rolls each round though, and IIRC it had been establishied that the enemy has assassins in his service. It was obvious that they were sleeping with only one guard in a dangerous territory.

The lone guard was taken out first, and then it was CdG time. Maybe not great gamemastering, but seemed like something an assassin would do. And they seemed to botch all rolls I gave them.

 

[Wippit Guud]

The game is actually 2 years gone, but the Player vs Player thread reminded me of this. Currently that DM is a player in the game I'm in as well, and he starting to reform his powergaming ways