Killing Characters

[Agent 537]

This subject has likely come up before, but I bring it to you all anyway.

How do you handle killing characters in a superhero setting? Do you make it an OOC priority not to, because making a character and fitting it into the campaign is difficult and/or time-consuming? Do you allow it only if the characters do something REALLY stupid? Do your campaign's characters start to feel invincible because they know they can't die, and thus start to maybe grow bored or take unrealistic chances?

I'd appreciate any and all viewpoints you might care to offer.

[Demonsong]

I have a very simple rule in the games I GM.

*****I do not kill player characters. I do however let player characters kill themselves.

If I think a PC is doing something incredibly dumb I generally try to give them a hint or two that it might not be such a good idea. But there are times when PC's are going to do what they want. And I let them do what they want, they just have to live (or die) with the consequences of there actions.

[Agent 537]

Let me throw a 'for example' your way. What if the big bad villain knocks a hero out, with no other heroes around? Would you have the villain run off, or continue attacking the hero into a fine red paste? Would it depend on the villain, or would you always choose the former, so as to keep the player from being disappointed that his character is now dead?

[Vanguard]

It would depend entirely on the villian as well as what the villian is trying/intending to do.

Most of your villians out there would be happy just pasting the Hero and then grabbing what they came for and leaving the poor hero beaten, battered and defeated. A rare few (and these ones should be used extremely rarely) will finish what they've started and smoke the Hero.

[Hugh Neilson]

Most villains follow the "unwritten rule" that you don't kill the hero, mainly because hero killers tend to pick up a lot of new hunteds. In some cases, a comic book type coincidence that rescues the character may well be in order.

[Blue]

Originally posted by Agent 537
Let me throw a 'for example' your way. What if the big bad villain knocks a hero out, with no other heroes around? Would you have the villain run off, or continue attacking the hero into a fine red paste? Would it depend on the villain, or would you always choose the former, so as to keep the player from being disappointed that his character is now dead? This is all about the villain's psychiatric makeup. A homicidal villain might very well kill him, but I cannot tell you how few homicidal villains I have!

More generally, if they KO a hero they either leave him behind and finish what they came to do or they take him captive. Sometimes he's leverage against the rest of the team.

I've had only once where a villain has come close to killing a hero in the current campaign and that hero WISELY got his butt out of dodge and around a corner so that the other heroes could take down the villain. But if that hero had fallen, even an enraged villain wouldn't bother to concentrate on someone he saw as unconscious. He'd focus on the other guys, and in cases where the hero is dying and the villain does not have the CVK disad, he'd just leave the guy to bleed to death.

I honestly think you have to go out of your way to kill someone on purpose, and you have to be monumentally reckless to get your own character killed in a champions game.

Fantasy Hero, I've had deaths before, but never a PC. Unlike some games it's generally pretty easy to justify that person staying alive.

[pinecone]

I have no problem seeing a hero die, but the players know that so it's no suprise....but in Hero death just doesn't happen so it is rare. As far as finishing off a downed character that depends on the villian, in supers it is very seldom that someone would prefer a murder charge to a property crime, and situations like that are why you buy Luck (no way out senarios). I almost exclusivly play champs and in decades of play only a handful of heros have died, but then again that far more than most. In fantasy hero I beleive death should be more likely, but the less powerful and more human scale heros solve that already....

[lemming]

I've seen plenty PCs die and had several die of my own. However, the case where a PC was executed, was very, very rare and usually the player had agreed to it.

[Bengal]

Doesn't anyone use death traps? I mean, if a hero or heroes are utterly defeated and their fates are sealed, isn't it up to the villain to entrap them in some monstrously complicated machine or whatever, give a lengthy retelling of his origin story, reveal all his secret plans, gloat a while, and leave?

I actually think villains gain more XP from making death traps and executing them than they do from killing the good guys.

[Blue]

I've got too many heroes to ever fall into the "Death trap" thing. Too bad, I love those. But on average I've got 6 Heroes a game; if one falls AND should be captured (which has only happened once) then the others usually come to the rescue before there's any deathtrap action.

And the chances of ALL of the heroes being defeated are very rare.

[Bengal]

I run one game with one PC hero and one NPC hero, so the death trap thing comes up for me sometimes. The other game, I get 4-8 people a session, so you're right about that.


One of the great things about DNPCs or other credible threats is, you can sometimes coerce a hero into that sort of situation without actually beating him down first.

[BoneDaddy]

Why kill when you can capture, brainwash and release? Nothing quite so much fun as a Manchurian Candidate. "Raymond, how about a nice game of solitaire?"

If I kill, things get so awfully dark. If that's appropriate, then so be it, but its head-on-a-pike time, or really-good-death-scene time. Nothing so so or ho-hum. We had a hero go missing and turn up days later in a dumpster - so disappointing. Takes all the fun out of a good revenge scenario.

[Agent 537]

I started this thread because I'm concerned about a sense of complacency I think I'm seeing. Heroes in our campaign alternate between sitting around talking ICly for hours, going in dozens of random directions conversationally and getting nowhere, or they all rush to fight the bad guy when he shows his face. Heroes don't seem motivated to really focus and track down the bad guy BEFORE his big strike. When the bad guy DOES strike, the heroes all wade in, with little regard for teamwork. It's like they're all fighting the bad guy by themselves, and never mind those other heroes who happen to be at the same location. The possibility of dying seems not to be a concern, even against the most horrendous villains.

What to do about it? I dunno. I was hoping to get some perspective, which is why I posted. Thanks for all the responses so far. They are helping.

[Dr. Anomaly]

I've twice had the PCs in a position of being helpless before the villains.

In the first case, it was Genocide, and all the PCs were unconcious. One actually was a mutant, one was only half human (the other have being Greek divinity) and one -- I don't know if you could call Mark a mutant or not. In any case, Genocide most likely WOULD kill them. Instead I decided to have Genocide capture them and try to learn as much about their real identities as possible, in order to track down any friends or relatives (especially relatives) who might also be 'tainted'. I did this by having the PCs wake up, as college students, and discovering they'd been participating in a virtual reality simulation for credit hours (and a little cash). Of course in actuality Genocide had put the heroes in a VR set-up in order to get them to talk about their 'virtual experiences' as super-heroes, and thus get info on them. Little inconsistancies began to add up, though, and the heroes broke out of the VR set-up and trashed the local Genocide base they were in. They still have a lab coat from one of the Genocide techs hanging in their trophy room.

In the second case, this same team found itself helpless after a Viper team had entangled the lot of them using an expanding, hardening foam. I got MAX results from the dice, and they were all buried up to their necks and unable to get out. I really didn't see why the Viper team wouldn't kill them, considering they'd been a pain in Viper's neck for a while now. I was still trying to think of a way that would be both 'believable' (in the context of the campaign history) and not too 'GM ex machina' to save them, when one of my players saved me the trouble. Corona is a daughter of the Greek god Apollo, and an archer extraordinaire, as you'd expect. She also has both a rivalry and a Hunted with/by Eros (because of the archery thing, among other reasons).

As the Viper agents are lining up their weapons for the killing shot, Corona calls out in a loud voice, "Looks I won, Eros you bastard! YOU didn't get to kill me -- this bunch of mortal thugs are going to get that privledge!" I had to take my metaphorical hat off to her -- turning a Disad into a life-saving manuever like that! Eros popped in, and shot the Viper agents...who promptly fell in love with each other, dropped their weapons, and went off for an extended romantic idyll. Then Eros turned on the still-trapped PCs, smiled slowly...and did the same thing to them. (After all, he WAS Corona's Hunted, and I couldn't see him passing up the chance for a little sweet revenge.)

They were very much in love for quite a while, but were eventually snapped out of it by the Deacon on Sanctuary after their live-in mechanic/base guardian convinced them to take a vacation there (HE could tell how things between them had changed, of course, though THEY believed they'd just finally given in to the emotions that had been there all along.) Afterwards there were some tough times between the team members, considering things they'd said and done while under Eros' influence, but at least they were still alive.

That group is a group of superb players, believe me...:cool:

[Blue]

Viper agent love. That's just so wrong :eek: ;)

[Trebuchet]

I think killing characters should generally be a rare and significant event, but it shouldn't be impossible or you take away much of the excitement and feeling of accomplishment from triunphing over all obstacles. How rare depends on the genre. In Silver Age campaigns it would be virtually unknown; in Iron Age it's going to be more common. In graphic novels, fantasy settings and spy stories it might be fairly common.

That having been said, I would never kill a character in a cheap way. Comic book and movie heroes don't die from mooks' guns or villainous booby traps, nor should they. It's also against genre for the villain to just blast the hero until he's a fine red pulp. If they're going to die it should be for a good purpose, and in a way that lets them feel heroic and lets them accomplish something important. Whether it be saving New York from a nuke or a six-year-old from a burning building, the hero's death has to be meaningful and heroic.

[GrimJesta]

I adhere to the old addage from Hackmaster: Let the dice fall where they may.

I never, ever fudge the dice. It sorta cheats players of victories they attain through skill, as even if they dont do things right they get to live. If the villain ever smokes someone, then theyre dead. But I tend to run gritty, realistic games, thus why I run Fantasy Hero and Dark Champions.

:)

-=Grim=-

[lemming]

The other thing is, even if a character is accidently killed, it's true to genre to bring them back somehow.

[KA.]

Okay, I have to weigh in on this.
If your players can only be motivated by the threat of their own death, something is seriously wrong, and they do not understand the genre.
A hero's greatest fear should never be his own death, it should be failure.
I don't mean failure to curb-stomp every mook they meet, I mean failure to protect the innocent.

If they rush in headlong and Dr. Destroyer KO's them, they shouldn't be worried about what is going to happen to them, it should be what is he going to do to innocent people while they are unconscious!.

If all a person worried about was his personal safety, they would never become a hero, they would just stay home.

Don't motivate your heroes by threatening them with death.
Have them "get to know" some DNPC's.
Make them care about them, and by extension, the community they protect.

Then when they don't pay attention, and don't care what happens, have the innocent affected by their slack attitude.

You don't have to kill them off either.

Have it happen in subtle ways:
Mom 'n Pop's Grocery gets burned down by a stray blast from a DEMON Morbane, that no one was keeping an eye on.

Every time they go past the location, have them see Pop in there, working like a dog to rebuild it.

Have a Mission that helped the homeless forced to close because of damage.

Now have the players have to deal with a lot of petty crime committed by homeless people just looking for food and a place to sleep.
Or have the homeless kidnapped and experimented on by some villain, because they lost the safety of the shelter.

Others can give you more suggestions, but you get the idea.

Have their actions, or lack of them, matter in the game world.

Don't crucify them for every little mistake, but make them pay for a total lack of care.

KA.

[Trebuchet]

You hit the nail right on the head, KA. :cool:

That's the whole point of being a hero: Protecting others. When our team was fighting Eurostar back in late August of last year, losing was not an option because the stakes were two nuclear weapons. God only knows how many innocent people would have died if MidGuard had failed to stop Eurostar from escaping with two nukes. It damn sure wouldn't have been pretty. :eek:

[PhilFleischmann]

I must echo what KA said.

Agent 537 seemed to have two problems with his players:
They don't understand what it means to be a hero.
They don't understand the value of teamwork and strategy.

KA addressed the first problem quite well. Allow me to address the second:

This will require a little more work on your part. How are you playing the villains? If six 350-point supers can take down Dr. Destroyer or some cosmic-level villain without using teamwork, then I suspect the GM isn't playing the villain right. Go ahead and let the villains be as intelligent as they should be. Let them exploit the heroes' weaknesses. Let them press every advantage.

One useful technique is to send the PCs against a team of villains. Let them be well matched to the heroes' weaknesses, but let the PC's Psych lims motivate them to attack each villain that can defeat them. For example, let the villain with the AE Entangle taunt the martial artist hero into fighting. Let the rubber-bodied villain with Physical Damage reduction really get on the hero brick's nerves. The PCs won't be able to just attack whoever they feel like attacking. They'll have to think a little to determine how best to take down the bad guys.

Make your players do a little thinking and investigation. Someone is robbing all the local banks in the middle of the night without setting off any alarms or leaving any trace. How? If the players say, "We can't do anything until a bad guy in a costume shows up and loudly announces himself to be the bank robber," then let them watch TV, while you go out and find some players who actually want to play.

To teach the lessons of both heroism and tactics, try taking a hostage.

[Arthur]

Originally posted by Demonsong
I have a very simple rule in the games I GM.

*****I do not kill player characters. I do however let player characters kill themselves.

If I think a PC is doing something incredibly dumb I generally try to give them a hint or two that it might not be such a good idea. But there are times when PC's are going to do what they want. And I let them do what they want, they just have to live (or die) with the consequences of there actions.

Nicely put.

That has also been my philosophy for decades. It's not my job as GM to kill characters. However, it's also not my job to prevent them from killing themselves.

However, I find it distasteful to kill a PC, and will ask for confirmation of really stupid actions ("Are you SURE you want to insult Doctor Doom's mother to his face?"). However, if the player insists, I will sigh and roll the dice.

[KA.]

Trebuchet,
Thanks for the kind words.

PhilFleischmann,
I totally agree with your points about teamwork and motivation.
It sounds like these players have seen too many episodes of SuperFriends!
They just wait around for the Troubalert to go off and tell them what to do.

KA.

[Trebuchet]

Originally posted by KA.

It sounds like these players have seen too many episodes of SuperFriends!

They just wait around for the Troubalert to go off and tell them what to do.It's any easy trap to get into, and generally indicates player laziness. I used to tell my players in my old D&D campaign "There's no escalator to the adventure. You have to tell me what you're doing, or I'll assume you're doing nothing and just sitting at home. So what are you doing?"

My current Champions campaign has a pretty good mix of "Let's investigate that, it sounds interesting" (Helped by a monthly "newspaper" I publish before every month's game), being fortuitously nearby when something unusual happens, being contacted by the authorities for help, and having villains arrange something evil.

[Farkling]

I like the newspaper method. I put columns in it relevant to their previous game actions also. (When I find the time to make one)

Occasioanally I have delivered a lst of "hot internet topics"

I also didd the "letters from friends and DNPC's" schtick for one game. The ArchAngel was the worst one, I eventually decided on the Vatican sending a leter of inquiry about his "bloodthirsty nature"


Another motivator is to field a group of knowledgable agents into battle, and have these "mooks" temawork the heroes into helplessness. Haul them all off to a DeathTrap.

(Maybe seal them in an adamantium walled crate and drop them in the Marianus Trench)

If they get out of it, one or two should be motivated into an ongoing search and destroy of the agent group if nothing else.

Imagine Batman or Spidey complacently accepting such treatment and returning to the "waiting for the TroubleAlert"

Maybe that's why Batman misses so many Justice League shows? "I'm BUSY!"

[Trebuchet]

The newspaper has worked out pretty well. I solicit columns from the other GMs as well, and the articles often cover previous team exploits (The press often misses the full story, and the players really like having the "inside scoop") as well as set up future adventures. Of course, plenty of the team's exploits are off camera and/or secret. The team's last exploit (Preventing a rescue attempt by some supers trying to free their incarcerated comrade and also fighting two Mechanon knockoffs appeared in the papers as an ordinary "RAF C-130 military plane crash" (Having both wings sheared clean off at the roots on takeoff by the equivalents of light-sabers will do that.).

[BlackSword]

Originally posted by GrimJesta

I never, ever fudge the dice. It sorta cheats players of victories they attain through skill, as even if they dont do things right they get to live. If the villain ever smokes someone, then theyre dead. But I tend to run gritty, realistic games, thus why I run Fantasy Hero and Dark Champions.

We tend to roll combat rolls in front of everyone, so there is no fudging. Which is why my last charecter hit the ground with -17 body. Really sucks when you get surprised and don't have your force field up. For some odd reason the rest of my characters are staying in body armor even when sleeping.

[rayoman]

I have had or I have seen similar problems.

I have three players in a DnD campaign. I have tried to give them enough information so they could start their own investigation to get them involved in the game. They don't seem to want to do that. I have to basically put stuff right out in front of them that says, ENTURE HOOK! If that doesn't interest them then I try to wrap things up quickly so I can go watch TV or something.

If you are worried about teamwork then you need to make a villain that can take the groups largest attack (ie: read the villain isn't hurt or hurt very little). Make them have to work together. Don't kill them. The villain should gloat then get what he was trying to steal and leave. After a couple of times of getting pasted in fights they should try to work together.

Make a group on less points than the Heroes. This group has code words and manuevers worked out so they should be able to win against an unorganized team. After getting beat by weaker foes, make sure the group KNOWS they were beaten by a weaker foe. This should motivate them to work together.




Originally posted by Agent 537
I started this thread because I'm concerned about a sense of complacency I think I'm seeing. Heroes in our campaign alternate between sitting around talking ICly for hours,...

-rest of post snipped-

[zornwil]

Interesting thread.

Bearing in mind this is a game, I think the threat of death is helpful to the spirit of battling something. So I think it should be there, well, genre-dependent anyway (certainly a light-hearted genre wouldn't require such a thing).

I've very rarely had PCs die when running. They've been mostly on-camera events. I've tended to shy away, though, after a guy got pretty upset his PC died and basically stopped playing, though he would hang out with us. He never admitted it bothered him, he claimed in fact it didn't at all. But he was the type of person not to admit those things. The problem is, he played the character so aggressively and so killing-oriented at times that he basically set himself up to get killed, or at least I thought so. And his character was powerful enough he had reached a Reputation Level in my game where he could come back, so I thought he'd enjoy it.

Anyway, as a result, I'm a little more gunshy.

[Vondy]

I prefer to avoid killing PCs, and my players know it, but they also know there are two times where the normative plot-preservation and script-immunity ceases to be "golden":

1) dramatic or climactic plot junctures
2) if they do something extremely stupid

They still have cause to get nervous outside these times (there are bad things that can happen other than death), and there have been a few kills - all extremely well remembered - in my game.

In a thirteen year campaign five heroes have been killed.

1 because the player did something abysmally stupid + unlucky rolls
3 because the players knowingly paid the last true measure of devotion to the cuase
1 because the player wanted a new character (I would have let him retire one for another) and asked me to take him out in a brutal and dramatic way

There have also been some villian kills, but those also tend to be rare.

[Ken Solo]

1) When I start a campaign, I publish a pamphlet alerting the players to the nature of the world they will be playing in, as well as a list of all the optional combat rules I am and am not using in the game. I tend to weigh the combination of optionals so that Killing Attacks are indeed dangerous. For one thing, I like thugs with a .38 to be a *little* respected, and for another, I intensly dislike "gunfighter at high noon" combat. I like to see people seeking cover, and moving a fight to a battleground that offers them an advantage.
With this right out in the open, I have no problem with killig a PC that does something stupid. fer instance, the character the peeped through a window from hiding saw a squad of agants with AK-47s ready and aimed at the door. He charged through anyway. He got dead.
On the otherhand, it I manage to KO the whole hero team, I will look for any excuse to keep them alive. Usualy by way of the villan putting them into an 'inescapable' prison, or deathtrap.


2) I like the idea of the news paper acounts mentioned earlier so much that I'm going to start a new thread in the Champions Discussion soliciting just such accounts for my own game. I play with about two dozen NPC hero groups around the world, and a newspaper sumarizingtheir exploits would be wonderful for adding to the campaign world. (and giving me more springboards for plot ideas)

[zornwil]

Originally posted by Ken Solo
1) When I start a campaign, I publish a pamphlet alerting the players to the nature of the world they will be playing in, as well as a list of all the optional combat rules I am and am not using in the game. I tend to weigh the combination of optionals so that Killing Attacks are indeed dangerous. For one thing, I like thugs with a .38 to be a *little* respected, and for another, I intensly dislike "gunfighter at high noon" combat. I like to see people seeking cover, and moving a fight to a battleground that offers them an advantage.
With this right out in the open, I have no problem with killig a PC that does something stupid. fer instance, the character the peeped through a window from hiding saw a squad of agants with AK-47s ready and aimed at the door. He charged through anyway. He got dead.
On the otherhand, it I manage to KO the whole hero team, I will look for any excuse to keep them alive. Usualy by way of the villan putting them into an 'inescapable' prison, or deathtrap.


2) I like the idea of the news paper acounts mentioned earlier so much that I'm going to start a new thread in the Champions Discussion soliciting just such accounts for my own game. I play with about two dozen NPC hero groups around the world, and a newspaper sumarizingtheir exploits would be wonderful for adding to the campaign world. (and giving me more springboards for plot ideas)

I don't have the same prejudices you do, but I like your newspaper account comment and will (eventually) check out that thread, great idea for posting!

[Arthur]

Originally posted by Dr. Anomaly

.....
WOULD kill them. Instead I decided to have Genocide capture them and try to learn as much about their real identities as possible, in order to track down any friends or relatives (especially relatives) who might also be 'tainted'. I did this by having the PCs wake up, as college students, and discovering they'd been participating in a virtual reality simulation for credit hours (and a little cash). Of course in actuality Genocide had put the heroes in a VR set-up in order to get them to talk about their 'virtual experiences' as super-heroes, and thus get info on them. Little inconsistancies...


This is one of the coolest story arcs I have ever read about. My hat's off to you.

[ZootSoot]

Originally posted by Agent 537
This subject has likely come up before, but I bring it to you all anyway.

How do you handle killing characters in a superhero setting? Do you make it an OOC priority not to, because making a character and fitting it into the campaign is difficult and/or time-consuming? Do you allow it only if the characters do something REALLY stupid? Do your campaign's characters start to feel invincible because they know they can't die, and thus start to maybe grow bored or take unrealistic chances?

I'd appreciate any and all viewpoints you might care to offer.

I am an extremist on these boards. I don't use death to force players to play my way (punishing them for being stupid) and I don't protect them from failure and death. If the characters would die according to the situation and the dice, they die.

[ZootSoot]

Stupidity will get a character killed, but not because I say they must die. They will die if the dice say their tactics result in death. I don't hammer my players into line (I also ignore many genre conventions, my villains have workable plans and comprehensible goals, never use death traps and never refuse to believe the obvious).

[Tech]

I have yet to kill a character - although I have had villains try quite hard to kill the characters. Hm, that wasn't very clear.

As a GM, I do not look for ways to kill characters. Not one character has died while I've GM'd. I'm glad to be able to say that my players are veteran players and generally do not make stupid moves. The PC's look out for each other and teamwork is generally the action performed by them. I consider it the DnD mindset when a GM goes out of his way to actually kill a character and as we all know, building a good character takes a lot of thought, energy and time on a player's behalf.

As many have already pointed out, there are many avenues out to killing heroes. Brainwashing, putting them in a deathtrap, letting the heroes wake-up realizing their defeat and licking their wounds, trapping them suddenly, etc. Mind you, I have a few villain nuts who would try to kill the heroes, given the chance. However, the heroes go out of their way to avoid such an incident occuring and it works. Even the villainous nuts, who don't care if a hero dies, can realize there may be a way mucho big bonus if they bring home the hero tied-up to their boss than simply killing them outright. Wounding a hero can effectively neutralize a hero, also. For those who can't be hurt, generally bricks but not always, the threat of loved ones getting hurt or innocent bystanders injured works. There is no need to kill a hero.

One time I asked a player to the side if he'd be willing to set his hero in extreme danger and told him the specifics of the danger and he said 'Sure! Sounds like fun!' It was a small atomic bomb. (FYI, I use my own ideas on the damage an A-bomb would do.) He survived the bomb and came after the villain who set it off with tremendous heroic effect! Yes, the dice rolls actually worked with the player that time. The thing is, neither he nor I knew what the outcome of that adventure would be and the heroes likely death was a 50/50 chance in theory. (More like 0% since I so badly wimped out on the damage.)

To close, I haven't killed a hero yet because there are so many things that can be done to them otherwise, but that doesn't mean it won't ever happen.