GMs: what's your take on killing PCs?

[JRE]

Elemental engulfs, surprise spirit combat, hidden or long range foes dismissing the character magic, controling their bound spirits and casting harmful or at least useless spells to spend MP (control spells affect also ally spirits), a pit (not recommended against Wind Lords), metal destroying acid, though players will hate you for that, grapple combat, specially ranged (lassoes, nets, Giant Chaos octopus...), Chaos abilities, specially reflect and absorb, as well as clouds, sorcerers once in a while (steal breath from kilometers away, magic circle of a few hundreds of meters with neutralize Death Rune, and neutralize Spirit Magic, Dominate Human 18, and see if they can dismiss it... )

Anything new. There will be a moment of panic and the memories of the first games when everything was a menace.

[jajagappa]

On 5/17/2022 at 10:12 AM, icebrand said:

So, do you actually kill your PCs? 

How often do your players manage to die?

Do you cheat?

Do you do traps?

How about really tough monsters?

Well, thats it, hope you find the topic interesting and share your GM style with us!!!

1) There's nothing that explicitly prevents them from dying.  However, if there is an option that keeps them alive, I generally favor that.

One PC died in the Underworld when shards of black glass rained down after he rang a bell.  His demon companion kind of recreated him (his soul put into a new body), but he no longer has any Darkness Rune, lost his connection to Issaries, and sort of has a fluid crystalline body at this point.

Another PC got possessed by a Thanatari mad head ghost.  He was losing CON as a consequence and likely would have died except the party encountered a tin dwarf in process of refilling a dwarf way station.  They were able to get canned liquid food that they could feed the unconscious character with to keep him alive long enough to reach Tink and get Forang Farosh to exorcise the ghost.

2) Rarely.  But I will give them chances to survive - an NPC has healing; they think to cast the Vigor spell so the poison doesn't take full effect; there's always at least one melee round opportunity to cast healing.

3) No.  Since I run play-by-forum games, the dice roller results are always fully visible.  

4) If there was a reason to do so.

5) In one of my current games, the PC's encountered a giant in Snakepipe Hollow - they tricked it into eating a Thunderstone instead of Harmast, and blew it's head off, a rather messy ending.  I've had other giants appear in the Otherworld, demons, nightmares, Boggles, and other tough monsters.  A large darkness elemental nearly wiped out part of one party except the Donandar initiate saved them by conjuring an Illusionary Light that drove it back (crit on the Rune spell roll IIRC).

6) GM style - generally narrative (but PbF is conducive to that); lots of quests (heroquests, quests to Hell, dream visions, etc.); and will increasingly interact with the Hero Wars (e.g. one game included the Battle of Queens and its shaman character has encountered Cragspider in the Spirit World).