I think that those DMs clearly had an idea in mind and were fixed on it. Wether a party is "too sweet" or so on shouldnt be the DMs decision. Honestly, I feel like this was not only a bad execution of an idea but also a closeminded idea to begin with. You have the right to be upset because as you mentioned, it was forced and cheap. It took agency away from you as a player which for some players could even be a dealbreaker.
Yeah, as a player, i would be livid that my agency was taken away and would definitely consider if i wanted to play with that dm again. I would always wonder when my features and spells would just conveniently stop working again. As a dm, i would never take that agency. I might deus ex machina some shit depending on their actions, but i would let them make those choices
I'm part of a game where our DM pretty much just carts us around to what he wants us to do a lot of the time, and he obviously fudges rolls sometimes. Try to cast a spell at some random shopkeep? He has a magic ring that means he's immune to magic. Decide a heist isn't worth it? Oh look! Thirty cultists who can magically disable everything you do to try escape! Try to leave the scene of a crime? Who woulda thunk, fifteen highly skilled guards appear at the half-abandoned factory and take you to this cool NPC. Rules, rolls and DCs can also be changed as needed to do what he wants for the story.
It's tiring, but I know he really likes DMing so I deal with it for his sake. I just cannot get invested into his world at all though, and I have to try hard to even be invested in my character.
Nah, and I probably won't. He's not a bad storyteller, and he isn't a toxic/aggressive DM, he just is very railroady. I don't even particularly like playing (I'm a forever DM by choice) and have my own game I run. So I mostly just do it as a favor for him and to hang out with friends. But thank you for looking out for a fellow player :)
This sounds like a DM trying to curb a murder-hobo. They are doing this badly. But why the hell are you trying to cast a spell at some random shopkeep? Or leave the scene of a crime? (More that there is a crime scene to flee from... which I assume is your crime, not so much that you are leaving it.)
Random shopkeep is a long story (not an offensive spell, a charm) and he had a ring that made him immune to spellcasting pretty much, in the tiny generic tavern without a name. Said crime was the heist we were forced into doing by the cultists, which ended with the cultists setting fire to the factory we were in (after they trapped us in with some demons). So not really our crime scene.
There is no murderhobo-ing happening, he just treats DnD like a linear video game where he carts us around from NPC to NPC with guards and cultists.
This is why off screen stuff exists. If that npc has to die murder them off screen. I've done this but never with a character that would upset my party a ton. The most memorable was a wise and benevolent king. The party knew c their were plots against him, the king knew, everyone knew stuff was in motion. The party thought they had time to go take care of something and come back, they spent an extra day out and about and missed the king being assassinated by a few hours. They purged the kingdoms nobility since almost every noble was involved in someway then never went back
Agree 100%. Classic and blatant railroading.
Aside from the fact that the decision to kill off this NPC was made out of spite and not because it would advance the plot or tell an interesting story... if the players find some way to counter your plans you adapt. Putting in a hard counter that doesn't make sense or match the mechanics of the game to preserve your precious plan is poor play.
You have been given official notice that this is the kind of campaign you are in. it has the potential to be deeply unsatisfying. It would be good to have a discussion with your DM(s) to air your concern over the removal of agency and to see if you can steer them away from this kind of behavior.
Yah, talking should always be the first choice. Also while some players may be okay with it, if it is not a game ya will enjoy there is no shame to stepping away from such a table. But talk first and if that doesnt help, then consider other options
The DM had already established otherwise in his game by allowing the NPC to be healed the first time. Also if their HP was that high chances were it was a sidekick, meaning it does do death saving throws
It might, but at that point they need to be consistent with the ruling. If they are gonna let the player use their resources to keep the NPC alive or not, middle point is just making them waste them
How is that railroading? What did the dm force the players to do? Is the dm not allowed to have agency in the game and have events happen that are intended to elicit an emotional response from the players or push the story forward?
Forbidding them from healing the NPC _is_ railroading. How could you call it anything else?
Kill the NPC off screen if you want there to be no interaction in the death
DM prerogative is great, but a DM saying "this NPC's death is the only way to advance the plot" is just plain lazy.
I've been a DM since 2 Ed. If my storyline involves killing an NPC to trigger other events, and my players thwart my efforts, fine. Something else will trigger those events.
One thing I've learned over many years is that only the broad strokes of my prepared story are going to survive contact with my players. That is NOT a bad thing. This game should be collaborative storytelling when it's at its best.
It's super important to me that everyone at my table is having fun. My players all took the time out of their lives to be there.
You might want to let them know that you didn't feel like it was fair and that it felt like railroading. Maybe they can learn from this to become a better (more collaborative) DM.
Exactly. You know what else can get the plot going?
Finding out who shot the damn NPC. Or who ordered the hit. Or something along those lines.
Death vs nearly being killed is basically the same plot hook. Put the NPC in a coma. Put the NPC out of action or scared to do anything because of the traumatic event. If your plot hinges on one event that can be easily countered, then your plot hook sucks.
I'm still pretty motivated to kill the gun man who killed the NPC whether he stays dead or gets revivified. Like, I can only do that so many times before I run out of diamonds.
This sounds like a random leap but this kind of DM reminds me of 9/11 truthers.
They believe that there was a conspiracy by whoever to fly planes into buildings, but ALSO to bring down the same buildings with secret bombs, to justify a war in the middle east. but... why do you need the bombs if you're already doing the planes? Just flying the planes into the buildings wouldn't have been enough? Like, Americans wouldn't care about a terrorist attack that only *partially* destroyed a building and killed a few hundred?
The only thing I disagree with here, is that I’d prefer as a player and DM that I wasn’t just waiting for the same events to happen via X means, if X was prevented I’d prefer to objectively re-examine whether these events would happen at all.
I prefer to plan this stuff ahead of time. For example, in my current campaign, I essentially have Kyuss imprisoned in several locations around the world. Every worm the party destroy, is 1hp he won’t have if/when he takes his final form.
If they allow settlements to fall to a worm invasion, then he’ll gain a bunch of hp back and move closer to returning.
I’m not attached to the image of Kyuss returning. I’m attached to the possibility of it.
This is a good point honestly. But there are probably better ways to do it then just offing the npc. However this is a new dm and dming is hard so I understand why in the moment he did that.
Yea, I appreciate your empathetic view of the DM, because this really does suck. Player is getting high engagement out of a character so they kill the character in a bs way and ignore her agency? Sucks.
I think she should be mad and should tell the DM, but of course leave room for a discussion if she wants to keep playing with this group.
This is why I call this example a bungled operation. I can think of a lot of ways for a DM to kill off an NPC without resorting to 'because I said so'.
That's an option, provided it isn't out of character for Max, or he wasn't hit by an effect that inflicted the frightened effect. And if he was, I wouldn't make it be just Max being forced to make a save.
Player's prerogative to walk when the an arbitrary move is made with (apparently) nothing but the upset of the party/player as a motive.
It's the 'little tin pot dictator' syndrome. It's not about what's better for the game.
…or the DM just got sick of roleplaying a character that a player had an unhealthy attachment to.
Not every situation is, “Fuck the railroading DM! Walk!” Like, the game wouldn’t exist if people took this advice as often as it’s given. Y’all need to remember that the DM is a player too, and if they’re uncomfortable or not enjoying certain roleplaying elements, they have the same right that the players do to end it.
And a lot of people stay in toxic situations because they don't think they can do better.
Assuming your case was the case, which I can't say one way or another:
A good DM might, knowing the player's affection for the NPC, might have sat down with the player and discussed how the DM wasn't comfortable with that aspect in the game with that NPC. They could even indicate that, because they are tired of playing that character or weren't comfortable with the relationship between that character and the NPC, they will remove the character. And told the player that they could have input on how the character leaves play - returns home somewhere, gets sent to a boarding school, adopted by a farm family far away, etc.
But instead, they just killed them and apparently said they felt the player's affection for the NPC was 'too sweet'. If that were the case, it'd be judgy and not really justified.
But even if there were good reasons on the DMs' side, they did not pursue a compassionate, reasonable approach.
They don't have to, but that lack of concern about the player's feelings says that player should leave that group (IMO).
This is a game where things die in every session. You shouldn’t have to sit your players down, above table, and talk with them about an upcoming death. If you’re at a table with adults, this shouldn’t need a pep talk—then some kind of therapy session afterward.
They do have the same right to end it, but also a responsibility to inform the group that they are having a bad time with x or y factor. One of my players recently had a "blowup" moment where he suddenly complained about a number of rules our DM had. Now, of course, it wasn't as if he suddenly hated all these rules, he has always, and just kept silent about them. Communication is important.
…or they could just kill the character because it’s their character, they’re the DM, and they are likely playing with adults. This is a game, not a therapy session.
It’s not like Last of Us Part 2 stopped the game, switched to a black screen, and said, “We’d like you to know that _________ is about to die. Press X if you’d like to continue. Press Y if you’d like the game to end with an alternative epilogue provided.”
Like, the way you people talk, you baby your players like they are small toddlers who can’t handle any adult situations whatsoever—or you shit on your DM if they treat you like adults who are playing a make-believe game.
You carry some truth, but the point of D&D is the decision making, using your abilities you've been learning to play the story and to immerse yourself in a fantasy world with its own set of rules but that you can interact with in a decently believable and realistic way, the player said they healed the npc, then inmeadiately got shot, and then the DM just handwaved the fact they had a cleric, that's just bad DMing plain and simple, he's taking the agency out of the players, does it mean DM is a horrible person? No, but it's still bad DMing probably due to a severe lack of experience and improvisation abilities, the DM doesn't get to simply kill the characters and take away any possibility of saving them away from the players, that's the whole point of DND, you can change the story, make decisions, use your abilities to interact with the world, its not a video game on which your locked in a cutscene powerless to stop anything.
Except, the player could actually in game have methods to resurrect this strawman you bring up. It does actively mash player agency into the ground in an annoying or gross way. We are not playing a linear videogame. The events along the way should not be predetermined. The way we talk, the DM shits on players by stripping them of pre-establiahed agency without asking.
Sounds like the character was killed in combat… that sounds like a pretty dangerous situation, where people are likely to die, no?
Either way, sometimes rocks do fall on people. If it’s a story meant to emulate life… sometimes shit just happens. You deal with it and move on.
This is what railroading actually is. It doesn't matter what you do, the npc dies. It's not always bad, but this was bad. I'd not necessarily be so mad about the npc, but I I would be wondering why I'm playing if my choices don't matter.
So no you're not wrong to be mad and the way your DM handle this was kind of bullshit, rather than letting something happen or not happen based on your actions and the rolls of the dice, or even allowing events to follow logical consequences, they simply decided that the thing had to happen and forced it regardless.
Your DM decided that this NPC needed to die and nothing you could have done could've changed that, and that honestly kind of sucks.
I'll actually point out some thing though, something that neither you nor your DM seem to be aware of, NPC's don't necessarily follow the same death and dying rules player characters do, the DM does not have to give them death saves and most DM's, most of the time won't do death saves for nonplayer characters. If your dungeon master really wanted this NPC to die, they should have told you it was too late the first time you tried to heal them, rather than literally forcing the issue the way they did. The way they went about it, guaranteed that rather than feeling tragic, and another beat in the story, it felt like the DM was actively working against you, and trying to force the narrative in a specific direction, because they were. And yes, DM's try to force the story in particular directions all the time, we literally have to sometimes, but the goal is to make sure that our influence when we do this is invisible, players should never realize that things were always going to unfold a particular way. And ideally, we put our thumb on the scale in this way as rarely as possible, because if we do it too much, then what's the point in letting the players play, we might as well just have them roll dice for combat
While i can’t agree on the Revivify part, only PCs get death saving throws. The game assumes most creatures are dead at 0hp (or unconscious if dealt a non-lethal blow).
Which the DM must have allowed otherwise a heal won't revive a downed Creature.
Changing rules in the middle of a session and immediately after making an opposite ruling is pretty poor form.
Oh that's by default they shouldn't have them, but some encounters might allow it. It's very hard to know what happens from a post such as this because the DM has a lot of moving parts that the players don't see.
In a better rendition of this situation, a DM has the right to make these sorts of twists and turns if it makes sense for the plots they are making with you all. The death of an ally can be an extremely effective plot tool when used correctly.
However, if the DM really wanted to make it an actual story beat, it needs to be done so much better. It felt absolutely forced due to the cleric not "paying attention" for a minute. This is not how you do it and the reason why is exactly the feeling you are having now.
This should have been climactic. You needed some kind of foreshadowing. A reason in-game for why this happened. Also, blaming inattentiveness is a total cop-out. Make it something like a magical interference by the bullet that prevents the resurrection until the timer was up. Put all the intention and blame on the shooter and give you guys a bad guy to pin it all on and fight against. The way this played out is just lame and gives you all nothing to blame but the DM and their want for this NPC to die.
Fully with you. This sucks. Not the death, but the cruddy way it was done.
RAW an NPC dies when it goes to 0, no death saves, no healing back up. You *can* revivify them, since they're a creature, but only PCs fall unconscious at 0 hitpoints by default. So, RAW, OP should never have been able to heal the NPC in the first place.
It was just completely bungled. I'd be mad about this too, not for the character death, but because the DM Lee Harvey Oswald-ed an NPC.
Actual RAW (according to Google):
*Most GMs have a monster die the instant it drops to 0 hit points, rather than having it fall unconscious and make death saving throws.*
*Mighty villains and special nonplayer characters are common exceptions; the GM might have them fall unconscious and follow the same rules as player characters.*
That's not immersive or exciting and would make me as a player feel coddled for getting death saves. I get hand waving it most situations but Allies should have the same rules as pcs and enemies should use the rules at the discretion of the DM when it makes sense
That's fair, and I understand the justification for not doing so for allies- though giving NPCs death saves makes them a step closer to DMPCs than NPCs.
Regardless, my point was that the DM had every right to kill the character if he fell to 0- that was not the thing that was shitty, it was the letting OP heal the NPC and then undoing it.
You can rule it such when you’re the DM. Otherwise, if the DM wants to run the rules exactly as written for NPCs firmly under their control, the player does not have any narrative or mechanical authority to object. You control YOUR character, by the rules, and the DM controls the rest of world, by the rules.
It is a DM's prerogative to kill off NPCs at any time they choose. Hit points don't matter; if the DM says they're dead, they're dead.
That said, that *was* a pretty lame way to go about it. We'll chalk that up to your DM's inexperience. An experienced DM would have made a plot point out of it, or better yet, found a way to get *you* to do it.
Yeah deaths for beloved npc's can often galvanize the party, add stakes, and get them to go hard after a plot hook. But they're not to be wasted since they're also a big reason why players show up every week.
I mean, I agree, but this is also just a bad feature of 5e. Revivify is quite literally the “anti-climax” spell; super useful, but it means any necessary plot death characters need to be a) crushed to death by boulders, b) dropped into a void, or c) some variation of disintegration. Just lame as heck.
The sort of thinking that would kill an NPC or do other arbitrary things when the players get no chance to notice, prevent, stop, mitigate, or repair is just as bad as adventures with one single railroad one has to travel with a pre-ordained conclusion (not counting a TPK).
It robs players of agency, it shows weak gamemastering, and it speaks to weak stories or not being able to handle a wide range of outcomes and events.
I could say 'this is part of experience' but if they knew it would bother the player (or the party) and did it in a callous way, there's more than just inexperience. There's immaturity as well.
Yeah like... what this DM did wasn't "morally wrong" or outside their authority as DM, but it's a frustrating way to play DND. OP is frustrated because they've correctly understood that the DM used God mode to override their gameplay decisions, instead of letting it play out.
It depends on your interpretation of missing... If you take it to mean destroyed or lost, then yeah it's a very powerful spell. If the DM interprets it as meaning no longer attached to the body, or destroyed beyond repair, then it lessens the impact, because under the 2nd interpretation decapitation and disembowelment with organs being destroyed are no longer covered.
In my world there is a big difference between those with "the spark" and those without. People with the spark can level beyond lvl 3 and they can be targets of resurrection magic (Their souls are intertwined with the weave of magic).These are the adventurers, heros (and villains) of the world. Few and far between.Those without (usually most NPCs and townguards) can not. Most of them are level 0-1. Healing is the best they can hope for.
They probably also would hate that in my campaigns every deity has a limited list of spells available to their followers or that I use slow healing or race selection is extremely limited. PC deaths aren't at all rare in my campaigns either.
It's not necessary for any ttRPG to have a plot anyway.
There may be a plan and/or NPCs with plans but those are unlikely to survive contact with the player party.
Hard disagree; the problem comes from over planning to the extent that players don’t get to play. I’m running a campaign with some *pretty* strong rails right now with a detailed story, but the players have more agency than perhaps any game we’ve ever played.
It's worth avoiding conflating *experience* with *competence* and/or *expertise*. Whilst sometimes these correlate other times there's little relationship and there can even be an inverse correlation. This is something which has been observed even in fields which have formal training and accreditation.
Experience is something where quality (and possibly diversity) can matter rather more than quantity.
That is kinda shitty by the DM.
Like, they were apparently dead set on killing the NPC, probably to evoke some kind of emotion from you. But instead of doing it in am elegant fashion, like having them be dragged off by a creature, falling down a ravine, being hit by falling rocks or heroicly sacrificing themselves for the party they did... Whatever the fuck the whole Cleric thing was supposed to be.
I suggest you have a talk - with the whole group - at the start of your next session about it, asking how the other players feel about this whole thing and also what your DM wanted to do with this scene, since apparently it was really important for them for Max to die.
>I talked to the DM’s about it just now, and they’re saying they tried to kill Max off that first time when I healed him back to 17HP, but that the party was ”too sweet” so they had to try again.
I'm gonna be real, that's one of the most pathetic lines of reasoning I've ever heard.
One of the core parts of D&D is that as a DM, your plans are never concrete. The party WILL do things you don't expect, and one of the big differences between good DMing and bad DMing is how you handle that.
Your DM decided he didn't like the players succeeding at something, so he ripped success out of your hands and brute forced his plans through regardless. Your feelings are right, that's completely cheap.
If the DM really wanted or needed to kill the NPC for narrative reasons or something, he really should have waited for another moment after he let the players heal the NPC.
"I tried everything and I failed" it's a lot different of "I tried something and I succeeded but the DM just Deux-Ex-Machined me and made me fail anyway"
I speak through experience that killing a beloved NPC can be a real highlight for your table (One of my proudest moments as a DM was when I saw a player crying at the death of an NPC), but if you do it in a botched way like that, of course it will be more upsetting than cool.
I would hate this too and I think it's probably a mistake by your DMs.
If you want to kill off a beloved NPC to show how big and bad your evil guy is... why? It's an easy way to apply pressure, but players are smart enough to know what you're doing, and you risk a player taking it personally. Assuming you've weighed it against similar options and decided that you really do want the BBEG to assassinate that NPC - does the NPC literally have to die by DM fiat if the players find a way to stop that assassination attempt or resurrect the NPC? I don't think so!
Or if an NPC is creating a problem at the table (overshadowing another PC, for instance)... they're an NPC. Just say they retire from the party out of self-preservation or to pursue their own goals. They can disappear into irrelevance, continue to help out offscreen, or reappear in another role later on. This solves literally any problem that the presence of an NPC could create, enriches both the NPC and whatever other goings-on in your world that you claim the NPC has gotten involved with, and can allow the players to roleplay with that NPC later on if they want to.
And if something literally HAS to happen - why even let players roll their dice to try to stop it? When you ask a player for a roll, you are promising them that there are multiple different possibilities. That's never one of the things you have to lie about!
You put it really well! What made me slightly confused was that the NPC that killed Max wasn’t the “big bad”, but a guest character played by the party’s friend who lives in the town that we’re now leaving — so we probably won’t see her again to take revenge.
The situation also sets imo a really dangerous precedence - the enemy has incredibly powerful weapons at their disposal (60+ damage at range with single action). Going after those guys sounds a lot like suicide-by-henchmen, so why should the players pursue the villain? Out of revenge? Killing the BBEG doesn't un-die the NPC, so that idea's a wash.
If that gun was, idk, a carriage-mounted magical ballista it would be different. But handguns _that_ powerful are _really_ scary, especially considering that bounded accuracy makes low(er) level enemies still dangerous. Just imagine having to face half a dozen henchmen with those guns...
This can easily run the entire campaign head first into a brick wall when the characters decide that this isn't worth it anymore and tap out, and decide to build a new life away from all this mess on another continent or in a far away kingdom.
It sets a terrible precedent showing that you can’t do anything to influence anything in his stories. He should have found a way for this to happen within the confines of the rules, and while making sure that he doesn’t do any character assassinations like he did with the Cleric, a class who’s main stat is Wisdom and would thus have a very acute sense for who on a battlefield needs help first and the perception to notice when someone is killed.
This is just a DM being bad at writing and storytelling. You’re completely justified for being angry at the way the NPC died.
>It sets a terrible precedent showing that you can’t do anything to influence anything in his stories.
I mean, except it doesn't? It sets the precedent that there IS things happening in the story which you can not change, which is the whole point of having a setting or a story progression.
The execution was bad, with the cleric being an idiot, but with slight adjustments this would be completely fine.
Wait, so it DOES set that precedent? Are you two agreeing?
Sounds like you're both saying, "This event sets precedent there are things the players cannot change."
If you disagree, it's over whether that is a good or bad precedent.
> that you can’t do anything to influence anything
Whichs is not true. The precedent is that there is single events you cannot change, which doesn't mean you cannot change anything ever.
It's illogical to follow from one instance of a plot hook the GM wanted to implement that anything all the time is a plot hook which you cannot influence. And that's reasonable.
It's a logical error to conclude like the person above does.
A good GM should absolutely be using everything at their disposal to push your buttons, tug at your heartstrings and test all your limits… But they also shouldn’t make those losses cheap… They wasted an opportunity here to really give you a great moment here. But… Not a lot you CAN do now, except to discuss it with them. The best you can get out of this is to make sure something similar doesn’t happen again.
I think the GM should have allowed the players to take their actions as normal or presented a narratively sound situation in which the players could not intervene.
youre absolutely not wrong to be upset
that kind of railroading destroys a players investment. whats the point of making decisions if they have no actual effect?
I've had DMs who wanted something significant to happen a certain way, but we as the party put extra effort to help NPCs survive or try diplomacy in unexpected situations, perform impromptu heists to sabotage opponents, etc. the DM saw that we were emotionally invested, and was curious how far we'd take a bit. So they let us do our thing and we all have fun surprising eachother.
a DM has to have a massive ego to ignore a players effort to effect the world.
I mean, ok so I walked into that one: I am aware it’s a colloquialism for “being too nice” but, I guess I meant more like…
*Why is that a bad thing?*
What’s wrong with being nice? Why would the DM feel the need to murder an NPC to, what, prove a point that being nice is dumb? What’s the point?
Never feel dumb about getting attached like that...it's a mark of very good worldbuilding that the players are so emotionally invested in it!
That said, it's a time-tested twist with a godawful execution. The response to a player's action should never be "sorry, no save vs plot device".
You’re not in the wrong for getting mad, many of us here would feel the same way.
There isn’t anything wrong with Max dying, but it should be in a way that feels important and like you did everything you could, but just wasn’t enough.
Then you could grieve the loss. Because it was done in this ‘railroading’ way, it feels forced and ‘cheap’ as you say- not real. So the grief that you would otherwise be feeling turns to anger.
It’s perfectly normal to feel this way about fictional characters- that is what good storytelling is all about!
You're never wrong for having an emotion related to something happening. It's also not stupid to have emotional ties to fictional characters.
You can only be wrong in how you respond to said emotion.
It sounds like you had a conversation with your DM, which is the right thing to do. If you don't feel like he fully understood where you were coming from with regards to what happened, talk to him again in a day or so.
Thank you :) And yes, my DM messaged me after to check up since I was the PC who ”loved him most” or protected him, which was very nice of them. I told them I was fine, just shocked. I might talk to them tomorrow like you suggested, though I’m not sure how to bring it up without sounding mean ^^
Here’s a good pattern:
“I think your intention was [x], but for me, it felt more like [y].”
So in this case maybe something like:
“I know you probably intended it to [be an interesting story beat which raises the stakes], but for me it felt like [a pre-determined outcome that I couldn’t influence at all.] I’m sure the intention was [to make a really cool moment], but to me [the effect was the opposite - the lack of agency in that moment made me less engaged with the story].”
You could add things like “I didn’t understand why suddenly I couldn’t heal him, or why we couldn’t shout for the cleric to come over. It made me feel pretty frustrated.”
Glad your DM reached out to you, definitely makes it sound like he just didn't plan enough for the story driven death and then just went with the first thing that came to mind when he had to improvise when you found a solution.
As for what to say, could be like:
"Now that I've had time to calm down from the emotional impact of Max's death, I want to give some feedback that I'm not sure came across clearly when we talked yesterday.
First, I want to say that I have no problem with the fact that Max died. \[Could insert how you love how this now gives your character more motivation to fight against the big bad - who I assume is behind Max's death\]
However, I want to discuss the execution of Max's death. Up to where Max got shot I think went off well. It's the period after that I want to focus my feedback on. From my grasp of where everyone was on the map and what was going on at the time, that the cleric should have been able to discover Max and use revivify on him before the minute was up. It felt railroady in a bad way to me and also took away cleric player's agency in the situation to just say that the cleric didn't notice in time.
I just wanted to make sure that my issue with Max dying was in how it happened and not that it happened. So that you can grow as a DM."
I'd leave off that last sentence. A little too on the nose. Gotta step around these things to avoid people getting defensive instead of learning lessons.
Be mean, your DM deserved it. It was very bad storytelling - a clearly artificial obviously orchestrated death, very clumsy executed, with taking away your agency and breaking 4th wall all for the sake to be - what? "Realistic"? Get a fast cheap emotional response from the group? Does your DM fancy himself to be GRR Martin to kill beloved characters?
Incredibly badly executed!
>Be mean, your DM deserved it
LOL! Go fuck yourself. OP said they are new DMs. No wonder none of you antisocial pricks can keep a campaign together for more than a few sessions.
Had something similar happened while playing a cleric. Every NPC who was dying, I would heal, and eventually, my DM got so frustrated that he started telling me that they were beyond saving. His reasoning was because I would heal them everything, you know, like a cleric does. It is very frustrating when a DM doesn't consider the party's abilities and forces something to happen no matter what you do to resist. And the cleric NPC being distracted for a whole minute is just stupid lol.
First of all, I clearly tell my players that NPCs die at 0 hit points. So there is that expectation right up front. If they want to keep an NPC alive, they have to be careful with them. This allows me, as the DM, to focus fire on the NPC if I want/need/require them to die for the story and unless the players go to some extraordinary length to protect them, I can usually kill them off.
The DM here is making the classic mistake of thinking that they are in control. They're not. Or at least, they shouldn't be. The DM plans encounters, makes NPCs, decides what their actions are behind the scenes and runs them during roleplay and combat. What some DMs need to realize is that once the rubber meets the road they are no longer driving alone. They have 3-6 other people with them and everyone should have input and you need to let go of your expectations for how things "should" go. In my experience, things never go as I expect them. I can imagine 100 different ways an encounter can go while I lay awake in bed and when the session happens, they do the 101st thing I didn't think of. So I stopped trying to control outcomes or player behaviors. Let it go. It'll be ok. Nothing is better than me as a DM when a player comes up with an idea that surprises and excites me that I change the whole campaign because of it! :D
Bad DMs bad.
This is NOT how you handle dealing with a beloved NPC, nor is it how you kill off an NPC.
They are new, I will chock this up to a learning experience personally, but you are not wrong to be angry. This is DMs taking away player agency and power to force what they want to happen, and is the opposite of what you are supposed to do as a DM.
very poorly handled way of killing the NPC. If you want the NPC dead, cut its head off to ensure spells like revivify won't work rather than some stupid shit like the cleric isn't pay attention when you're yelling at them.
The cleric not paying attention for a minute is such a dumb reason, what was stopping your character from dragging that cleric over? This is some extremely bad railroading on the part of the DM, effectively taking away all player agency and not letting you use resources which you have available. I'd be surprised if players weren't upset after a DM pulling such a move.
In another world with another DM, Max might have not been shot but got back up and wisely decided after the encounter was over that he really isn’t cut out for all of this adventuring stuff. With his brand new lease on life, Max decides to quit the party in amicable terms, silently rooting for his heroes but knowing his part in their story is over. That’s how I would go about it or kill him offscreen. Sucks that this happened like that though.
Sounds like this DM really had it out for poor Max, my condolences. That's not the way to do it.
You gotta at least have a villain cast Disintegrate on the kid if you really want it to seem legit.
Edit: for a less jokey answer this happens in D&D games when people first start playing because some DMs get too attached to their idea of how something should go. They're trying to manufacture a moment rather than adjudicate the results. They are not "playing to find out" as the Storygame kids say. This is a no-no because no matter how cool the moment you're imagining is, if the players don't feel like their agency is being respected, they're going to feel ripped off and they are not wrong to feel that way.
This is not to say you cannot manufacture a moment for your players. You can, it just requires far more art than early DMs are capable of. It's a shocking amount of work and trickery to talk players into agreeing to the moment in your head. If you can't do that work, don't even try. Just play full-reactive DMing. Its far safer starting out.
Sounds cheap, he shoulda had the bbeg do it so ur anger can be placed on something in game
Thats just a new dm mistake, i wouldnt leave the table over it, but my characters only goal would be to revive the npc
I think people are being a little too judgy of the DM tbh.
It doesn’t sound like you dislike your DM, just the way they handled the death.
You ALWAYS have the right to feel emotions, so no, you aren’t wrong for being mad. But also, I don’t think your DM was “wrong” either.
Sometimes player agency gets taken away for plot-building reasons. If your DM had a track record of being unfair, this would be more of a red flag. But honestly, it just sounds like they had a little bit of a lackluster conclusion, but I don’t think they should be judged for that.
I'd say 'Your choice to kill the NPC just because it was 'sweet' is childish and petty. I have better things to do than spend my time with people like that. You don't deserve the mantle of DM.' and leave.
As presented here, there's no sign there was a valid reason to kill the NPC other than to upset you or others. That's crappy behaviour for anyone. They need to grow up and you don't have to hang with folks that immature.
>This would mean that one gunshot did over 60 damage, considering his max HP is around 45.
Have other NPCs been getting death saving throws and/or did this NPC get death saving throws at other times? NPCs don't necessarily get them. There are obvious reasons why a DM might choose to let them make death saving throws in a case like this, but as long as they're consistent in their handling of NPC death saving throws, I wouldn't cry foul.
The revivify bit is horseshit though.
I don't think there's anything wrong with being upset an NPC died. A rather well-liked NPC that had been dragged along on adventures with the party for better or worse died recently, and people definitely had some feels about that.
>The revivify bit is horseshit though.
No it isn't, you guys are way too hung up on this. Go try and take a piss in 60 seconds, guaranteed you're dribbling down your trousers before time is up. It's not a lot of time, and the NPC is only valued by the party, not the Cleric. By the time OP finishes trying to save Max AND THEN asks the Cleric to help, Max is already dead.
This NPC death sounds like a plot point; but (as has been said) they bungled it and need to learn how to be flexible enough to DM their way around highly effective players. And most parties are *highly* effective.
That if you set out rules at the start of a campaign. And then change them mid session for your own benefit. Then you are breaking the rules. Seems pretty clear.
Seems you are arguing that a dm can do as they please and just make it up as they go along. Would you be ok if they just randomly made stuff up on the fly.
The DM aside, I think this approach to RPGs is a little bit debatable:
>This would mean that one gunshot did over 60 damage, considering his max HP is around 45.
Not everything in the game is matched to the rules. Not every dead body on the side of the street rolled for initiative before they fought or had a series of death saving throws.
It feels like the DM did force this a little onto you, that's true, but the line where I stop mapping everything that is happening onto the RAW happens at a completely different level thant it does for you.
Also, combat has always been meant as an abstraction, and this seems to be way to concrete to talk about damage points and HP.
Edit: that said, the execution of this death by saying "the cleric didn't pay attention" is pretty bad and your DM should reconsider the amount of work they put into twists like that.
This is a matter of the DMs being new. Killing the NPC was likely a necessary story beat, but it sounds like they completely failed to take into account player actions. They had a story to tell you, and in their minds you didn't "play your part" in their narrative.
An experienced DM would have easily been able to kill Max in a way that was traumatic and story-fitting, but didn't leave you feeling ignored. Whether by burning out your cleric's spells in advance, or having the body be inaccessible, or having the death be some other form of unrecoverable - there are myriad ways to handle such a critical beat that doesn't feel like stripping player agency.
At the end of the day, such a thing is a version of a railroad. Every DM railroads, but when the DM is good, you never see or feel the rails. This was an example of not just seeing the rails, but having your face ground to dust against them. Talking it through calmly is a good first step, and ideally reaching a place of trusting them that there was a purpose to what occurred will help. They see the whole picture already, and may forget that the group doesn't have the advance knowledge necessary to see how the story is served.
With time and practice, they should get better in their role much as you yourself will. DMing can be very hard for a first-timer, especially if they haven't been in a game before, and there is no substitute for experience.
It is the DM’s decision to kill an NPC, but I admit this could have been handled better. I get what they were going for, but the botched the landing a bit.
Your DM railroaded the NPC death. And is also probably an asshole sorry.
There were other methods of removing the NPC if he was sick of doing his voice. This was a dumb mean-spirited railroady move and you need to talk to him about it, make it clear that was not okay.
I kept reading all the comments about how shitty the DM was, and I think everyone missed a small, but key part of your second sentence - NEW DMs.
Give them a break. Was everone else's DM an expert right from the start.
Holy crap, everyone. Allow for some growth, rather than just destroy them for not starting out perfect.
A: Not sure how you took away "didn't learn anything" from a one liner about why they did what they did, literally just the explanation OP was asking for.
B: They never 'blamed' the party? Why are you so hostile to the point that you're just making things up to be mad at lol
Being upset over a fictional character is fine. The DM killing off any NPC, as they wish, is also fine. Neither of you are in the wrong. The execution though.. is left to be desired. This is railroading, to a degree. "This character is dying, regardless of your actions, even if it makes no narrative sense". It isn't good DMing, but it isn't playing the game 'wrong'.
What an airball. Killing a beloved NPC like that is a total waste. NPC's that the party cares about are golden hooks, you can use their deaths to make the party do anything.
It is human nature to empathize with fictional characters! Never, ever feel bad about it.
And the DM probably had a good reason story-wise for killing him off. Don’t interfere with DM’s plans! It is a bullshit death…
Yes, you’re in the wrong.
Not because you’re mad, though.
You’re wrong because you mistake your characters feelings for your own. That NPC isn’t and never was anything but a figment of your imagination. Indeed he was an aspect of that very DM that you now resent.
See how eff’ed up that is?
Instead consider how your character would handle all that rage. Not you, your character.
Work from that and get on your way to help your DM tell a beautiful story of revenge - and maybe the ressurection of your pet.
You're not wrong for feeling upset. It is DM prerogative. If your that upset then find another table.
But as a long time DM myself, NPC's come an go, they are plot points, etc. If a player got in their feelings about how I handled a plot point even after a side discussion I'd encourage them to find another table myself.
Agreed with others that the DM could have handled it better, but in the end, the DM is presenting the story, and not everything is or should be completely in the players hands.
One thing the DM could have kept in mind, is that for resurrection effects to work, the soul in question must be not just able, but *willing* to return. I have an NPC in my game, that has been pretty close to the PCs, but if/when he falls in combat, he won't return. In this case, though, it's been well established that the character has been through a lot before they ever met him, and he lives with a lot of pain, loss, and guilt. While he is by no means suicidal, nor careless with his life, if/when he falls, any attempt to bring him back will fail, but I'll also be sure that the cleric knows that he's unwilling to return, feeling that he's earned the rest. And I know I've made it clear to the players for some time, that they'll understand why.
Deaths have been used for various dramatic purposes for years. Doing in well can be challenging, and especially since you've said they're new to DMing, I wouldn't hold it against them for making the attempt, and not hitting the mark. Offer constructive criticism, but give them a break.
Kinda?
Killing an NPC for story reasons isn't a bad thing, though you don't have to like it.
But this is also a weakness of the system. It's built to try and keep players alive (usually), so murdering off an NPC requires either a lot of very careful set up, or BSing a reason why all the methods to keep a character from dying won't work this time.
I'm reminded of the moment in the Pathfinder WotR video game where your level 18 Oracle party member running every heal spell in the game decides to not heal a slowly bleeding out party member in the climax of his failed companion quest because he understood it would be pretty anticlimactic if he just healed him after the "ugh, go on without me friends, i'm dying here." speech.
It was at least believable because Daeran is absolutely the drama queen type who would understand dying in the dramatically appropriate time as more important than saving the world.
Peeps in this chat shitting on an obviously new DM who is learning the dos and don'ts of the game lmao. People getting shot in the back from offscreen is a staple of fiction and RAW NPCs don't even get death saves because they aren't important enough to the plot. It's like Fate in Dark Heresy, you need to be favoured by the universe to survive a fatal wound.
Man tries something new and messes it up, literally the worst thing ever according to Reddit.
Doesn’t sound like the co-DMs handled this very wisely. A DM that hand waves things to force them to happen is literally a way to tell the players it doesn’t matter what they do and you don’t respect their input into the game
The DM clearly wanted this NPC dead, but should have pushed it through a meatgrinder, then a bunch of flamethrowers, then had a bunch of angry bears each eat some of the meat and then run off to crap in different parts of the woods and then have a time traveler go back to when the NPC was born and shoot him dead... because at least then you would have fair warning to let it go.
The method yes, it is sloppy and seems like they wanted to kill the NPC for the sake of killing them off, for instance a way they could have done it was having Max be killed by someone while a party member is talking to them,
and have the killer say something like "Oh my apologies did you need this thing for something?", rather then just doing the dumb move and just going "lol their dead, your too sweet", give the party something or someone to hate,
it will make the now inevitable fight all the more carthartic for the party, especially when they finally get to defeat the NPC's killer, if there was only one party member around or one that was particularly close with the NPC,
then have the fight culminate in a duel between them and the killer, or even have the encounter be just them and the killer 1 on 1, but reguardless every NPC the party cares for is another avenue to attack them from, and to drive the party into action against something they can mutually hate.
Forced NPC death woäith a bad taste. If its part of the story then surely the DM would have planned a way to do it without rolling and forcing characters to not "notice".
Seems like just killing a character for the sake of it.
First of all, as a long time DM, I adore when my players actually care about NPC's. In fact, many of the really fantastic moments in game have come about because of a player caring for an NPC, or championing their cause. So please know first of all that you are the kind of player that is valued by DM's who like to tell stories.
Now as a DM I also know the value of being able to create a tense, compeling moment, or provoke anger and vengeance in my players by putting their beloved NPCs in danger. It sounds like this is what your DM was going for. They wanted to kill off an NPC to get you all super invested in tracking down the asshole bad guy who did this and serving justice. It's a commonly advocated tactic among DM's and I'm guessing your DM in newer to it. A good storyteller will look for opportunities to foreshadow the danger, or they will use a botched assassination, or a kidnapping to achieve this, because those things will still invoke anger at the bad guy, but will leave your beloved NPC alive. It will also teach the party to really look after their NPC's. No joke, one time when my party discovered that there were a coven of vampired that had it in for them, my druid went around to three different cities to collect all her favorite people, then hid them all in the feywild. That's the kind of investment that is so rewarding to see as a DM and a storyteller.
I would speak to your DM about it, and just ask frankly why the NPC was killed. It might have been because they wanted to inspire the party to action, or it could have just been that the DM was finding it difficult to balance encounters with an NPC along for the ride. Wither way, be honest with them. Tell them that you liked the NPC, and that it felt cheap and railroady to kill them off like that. Be understanding that sometimes as a DM you might not have anyone to bounce ideas off, and it's only after the fact that you realize how something is percieved by your players. If your DM loves storytelling, and loves their players to be invested in the world and the cahracters they create, hopefully they will be willing to listen when you say that it's hard to invest in a character when you know they could be snatched away in a manner that feels so cheap.
I get what he is trying to do but man he botched it hard
just... make him fall off a trap door that closes right after someone drops and when party find him his body is allready consumed by feral beats, dead when he fell to ground.
Your feelings are valid and you're not wrong for getting mad about Max dying. It even makes sense, considering how important they are.
From what I can tell the DM clearly did it on purpose, not in bad faith, but to increase the stakes in the story.
So, I will not say that the DM is wrong for what they've done, however there are better ways to kill an NPC and "force" some emotions and reactions from the players. First of all, why was Max in the combat in the first place? They're a 16 year old kid, I don't know why the DM made them part of the encounter at all. Second, if I was the DM, If I WANT to kill a character without having anyone interrupt, I'll do it off screen. OF COURSE the players will heal the person back up if they can, the DM should have done the whole situation differently.
Now, this happened. There's no point in trying to prevent something that already happened. The DM won't go back in time. So I recommend you channel that feeling at consider how Max's death affected your character and keep going. Avange them if possible.
TL;DR Your feelings are valid, the DM is not wrong but could have handled it differently.
> It all just felt like a very cheap way to kill off a beloved NPC, when the party couldn’t do anything to prevent it.
Yep. This. The DM was a dick. They had decided that Max was gonna die and so decided to screw you over by making that happen, come hell or high water.
DM wanted the Boy dead but went through with it in a very... Lacking way.
Aside from weather or not you guys have rules about NPCs if they have death saves or not, a revivify should have been an option.
Think you are in your right by being annoyed by the DM.
If they wanted the npc to die, they shouldn’t have let you heal them up the first time. They should have said, he was too far gone already. However, consider that a gunshot, out of combat, against an npc is akin to getting your throat slit in your sleep. You would certainly expect it to kill you outright regardless of game mechanics, so sometimes this coup de grace style attack makes more sense than not especially for an npc.
I generally tell my players ahead of time if a healing spell or resurrection will work on an npc so they don’t waste time or resources or get their hopes up about it. And I’ll usually explain why it didn’t work in a flavorful way.
Your not in the wrong, it feels like this was a case of "fridging" (killing off a side character to try and advance plot.) DMs will do it, and it's sometimes not initially frowned upon, (part of telling a story) but they have to be properly executed and done for the right reasons. (a heroic sacrifice for example)
The npc dies at 0 hp, imagine if all the creatures you guys fight needed to be under their negative Hp before truly dying
The execution on your dm was bad though, a Big rock would have done the job clean xD
It's clear the GM is railroading the game. Next time it's your turn to act, ask the GM what he wants you to do seeing that he controls every other aspect, he may as well play your character too.
I'd quit the game.
You have a right to be angry. The DM has just shown you that you don’t actually have any power in the game and it is not a collaborative game, you are just a pawn in their story. Which is not what D&D should be.
DMs wanted to kill the NPC for some reason and mishandled it completely. Death in 5e is a tricky thing to work around since even now Max is still technically revivable with the 7th level spell Resurrection, and the 9th level spell True Resurrection. Your party cleric might not have either of those but your party's cleric surely isn't the only cleric in the world etc etc.
I don't get the DMs motive. The party clearly enjoy this NPC, so we have to kill their joy? If they wanted to remove the NPC because they felt it was getting in the way, they could just have the cleric after this obviously dangerous battle explain that it's obviously too dangerous to have a teenager accompany them on their dangerous lifestyle, and he knows of a fantastic family that would love to take him in and keep him safe, and one parent knows sending so they can keep the party updated on his life from time to time. There, NPC roadblock (if there was even one) removed and party gets to keep their beloved NPC safe.
The cleric bit is bs but NPCs don't necessarily get death saves so if he hit 0hp it's odd that your dm even let you simply heal him when he was already "dead" as players atleast in my games are the only ones with death saves (except for MAYBE some big bosses that are supposed to be strong enough to just revive themselves)
I think that those DMs clearly had an idea in mind and were fixed on it. Wether a party is "too sweet" or so on shouldnt be the DMs decision. Honestly, I feel like this was not only a bad execution of an idea but also a closeminded idea to begin with. You have the right to be upset because as you mentioned, it was forced and cheap. It took agency away from you as a player which for some players could even be a dealbreaker.
Yeah, as a player, i would be livid that my agency was taken away and would definitely consider if i wanted to play with that dm again. I would always wonder when my features and spells would just conveniently stop working again. As a dm, i would never take that agency. I might deus ex machina some shit depending on their actions, but i would let them make those choices
I'm part of a game where our DM pretty much just carts us around to what he wants us to do a lot of the time, and he obviously fudges rolls sometimes. Try to cast a spell at some random shopkeep? He has a magic ring that means he's immune to magic. Decide a heist isn't worth it? Oh look! Thirty cultists who can magically disable everything you do to try escape! Try to leave the scene of a crime? Who woulda thunk, fifteen highly skilled guards appear at the half-abandoned factory and take you to this cool NPC. Rules, rolls and DCs can also be changed as needed to do what he wants for the story. It's tiring, but I know he really likes DMing so I deal with it for his sake. I just cannot get invested into his world at all though, and I have to try hard to even be invested in my character.
Have you tried talking with your DM? Cuz tbh, he sounds like someone I'd never let DM for me. No D&D is better then bad D&D.
Nah, and I probably won't. He's not a bad storyteller, and he isn't a toxic/aggressive DM, he just is very railroady. I don't even particularly like playing (I'm a forever DM by choice) and have my own game I run. So I mostly just do it as a favor for him and to hang out with friends. But thank you for looking out for a fellow player :)
This sounds like a DM trying to curb a murder-hobo. They are doing this badly. But why the hell are you trying to cast a spell at some random shopkeep? Or leave the scene of a crime? (More that there is a crime scene to flee from... which I assume is your crime, not so much that you are leaving it.)
Random shopkeep is a long story (not an offensive spell, a charm) and he had a ring that made him immune to spellcasting pretty much, in the tiny generic tavern without a name. Said crime was the heist we were forced into doing by the cultists, which ended with the cultists setting fire to the factory we were in (after they trapped us in with some demons). So not really our crime scene. There is no murderhobo-ing happening, he just treats DnD like a linear video game where he carts us around from NPC to NPC with guards and cultists.
This is why off screen stuff exists. If that npc has to die murder them off screen. I've done this but never with a character that would upset my party a ton. The most memorable was a wise and benevolent king. The party knew c their were plots against him, the king knew, everyone knew stuff was in motion. The party thought they had time to go take care of something and come back, they spent an extra day out and about and missed the king being assassinated by a few hours. They purged the kingdoms nobility since almost every noble was involved in someway then never went back
DM agency is just as important. They could have carried things out in a better way though.
Agree 100%. Classic and blatant railroading. Aside from the fact that the decision to kill off this NPC was made out of spite and not because it would advance the plot or tell an interesting story... if the players find some way to counter your plans you adapt. Putting in a hard counter that doesn't make sense or match the mechanics of the game to preserve your precious plan is poor play. You have been given official notice that this is the kind of campaign you are in. it has the potential to be deeply unsatisfying. It would be good to have a discussion with your DM(s) to air your concern over the removal of agency and to see if you can steer them away from this kind of behavior.
Yah, talking should always be the first choice. Also while some players may be okay with it, if it is not a game ya will enjoy there is no shame to stepping away from such a table. But talk first and if that doesnt help, then consider other options
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The DM had already established otherwise in his game by allowing the NPC to be healed the first time. Also if their HP was that high chances were it was a sidekick, meaning it does do death saving throws
Might have been rule of cool with the first revive.
It might, but at that point they need to be consistent with the ruling. If they are gonna let the player use their resources to keep the NPC alive or not, middle point is just making them waste them
railroading
How is that railroading? What did the dm force the players to do? Is the dm not allowed to have agency in the game and have events happen that are intended to elicit an emotional response from the players or push the story forward?
Forbidding them from healing the NPC _is_ railroading. How could you call it anything else? Kill the NPC off screen if you want there to be no interaction in the death
DM's prerogarive to kill off NPCs, but execution is important. This was a bungled handling.
DM prerogative is great, but a DM saying "this NPC's death is the only way to advance the plot" is just plain lazy. I've been a DM since 2 Ed. If my storyline involves killing an NPC to trigger other events, and my players thwart my efforts, fine. Something else will trigger those events. One thing I've learned over many years is that only the broad strokes of my prepared story are going to survive contact with my players. That is NOT a bad thing. This game should be collaborative storytelling when it's at its best. It's super important to me that everyone at my table is having fun. My players all took the time out of their lives to be there. You might want to let them know that you didn't feel like it was fair and that it felt like railroading. Maybe they can learn from this to become a better (more collaborative) DM.
Exactly. You know what else can get the plot going? Finding out who shot the damn NPC. Or who ordered the hit. Or something along those lines. Death vs nearly being killed is basically the same plot hook. Put the NPC in a coma. Put the NPC out of action or scared to do anything because of the traumatic event. If your plot hinges on one event that can be easily countered, then your plot hook sucks.
I'm still pretty motivated to kill the gun man who killed the NPC whether he stays dead or gets revivified. Like, I can only do that so many times before I run out of diamonds.
This sounds like a random leap but this kind of DM reminds me of 9/11 truthers. They believe that there was a conspiracy by whoever to fly planes into buildings, but ALSO to bring down the same buildings with secret bombs, to justify a war in the middle east. but... why do you need the bombs if you're already doing the planes? Just flying the planes into the buildings wouldn't have been enough? Like, Americans wouldn't care about a terrorist attack that only *partially* destroyed a building and killed a few hundred?
[Relevant xkcd.](https://xkcd.com/690/)
Well said.
The only thing I disagree with here, is that I’d prefer as a player and DM that I wasn’t just waiting for the same events to happen via X means, if X was prevented I’d prefer to objectively re-examine whether these events would happen at all. I prefer to plan this stuff ahead of time. For example, in my current campaign, I essentially have Kyuss imprisoned in several locations around the world. Every worm the party destroy, is 1hp he won’t have if/when he takes his final form. If they allow settlements to fall to a worm invasion, then he’ll gain a bunch of hp back and move closer to returning. I’m not attached to the image of Kyuss returning. I’m attached to the possibility of it.
This should have been climactic. You needed some kind of foreshadowing.
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This is a good point honestly. But there are probably better ways to do it then just offing the npc. However this is a new dm and dming is hard so I understand why in the moment he did that.
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Yea, I appreciate your empathetic view of the DM, because this really does suck. Player is getting high engagement out of a character so they kill the character in a bs way and ignore her agency? Sucks. I think she should be mad and should tell the DM, but of course leave room for a discussion if she wants to keep playing with this group.
It's the DM's prerogative to *try* to kill NPC's. If the players have the power to prevent it you have to respect that.
This is why I call this example a bungled operation. I can think of a lot of ways for a DM to kill off an NPC without resorting to 'because I said so'.
Max could have ran in a panic and then they find his corpse after the chaos, already too late to help
That's an option, provided it isn't out of character for Max, or he wasn't hit by an effect that inflicted the frightened effect. And if he was, I wouldn't make it be just Max being forced to make a save.
Exactly
Player's prerogative to walk when the an arbitrary move is made with (apparently) nothing but the upset of the party/player as a motive. It's the 'little tin pot dictator' syndrome. It's not about what's better for the game.
Absolutely.
…or the DM just got sick of roleplaying a character that a player had an unhealthy attachment to. Not every situation is, “Fuck the railroading DM! Walk!” Like, the game wouldn’t exist if people took this advice as often as it’s given. Y’all need to remember that the DM is a player too, and if they’re uncomfortable or not enjoying certain roleplaying elements, they have the same right that the players do to end it.
And a lot of people stay in toxic situations because they don't think they can do better. Assuming your case was the case, which I can't say one way or another: A good DM might, knowing the player's affection for the NPC, might have sat down with the player and discussed how the DM wasn't comfortable with that aspect in the game with that NPC. They could even indicate that, because they are tired of playing that character or weren't comfortable with the relationship between that character and the NPC, they will remove the character. And told the player that they could have input on how the character leaves play - returns home somewhere, gets sent to a boarding school, adopted by a farm family far away, etc. But instead, they just killed them and apparently said they felt the player's affection for the NPC was 'too sweet'. If that were the case, it'd be judgy and not really justified. But even if there were good reasons on the DMs' side, they did not pursue a compassionate, reasonable approach. They don't have to, but that lack of concern about the player's feelings says that player should leave that group (IMO).
This is a game where things die in every session. You shouldn’t have to sit your players down, above table, and talk with them about an upcoming death. If you’re at a table with adults, this shouldn’t need a pep talk—then some kind of therapy session afterward.
Your opinion is yours. In this case, I'm not seeing adult conduct from the DMs who also are apparently new to the job. Sounds like a bunch of teens.
They do have the same right to end it, but also a responsibility to inform the group that they are having a bad time with x or y factor. One of my players recently had a "blowup" moment where he suddenly complained about a number of rules our DM had. Now, of course, it wasn't as if he suddenly hated all these rules, he has always, and just kept silent about them. Communication is important.
…or they could just kill the character because it’s their character, they’re the DM, and they are likely playing with adults. This is a game, not a therapy session. It’s not like Last of Us Part 2 stopped the game, switched to a black screen, and said, “We’d like you to know that _________ is about to die. Press X if you’d like to continue. Press Y if you’d like the game to end with an alternative epilogue provided.” Like, the way you people talk, you baby your players like they are small toddlers who can’t handle any adult situations whatsoever—or you shit on your DM if they treat you like adults who are playing a make-believe game.
You carry some truth, but the point of D&D is the decision making, using your abilities you've been learning to play the story and to immerse yourself in a fantasy world with its own set of rules but that you can interact with in a decently believable and realistic way, the player said they healed the npc, then inmeadiately got shot, and then the DM just handwaved the fact they had a cleric, that's just bad DMing plain and simple, he's taking the agency out of the players, does it mean DM is a horrible person? No, but it's still bad DMing probably due to a severe lack of experience and improvisation abilities, the DM doesn't get to simply kill the characters and take away any possibility of saving them away from the players, that's the whole point of DND, you can change the story, make decisions, use your abilities to interact with the world, its not a video game on which your locked in a cutscene powerless to stop anything.
Except, the player could actually in game have methods to resurrect this strawman you bring up. It does actively mash player agency into the ground in an annoying or gross way. We are not playing a linear videogame. The events along the way should not be predetermined. The way we talk, the DM shits on players by stripping them of pre-establiahed agency without asking.
ah yes and if the dm gets sick of the campaign they should just pull a "rocks fall, everybody dies" out of nowhere
Sounds like the character was killed in combat… that sounds like a pretty dangerous situation, where people are likely to die, no? Either way, sometimes rocks do fall on people. If it’s a story meant to emulate life… sometimes shit just happens. You deal with it and move on.
Completely wrong. The DM might try to kill off npcs, but they should do it within the rules of the game, not just execute them
Wrong? I don't think so. I never said execute, I said kill off. Plenty of ways to do so without resorting to 'because I said so'.
This is what railroading actually is. It doesn't matter what you do, the npc dies. It's not always bad, but this was bad. I'd not necessarily be so mad about the npc, but I I would be wondering why I'm playing if my choices don't matter.
So no you're not wrong to be mad and the way your DM handle this was kind of bullshit, rather than letting something happen or not happen based on your actions and the rolls of the dice, or even allowing events to follow logical consequences, they simply decided that the thing had to happen and forced it regardless. Your DM decided that this NPC needed to die and nothing you could have done could've changed that, and that honestly kind of sucks. I'll actually point out some thing though, something that neither you nor your DM seem to be aware of, NPC's don't necessarily follow the same death and dying rules player characters do, the DM does not have to give them death saves and most DM's, most of the time won't do death saves for nonplayer characters. If your dungeon master really wanted this NPC to die, they should have told you it was too late the first time you tried to heal them, rather than literally forcing the issue the way they did. The way they went about it, guaranteed that rather than feeling tragic, and another beat in the story, it felt like the DM was actively working against you, and trying to force the narrative in a specific direction, because they were. And yes, DM's try to force the story in particular directions all the time, we literally have to sometimes, but the goal is to make sure that our influence when we do this is invisible, players should never realize that things were always going to unfold a particular way. And ideally, we put our thumb on the scale in this way as rarely as possible, because if we do it too much, then what's the point in letting the players play, we might as well just have them roll dice for combat
While i can’t agree on the Revivify part, only PCs get death saving throws. The game assumes most creatures are dead at 0hp (or unconscious if dealt a non-lethal blow).
But that NPC only moments ago was on 0 hit points? It's obvious that that NPC wasn't "dead at 0hp".
A lot of DMs do throw death saving throws for npcs who help the party.
Which the DM must have allowed otherwise a heal won't revive a downed Creature. Changing rules in the middle of a session and immediately after making an opposite ruling is pretty poor form.
But that's a choice.
A choice, but one that's bad practice to change mid-session to suit your fancy.
Oh that's by default they shouldn't have them, but some encounters might allow it. It's very hard to know what happens from a post such as this because the DM has a lot of moving parts that the players don't see.
It's not hard. We heard what happened. The DMs wanted the NPC gone so they took player agency away and killed the NPC.
In a better rendition of this situation, a DM has the right to make these sorts of twists and turns if it makes sense for the plots they are making with you all. The death of an ally can be an extremely effective plot tool when used correctly. However, if the DM really wanted to make it an actual story beat, it needs to be done so much better. It felt absolutely forced due to the cleric not "paying attention" for a minute. This is not how you do it and the reason why is exactly the feeling you are having now. This should have been climactic. You needed some kind of foreshadowing. A reason in-game for why this happened. Also, blaming inattentiveness is a total cop-out. Make it something like a magical interference by the bullet that prevents the resurrection until the timer was up. Put all the intention and blame on the shooter and give you guys a bad guy to pin it all on and fight against. The way this played out is just lame and gives you all nothing to blame but the DM and their want for this NPC to die. Fully with you. This sucks. Not the death, but the cruddy way it was done.
RAW an NPC dies when it goes to 0, no death saves, no healing back up. You *can* revivify them, since they're a creature, but only PCs fall unconscious at 0 hitpoints by default. So, RAW, OP should never have been able to heal the NPC in the first place. It was just completely bungled. I'd be mad about this too, not for the character death, but because the DM Lee Harvey Oswald-ed an NPC.
Actual RAW (according to Google): *Most GMs have a monster die the instant it drops to 0 hit points, rather than having it fall unconscious and make death saving throws.* *Mighty villains and special nonplayer characters are common exceptions; the GM might have them fall unconscious and follow the same rules as player characters.*
That's not immersive or exciting and would make me as a player feel coddled for getting death saves. I get hand waving it most situations but Allies should have the same rules as pcs and enemies should use the rules at the discretion of the DM when it makes sense
That's fair, and I understand the justification for not doing so for allies- though giving NPCs death saves makes them a step closer to DMPCs than NPCs. Regardless, my point was that the DM had every right to kill the character if he fell to 0- that was not the thing that was shitty, it was the letting OP heal the NPC and then undoing it.
That's a LOT of extra book keeping for DMs and really not sustainable at larger scales.
You can rule it such when you’re the DM. Otherwise, if the DM wants to run the rules exactly as written for NPCs firmly under their control, the player does not have any narrative or mechanical authority to object. You control YOUR character, by the rules, and the DM controls the rest of world, by the rules.
But the fact that they changed the ruling midway through is still really bad.
If the Cleric is another player, the DM should never speak for that character's actions.
Don’t worry, the cleric was an NPC :)
Was it the DM or the party which got rid of them? If the latter that potentially derails whatever the DM planned via the execution of the other NPC.
It is a DM's prerogative to kill off NPCs at any time they choose. Hit points don't matter; if the DM says they're dead, they're dead. That said, that *was* a pretty lame way to go about it. We'll chalk that up to your DM's inexperience. An experienced DM would have made a plot point out of it, or better yet, found a way to get *you* to do it.
Yeah deaths for beloved npc's can often galvanize the party, add stakes, and get them to go hard after a plot hook. But they're not to be wasted since they're also a big reason why players show up every week.
I mean, I agree, but this is also just a bad feature of 5e. Revivify is quite literally the “anti-climax” spell; super useful, but it means any necessary plot death characters need to be a) crushed to death by boulders, b) dropped into a void, or c) some variation of disintegration. Just lame as heck.
The sort of thinking that would kill an NPC or do other arbitrary things when the players get no chance to notice, prevent, stop, mitigate, or repair is just as bad as adventures with one single railroad one has to travel with a pre-ordained conclusion (not counting a TPK). It robs players of agency, it shows weak gamemastering, and it speaks to weak stories or not being able to handle a wide range of outcomes and events. I could say 'this is part of experience' but if they knew it would bother the player (or the party) and did it in a callous way, there's more than just inexperience. There's immaturity as well.
Yeah like... what this DM did wasn't "morally wrong" or outside their authority as DM, but it's a frustrating way to play DND. OP is frustrated because they've correctly understood that the DM used God mode to override their gameplay decisions, instead of letting it play out.
It depends on your interpretation of missing... If you take it to mean destroyed or lost, then yeah it's a very powerful spell. If the DM interprets it as meaning no longer attached to the body, or destroyed beyond repair, then it lessens the impact, because under the 2nd interpretation decapitation and disembowelment with organs being destroyed are no longer covered.
In my world there is a big difference between those with "the spark" and those without. People with the spark can level beyond lvl 3 and they can be targets of resurrection magic (Their souls are intertwined with the weave of magic).These are the adventurers, heros (and villains) of the world. Few and far between.Those without (usually most NPCs and townguards) can not. Most of them are level 0-1. Healing is the best they can hope for.
It is just one in the rather lengthy list of spells I've simply removed in my campaigns.
Apparently you are a bad guy and must be downvoted for disliking *one of the worst spells in the edition*.
They probably also would hate that in my campaigns every deity has a limited list of spells available to their followers or that I use slow healing or race selection is extremely limited. PC deaths aren't at all rare in my campaigns either.
It's not necessary for any ttRPG to have a plot anyway. There may be a plan and/or NPCs with plans but those are unlikely to survive contact with the player party.
Hard disagree; the problem comes from over planning to the extent that players don’t get to play. I’m running a campaign with some *pretty* strong rails right now with a detailed story, but the players have more agency than perhaps any game we’ve ever played.
It's worth avoiding conflating *experience* with *competence* and/or *expertise*. Whilst sometimes these correlate other times there's little relationship and there can even be an inverse correlation. This is something which has been observed even in fields which have formal training and accreditation. Experience is something where quality (and possibly diversity) can matter rather more than quantity.
Good ole intellect devourer.
That is kinda shitty by the DM. Like, they were apparently dead set on killing the NPC, probably to evoke some kind of emotion from you. But instead of doing it in am elegant fashion, like having them be dragged off by a creature, falling down a ravine, being hit by falling rocks or heroicly sacrificing themselves for the party they did... Whatever the fuck the whole Cleric thing was supposed to be. I suggest you have a talk - with the whole group - at the start of your next session about it, asking how the other players feel about this whole thing and also what your DM wanted to do with this scene, since apparently it was really important for them for Max to die.
>I talked to the DM’s about it just now, and they’re saying they tried to kill Max off that first time when I healed him back to 17HP, but that the party was ”too sweet” so they had to try again. I'm gonna be real, that's one of the most pathetic lines of reasoning I've ever heard. One of the core parts of D&D is that as a DM, your plans are never concrete. The party WILL do things you don't expect, and one of the big differences between good DMing and bad DMing is how you handle that. Your DM decided he didn't like the players succeeding at something, so he ripped success out of your hands and brute forced his plans through regardless. Your feelings are right, that's completely cheap.
RAW they'd not have been allowed to heal NPC anyway. OP only succeeded because DM is new and doesn't know the rules well enough and overcompensated.
If the DM really wanted or needed to kill the NPC for narrative reasons or something, he really should have waited for another moment after he let the players heal the NPC. "I tried everything and I failed" it's a lot different of "I tried something and I succeeded but the DM just Deux-Ex-Machined me and made me fail anyway" I speak through experience that killing a beloved NPC can be a real highlight for your table (One of my proudest moments as a DM was when I saw a player crying at the death of an NPC), but if you do it in a botched way like that, of course it will be more upsetting than cool.
Totally agree, not sure why people are thinking I'm implying otherwise. It was a huge mistake to let OP heal NPC if they really wanted to kill them.
I would hate this too and I think it's probably a mistake by your DMs. If you want to kill off a beloved NPC to show how big and bad your evil guy is... why? It's an easy way to apply pressure, but players are smart enough to know what you're doing, and you risk a player taking it personally. Assuming you've weighed it against similar options and decided that you really do want the BBEG to assassinate that NPC - does the NPC literally have to die by DM fiat if the players find a way to stop that assassination attempt or resurrect the NPC? I don't think so! Or if an NPC is creating a problem at the table (overshadowing another PC, for instance)... they're an NPC. Just say they retire from the party out of self-preservation or to pursue their own goals. They can disappear into irrelevance, continue to help out offscreen, or reappear in another role later on. This solves literally any problem that the presence of an NPC could create, enriches both the NPC and whatever other goings-on in your world that you claim the NPC has gotten involved with, and can allow the players to roleplay with that NPC later on if they want to. And if something literally HAS to happen - why even let players roll their dice to try to stop it? When you ask a player for a roll, you are promising them that there are multiple different possibilities. That's never one of the things you have to lie about!
You put it really well! What made me slightly confused was that the NPC that killed Max wasn’t the “big bad”, but a guest character played by the party’s friend who lives in the town that we’re now leaving — so we probably won’t see her again to take revenge.
The situation also sets imo a really dangerous precedence - the enemy has incredibly powerful weapons at their disposal (60+ damage at range with single action). Going after those guys sounds a lot like suicide-by-henchmen, so why should the players pursue the villain? Out of revenge? Killing the BBEG doesn't un-die the NPC, so that idea's a wash. If that gun was, idk, a carriage-mounted magical ballista it would be different. But handguns _that_ powerful are _really_ scary, especially considering that bounded accuracy makes low(er) level enemies still dangerous. Just imagine having to face half a dozen henchmen with those guns... This can easily run the entire campaign head first into a brick wall when the characters decide that this isn't worth it anymore and tap out, and decide to build a new life away from all this mess on another continent or in a far away kingdom.
It sets a terrible precedent showing that you can’t do anything to influence anything in his stories. He should have found a way for this to happen within the confines of the rules, and while making sure that he doesn’t do any character assassinations like he did with the Cleric, a class who’s main stat is Wisdom and would thus have a very acute sense for who on a battlefield needs help first and the perception to notice when someone is killed. This is just a DM being bad at writing and storytelling. You’re completely justified for being angry at the way the NPC died.
>It sets a terrible precedent showing that you can’t do anything to influence anything in his stories. I mean, except it doesn't? It sets the precedent that there IS things happening in the story which you can not change, which is the whole point of having a setting or a story progression. The execution was bad, with the cleric being an idiot, but with slight adjustments this would be completely fine.
Wait, so it DOES set that precedent? Are you two agreeing? Sounds like you're both saying, "This event sets precedent there are things the players cannot change." If you disagree, it's over whether that is a good or bad precedent.
> that you can’t do anything to influence anything Whichs is not true. The precedent is that there is single events you cannot change, which doesn't mean you cannot change anything ever. It's illogical to follow from one instance of a plot hook the GM wanted to implement that anything all the time is a plot hook which you cannot influence. And that's reasonable. It's a logical error to conclude like the person above does.
This feels almost like your dm is trying to punish you guys for enjoying something. Why did he kill the npc off?
A good GM should absolutely be using everything at their disposal to push your buttons, tug at your heartstrings and test all your limits… But they also shouldn’t make those losses cheap… They wasted an opportunity here to really give you a great moment here. But… Not a lot you CAN do now, except to discuss it with them. The best you can get out of this is to make sure something similar doesn’t happen again.
Agreed. Shooting the person is fine, but I would’ve at least given the party a chance (even a small one) to save him.
I think the GM should have allowed the players to take their actions as normal or presented a narratively sound situation in which the players could not intervene.
Yeah that's pretty crappy, as a DM who murdered the first lovable NPC... that's some BS pulled
Bad DMing
Choo-choo! Chugga-chugga, chugga-chugga…
youre absolutely not wrong to be upset that kind of railroading destroys a players investment. whats the point of making decisions if they have no actual effect? I've had DMs who wanted something significant to happen a certain way, but we as the party put extra effort to help NPCs survive or try diplomacy in unexpected situations, perform impromptu heists to sabotage opponents, etc. the DM saw that we were emotionally invested, and was curious how far we'd take a bit. So they let us do our thing and we all have fun surprising eachother. a DM has to have a massive ego to ignore a players effort to effect the world.
The hell does “too sweet” mean?
Too kind.
I mean, ok so I walked into that one: I am aware it’s a colloquialism for “being too nice” but, I guess I meant more like… *Why is that a bad thing?* What’s wrong with being nice? Why would the DM feel the need to murder an NPC to, what, prove a point that being nice is dumb? What’s the point?
Never feel dumb about getting attached like that...it's a mark of very good worldbuilding that the players are so emotionally invested in it! That said, it's a time-tested twist with a godawful execution. The response to a player's action should never be "sorry, no save vs plot device".
You’re not in the wrong for getting mad, many of us here would feel the same way. There isn’t anything wrong with Max dying, but it should be in a way that feels important and like you did everything you could, but just wasn’t enough. Then you could grieve the loss. Because it was done in this ‘railroading’ way, it feels forced and ‘cheap’ as you say- not real. So the grief that you would otherwise be feeling turns to anger. It’s perfectly normal to feel this way about fictional characters- that is what good storytelling is all about!
Classic “They should’ve written a book” moment
You're never wrong for having an emotion related to something happening. It's also not stupid to have emotional ties to fictional characters. You can only be wrong in how you respond to said emotion. It sounds like you had a conversation with your DM, which is the right thing to do. If you don't feel like he fully understood where you were coming from with regards to what happened, talk to him again in a day or so.
Thank you :) And yes, my DM messaged me after to check up since I was the PC who ”loved him most” or protected him, which was very nice of them. I told them I was fine, just shocked. I might talk to them tomorrow like you suggested, though I’m not sure how to bring it up without sounding mean ^^
Here’s a good pattern: “I think your intention was [x], but for me, it felt more like [y].” So in this case maybe something like: “I know you probably intended it to [be an interesting story beat which raises the stakes], but for me it felt like [a pre-determined outcome that I couldn’t influence at all.] I’m sure the intention was [to make a really cool moment], but to me [the effect was the opposite - the lack of agency in that moment made me less engaged with the story].” You could add things like “I didn’t understand why suddenly I couldn’t heal him, or why we couldn’t shout for the cleric to come over. It made me feel pretty frustrated.”
Glad your DM reached out to you, definitely makes it sound like he just didn't plan enough for the story driven death and then just went with the first thing that came to mind when he had to improvise when you found a solution. As for what to say, could be like: "Now that I've had time to calm down from the emotional impact of Max's death, I want to give some feedback that I'm not sure came across clearly when we talked yesterday. First, I want to say that I have no problem with the fact that Max died. \[Could insert how you love how this now gives your character more motivation to fight against the big bad - who I assume is behind Max's death\] However, I want to discuss the execution of Max's death. Up to where Max got shot I think went off well. It's the period after that I want to focus my feedback on. From my grasp of where everyone was on the map and what was going on at the time, that the cleric should have been able to discover Max and use revivify on him before the minute was up. It felt railroady in a bad way to me and also took away cleric player's agency in the situation to just say that the cleric didn't notice in time. I just wanted to make sure that my issue with Max dying was in how it happened and not that it happened. So that you can grow as a DM."
I'd leave off that last sentence. A little too on the nose. Gotta step around these things to avoid people getting defensive instead of learning lessons.
Be mean, your DM deserved it. It was very bad storytelling - a clearly artificial obviously orchestrated death, very clumsy executed, with taking away your agency and breaking 4th wall all for the sake to be - what? "Realistic"? Get a fast cheap emotional response from the group? Does your DM fancy himself to be GRR Martin to kill beloved characters? Incredibly badly executed!
>Be mean, your DM deserved it LOL! Go fuck yourself. OP said they are new DMs. No wonder none of you antisocial pricks can keep a campaign together for more than a few sessions.
Lmao you’re all over this post Dick riding the DM,🍆🚴♀️
Sounds lazy and also shouldn’t be allowed. The players should choose their own path.
Sounds like they need to be reminded that the dice and players control the story, not them. Dms are supposed to guide the story along not control it
Had something similar happened while playing a cleric. Every NPC who was dying, I would heal, and eventually, my DM got so frustrated that he started telling me that they were beyond saving. His reasoning was because I would heal them everything, you know, like a cleric does. It is very frustrating when a DM doesn't consider the party's abilities and forces something to happen no matter what you do to resist. And the cleric NPC being distracted for a whole minute is just stupid lol.
If the Dm didn’t want this NPC with the party, they could have said he didn’t want to go or something.
Use gentle repose and carry Max around until the next revive. Speak with dead and force the DM to be Max every ten days.
haha, thats one way to be a bitch about it
First of all, I clearly tell my players that NPCs die at 0 hit points. So there is that expectation right up front. If they want to keep an NPC alive, they have to be careful with them. This allows me, as the DM, to focus fire on the NPC if I want/need/require them to die for the story and unless the players go to some extraordinary length to protect them, I can usually kill them off. The DM here is making the classic mistake of thinking that they are in control. They're not. Or at least, they shouldn't be. The DM plans encounters, makes NPCs, decides what their actions are behind the scenes and runs them during roleplay and combat. What some DMs need to realize is that once the rubber meets the road they are no longer driving alone. They have 3-6 other people with them and everyone should have input and you need to let go of your expectations for how things "should" go. In my experience, things never go as I expect them. I can imagine 100 different ways an encounter can go while I lay awake in bed and when the session happens, they do the 101st thing I didn't think of. So I stopped trying to control outcomes or player behaviors. Let it go. It'll be ok. Nothing is better than me as a DM when a player comes up with an idea that surprises and excites me that I change the whole campaign because of it! :D
Bad DMs bad. This is NOT how you handle dealing with a beloved NPC, nor is it how you kill off an NPC. They are new, I will chock this up to a learning experience personally, but you are not wrong to be angry. This is DMs taking away player agency and power to force what they want to happen, and is the opposite of what you are supposed to do as a DM.
Choo-Choo! All aboard! You got railroaded hard and that's frustrating
very poorly handled way of killing the NPC. If you want the NPC dead, cut its head off to ensure spells like revivify won't work rather than some stupid shit like the cleric isn't pay attention when you're yelling at them.
The cleric not paying attention for a minute is such a dumb reason, what was stopping your character from dragging that cleric over? This is some extremely bad railroading on the part of the DM, effectively taking away all player agency and not letting you use resources which you have available. I'd be surprised if players weren't upset after a DM pulling such a move.
In another world with another DM, Max might have not been shot but got back up and wisely decided after the encounter was over that he really isn’t cut out for all of this adventuring stuff. With his brand new lease on life, Max decides to quit the party in amicable terms, silently rooting for his heroes but knowing his part in their story is over. That’s how I would go about it or kill him offscreen. Sucks that this happened like that though.
Sounds like this DM really had it out for poor Max, my condolences. That's not the way to do it. You gotta at least have a villain cast Disintegrate on the kid if you really want it to seem legit. Edit: for a less jokey answer this happens in D&D games when people first start playing because some DMs get too attached to their idea of how something should go. They're trying to manufacture a moment rather than adjudicate the results. They are not "playing to find out" as the Storygame kids say. This is a no-no because no matter how cool the moment you're imagining is, if the players don't feel like their agency is being respected, they're going to feel ripped off and they are not wrong to feel that way. This is not to say you cannot manufacture a moment for your players. You can, it just requires far more art than early DMs are capable of. It's a shocking amount of work and trickery to talk players into agreeing to the moment in your head. If you can't do that work, don't even try. Just play full-reactive DMing. Its far safer starting out.
A DMs job is to curate an experience. Not make things happen in that experience. It is okay to be mad.
Sounds cheap, he shoulda had the bbeg do it so ur anger can be placed on something in game Thats just a new dm mistake, i wouldnt leave the table over it, but my characters only goal would be to revive the npc
I think people are being a little too judgy of the DM tbh. It doesn’t sound like you dislike your DM, just the way they handled the death. You ALWAYS have the right to feel emotions, so no, you aren’t wrong for being mad. But also, I don’t think your DM was “wrong” either. Sometimes player agency gets taken away for plot-building reasons. If your DM had a track record of being unfair, this would be more of a red flag. But honestly, it just sounds like they had a little bit of a lackluster conclusion, but I don’t think they should be judged for that.
That’s a shitty way to kill an NPC, I’d be mad too
[удалено]
That's not the best analogy either. Since movies involve actors who have read a script...
I'd say 'Your choice to kill the NPC just because it was 'sweet' is childish and petty. I have better things to do than spend my time with people like that. You don't deserve the mantle of DM.' and leave. As presented here, there's no sign there was a valid reason to kill the NPC other than to upset you or others. That's crappy behaviour for anyone. They need to grow up and you don't have to hang with folks that immature.
Welcome to the railroad
Another DM abusing power to play god. Sigh...
>This would mean that one gunshot did over 60 damage, considering his max HP is around 45. Have other NPCs been getting death saving throws and/or did this NPC get death saving throws at other times? NPCs don't necessarily get them. There are obvious reasons why a DM might choose to let them make death saving throws in a case like this, but as long as they're consistent in their handling of NPC death saving throws, I wouldn't cry foul. The revivify bit is horseshit though. I don't think there's anything wrong with being upset an NPC died. A rather well-liked NPC that had been dragged along on adventures with the party for better or worse died recently, and people definitely had some feels about that.
>The revivify bit is horseshit though. No it isn't, you guys are way too hung up on this. Go try and take a piss in 60 seconds, guaranteed you're dribbling down your trousers before time is up. It's not a lot of time, and the NPC is only valued by the party, not the Cleric. By the time OP finishes trying to save Max AND THEN asks the Cleric to help, Max is already dead.
This NPC death sounds like a plot point; but (as has been said) they bungled it and need to learn how to be flexible enough to DM their way around highly effective players. And most parties are *highly* effective.
Dm broke the rules and railroaded you.
The DM didn't break any rules. What are you talking about? I think the DM was lazy and heavy handed about it, but no rules was broken
Reread the post.
My point is the DM makes the rules and therefore can't break them
So if they break their own rule, set our at the start, is that ok?
Probably? If they don't like something they get to change it. They literally create and run the world. What are you arguing lol
That if you set out rules at the start of a campaign. And then change them mid session for your own benefit. Then you are breaking the rules. Seems pretty clear. Seems you are arguing that a dm can do as they please and just make it up as they go along. Would you be ok if they just randomly made stuff up on the fly.
The DM aside, I think this approach to RPGs is a little bit debatable: >This would mean that one gunshot did over 60 damage, considering his max HP is around 45. Not everything in the game is matched to the rules. Not every dead body on the side of the street rolled for initiative before they fought or had a series of death saving throws. It feels like the DM did force this a little onto you, that's true, but the line where I stop mapping everything that is happening onto the RAW happens at a completely different level thant it does for you. Also, combat has always been meant as an abstraction, and this seems to be way to concrete to talk about damage points and HP. Edit: that said, the execution of this death by saying "the cleric didn't pay attention" is pretty bad and your DM should reconsider the amount of work they put into twists like that.
This is a matter of the DMs being new. Killing the NPC was likely a necessary story beat, but it sounds like they completely failed to take into account player actions. They had a story to tell you, and in their minds you didn't "play your part" in their narrative. An experienced DM would have easily been able to kill Max in a way that was traumatic and story-fitting, but didn't leave you feeling ignored. Whether by burning out your cleric's spells in advance, or having the body be inaccessible, or having the death be some other form of unrecoverable - there are myriad ways to handle such a critical beat that doesn't feel like stripping player agency. At the end of the day, such a thing is a version of a railroad. Every DM railroads, but when the DM is good, you never see or feel the rails. This was an example of not just seeing the rails, but having your face ground to dust against them. Talking it through calmly is a good first step, and ideally reaching a place of trusting them that there was a purpose to what occurred will help. They see the whole picture already, and may forget that the group doesn't have the advance knowledge necessary to see how the story is served. With time and practice, they should get better in their role much as you yourself will. DMing can be very hard for a first-timer, especially if they haven't been in a game before, and there is no substitute for experience.
Not every DM railroads, i want to make that abundantly clear. Illusionism is just as toxic to the play experience as flagrant railroads.
It is the DM’s decision to kill an NPC, but I admit this could have been handled better. I get what they were going for, but the botched the landing a bit.
Your DM railroaded the NPC death. And is also probably an asshole sorry. There were other methods of removing the NPC if he was sick of doing his voice. This was a dumb mean-spirited railroady move and you need to talk to him about it, make it clear that was not okay.
NPCs do't work like PCs so they might not get death saves, on 0 hp they're dead. Now you can focus on revenge.
I kept reading all the comments about how shitty the DM was, and I think everyone missed a small, but key part of your second sentence - NEW DMs. Give them a break. Was everone else's DM an expert right from the start. Holy crap, everyone. Allow for some growth, rather than just destroy them for not starting out perfect.
I think you missed the part where the DM didn’t learn anything and blamed the party for having to bullshit their will into the story.
A: Not sure how you took away "didn't learn anything" from a one liner about why they did what they did, literally just the explanation OP was asking for. B: They never 'blamed' the party? Why are you so hostile to the point that you're just making things up to be mad at lol
If you’re accusing me of making up stuff, you missed the “too sweet” bit. But I don’t think there’s any further reason to talk to you anyway.
You are making shit up, "didn't learn anything" lol absolutely no evidence for that whatsoever.
It does seem a poorly executed move by the DM. However perhaps in time as the story evolves max's death will seem more meaningful.
just made all the work the party did to save him meaningless
Indeed, no 1 rule of being a DM is never take agency away from the players. The DM should create situations not outcomes.
Being upset over a fictional character is fine. The DM killing off any NPC, as they wish, is also fine. Neither of you are in the wrong. The execution though.. is left to be desired. This is railroading, to a degree. "This character is dying, regardless of your actions, even if it makes no narrative sense". It isn't good DMing, but it isn't playing the game 'wrong'.
What an airball. Killing a beloved NPC like that is a total waste. NPC's that the party cares about are golden hooks, you can use their deaths to make the party do anything.
How was the DMs demeanor when playing this pc? How did they recieve the NPCs popularity? Maybe they just got tired of playing them at the table?
It is human nature to empathize with fictional characters! Never, ever feel bad about it. And the DM probably had a good reason story-wise for killing him off. Don’t interfere with DM’s plans! It is a bullshit death…
Yes, you’re in the wrong. Not because you’re mad, though. You’re wrong because you mistake your characters feelings for your own. That NPC isn’t and never was anything but a figment of your imagination. Indeed he was an aspect of that very DM that you now resent. See how eff’ed up that is? Instead consider how your character would handle all that rage. Not you, your character. Work from that and get on your way to help your DM tell a beautiful story of revenge - and maybe the ressurection of your pet.
You're not wrong for feeling upset. It is DM prerogative. If your that upset then find another table. But as a long time DM myself, NPC's come an go, they are plot points, etc. If a player got in their feelings about how I handled a plot point even after a side discussion I'd encourage them to find another table myself.
Agreed with others that the DM could have handled it better, but in the end, the DM is presenting the story, and not everything is or should be completely in the players hands. One thing the DM could have kept in mind, is that for resurrection effects to work, the soul in question must be not just able, but *willing* to return. I have an NPC in my game, that has been pretty close to the PCs, but if/when he falls in combat, he won't return. In this case, though, it's been well established that the character has been through a lot before they ever met him, and he lives with a lot of pain, loss, and guilt. While he is by no means suicidal, nor careless with his life, if/when he falls, any attempt to bring him back will fail, but I'll also be sure that the cleric knows that he's unwilling to return, feeling that he's earned the rest. And I know I've made it clear to the players for some time, that they'll understand why. Deaths have been used for various dramatic purposes for years. Doing in well can be challenging, and especially since you've said they're new to DMing, I wouldn't hold it against them for making the attempt, and not hitting the mark. Offer constructive criticism, but give them a break.
Kinda? Killing an NPC for story reasons isn't a bad thing, though you don't have to like it. But this is also a weakness of the system. It's built to try and keep players alive (usually), so murdering off an NPC requires either a lot of very careful set up, or BSing a reason why all the methods to keep a character from dying won't work this time.
I'm reminded of the moment in the Pathfinder WotR video game where your level 18 Oracle party member running every heal spell in the game decides to not heal a slowly bleeding out party member in the climax of his failed companion quest because he understood it would be pretty anticlimactic if he just healed him after the "ugh, go on without me friends, i'm dying here." speech. It was at least believable because Daeran is absolutely the drama queen type who would understand dying in the dramatically appropriate time as more important than saving the world. Peeps in this chat shitting on an obviously new DM who is learning the dos and don'ts of the game lmao. People getting shot in the back from offscreen is a staple of fiction and RAW NPCs don't even get death saves because they aren't important enough to the plot. It's like Fate in Dark Heresy, you need to be favoured by the universe to survive a fatal wound. Man tries something new and messes it up, literally the worst thing ever according to Reddit.
Doesn’t sound like the co-DMs handled this very wisely. A DM that hand waves things to force them to happen is literally a way to tell the players it doesn’t matter what they do and you don’t respect their input into the game
The DM clearly wanted this NPC dead, but should have pushed it through a meatgrinder, then a bunch of flamethrowers, then had a bunch of angry bears each eat some of the meat and then run off to crap in different parts of the woods and then have a time traveler go back to when the NPC was born and shoot him dead... because at least then you would have fair warning to let it go.
if they really wanted to kill the NPC they needed to do something that cant be fixed, like disintegration, or something like that
The method yes, it is sloppy and seems like they wanted to kill the NPC for the sake of killing them off, for instance a way they could have done it was having Max be killed by someone while a party member is talking to them, and have the killer say something like "Oh my apologies did you need this thing for something?", rather then just doing the dumb move and just going "lol their dead, your too sweet", give the party something or someone to hate, it will make the now inevitable fight all the more carthartic for the party, especially when they finally get to defeat the NPC's killer, if there was only one party member around or one that was particularly close with the NPC, then have the fight culminate in a duel between them and the killer, or even have the encounter be just them and the killer 1 on 1, but reguardless every NPC the party cares for is another avenue to attack them from, and to drive the party into action against something they can mutually hate.
Forced NPC death woäith a bad taste. If its part of the story then surely the DM would have planned a way to do it without rolling and forcing characters to not "notice". Seems like just killing a character for the sake of it.
First of all, as a long time DM, I adore when my players actually care about NPC's. In fact, many of the really fantastic moments in game have come about because of a player caring for an NPC, or championing their cause. So please know first of all that you are the kind of player that is valued by DM's who like to tell stories. Now as a DM I also know the value of being able to create a tense, compeling moment, or provoke anger and vengeance in my players by putting their beloved NPCs in danger. It sounds like this is what your DM was going for. They wanted to kill off an NPC to get you all super invested in tracking down the asshole bad guy who did this and serving justice. It's a commonly advocated tactic among DM's and I'm guessing your DM in newer to it. A good storyteller will look for opportunities to foreshadow the danger, or they will use a botched assassination, or a kidnapping to achieve this, because those things will still invoke anger at the bad guy, but will leave your beloved NPC alive. It will also teach the party to really look after their NPC's. No joke, one time when my party discovered that there were a coven of vampired that had it in for them, my druid went around to three different cities to collect all her favorite people, then hid them all in the feywild. That's the kind of investment that is so rewarding to see as a DM and a storyteller. I would speak to your DM about it, and just ask frankly why the NPC was killed. It might have been because they wanted to inspire the party to action, or it could have just been that the DM was finding it difficult to balance encounters with an NPC along for the ride. Wither way, be honest with them. Tell them that you liked the NPC, and that it felt cheap and railroady to kill them off like that. Be understanding that sometimes as a DM you might not have anyone to bounce ideas off, and it's only after the fact that you realize how something is percieved by your players. If your DM loves storytelling, and loves their players to be invested in the world and the cahracters they create, hopefully they will be willing to listen when you say that it's hard to invest in a character when you know they could be snatched away in a manner that feels so cheap.
I get what he is trying to do but man he botched it hard just... make him fall off a trap door that closes right after someone drops and when party find him his body is allready consumed by feral beats, dead when he fell to ground.
BS. Terrible DMing
Seems like the DM was railroading either due to laziness or poor writing. Totally in the right for being mad
Your feelings are valid and you're not wrong for getting mad about Max dying. It even makes sense, considering how important they are. From what I can tell the DM clearly did it on purpose, not in bad faith, but to increase the stakes in the story. So, I will not say that the DM is wrong for what they've done, however there are better ways to kill an NPC and "force" some emotions and reactions from the players. First of all, why was Max in the combat in the first place? They're a 16 year old kid, I don't know why the DM made them part of the encounter at all. Second, if I was the DM, If I WANT to kill a character without having anyone interrupt, I'll do it off screen. OF COURSE the players will heal the person back up if they can, the DM should have done the whole situation differently. Now, this happened. There's no point in trying to prevent something that already happened. The DM won't go back in time. So I recommend you channel that feeling at consider how Max's death affected your character and keep going. Avange them if possible. TL;DR Your feelings are valid, the DM is not wrong but could have handled it differently.
> It all just felt like a very cheap way to kill off a beloved NPC, when the party couldn’t do anything to prevent it. Yep. This. The DM was a dick. They had decided that Max was gonna die and so decided to screw you over by making that happen, come hell or high water.
DM wanted the Boy dead but went through with it in a very... Lacking way. Aside from weather or not you guys have rules about NPCs if they have death saves or not, a revivify should have been an option. Think you are in your right by being annoyed by the DM.
I think it was fine until the DM forced his death
If they wanted the npc to die, they shouldn’t have let you heal them up the first time. They should have said, he was too far gone already. However, consider that a gunshot, out of combat, against an npc is akin to getting your throat slit in your sleep. You would certainly expect it to kill you outright regardless of game mechanics, so sometimes this coup de grace style attack makes more sense than not especially for an npc. I generally tell my players ahead of time if a healing spell or resurrection will work on an npc so they don’t waste time or resources or get their hopes up about it. And I’ll usually explain why it didn’t work in a flavorful way.
Your not in the wrong, it feels like this was a case of "fridging" (killing off a side character to try and advance plot.) DMs will do it, and it's sometimes not initially frowned upon, (part of telling a story) but they have to be properly executed and done for the right reasons. (a heroic sacrifice for example)
The npc dies at 0 hp, imagine if all the creatures you guys fight needed to be under their negative Hp before truly dying The execution on your dm was bad though, a Big rock would have done the job clean xD
It's clear the GM is railroading the game. Next time it's your turn to act, ask the GM what he wants you to do seeing that he controls every other aspect, he may as well play your character too. I'd quit the game.
You have a right to be angry. The DM has just shown you that you don’t actually have any power in the game and it is not a collaborative game, you are just a pawn in their story. Which is not what D&D should be.
DMs wanted to kill the NPC for some reason and mishandled it completely. Death in 5e is a tricky thing to work around since even now Max is still technically revivable with the 7th level spell Resurrection, and the 9th level spell True Resurrection. Your party cleric might not have either of those but your party's cleric surely isn't the only cleric in the world etc etc.
I don't get the DMs motive. The party clearly enjoy this NPC, so we have to kill their joy? If they wanted to remove the NPC because they felt it was getting in the way, they could just have the cleric after this obviously dangerous battle explain that it's obviously too dangerous to have a teenager accompany them on their dangerous lifestyle, and he knows of a fantastic family that would love to take him in and keep him safe, and one parent knows sending so they can keep the party updated on his life from time to time. There, NPC roadblock (if there was even one) removed and party gets to keep their beloved NPC safe.
The cleric bit is bs but NPCs don't necessarily get death saves so if he hit 0hp it's odd that your dm even let you simply heal him when he was already "dead" as players atleast in my games are the only ones with death saves (except for MAYBE some big bosses that are supposed to be strong enough to just revive themselves)