Shuffling this Mortal Coil: How to Handle Death for Players and Baddies

In my most recent game, the players found themselves up against an invading force that they couldn't take alone. An invading army had been collecting intel on them over the course of several encounters, and had decided to make an all-out assault against the heroes in the hopes of taking over the city. The PCs, well aware that the big bad had been reading them and developing countermeasures to everything they could do, decided that it was best that they cut and run for now, doing what they could to evacuate the civilians before the evil overlord broke the barricades and seized the city by force. In a move worthy of an epic fantasy hero, our warlord stood up and announced that he would stay behind in order to ensure that as many people escape as possible, knowing full well that he had a good chance of being killed in the ensuing invasion.

This statement freaked the other players out, primarily because the warlord had been one of the most important characters to the storyline. There had been a few instances of characters being killed off earlier on, but those were minor characters who didn't have much backstory or interaction. The warlord had been the one to bring the party together in the first place, had been the face of the party in most social situations, and had the most comprehensive ambitions and motivations of anyone in the party. The player had roleplayed this character immensely, always contributing with everything f from battle tactics to one-liners to life advice for the other characters. The entire party had fallen in love with this character, and whether or not he lived to see another session would change the course of the game immensely. One last thing: This is an E7 game, so resurrection isn't an option here. If Grimheln the wisecracking, elf-hating, civilian-rescuing warlord goes down here, he ain't coming back any time soon. With the dire encounter swiftly approaching, I as a GM am genuinely worried about whether or not I should offer an easy way out or just allow this amazing character to go down in a blaze of glory.

Death is as much a part of D&D as rolling dice and leveling up; every session is likely to involve at least one creature being killed for some reason or another. However, the way it is handled can vary greatly from world to world and even from party to party. Some may have death be as reversible as a paper cut, whereas others may treat shuffling off the mortal coil as something that is 100% irreversible. Now, I don't think that there is any inherent value in allowing or disallowing resurrection (I've seen both kinds of worlds work effectively), but there are several things to consider when implementing it or barring it from the table.

The first question of dying and coming back is the frequency and strictness of it. How easy is it for the players to get their buddy back from heaven, and is it the same way for other denizens of the fantasy world? If the ranger gets eviscerated while on patrol, can the other heroes get him back by grabbing the body? Heck, do they even need the body to bring him back to the Material Plane? By the same token, could some particularly loyal monsters take their fallen master and give him a second chance at world domination? How deep do somebody's pockets need to be in order to master death itself, and what happens to a society that sees death as nothing more than a financial setback? If the ranger is capable of popping back up within a session, you can guess that the same principle will apply to the king whose murder was supposed to start an intrigue campaign or the meglomaniacal tyrant who the PCs assumed had been dealt with when they mounted his head on a stake. When the players can get resurrected easily, that means that any similarly-wealthy and powerful NPCs can as well, which may ruin a plotline or adventure altogether. Likewise, heroes staying dead means that villains stay dead too, so continually rezzing a favorite villain every time he gets axed is not going to slide well with a party who can't get their old buds back.

The second question is more attuned to the needs and desires of the players. How much do they appreciate their individual characters, and how would they respond if some happenstance were to off them? I can recall several campaigns in which people didn't much care about who or what they were playing, and who were okay with their character dying so that they could try some new class or build. On the flip side, I've played in games where people were utterly devastated by a random crit killing their character, to the point where that session broke up the group. As a GM, it is important to read the way players are treating their characters and from this information get a picture of whether or not a George R.R. Martin-style death trap would inject a cool sense of urgency or frustrate at least one player to the point where they no longer enjoy the game. If somebody cares a lot about the story that their character is wrapped up in, then they will probably want to get their character back rather than starting over as somebody new. On the flipside, the player who isn't too invested in the plotline may jump at the chance of a blank slate. As much as it can be fun to drive players crazy from time to time, a GM is obligated to make sure his party is having fun, so the expectations of resurrection in a game should be tailored somewhat to how the people want to play it.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, how much do the NPCs and Baddies of the world fear death? It's quite common in many games for monsters to fight to the death, which would be pretty unrealistic if they don't expect any hope of being brought back. When it's clear that victory isn't really in the cards, losing armies typically live to fight another day rather than dying hopelessly on the battlefield. Intelligent monsters should do the same, taking out heroes when advantageous but stepping out when things aren't looking too hot for them. If somebody goes into combat knowing that he can be resurrected, however, this premise is inverted. It isn't too hard to find an example of soldiers going on suicide missions confident that they will be welcomed into the afterlife for their bravery, and while that premise can certainly be used in plenty of scenarios, readily accessible resurrection magic adds a whole new dimension to this premise. If a soldier knows that his boss is capable of resurrection magic, it creates a mindset where he has nothing to lose and as a result will go to extreme measures to serve his cause. He is all but guaranteed to see his wife and kids again, so if he has to fight to the death in order to ensure victory he will most certainly do it. When death is a minor setback, people will be much more willing to suffer through it, resulting in a culture that substantially changes how a society approaches conflict, danger, and mortality.

Finally, the last question pertains to the philosophical consequences of reanimation magic. What sort of writings exist in a setting where a substantial number of people have been to heaven or hell and returned to talk about it? Likewise, how do people view the gods and elements when what is most precious to them can't really be permanently taken away? How has society evolved differently, and what sort of special attention do clerics get or not get when they are the ones dispensing extra lives? Heck, is rezzing even allowed by all societies, or by all gods? What is the ethical split between bringing someone back with a new living body and bringing them back as an undead?

Answers to these questions are chiefly subject to the needs of the story, players, and campaign, but the considerations I posed should be accounted for whenever a GM runs into a consequential death. The one concrete rule is that resurrection should be above all consistent. If the players can use it, so can the bad guys and vice versa. If resurrection privilege is unfairly distributed, you can be that either player relations or suspension of disbelief will wind up being strained. The questions of life and death should be weighty and personal, but they should still be bound by rules. After all, what is Pathfinder if not imagination put to order?

The Fault with Fighters, or why character versatility is important in an immersive setting

I have been a player of Pathfinder since my freshman year in high school, and I have been GMing the game for very nearly as long. I've played with a wide variety of players, encountered a wide variety of adventure types, and designed monsters and adventures which and as a result I can with nominal confidence state that I understand the way Pathfinder works. I know what abilities are useful, I know how encounters both violent and nonviolent should be run, and I know how both PCs and monsters can operate to the peak of their abilities.

Naturally, I end up in conflict with many other players about what is considered good encounter design and enemy usage, especially when it comes to players using classes that innately lack versatility in dealing with situations. The most notable of these is the Fighter.

The premise of the fighter class is simple: you are a character who excels at physical combat in some manner and who can theoretically reach a level of combat effectiveness that rivals or exceeds that of magic-users simply by having plenty of resources to dedicate to martial arts. I've seen many people decide to play a fighter because they want to prove that magic isn't the end-all be-all for combat utility, or simply because they want to emulate heroes like Conan or Theseus who take on crazy monsters with nothing but a sword and sheer guts. However, the harsh reality of the complex and rapidly evolving combat of Pathfinder means that Fighters aren't often capable of living up to their expectations.

Most recently, I was playing a dungeon crawl with a large party, one of who was a foul-mouthed falchion-packing 12th-level Orc Fighter named Krangoth. Krangoth wasn't the smartest character or even the most sensible; his specialty was dealing obscene damage using a combination of power attack and a 15-20 crit range on his blade. Thanks to his high base attack bonus and immense strength score, Krangoth could very easily hit any monster that he got close to, and was doing a respectable average of 48 or so damage per attack. On paper, it seemed like a character that could feasibly make their way through an appropriately tough dungeon. However, I very quickly learned how fragile this seemingly burly Krangoth was.

All that the monsters need to do to render Krangoth helpless was stay outside of his range, utilizing flight or climbing or even something as simple as a mud puddle or Obscuring Mist to stop him from effectively getting near them. Even when he could utilize his melee prowess, maneuvers like tripping, grappling, or bull rushing could quickly drop his damage numbers by means of negating his ability to full attack (or in the case of grappling, attack at all) with that immensely destructive sword of his. His HP was through the roof, but he was always a single bad roll away from being completely crippled by a spell or trap. What was designed to be an unbreakable juggernaut who destroys everything in his way ended up being a glass cannon who could be rendered helpless by any monster who used common-sense tactics.

While the fighter's copious number of bonus feats indicates that it should be capable of utilizing a vast arsenal of weapons and hence adapting to any situation, the design philosophy for many combat feats prevents such a build from being feasible. Being even passable at using a bow, a shield, or a second weapon requires at least two or three feats per selection, and being useful with a fighting technique requires even more investment in that style. Any Pathfinder Society players who have picked up the Valeros pregen may have noticed how haphazardly his feats are allocated, preventing him from making a sizable contribution to any sort of encounter. Fighters are forced to specialize in order to keep up with the creatures they are going up against, and these creatures often have quite a bit of leeway to negate whatever the Fighter is trying to do. Just looking at the statblock for a succubus or dragon displays just how many ways the average monster can do this.

And if a bad guy has the capacity to render a hero irrelevant, there is no logical reason as to why he shouldn't do just that. Something that many GMs end up forgetting is that monsters can be just as clever as the heroes, and that sort of cleverness can really help to engage players in a campaign. When spears were the paragons of warfare, the Macedonians won by utilizing bigger ones. When Britain couldn't overpower the Spanish Armada, the won by sabotaging it. When the mustard gas came into the trenches, you can be that gas masks emerged soon after. Likewise, the evil overlord should quickly recognize that throwing wave after wave of minions at the heroes is doing jack squat to stop them, and so turn to different tactics.

The benefits of strategic enemies in a setting are monumental. It gives players a sense of danger, because enemies are smart enough to cover their bases and exploit gaps in the heroes' plans. It gives players a sense of importance because now the tactics they are using have consequences, and the rest of the villains are shaping their agendas to guard against what took down their buddy. Finally, tactical bad guys give the player a sense of intrigue, because intelligent opposition forces the players to respect the NPCs as thinking, functioning entities whose capacity for ingenuity rivals their own. Overall, battle strategy turns a ho-hum encounter with ravenous Gnolls into a tense engagement that forces players to stay on their feet. If the baddies change up tactics, exploit the weaknesses of the players, and coordinate their engagements so as to maximize their chance of victory, the PCs will be forced to do the same, in the process delving into a dimension of gameplay they may not even have considered.

An example comes from my most recent session, in which the players were able to beat a rapacious barbarian horde by taking cover behind fortifications and employing elemental attacks that could get around the barbarians' damage reduction. Rather than having the clan leader send another horde to the same fate, I decided that the shaman commander would instead trap the heroes inside the fortress by laying siege to it, thus forcing them to engage her in the open before she called in more troops. On top of this, she gave potions of Resist Energy to her lieutenants, preventing the PCs from fire-balling or acid-globing their way out. This is the kind of thinking that a military commander does in real life, and it should be the sort of tactical aptitude that your villains display in-game.

The issue with classes like Fighters is that they are counter-intuitive to this sort of intelligence and adaptability, pigeonholing the character into one specific fighting style that is very difficult to change and which defines their entire character. This, in turn, makes things unpleasant for a Fighter who finds himself up against bad guys who quickly pick up on the fact that he's only truly dangerous in melee, and so switch to sniping tactics to take him down while minimizing casualties. A cleric or wizard can simply change their spells prepared, while a sorcerer or bard comes with enough spells and abilities that they have at least one trick up their sleeve in case things go south. A Fighter, meanwhile, is stuck, forced to use a fighting style that has become decreasingly useful as the game moves along. As a result, GMs are forced to design encounters that accommodate the Fighter's lack of tenacity (which results in a lot of samey-feeling games) or throw the character up against opponents that completely outplay them.

So, how does one reconcile this problem of unreliability while still keeping players alert with complex encounters? The answer lies in rethinking what a class should be capable of doing. When somebody builds a specialist, they should not be prevented from engaging in any other scenario. Instead, they should be able to participate to an adequate degree in any situation, truly excelling in a few specific ones that they optimized for. Classes like the alchemist and the inquisitor do a fantastic job of this, utilizing a large pool of resources that are universally handy but still offering options that enable them to be awesome in specific departments. The martial classes presented in Dreamscarred Press' Path of War books alleviate many of the troubles of playing a martial character, giving them a fair amount of power while also offering abilities that are useful not only in combat, but in exploration, stealth, and diplomacy as well. Some of the additional rulebooks put out by Paizo are helping to mitigate this issue, with archetypes like the Mutagen Warrior giving the maligned class some new options that enable it to work even against smart or non-combative foes. Heck, giving your Fighter some more skills or some feat-shifting mechanics might even be enough to bring him up to snuff.

Overall, I encourage GMs to get more dangerously inventive with their villains, and to perhaps encourage players to take more versatile classes than the Fighter for the sake of making the game interesting for everyone. The improvements that party balancing as well as enemy strategy can bring to a game are well worth the consideration involved.