Final destination- How often do Player Characters die in missions that you GM?

[Mckraken 1]

I know this is a very open question but as someone coming back to GMing Roleplay I wanted to know what the views and experiences are of other GMs in Dark Heresy?

In previous RP Games that I have GM-ed (Fantasy Roleplay, AD & D, Cyberpunk, Vampire: the masquerade etc.) I have always made life tough for my PCs and never shied away from seeing their PCs die (especially in Cyberpunk).  That said, though I never openly admit it to the players, I enjoy seeing their PCs succeed and develop.

In my view its all about getting the balance right; no reward/satisfaction without risk (of death/failure etc.).  The "grim dark" 40k setting of Dark Heresy implies to me that my PCs should be using up fate points quickly and regularly at risk of their PC's death- sometimes even rolling up new PCs mid-session. 

However, what are you guys and gals doing?  Have you EVER killed off PCs or do they all bow out at rank 16?  Or, at the other extreme, are your PCs dying on a regular basis? (If so, how regular?) 

I want to get the balance right with my PC group, so I am really interested to hear of the actual "in game" experience (and recommendations) from other Dark Heresy GMs?

Thanking you all in anticipation…….

[Garner 0]

In my experience playing Dark Heresy it seems the more investigation heavy the game is the less likely the characters are to be scrapping characters every session. Their leads, clues, and information that character has access to become important to drive the game and it's narrative forward.

In games of Dark Heresy that are more mission oriented I notice the players burn fate often due to the nature of the game system. If you have even a few crazy rolls in a row or a couple tough encounters back to back the players tend to burn fate points. Also in these mission/strike-team games the importance of each individual character to propel the narrative is usually inconsequential so if they die no biggy and the game master is less torn about putting the acolytes in significant danger.

[Braddoc 112]

Not that often.  sure they get crit damage on a regualr basis, but die?  I never had that happen yet in DH.

It happened once in rogue Trader, where the RT and the archmilitant were not that friendly with each other and their shooting at each other was what killed the game.

The 'fardest' in DH was my last mission where they are looking for their missing Inquisitor, yet despite knowing the xeno colloborators were active on the Feudal world they went without even bothering a change of clothe, much less a disguise. 

So they got attacked by 3 bowmen and a couple of them ended up burning fate point due to numerous arrows to the head.

 

 

[Saldre 44]

Lucky you!

I have people losing characters pretty damned often- but I guess my missions are a bit deadlier than most?

With seven players, I have to ramp things up a bit. 

Last mission, the group went down to a small and isolated mining district on the edge of Hive Tarsus and riled up a local Witch-Coven consisting of the district's "persons of authority"- by the end of the three session game, 3 of them are dead [One to a hail of bullets by the local enforcers, two for being abandonned in a crate of copper with 1 toughness point, a broken leg and 0 fate points and the third one being melted by acidic blood of a hideously mutated/monstrous shape-shifting assassin.] 

Alternatively, every once and a while I'll have a mission with an extreme danger level and a high death toll like this one- usually though, I have one player [last campaign] that has the bad habit of losing his character every couple of missions- [death by acid blood guy]. This is the first character he's lost this campaign, so were going to see if he's going start the patern or not. 

The others tend to lose characters a lot less often- despite my not being generous with fate points. Or at least, trying not to be.

So, bottom line: Once the characters get into criticals and burn that first fate point, its very easy to lose the other ones [often a single hit is going to be necessary to drop them again.] So it really depends on their approach: Hammer approach means lots of burnt fate points, a more subtle investigation is likely to lead to less confrontation overall and less burned fate points. 

[Cymbel 122]

I thought burning that fate was supposed to leave them at 0, but out of the fight or some kind of minor guarantee that barring something major, their character would just survive at worst and not lose the limb at best. If you run it the other way, they could go through 3 fate easily in one encounter.

[Saldre 44]

That's how we play it- but being at 0 hitpoints for the NEXT encounter isn't very helpful if they decide to start shooting things up  

Agreed with Cymbel- at first we played it that burning a fate-point was just "losing one life" and you kept on going until  you chose to stop… that caused monsters to ignore players that went down [only to have them stand back up and kill the monsters[ or double-taping players in order to finish them off for good. 

What we do now is, the player that burns a fate point takes 1d5 Critical damage and is safely out of the fight. If the players Lose the encounter, they often get captured by the bad guys and taken to torture dungeons- or wake up as they are being moved to a point where they can be executed, and the adventure moves on from there. 

[InquisitorAlexel 244]

That's a good question. Honestly, my way of doing it is of not caring. What I mean by this: I create a scenario and ennemies adapted to the level of my players and their style of play. When I want them to shine like heroes, I make more narrative battles with a few tests to each player to determine the results (mobs and etc.). When I do minor battles (with a concrete objective for them or for their ennemies), I do the battle with standard fight, but any hit that would do critical (by the system I've written in the house rules section) kill the NPCs.

And when I want that major encounter, the players are level with their ennemies. They get critical damage the same way, and the main ennemies are strong enough to hold their ground. If the players charge head on, nice for them, but the risks are there. For them, it's to assess how much the situation is important and how much does the success of their mission depends on them being careful or not.

And if a harder battle slay one of them, then so be it, I don't make my fight unfeasable, but I do make them dangerous enough. And healing wounds in my games is highly difficult, we stick to the written system of healing and they can have to do a lot of fights before having the chance to heal. This means death if they are too reckless.

[Mckraken 1]

Cheers Guys, always helpful to receive information of your actual in game experiences. 

Just want to make sure that I get the "risk and reward" balance right in my games.  Easy to think or talk about these things but no substitute to hearing from GMs who've "been there, done it and got the T-shirt".

[Griffsnog 0]

Always roll behind a screen. A good GM will always have his players thinking they may be in mortal danger but they should only be dying if it makes sense. Unless you are playing true to the setting in which case The Grim-Dark future is Grim-Dark and everybody should be dying constantly.

The whole point of roleplaying is collaborative story telling. If people are dying left and right it's probably no fun. Fudge some rolls but only your own. The PCs still need to be masters of their own fate. Try run ing them through a "training excercise" at an inquisitorial academy where the characters and vicariously the players understand the mechanics amd importance of cover.

Also encourage grenade use.

[Magnus Grendel 11,679]

I tend to be quite open about it. Combat is pretty deadly and if you screw up, you die.

That said, the players tend not to be idiots, so they don't actually die that often. Someone tends to require serious medical attention after an combat-heavy mission, but only about 1/3 of those actually cost fate points, and I've not (to date) had any characters die.

 

I heartily encourage GMs to make sure the players know their way around combat mechanics. Suppressive fire is another important one (at least for those characters with appropriate weapons).

[khimaera 64]

My first DH campaign ran for three years.  In that time, we lost seven PCs, including the newly ascended Inquisitor in the final game of the campaign.  He sacrificed himself after realizing too late that he'd been lured into a Tzeentchian trap that depended upon him fighting his way out. 
Every death added something meaningful to the narrative, even the unexpected and seemingly unfair ones.

[Lexdamus 7]

My groups current campaign someone dies every 5-10 missions in. So it's not a terrible body count. When they do happen they are usually worked into the story in some way. Basically if you screw up and run out of fate and healing that's your fault. But risk taking done with good rp and in character choices is encouraged. Just understand the risks you are taking. I also agree if the player learns from it then something was gained at least. We had one character commit suicide after realizing he doomed half a subsector to an alien invasion following some messups on skill rolls and being subtlely influenced by a xenos artifact. 

Edited October 11, 2013 by Lexdamus

[Fgdsfg 1,017]

In the games I've been in: Not nearly enough!

[Griffsnog 0]

I tend to be quite open about it. Combat is pretty deadly and if you screw up, you die.

That said, the players tend not to be idiots, so they don't actually die that often. Someone tends to require serious medical attention after an combat-heavy mission, but only about 1/3 of those actually cost fate points, and I've not (to date) had any characters die.

I heartily encourage GMs to make sure the players know their way around combat mechanics. Suppressive fire is another important one (at least for those characters with appropriate

I forgot to mention that the 1d4chan article on dark heresy combat should be read by all acolytes. Also print out the quick start rules section of any of the free adventures for each of them.

http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Dark_Heresy

Edited October 11, 2013 by Griffsnog

[bogi_khaosa 267]

Not as much as the dice would dictate, as I have a tendency to feel bad and cheat in the players' favor.

[Simsum 220]

Not as much as the dice would dictate, as I have a tendency to feel bad and cheat in the players' favor.

 

Be very careful with that. You're draining the tension from the game, making the rules unreliable in your games, and in a very real sense robbing your players of agency (even if it's mostly the ability to be suicidal).

 

In the short term a competent GM can fudge all he pleases with no meaningful impact on the game. But in the long run all of the above is going to grow noticeable, and they're not beneficial to the experience of playing.

 

...

 

I prefer to think of it as the players killing their characters in most cases. But I do it too, on occasion. Not deliberately, of course, but it happens. more often, though, my players end up killing someone or something I didn't intend for them to kill. Fortunately that's usually a lot less inconvenient than unplanned PC death.

 

Mostly death, whomever it happens to, is a direct consequence of sticking to the rules the group is playing by. But the consistency, reliability and verisimilitude of doing exactly that, vastly outweighs the drawbacks.

[khimaera 64]

I've learned to instill a sense of building dread in my PCs, occasionally I'll imply that I'm planning on killing them off, drop little hints here and there.  Too add to the tension, I'll set up the game to focus on them for a session or so, allowing for character development and to make sure that the other players know the character well enough.  I'll keep it going for a few months, and then I'll let up and move on to another character. Or I'll go easy on the group with a few easy missions. 

I never actually set out to kill a PC but the paranoia inspires good roleplaying and it keeps the player's attention.  It's especially effective when I set up a hard battle and the PC barely survives. He feels as though he's accomplished something, beaten fate. Then maybe I kill him two session later.  It's always makes for a heartbreaking scene and excellent roleplaying.

 

A little bit of table knowledge can be a good thing.

Edited October 24, 2013 by khimaera

[bogi_khaosa 267]

I've been running Final Testament (in Only War, so roughly the same mechanics), and in the initial encounter (f you know the adventure, you know what I mean), one character has lost an arm and burned his only Fate Point, another is in Crits and another has 1 Wound. (In fact, one almost went into Crits BEFORE the fight started.) Albeit, this adventure does NOT have the cliche "slow build-up with increasingly dangerous encounters" setup.

 

These games are very lethal.

[Simsum 220]

I've been running Final Testament (in Only War, so roughly the same mechanics), and in the initial encounter (f you know the adventure, you know what I mean), one character has lost an arm and burned his only Fate Point, another is in Crits and another has 1 Wound. (In fact, one almost went into Crits BEFORE the fight started.) Albeit, this adventure does NOT have the cliche "slow build-up with increasingly dangerous encounters" setup.

 

These games are very lethal.

 

Heh, I'm pretty sure everyone I know has similar stories of their first game with a version of the 40K system. In our first DH game (with a bunch of people who'd never tried the system), the Psyker managed to call forth a daemon, who promptly ate the entire party, on the first attempt at using a psychic power (resulting in our very first houserule - drastically improving what FP Burn can do).

 

My own "first" was with WFRP1e (the mother of the 40K system) waay back in the day, where my freshly created PC nearly got his leg chewed off by a Snotling, caught an infection, and died.

 

It's almost like if your party survives the first session more or less intact, you're doing it wrong

 

.. Though perhaps the better explanation is the system is deceptively deadly, and in ways people are unlikely to anticipate when they come from other RPGs. Once you get used to the system, it's not really that lethal. In our last campaign we houseruled away wounds and skipped straight to Critical Damage, without seriously increasing lethality. To me, the real killer in the system, are the Insanity/Corruption mechanics. By RAW a party is never going to survive a 10+ session campaign, unless all they do is knit sweaters somewhere inside a very safe bunker.