PC death

[mastereji]

I was wondering some of the alternate ways some of you gms out there handle PC death. For the d6 system i usually try and avoid PCs dying from lets say a stormtrooper blaster rifle unless they absolutely deserve it, i.e., charging several squads of them. Ive always felt as a gm that if a player is playing their character and is having fun i usually dont let a die roll kill them. Instead ill have them maimed, lose an appendage, etc. but not without further cost. I might also allow a PC to freely expend one of their force points to allow them to live though they will sustain some sort of permanent damage. I dont know im just raving on. What do you guys think?
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"Remember the PCs are just putty in your hands"

[YodaWI]

In the many years I have been gaming with my small group we have had only a few instances were characters have died.

One, two of the three PC's (rebels) died when they chose to try to fight off a host of zero G stormtroopers rather than join their fellow rebel in the escape pod.

Two, we were running a 'prequel' adventure for our favorite characters. In the prequel, two of the three PC's had to die. One PC was roleplaying the father of his original character. When the characters were started, his background said his father died in the line of duty.

We have had a variety of close calls. One character ended up with two prosthetic limbs, one character was saved from falling to his death by his partner in a starship, along with many others.

In other words, our group handles it much the same way you do.
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"May the Force Be With You."

[Yak Face]

Our group has seen its share of PC death. Once a TPK ended a fine campaign. We even had a suicide. Sometimes it's deserved... I like to have somebody die once in a while. It keeps people from acting crazy and making the story unreasonable.

What I have done to avoid PC death has typically included maiming or taking away toys. For example, a jedi player recently make a rash move. He was stunned into submission rather than killed (which was his rightful fate) and both of his lightsabers taken away. Now he must adventure to recover the loss.
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However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. -Sir Winston Churchill

[hisham]

Whenever a random death I usually reroll... but just once.

This has saved a lot of lives over the years, except for one Trandoshan who jumped away from molten metal spilled in a foundry around 1993. He failed his second roll, so he was burned to a crisp.

Other deaths in my campaign are usually characters that sacrificed themselves willfully or those that planned their death in-story ahead with me in secret.
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The Enteague Sector | Cracken's Collection of Crackpots
In D6, of course.

[schnarre]

PC deaths haven't been very common, but they do happen. Bad luck on rolls (rolling 1 on a wild die in a cliffhangar situation was one example), wrong place at the wrong time (Wookiee at ground zero for an EMP pulse), honorable suicide (PC being eaten by a Rancor activates the explosives he packed) & other possibilities. If they come up, I'll weigh the situation & roll with it usually.

Fortunately, most of my old group were careful enough for that not to be a problem. When it did, the result was good RP.
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The man who thinks he knows everything is most annoying for those of us that do.

[garhkal]

With me, if death is what is rolled, death is what usually happens. For newer characters though i do go with a 'gloves on' approach in which all enemies want prisoners..

Once that phase is over, only those who have been specificed in the module (or what i have wrote up for them) take prisoners or otherwise go for sparing them rather than killing..
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Buttonz]

The biggest trouble i have with my players is they kill everything in sight and then claim they are fighting in self defense. Two player in particular are guilty of this type of play. They have no regard for their characters or the consequences their actions can have for themselves or the other players.
I don't bother killing these characters as i know the only response will be a new and "better" character (see higher combat dice codes).

In a recent session, one of the characters encountered a member of an elite combat group who was covering another character and several NPCs with a assault rifle and wearing combat armor, but no helmet. She was behind her friend and armed with a pistol with 2 shots left. She points the gun at the group and orders the soldier to surrender. The soldier looks are her and points out she will hit one of her friends before she hits him, so she walks around a ground vehicle which i thought she would use as cover, but she steps out in the open about 10m away and orders the soldier to surrender. He points out that he is wearing armor her weapon is unlikely to punch through, and he has a higher powered weapon that tear her unarmored weapon apart before she can squeeze off a shot. She she shifts her aim to his head and gives me a cheeky smile.
One of the NPCs used the momentary distraction and sent an underling to tackle the soldier and ran away and the other PC jumping into the driver seat of the ground vehicle and made good their escape. Of course instead of joining the escape, the silly PC decided to stay and duel it out with the soldier.
Lucky for her the soldier had more important things to do that kill mindless drones and chased the NPCs, but thats an example of what an average session is like. Atleast they didn't kill NPC on the off chance they were evil, although it came close.

[Yak Face]

That's a shame. I don't like playing with those who don't get attached to their characters. Why bother, at that point? It leads to endless character engineering, as each dead character is replaced by some new gimick. "Ohh - check out my force-sensitive Verpine cyborg with kung-fu action grip.." It may be a good tactic to avoid killing those characters as you've done - either it avoids the constant parade of new faces, or allows the players to get used to one PC identity, thus making threats more serious.
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However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. -Sir Winston Churchill

[garhkal]

Or like happened to Jet li in the ONE, put them somewhere where they maybe a bad a&&, but they won't die.. like in a minority report like jail!
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[darthomer09]

I love a good PC death. Muahahaha.
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Rebel Uprisings

In Soviet Russia, RPG plays you!!

[ccatkins]

In my game we have stolen an idea from D20 SAGA edition and said that a Force Point can be spent to avoid death.

[darthomer09]

Hrmm. A good option for the players... But i'm not quite sure how that would work in the story telling point of view.
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Rebel Uprisings

In Soviet Russia, RPG plays you!!

[Gry Sarth]

I really hate that idea. "A Force Point can be spent to avoid death." Only a Sith deals in such absolutes.

A Force Point can be spent to greatly increase your chances of survival, as it says in the good book, but to cheat death, that is something else. So the character falls out of an airspeeder and plunges straight into the rocky ground miles below at terminal velocity. "I SPEND A FORCE POINT!" Wow, that was a close call...
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"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them."

[Whill]

I have had several PCs die in the past 20 years. In almost all cases, the characters totally deserved that fate based on the way their players were playing them. However, they all died in heroic manners that served the story.

One of the good players I had was game mechanically killed by a lucky goon's blaster bolt near the beginning of an adventure. I ignored the role and instead stated the result was incapacitated or something. His teammates pulled him out of the battle and they escaped or finished the enemies off (memory fails on the details).

During a break, I pulled the player aside and told him what I had done bcause I didn't feel the character should have such an unclimactic demise. So I told that player that he could continue playing the rest of the adventure if didn't tell the other players and he dramaticly sacraficed his character's life to save his team at the adventure's climax (which I beefed-up accordingly).

Sure enough, when the end of the final encounter came and other players began to lose hope that the party had any chance of surviving the big battle royale against a group of deadly bounty hunters who had them pinned down, the player of the wounded character "marked for death" spent a Force Point so he could charge into the enemies with a grenade in each hand, knocking out all of the bad guys and saving the day.

The end result for that PC was the same: he died in that adventure. But saving his death for the climax really made a better story.

And even though none of us knew it would be at the time, that adventure ended up being that last one of that particular player group, so it all worked out really well.
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[Buttonz]

I have never thought of handling a PC death like you have mentioned, Whill. I will often "modify" rolls to keep characters being killed by mere minions, or encourage the spending of a few CP (i might as well pull their teeth).
Sadly, I now have the feeling this has led my players to the "he won't kill us" attitude that causes players to act with a recklessness towards their characters when dealing with "minion" character. This gives me a great way to keep the idea that the characters are important, but they do die and that death should be important, or atleast something to remembered in times to come.