Dead Monk in Aisle -15
Thursday, October 23, 2008 at 09:59AM Reflecting on last night's gaming experience has raised a couple of issues I'd like to discuss with you.
Monahan Gurgles His Last
Monahan *was* my monk. After being chewed into negative hit points by a giant crocodile, Monahan lay gurgling nearby while the others finished the fight. At round two of my forced siesta we had a good laugh as the cleric stood near to the dying monk and announced that he had *just* the spell to handle this: Calm Emotions! (To be fair, there was still a giant enraged bear nearby, but I took solace in the cleric's proximity, believing I would not die.
We dropped out of initiative in round 3 as the giant bear relaxed. Monahan gurgled, and the party started looting bodies.
Round 4, and there is talk of detecting magic and itemization of treasure, but not so much as a heal check for my monk.
No one got to me until round 7, by which time I was at a house-ruled negative Constitution score for hit points. I had ceased to be.
About a minute later the cleric's player looked up from his laptop and said "Okay, I have a tonne of healing. Who needs it?"
Issues Raised, Lessons Learned
Players like our cleric, who can't seem to focus at any given point on what's in front of him, have always frustrated me, but this is the first time I have paid directly for the negligence. I'm pretty sure that he still has no idea that I bled out, rather than being killed directly by the giant croc. What can you do with a player like that?
Now, at any time, I could have simply turned to the druid, the cleric, or even our warblade, and said "please heal me before I die," but I didn't. I didn't want to metagame the situation, and I misguidedly wanted the cleric to be responsible for what was happening in-game for once. Further, I may have been bored with playing my monk archer. But still, am I crazy for "letting" myself die?
Crazy or not, the prospect of a new character is always exciting, and despite the urging of another player to continue playing Monahan, I might just roll a bard, a sorceror-turned summoner, or a shammy (and if you have any feat, race, or class suggestions for any of those, I'd love to hear them).
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Reader Comments (7)
Would it have been too meta for you to have quietly chanted "bleedbleedbleedbleed" while this was going on, or perhaps doodled larger and larger puddles of red if you were using dry erase markers and a battle mat? Seriously, the channels for information coming into the players are much more limited than for the characters; the cleric should have been able to see the monk lying there bleeding--there has to be some valid way for you to compensate for that fact and present valid in-game sensory information when it's the player who's distracted. The cleric letting his companion bleed out through carelessness offends my sense of the integrity of the game-world much more than a simple "Yo, dying over here" would.
This reflection makes me giggle inside. I too have sacrificed a not-so-loved character to the save-or-die in the name of trying to make other players more aware.
However, players are trying to be two people at once, the character and themselves. I don't think it would have been metagaming to describe your character as bleeding to death.
As far as what to do about a player like that... probably not much. You'd have to change what is most likely an integral personality characteristic, and that is unlikely to happen. The best you can do is to politely breech the subject and discuss it.
Looting before healing is bad form, but aside from that, I wouldn't blame the cleric much. There's a lot going on in a D&D combat. It's hard enough to keep track of your character and the monsters he's facing, let alone everyone else's hitpoints. If a fellow party member were unconscious and that character's player was silent, I'd assume he was stable and didn't particularly want to get back in the fight.
Some kind of communication is necessary. I know my players always check in with each other - "Anyone need healing?" "How much HP do you have?" "Should I switch to Sacred Flame, or are you guys okay for a couple more rounds?" Your cleric should probably have been doing that, but I don't think it was unreasonable for him not to. Most of us get pretty vocal about our healing needs, especially in case of character near-death. And, as Joshua said, a bleeding monk lying next to your character is more obvious to him than a guy sitting next to you not moving his mini around and quietly crossing off numbers on a sheet is to you.
I think there's a difference between assuming that someone would tell you if they needed healing, and really lacking situational awareness - eg, "I loot the body" "Uh, there's still three more goblins flanking our ranger" "Really? Oh, then I attack them." That kind of thing is a serious issue, and much less forgiveable.
I didn't illustrate the scene terribly well.
I had spent a couple of rounds in the croc's mouth before being spat out so the croc could bite me again and still threaten the squares around him. He bit me, I fell unconscious, and the DM asked me for an opposed grapple check which I declined to oppose "in favour of gurgling and bleeding," and I laid down my miniature. This got a laugh from the group, the DM described the croc chomping me once and letting me fall, and then we moved on.
As the rounds ticked by our Swordsage asked for me to be healed, which may not have been heard. Every time a set of actions were declared I rolled my stabilization check and made dying sounds. Seems like a lot to have missed, but it's quite possible it all was. My monk's death, however, is only the last in a continual series of attention-span issues we've been having, so I figured I'd ask the network.
Thanks for the feedback, guys!
@ Swordgleam: You're absolutely right, but unfortunately this player's situation is much closer to your last example there than I had at first described.
@ Joshua: I'm definitely going to do the dry-erase bloodstain thing next time. It just strikes me as a really good way to illustrate the situation without disturbing my somewhat silly ideas of roleplaying a dying person.
@ Mad Brew: I think I'll take your advice and ask for a bit more attention from him. That, or roll a healer of my own to make sure this doesn't happen again. :)
In general laptops at the table are a big no no for me. Maybe as a GM, but the players need to focus. If they aren't paying attention then they need to be told to do so, or to not play. I'm a bit of a hard case about this right now because a laptop caused a huge problem with my group, to the point of souring a lot of folk against each other when it came to a head.
Bummer, Matt. I don't think we're headed for that kind of confrontation, but it is a little frustrating when this guy doesn't even know from round to round what's going on.
Believe it or not, though, I didn't mean this post to be quite so focused on ragging on our cleric, but I think I let my frustration about a character death--a rare experience for me--bleed through a bit more than it should.
@ Ike: I can see why you're pissed, if that's the case. Having the most inattentive player being your party's only cleric is probably not such a good strategy. I don't get the laptop thing at the table, either - I would not be okay with that. There's no need for a player to have one, and they offer way more distractions than help.
Aside from nixing the laptop, I don't know what you can do about the guy. Someone who is not that engaged in the game is probably not going to change. One thing our group does that might mitigate the problem is put red poker chips under bloodied characters. That way, anyone glancing at the table can see who needs healing.