[AD&D] I Didn't Die :(

[Kevin Vito]

I fought a dragon on Sunday, and I am sad to say that I survived the encounter.

It was first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
I was a third level dwarven cleric (because nobody noticed the footnote that said "NPC only"). The party included myself, another cleric, a monk, a ranger, a thief, and two more dwarves that had joined recently. We also had two dogs named Goblin Gobbler and Hobgoblin Gobbler.
We were playing through a dungeon module (I don't know the name of it). The group has been playing this module for the last year. I only joined in about three months ago.
We finally got around to fighting the dragon after months of goblin slaying and dungeon exploration.

I went into the battle expecting a valiant dwarven doom. I was planning on it in fact. I wanted to lay there mutilated and proud. The party would circle around me and say "Oh Urist, we'll use all this dragon gold to ressurect you!"
"No." I'd say "This has been a good death."
Then I would roll up a magic user.

It didn't quite pan out.

Even when the dragon breathed his fire on me, I did not die.
Even when I threw my shield away (critical fail on an attack roll) and yelled "Come at me bro!" (critical success on a charisma check) I did not die.
Even when I was reduced to -5 HP by the dragon's bite, I did not die.
Even when I was in the dragon's mouth, I did not die.
Even when I said "What do I roll to make the dragon choke on my armored corpse?" I did not die.
Even when the other cleric grabbed me by my leg (poking out from the dragon's jaws) and healed me, I did not die.
Even when the dragon coughed me up, I did not die.
Even when I yelled "Do you like the taste of dwarf, dragon?! Eat me again!" I did not die.


The monk and the other dwarven cleric got under the dragon and stabbed its belly with their magical spears.
The dragon attempted to eat the dwarven fighter. It had even less luck with that then it had with me. He was still conscious in the dragon's mouth. He stabbed it in the uvula.

The dragon died.

We claimed the dragon's treasure, but alas, I could not claim the greatest treasure of them all; I did not ride to Valhalla that day.

I'll probably get killed by a poisoned doorknob or something next time.

[Abkajud]

is it safe to assume that you survived because the DM pulled punches? what's the social context, here?

-zac

[Kevin Vito]

The DM was probably pulling punches. This is the second time I've had a character survive despite my attempts to kill the character off. Something like this happened in a Call of Cthulhu game.
There has only been one character death in this campaign (due to a poisoned needle in a treasure chest) but we raised him from the dead pretty easily. I remember the player's reaction though. He seemed pretty shocked and dismayed by it. He had the same reaction when his Call of Cthulhu character was killed off. There was quite a bit of butthurt when people got knocked unconscious by kobolds earlier in the adventure.
The DM is a really nice and easy going guy, but I think he's afraid to kill our characters because he doesn't want to hurt our feelings.

I think I should talk to him sometime and ask him to raise the stakes for my characters. I thought I'd be subtle about it but I guess that isn't working.

[Michiel R]

Well I gues I did the same thing. Rescue a PC by some rare magical event. But it had similar feeling to it. It was at bit lame.
So yes, you should notify your GM that a hero's death would be ok, no is really awesome!
(Though dying from a needle is pretty lame also.)

Respect for your opinion as a player. Hope your GM has the guts to let lots of your PC's die. A hero's death of course.

[Chris_Chinn]

So, I'm guessing your GM didn't give you the "negative hp countdown" where your character loses 1 hp a round until -10 when you die, and the rest of the heroes managed to get to you and stabilize you before it was over?

Maybe you should have your GM go through the Same Page Tool ( http://bankuei.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/the-same-page-tool/ ) and see if this is really the game you, personally, want to be playing?

Chris

[Callan S.]

A hero's death of course.

I think GM's can get scared of leaving the rules to just do their thing and kill (rather than interupting with the golden rule), because of how incredibly ambiguous a "hero's death" is, as a phrase. If the poison needle death can actually reduce your real life social position (ie, people think less of you for it), that's bad. What's worse is that those people who might think less also think they are tuned into what is and isn't a hero's death. What is and isn't a hero's death is as clear as 2+2=4 to them. When really it's an incredibly idiosyncratic thing, but when a person doesn't recognise that, then it's as clear cut to them as math, like them handing you $5 for a $4 item and getting 50c change is cheating them. People, especially when in the midst of a high tension moment and/or upset, will think "A hero's death" is as clear cut a thing as that and to have killed them outside of it is cheating them (and I wont even go into how some gamers, instead of realising it's idiosyncratic, have instead internalised such 'clear cut' cheating of each other as normal (eg: the smelly chamberlain)). As a similar example of that situation, once I went to a parent teacher interview at the time the note said, only to meet an annoyed teacher who said I was late. Even showing her the note showing I arrived on time didn't really remove the emotion. Once an emotion comes out, particularly that someone cheated you of something, people lock onto the emotion.

I think this is a GM who does not trust the rules to speak for players consent as to when a character can die. And yet clear cut rules are the only means of telling, since other methods of description are just super ambiguous. Bit of a dread path.

[rabindranath72]

So, I'm guessing your GM didn't give you the "negative hp countdown" where your character loses 1 hp a round until -10 when you die, and the rest of the heroes managed to get to you and stabilize you before it was over?

Maybe you should have your GM go through the Same Page Tool ( http://bankuei.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/the-same-page-tool/ ) and see if this is really the game you, personally, want to be playing?

Chris

Not only that. At -7 onward, the DM should have left the character with some crippling wound. Given the desires of the OP, this should have given him a nice trophy

[LandonSuffered]

@ Kevin:

I probably would have killed everyone, had I been your DM.

It's kind of weird that your DM is afraid to kill PCs. I mean, it's one of the advantages of playing "old school" editions of D&D:

- Character creation is a shit-ton faster than many RPGs (like ones that involve point buy chargen)
- "Resurrection" magic is a built-in plentiful part of the setting

I love killing players in D&D. It's one of the perks of that particular game. If your DM isn't in the role of an antagonist (placing deadly challenges for your PCs), then...um...what are his objectives of play?