UPDATED to Add...Scott, the -NEW- DM, is good guy and some of you are being way too hard on him. Just because he did one thing I'm having a tough time with doesn't make him a bad DM. It's one issue in MONTHS of encounters.
The Sunday Night group is currently trekking through a forest toward a castle we believe holds a magical quiver we've been tasked to retrieve. Our first encounter last night we stumbled onto some form of treant (4 of them) and what I assume were Pact Hags (2). They took turns dominating a couple of us, but I was their primary target. I was made to charge the Psion and, of course, I critted on him again. Luckily the hag could only make me use an at-will attacks. But, a crit is a crit. I did 66 points of damage and dropped him to within 12 points of his negative bloodied value. In 4th edition, hitting your negative bloodied value immediately results in death. No saving throws, no nothing. The second hag dominated me as soon as the first one's turn was done forcing me to hit my already downed companion. The minimum amount of damage I do is 20 points. So on a successful hit he was dead. I rolled barely enough, and that was that. As the player left the table to use the rest room, his character now well and truly dead, he asked if he'd pooped himself. The DM critted on an arbitrary "poop check". So yes. Violently.
Now, I appreciate that "dominate" is an ability that monster had, and that being made to hit my own ally was completely out of my control. But, forcing me to kill him made me feel like crap. Overnight that feeling only got worse. I know the DM doesn't think about it like this, but it feels like I'm being punished for rolling a really good character. What I don't understand is the seeming blood lust. The monsters, by way of the DM, meta-knowledged how close the character was to true death. Usually a monster leaves a character alone as soon as he or she drops, leaving them to make death saving throws. Not last night. With the character already down, and having already failed one death saving throw, the DM had me hit him again rather than peeling off to attack another, more dangerous target - like say the metal encased dragonborn paladin that could easily survive my hardest hit.
At this point, I'm not even certain that I want to play the character again. From a roleplaying perspective, Thunk wouldn't be able to live with himself knowing he killed a friend. Especially not when he knows he could be made to turn on his life long companion, Cassi. I know it's "just a game". And, maybe an already bad week just made killing a Someone else's character hit me that much harder. But, I play the game as an escape. It's supposed to be fun. Killing off one of your friends and then trying to find a valid in-game reason to stay with the party rather than running off into the woods to protect everyone else... that's no fun.
So how many of you have killed off an ally in a tabletop roleplaying game by accident or by force? Does it get any easier?
R.I.P. Regdar Legdar - 11 Human Psion
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