Kadri and Havelocke, kindly stay out of this thread. Or I'll kill you. Again.

I'm going to give the background of my question first, those of you not interested in the specifics of my campaign can skip to my question at the end.

I've been running Dark Heresy for about a year, though my sessions have been pretty infrequent with school/work/one player living on the opposite coast of the country. Until recently, I haven't killed a single pc, I hadn't even managed to cause more than a point or two of critical until the session before last, nor was a single point of fate burned. The only fatality we had was the resident evil-insane psyker going Daemonhost, which I had hoped would be a crazy hard boss fight, but he was dead within two rounds of his arrival. The cell consists of an untouchable metallican gunslinger, a forge-world assassin, an intellectual, combat-ineffective tech priest, a feral world guardsman/mutant, and a schola progenia arbitrator, all around 4,000 xp. Most of the gunfights I sent against the pcs were quick, bloody affairs, with the Metallican gunslinger and sniper-assassin blowing away all opposition in under half a minute.

That all changed recently. After a fight with a Goleph in a sewer complex, the gunslinger was at something like 7 critical. They killed the Goleph, most definitely, but had to abandon their larger investigation to help the gunslinger. Then, last session I had 3 fate point burnings in rapid succession.

First, the pcs were breaking into the private shuttle of an Interrogator aligned with another Inquisitor. I had two bolter-armed Oathsworn body guards stationed there, one of whom managed to nastily frag the feral-world guardsman before buying it. The Feral worlder had to burn a fate point to survive, though since he's also a necrophage he was back on his feet fairly quickly. Then, the group wound up in a fight with 5 Oathsworn, plus a sollex-energy blade wielding noble. They managed to injure or incapacitate most of the Oathsworn fairly quickly, but then three pcs decided to gang up on the noble. Once they had slaughtered him, one of the Oathsworn fired a burst at them... killing all but one. Everyone burned fate points to avoid actual death, and some npc deus-ex-machina later all of the remaining baddies are dead.

While the forgeworld assassin has been cyber-resurrected, the untouchable gunslinger is basically out of it. His body has been torn apart twice in a row now, and I've officially had his barely living carcass turned over to the Assassinorum, to see if they can salvage him/turn him into a culexus assassin. While the player who was running the gunslinger is happy to switch to a pc who can actually talk to people, he has expressed the desire to get his old character back at some point in the future, which will be kind of impossible if he does become a full-blown culexus assassin. I've got a few outs (his body being stolen by the heretek they've been trying to track down, wackiness involving clones and mind-cleansing, all sorts of other stuff), but currently I'm a little worried by how often I've been slaughtering pcs.

Basically, this is a very long winded post asking for advice on how to kill characters properly. When is it inappropriate to kill a pc? When is it inappropriate to let them live? Should pc deaths always be something worked out before hand? What's your take?

Hard to give an answer to it with the dreaded and thrice damned "depends on". You should talk this over with your game group instead of us forum members.

How killing should be handled is a question of how/if the players do enjoy the game. What ever style you want to do it, talk to your players about it and pay attention to their reactions.

In one of my groups, I do have a player who is used to being a GM in a different system. He was a little...startled as he found out that I tend to play a lot more "by the dice" then he does in social situations. Out of this he came up with the topic of "how do you handle pc kills?" and I told him that I have no problem with killing a pc if the dice tell me to and he is OUT of fate points. He, on the other end, is clearly not a friend of "the player did nothing stupid but simply the dice kill him".

Thereby, I know I have to talk to the rest of the group and perhaps give thinks a second thought as soon as the first fate points are burnt.

Don´t ask the forum, discuss thinks with your group.

Gurn said:

Personally, I rarely kill PCs and one of the things I like about Dark Heresy is that Fate Points as "get out of death free cards." I encourage PCs to spend fate on healing and in the first adventure in my campaign our tech-priest burned a fate point after taking a nasty hit from a hell-pistol... got a nice new set of augmetic lungs out of the deal.

Generally speaking, I feel it is inappropriate for PCs to die from bad luck / random die rolls. The fate point mechanic does a lot to counter-balance that. Overall, I full is a inappropriate to let characters live if the story is better off by their death but in the case of the PCs, I think it's really up to the player. If the player would rather his character die, that's the players choice. I don't think that PC death need always be worked out ahead of time... some of the greatest character moments in my games have come from spur of the moment events. Still, if the player and GM work out some glorious end, either ahead of time or on the spur of the moment, that's great, but again it's the players choice... it's their character.

My $.02. Your millage my vary.

My 2 pence worth

As you may notice from any of my campaign logs our group has been through a fair few characters in the year or so we have been running dh - and 3 of those character death have been the same players.

The feeling in our group is that its no challenge/fun playing an rp if you know that whatever you come up against you WILL walk away at the end, to this end i've had players ask to retire characters when they thought they had got too powerful and there wasn't any challenge.

My view is if the dice decide your time is up, so be it, and so far i've had no complaints. Infact several of the deaths have resulted in the campaign taking a new and interesting path as the group seeks revenge and/or replacment personnel.

To give you a few examples of our character deaths,

Our first death in the group -

Whilst cleansing the black decks of a Chartist vessel the groups guardsman endsup getting frag by a 'freindly' grenade. He burns fate to survive (his last one) and the group arbitrator drags him clear to recover. Feeling generous I let him recover 1d5 wounds and stagger to his feet, he promptly endsup in the thick of it again and ends up taking his own (right) leg off with an evicerator.

Same Player, next character -

(This time playing a cleric) Two characters (and eldar and the cleric) walk into an underhive bar, they are on the track of xeno-smugglers. A few badly placed words later and all hell has broken loose with support a long way away. After a frantic fight the eldar gets clear but the cleric ends up mobbed by squgs. He has to burn his last fate point, and then a squig promptly takes his right leg off.

Same player, third character -

(playing a metallican gunslinger) The team are investigating a tainted temple. The gunslinger goes in solo to scout the way and finds a daemon host in residence. Rather than waiting for the others the player lets rip with his pair of custom revolvers, and manages to irritate the daemon host. in responce the daemon host blasted the gunslinger though the wall - having done a grand total of 50 damage with a fireball. The character burns his last fate point and the groups scum decided to 'get him back on his feet' so shoots him full of slaught, ghostfire pollen, and spook. The gunslinger goes screaming back into the building where the daemon host promptly fries him again - with a hit to the left leg.

Only other Death in the group, different player-

After defeating an Ebion Ghast (from RT) in hand to hand the character (an assassin) is one critical away from death and out of fate. THe group medic is out for the count so they find an npc to fix him up, one dice roll later and the character is very much dead, as the dice came up 100 dealing an extra point of damage and killing the character.

All of these incidents have proved to be great role-play experiences for the whole group, and several memorable moments have come out of it. The player who has lost 3 characters now fears shots to the right leg. The group as a whole now avoid faith-healers as it was one of them that killed the assassin. Another in the group fears autocannons as every time he gets hit by one he looses a fate point.

Just my random musings on (and around) the topic.

Surak

Character death is appropriate whenever it adds suitable drama to the game, drives the story or is otherwise just **** cool! There is also such a thing as "it was just their time to go" but IMO this is much more suitable for NPCs for the most part.

So far burned fate points in my game have been either:

A) The player/character doing something really stupid and paying for it.

B) One of those "Holy ****, that was so frickin' AWESOME!" scenes that sneaks up and makes people talk about "that game" several years later.

There definately seems to be a trend in my game (and apparently other GMs on this forum) for burnt fate points/character death to cluster around certain players. If you have characters at 8 critical damage get back on their feet and wade back into melee for any reason other than to dramatically sacrifice themselves to save the team/mission then really they need to die horribly if the dice come up that way. Doing something cool and heroic for the good of thier team and suddenly having bad luck (or a critter!) bite them on the ass is going to earn a little more "wiggle room" for Fate Point use. Heck, if I think the character was doing something really cool at the time I sometimes offer my own suggestions for the "explain why that did not just kill you" portion of Fate Point burns.

I agree with Gregorius21778 on the idea that you should ask your players how they think PC mortality should be managed in the campaign. The important thing is that everybody should have fun and different groups have different expectations on this matter. Some players want to feel a real threat to their character's life and see every session as a challenge to face while others would accept the death of the character only if it contriubtes to the sotry being told.

In past campaigns, I only killed characters when the player agreed to it. For my DH campaign, I'd like to take more of a "when the dice says you're dead, you're dead" approach as I want it to be grim and unforgiving but I have to discuss it with my players first.

Thanks for all the replies. I did talk it over with my group, and they said they're more or less happy with what's been going on. I'm going to try and plan the next session a little better, as I realized not giving them a chance to scout out their opposition first (dudes in Carapace armor with bolt guns are a serious threat at any rank) was probably a major contributing factor to the two massive injuries the second time around.

Now, on to my second question, which is related more specifically to my campaign:

What do I do with the untouchable?

At the end of last session, with 10 critical and a burned fate point, I had his barely alive carcass carted off to be turned over to the Culexus Temple. Now the problem here is that the player would like his character to return at some point, presumably when his new pc dies. Originally, I was going to just have the character go into semi-retirement as a noble family's retainer, but circumstances dictated it made more sense for him to be turned over to the Assassinorum.

The problem here is that a Culexus assassin initiate would be horribly difficult to rp ("I stand in the room being horrifying. Ok, now I kill something. Now I stand there being horrifying"), and the character was slowly coming to the conclusion that he had to try and find a "cure" for his condition. I'm trying to come up with some possible plot threads to bring him back, and I'd like everyone's input on them, as well as any other suggestions you might have:

1) Bring him back as an assassin initiate, but have his mental conditioning slowly break down and his personality return. He gets oodles of insanity points, as well as a fear rating. I am operating off the assumption that most officio operative receive some degree of mind cleansing, in order to destroy personal biases and attachments.

2) Wacky fun involving cloning! The cell's partially revealed arch-nemesis is aligned with hereteks, chaos renegades, the Phaenonites themselves and worse. Hoping to harness the pariah gene for his own nefarious experimentation, the nemesis captures the untouchable's body before it can be turned over to the Assassins. He then proceeds to clone and experiment with pariah tissue, hoping to uncover exactly what makes a psychic negative on the genetic level. Later on, the cell discovers a farmer on a backwater world who looks exactly like their old associate, but lacks any memory of them, as well as the horrific aura he used to possess. Eventually, his memories start returning, but the big reveal would be that he is a clone, while the original has gone to a darker fate....or maybe he is the original.

3) Have the badly injured untouchable escape after a botched attempt to rescue him. Horrifically scarred, he crash lands on an agriworld, and survives miraculously in the wilderness, eventually meeting the cell again through a twist of fate.

What do you think? Which one should I go with? As you might be able to tell, I'm inclined towards the middle one, but I'm apprehensive about switching a player's character on him.

Option 2 is a cool idea. With my group we all come from runequest 2nd ed, so the fate points are considered a huge bonus. My group is only really happy when death is a trigger pull away. Those characters that survie become legends and are talked about long after the game. Remember there is insanity & corruption. My group fears that more than death. They just hate the concept of talking pus boils.

from what i gathered with my experiences with dark heresy it is meant to be a very harsh and unforgiving environment. i think a game master should never be afraid to kill off a PC. its a rough game and the system allows for quick and unexpected retrubution from almost any source. but death should never be used as a punishment simply because either the player or the PC makes you angry on a regular basis. but i have seen character death result in players changing the way they approach things. for example, i had a PC charge, not approach but charge a group of three slaugth. im sorry but at rank 2 that is almost an assured death sentence. . . . . and it was. since then i have noticed an increase in discretion and a decrease in idiocy of that player. but hey thats just me

Do the botched escape, save the cloning for star wars and DND munchkinnery

When killing Acolytes there is always a fine line between fair and unfair... justified and unjustified... and necessary and gratuitous.

My line is that killing Acolytes should always be fair, justified and necessary. I'll elaborate:

Fair

The circumstances which lead to the Acolyte being killed should always be a result of players choices. These choices can be self-evident kind of stuff, like ending up into deadly combat because you obeyed your Inquisitors wishes but they should always be players choices. For example, an acolyte gets killed while trying to assault the stronghold of a known heretic. Its fair if the players themselves decided to assault that stronghold with the information they had gathered so far... Its fair even if the decision was made based on =I= telling them to do it. They do have the choice not to obey or obey with delay. It may not be a nice choice, but they have it.

Justified

The actions which kill Acolyte should be a result of what players did or did not do. Its okay to mow down Acolytes with overwhelming firepower because they choose to assault a heretic stronghold without preparation, planning and appropriate equipment. Its not okay to force Acolytes into certain death if they don't have a choice to affect the circumstances.

Necessary

This depends a bit on campaign, but basically means that every death should be somehow meaningfull in the context and thematics of the campaign. If you are running an extremely combat-oriented, violent campaign with lots of fights all the time then violence and combat are a huge part of the theme of the campaign. And, as it happens, violence is often deadly and combat does kill. You (and players) should actually expect a high kill count when things go south. You are right within your powers to blow up several Acolytes in one fight (or one shot) if they do reckless and stupid things. If you are running a investigative, slow-paced campaign where violence is an exception rather than rule then killing off several Acolytes at once isn't really ever necessary. Even killing off a single one might not be. In investigative campaign maiming or killing one acolyte only if and when they really mess it up is quite enough to keep them on their toes.

In our group we usually keep the following rule: No deaths because of random encounters, except when the players is stupid (and even warned about the stupid action). The death of the character should be part of the roleplaying experience.

DH has the ability to burn fate points to keep the character alive. This is nice. I had my tech priest almost being shot dead when he stood between the assassin and his inquisitor. I had the choice of dodging and kill the inquisitor or stand and accept the damage (and burn a fate point). I decide to burn the fate point. If I had no fate points left I would probably have chosen to take the hit as well. It would be a fitting end to my character.

I've been where the OP has been at one point, but I found that if you let the dice fall where they may, the game becomes a lot more fun. I don't even hide attack and damage die rolls behind the screen anymore.

There is a fine line in RPGs, where at one point you're trying to help fashion a story and at the same time you're playing a game. In my opinion, after so many years of playing and running these games, it's more important to stress the latter.

Why? Because RPGs are not novels, movies or plays. In novels, movies or plays, protagonists rarely ever die, and when they do it is a major event. But in RPGs, PCs die more frequently, and they often do it without a whole lot of purpose, whereas if a protagonist in a novel dies, he's sacrificing himself or he's dying to help fulfill the cause of the others in some way. True, a PC could have a noble death and he could die to help further a cause, but the chaotic nature of the game aspect makes this something that's not entirely in either the PCs or the GM's hands. If you were writing a novel or a film, you'd come up with something glorious for a protagonist.

If you stress the story aspect of RPGs, what I find that happens is that the players will come to realize that their decisions won't mean too much to their character's ultimate fate provided that it coincides with what's happening in the story. Meaning that it'll feel like the GM isn't going to let your characters suffer because of a bad decision made by you, and that can really hurt a game.

When you begin to feel like you're being molly-coddled, that you're hand is being held, now you're no longer playing an RPG, but are now playing D&D 4E. This is not good.

We're playing Warhammer 40k, folks, and this is a dangerous universe. Death should be lurking behind every corner, in every dark place, in every secluded room, waiting to pounce to the ill-prepared.

Naturally, though, you have got to be fair as much as you can. So, let the dice fall where they may, and adjudicate fairly.

Because, in truth, players worth their salt will not mind so much that their character was killed as long as things were fair. As long as things are fair, they'll gladly roll up a new character and try again.

Will my own PCs might find this hard to believe I do not try and kill them off. Most of if not all of the time PCs are plenty capable of having that happen to them. It either comes down to being over confidant or not knowing just how scary a gun fired on full auto can be.

IMO if it happens it happens after all this is the Grim Dark future...not happy bunny play time....

If a PC gets into a situation where he/she gets killed its their fault you as a GM do not have to help them out of it... sometimes it adds a little more flavor to the RPing of the game. PCs should know that they create their own risks if they run into the meat grinder with out scouting or trying to find things out before hand and they get taken all well then the next PC they make will hopefully know better.

On top of that really....they went after the melee noble instead of the mook with the auto gun.....serves them right to get cut down......Guns may not always kill you, but by the emperor a hail of bullets will end your days with the =][= in no time