I would be mad as hell if a DM killed my character for laffs, or to build tension, or whatever
ok cool story, see you never again
What I am suggesting is a bit more subtle: It's refraining from fudging die rolls to keep a player alive. Or otherwise fudging things behind the screen to make sure the most narratively or dramatically appropriate / satisfying thing always happen.
That's fair. At the same time, I'm also just not that interested in playing campaign settings where true random dice will eventually kill your character. If I spend hours and hours concepting, playing, and developing a character, I'm pretty much only okay with it being killed if that's part of a story development I explicitly helped plan and agreed to.
Like, only 1% of the playerbase ever actually wanted to play Diablo on hardcore. Power to the people who do want that, but I would feel like it was a huge violation of my time and extremely disrespectful if that got sprung on me without a whole ton of explicit metadiscussion and mutual greenlighting about how permadeath is a normal part of the campaign.
I don't know that I've ever enjoyed a "simulationist" tabletop game, as opposed to a tactical game or a narrativist game
People's ideas about reality, even a fictional reality, are way too disparate; the capacity to communicate the elements of physical and social reality is so insufficient; the work required is tremendous; etc
It also just ends up being less fun, in my experience — people want the narratively pleasing arc of events, the cinematic or dramatic scenes, but they want them to feel more plausible, less arbitrary and thus more special because they emerged from simulationist game. I get that. But most of time, those scenes just didn't emerge at all, especially in games like D&D where dice are enormously swingy and random chance is so dominant in determining outcomes. What it produces is a zany, blood-soaked comedy of errors. Which is fine but didn't have staying power for me.
The original Mad Max was crazy boring, I hope the real apocalypse is more interesting
Sadly it's not, unless you mean like in a hilariously stupid kind of way
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
It's important to me that a DM not secretly or privately fudge die rolls to keep a player alive. I'm okay with story games or beer and pretzels games but in either case i want a clear understanding of what the DM will make up and what the DM will not make up, and I want them to stick to it.
I have taken to grabbing dangerous shiny artifacts because I am sick of my DM putting in magical toys too dangerous to play with and no hints about them at all. He has been too much of a coward to kill me the three times I've set off horrible events so far.
The one straight character death I remember having that wasn't a one shot thing was the first character I made in what ended up being a 2.5 years long campaign. First session we are at some ruins near our home town and run into some orcs. My dick little halfing rogue throws an apple at them first because why not. Orcs get pissed and I get crit by the level 1 slayer that is the d12 damage battle axe. DM let me keep the character sheet and just change my name because it was session 1. Second version ended up living through the whole campaign well in the mid 20s for a level.
I would be mad as hell if a DM killed my character for laffs, or to build tension, or whatever
ok cool story, see you never again
What I am suggesting is a bit more subtle: It's refraining from fudging die rolls to keep a player alive. Or otherwise fudging things behind the screen to make sure the most narratively or dramatically appropriate / satisfying thing always happen.
That's fair. At the same time, I'm also just not that interested in playing campaign settings where true random dice will eventually kill your character. If I spend hours and hours concepting, playing, and developing a character, I'm pretty much only okay with it being killed if that's part of a story development I explicitly helped plan and agreed to.
Like, only 1% of the playerbase ever actually wanted to play Diablo on hardcore. Power to the people who do want that, but I would feel like it was a huge violation of my time and extremely disrespectful if that got sprung on me without a whole ton of explicit metadiscussion and mutual greenlighting about how permadeath is a normal part of the campaign.
Are you ok with your character being killed if you try to tackle something you're clearly not meant to tackle?
No!
That sounds like a breakdown of communication, and imo it's bad DMing to take a communication breakdown and then punish the player because it's 'their fault' for not getting what the DM was 'obviously' putting down
If your character gets permadeath is it generally the last session? Or do you make a new character and continue playing?
Depends on the game. D&D and similar are the kind of game where you are rolling the dice for a new character before the old one is in the ground and you are back in playing in 30 minutes. Cause D&D still is and always has been a game about fighting monsters and getting treasure.
The unfortunate thing is that one game has such a huge market share that it is pretty much synonymous with tabletop RPGs in general. Both from people outside the hobby and those inside it who try and bend D&D into being kinds game games it is absolutely terrible at.
I would be mad as hell if a DM killed my character for laffs, or to build tension, or whatever
ok cool story, see you never again
What I am suggesting is a bit more subtle: It's refraining from fudging die rolls to keep a player alive. Or otherwise fudging things behind the screen to make sure the most narratively or dramatically appropriate / satisfying thing always happen.
That's fair. At the same time, I'm also just not that interested in playing campaign settings where true random dice will eventually kill your character. If I spend hours and hours concepting, playing, and developing a character, I'm pretty much only okay with it being killed if that's part of a story development I explicitly helped plan and agreed to.
Like, only 1% of the playerbase ever actually wanted to play Diablo on hardcore. Power to the people who do want that, but I would feel like it was a huge violation of my time and extremely disrespectful if that got sprung on me without a whole ton of explicit metadiscussion and mutual greenlighting about how permadeath is a normal part of the campaign.
Are you ok with your character being killed if you try to tackle something you're clearly not meant to tackle?
No!
That sounds like a breakdown of communication, and imo it's bad DMing to take a communication breakdown and then punish the player because it's 'their fault' for not getting what the DM was 'obviously' putting down
Or it's bad playing, if the rest of the party runs from the ancient red dragon and you decide to poke it in the eye.
I like when a sandbox type game has things where you can say "oh, I'm gonna come back later and deal with that and it'll be awesome"
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AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
If your character gets permadeath is it generally the last session? Or do you make a new character and continue playing?
At least how I'm familiar with it, unless there's commitment to bringing the character back (in which case there might be entire sessions devoted to this sideplot), you just roll up a new one and the DM inserts you back into the party at some point in the near future where it makes sense.
If your character gets permadeath is it generally the last session? Or do you make a new character and continue playing?
Depends on the game. D&D and similar are the kind of game where you are rolling the dice for a new character before the old one is in the ground and you are back in playing in 30 minutes. Cause D&D still is and always has been a game about fighting monsters and getting treasure.
The unfortunate thing is that one game has such a huge market share that it is pretty much synonymous with tabletop RPGs in general. Both from people outside the hobby and those inside it who try and bend D&D into being kinds game games it is absolutely terrible at.
I would be mad as hell if a DM killed my character for laffs, or to build tension, or whatever
ok cool story, see you never again
What I am suggesting is a bit more subtle: It's refraining from fudging die rolls to keep a player alive. Or otherwise fudging things behind the screen to make sure the most narratively or dramatically appropriate / satisfying thing always happen.
That's fair. At the same time, I'm also just not that interested in playing campaign settings where true random dice will eventually kill your character. If I spend hours and hours concepting, playing, and developing a character, I'm pretty much only okay with it being killed if that's part of a story development I explicitly helped plan and agreed to.
Like, only 1% of the playerbase ever actually wanted to play Diablo on hardcore. Power to the people who do want that, but I would feel like it was a huge violation of my time and extremely disrespectful if that got sprung on me without a whole ton of explicit metadiscussion and mutual greenlighting about how permadeath is a normal part of the campaign.
Are you ok with your character being killed if you try to tackle something you're clearly not meant to tackle?
No!
That sounds like a breakdown of communication, and imo it's bad DMing to take a communication breakdown and then punish the player because it's 'their fault' for not getting what the DM was 'obviously' putting down
Yeah. A character tackling a situation that's too dangerous is probably underestimating the threat or overestimating their character's power, or the dynamism of that power. Your low level character is just going to roll one die a turn and hope for the best. You won't make any meaningful decisions that affect the outcome. The drama of the situation has no impact on the character's abilities.
It's up to the DM to communicate the facts of the world effectively.
Character immunity until level 3 in 5e, after that players actually can do things to prevent their deaths and know how the game works.
omg that kind of game is just torture to run. If you have plot armor than for fucks sake just stop rolling dice. You are wasting everyone's time. For D&D, means set aside those books cause you aren't using anything in them. Play a different game. Or start at level 3 (that's what Gygax did in his games). Or play 4th ed where they fixed that problem by having characters start out not totally helpless.
Attacked by tweeeeeeees!
+3
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
I would be mad as hell if a DM killed my character for laffs, or to build tension, or whatever
ok cool story, see you never again
What I am suggesting is a bit more subtle: It's refraining from fudging die rolls to keep a player alive. Or otherwise fudging things behind the screen to make sure the most narratively or dramatically appropriate / satisfying thing always happen.
That's fair. At the same time, I'm also just not that interested in playing campaign settings where true random dice will eventually kill your character. If I spend hours and hours concepting, playing, and developing a character, I'm pretty much only okay with it being killed if that's part of a story development I explicitly helped plan and agreed to.
Like, only 1% of the playerbase ever actually wanted to play Diablo on hardcore. Power to the people who do want that, but I would feel like it was a huge violation of my time and extremely disrespectful if that got sprung on me without a whole ton of explicit metadiscussion and mutual greenlighting about how permadeath is a normal part of the campaign.
Are you ok with your character being killed if you try to tackle something you're clearly not meant to tackle?
No!
That sounds like a breakdown of communication, and imo it's bad DMing to take a communication breakdown and then punish the player because it's 'their fault' for not getting what the DM was 'obviously' putting down
Or it's bad playing, if the rest of the party runs from the ancient red dragon and you decide to poke it in the eye.
I like when a sandbox type game has things where you can say "oh, I'm gonna come back later and deal with that and it'll be awesome"
This is simplistic and wrong, I think. The DL can say hey you know if you poke that in the eye your character might die, right?
The only way it would be "bad" playing is if the player was not comfortable with permadeath but knowingly did an action that could cause permadeath, without making their peace with it. Any time a character is surprised and upset by permadeath the question should be whether the DM did a good job of making it clear it was on the table and the player was okay with that.
If your character gets permadeath is it generally the last session? Or do you make a new character and continue playing?
Depends on the game. D&D and similar are the kind of game where you are rolling the dice for a new character before the old one is in the ground and you are back in playing in 30 minutes. Cause D&D still is and always has been a game about fighting monsters and getting treasure.
The unfortunate thing is that one game has such a huge market share that it is pretty much synonymous with tabletop RPGs in general. Both from people outside the hobby and those inside it who try and bend D&D into being kinds game games it is absolutely terrible at.
Also it's made on a tiny, tiny budget
Yeah for all people talk (quite rightly) about the need for more diversity in the creative staff behind D&D there are maybe half a dozen people who have full time jobs doing game design on the game. There are a tiny tiny number of such jobs and they don't open up often.
Attacked by tweeeeeeees!
+1
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
I would be mad as hell if a DM killed my character for laffs, or to build tension, or whatever
ok cool story, see you never again
What I am suggesting is a bit more subtle: It's refraining from fudging die rolls to keep a player alive. Or otherwise fudging things behind the screen to make sure the most narratively or dramatically appropriate / satisfying thing always happen.
That's fair. At the same time, I'm also just not that interested in playing campaign settings where true random dice will eventually kill your character. If I spend hours and hours concepting, playing, and developing a character, I'm pretty much only okay with it being killed if that's part of a story development I explicitly helped plan and agreed to.
Like, only 1% of the playerbase ever actually wanted to play Diablo on hardcore. Power to the people who do want that, but I would feel like it was a huge violation of my time and extremely disrespectful if that got sprung on me without a whole ton of explicit metadiscussion and mutual greenlighting about how permadeath is a normal part of the campaign.
Are you ok with your character being killed if you try to tackle something you're clearly not meant to tackle?
No!
That sounds like a breakdown of communication, and imo it's bad DMing to take a communication breakdown and then punish the player because it's 'their fault' for not getting what the DM was 'obviously' putting down
Or it's bad playing, if the rest of the party runs from the ancient red dragon and you decide to poke it in the eye.
I like when a sandbox type game has things where you can say "oh, I'm gonna come back later and deal with that and it'll be awesome"
In that situation I'd think it'd be prudent to at least have a brief OOC convo "you realize it's very likely your character could die if you do this, right?"
If they wanna do it anyway, but also don't want to die, and also the DM cannot or does not want to create bespoke hijinx for them... some people might not belong in the same playgroup
+2
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
I would be mad as hell if a DM killed my character for laffs, or to build tension, or whatever
ok cool story, see you never again
What I am suggesting is a bit more subtle: It's refraining from fudging die rolls to keep a player alive. Or otherwise fudging things behind the screen to make sure the most narratively or dramatically appropriate / satisfying thing always happen.
That's fair. At the same time, I'm also just not that interested in playing campaign settings where true random dice will eventually kill your character. If I spend hours and hours concepting, playing, and developing a character, I'm pretty much only okay with it being killed if that's part of a story development I explicitly helped plan and agreed to.
Like, only 1% of the playerbase ever actually wanted to play Diablo on hardcore. Power to the people who do want that, but I would feel like it was a huge violation of my time and extremely disrespectful if that got sprung on me without a whole ton of explicit metadiscussion and mutual greenlighting about how permadeath is a normal part of the campaign.
Are you ok with your character being killed if you try to tackle something you're clearly not meant to tackle?
No!
That sounds like a breakdown of communication, and imo it's bad DMing to take a communication breakdown and then punish the player because it's 'their fault' for not getting what the DM was 'obviously' putting down
Then what do you do if a player knows they cannot die (due to this rule) and they decide to get themselves in ridiculous situations even though the DM is basically throwing everything at the player to tell them not to go try to take on the Red Dragon sitting at the top of this mountain. Do you just want the DM to be like, oh well the dragon gets bored and flies off every time?
Talk about it like adults OOC / kick the player
+4
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
If your character gets permadeath is it generally the last session? Or do you make a new character and continue playing?
Depends on the game. D&D and similar are the kind of game where you are rolling the dice for a new character before the old one is in the ground and you are back in playing in 30 minutes. Cause D&D still is and always has been a game about fighting monsters and getting treasure.
The unfortunate thing is that one game has such a huge market share that it is pretty much synonymous with tabletop RPGs in general. Both from people outside the hobby and those inside it who try and bend D&D into being kinds game games it is absolutely terrible at.
Also it's made on a tiny, tiny budget
Yeah for all people talk (quite rightly) about the need for more diversity in the creative staff behind D&D there are maybe half a dozen people who have full time jobs doing game design on the game. There are a tiny tiny number of such jobs and they don't open up often.
I would be mad as hell if a DM killed my character for laffs, or to build tension, or whatever
ok cool story, see you never again
What I am suggesting is a bit more subtle: It's refraining from fudging die rolls to keep a player alive. Or otherwise fudging things behind the screen to make sure the most narratively or dramatically appropriate / satisfying thing always happen.
That's fair. At the same time, I'm also just not that interested in playing campaign settings where true random dice will eventually kill your character. If I spend hours and hours concepting, playing, and developing a character, I'm pretty much only okay with it being killed if that's part of a story development I explicitly helped plan and agreed to.
Like, only 1% of the playerbase ever actually wanted to play Diablo on hardcore. Power to the people who do want that, but I would feel like it was a huge violation of my time and extremely disrespectful if that got sprung on me without a whole ton of explicit metadiscussion and mutual greenlighting about how permadeath is a normal part of the campaign.
Are you ok with your character being killed if you try to tackle something you're clearly not meant to tackle?
No!
That sounds like a breakdown of communication, and imo it's bad DMing to take a communication breakdown and then punish the player because it's 'their fault' for not getting what the DM was 'obviously' putting down
Or it's bad playing, if the rest of the party runs from the ancient red dragon and you decide to poke it in the eye.
I like when a sandbox type game has things where you can say "oh, I'm gonna come back later and deal with that and it'll be awesome"
This is simplistic and wrong, I think. The DL can say hey you know if you poke that in the eye your character might die, right?
The only way it would be "bad" playing is if the player was not comfortable with permadeath but knowingly did an action that could cause permadeath, without making their peace with it. Any time a character is surprised and upset by permadeath the question should be whether the DM did a good job of making it clear it was on the table and the player was okay with that.
Oh, well yes, if a player is doing something that as the DM I am pretty sure is going to kill them, I might point that out, or do the ever popular "Are you sure you want to do that?"
If you give no indication that's on the DM. If you say "this is very likely to kill you dead!" and they do it anyway and then complain, that's not on the DM.
I got turned into a vampire in the individual session 0 for my character in our current descent into Avernus so that's been fun to deal with
Session 1, Paladin: Holy shit why can the bard throw a guy through a tree?
Sessoin 2, Paladin: I think our bard is a vampire
Session 3, Paladin: I should probably destroy you....
Session 4, Paladin: Holy fucking god we're level 2 and that lady necromancer could cast FIREBALL?! Yeah, fucking hell, drink the blood of these cultists, we need someone who can heal and tank hits! What the fuck, who the hell balanced this module
(we avoided death by fireball because I snuck up to the necromancer and stole her arcane focus, I used Tavern Brawler to swing the large crystal on a chain at her like a flail and beat the shit out of her with her own arcane focus, we knew she could cast fireball because I Vampire Charmed her and convinced her that we were sent by "the master" to be a change in management, using my fangs to convince her. We still don't know who her master is and it's Charm, not mind control, so that was all we risked getting before sending her outside to be treated fairly by the police)
It's the Grim Hollow kickstarter Vampire transformation, so I only have a few vampire powers, and I have to use a resource to do the extra attack - an extra attack that behooves more blood drinking. I also can't be healed so
if I need health it involves me grabbing our gnome wizard and drinking him like a juice box while using my spell slots to heal him, because he was the only one who was cool with this (his background is as a slave to the Drow so, really, being a vampire's beverage holder doesn't crack the top hundred most demeaning things hes done)
Character immunity until level 3 in 5e, after that players actually can do things to prevent their deaths and know how the game works.
omg that kind of game is just torture to run. If you have plot armor than for fucks sake just stop rolling dice. You are wasting everyone's time. For D&D, means set aside those books cause you aren't using anything in them. Play a different game. Or start at level 3 (that's what Gygax did in his games). Or play 4th ed where they fixed that problem by having characters start out not totally helpless.
this is honestly more for new players to the table and game itself
skipping right to third level doesn't let someone who's new to the whole thing get to experience how it all works, and someone's first time that character is extra special even if p&p rpg grognards don't think it should be
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
@override367 I'm running descent into avernus soon! And some of my players are here in this thread so in spoilers, how far in are you? I have questions about some of the early plot stuff and I'm curious how others handle it.
What kind of crazy people aren't constantly making new weirder and worse characters to replace their existing character upon their untimely but ultimately easily preventable demise?
A game where players "can't die" (because death is major narrative event and the game is shaped by narrative decisions) is also a game where players shouldn't be acting arbitrarily and goofily. In the same way that the GM and the setting is constrained in its effects by narrative guidelines, so are the players. There has to be agreement that it is collaborative fiction and what the nature of that fiction is, to some extent.
the worst is someone who holds up a session "roll to succeed" type traps over and over and over and not just have some mechanic like "you've twisted your ankle so you're moving at half speed for the next day" or "you take 4 hp of damage climbing out since you failed"
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Posts
That's fair. At the same time, I'm also just not that interested in playing campaign settings where true random dice will eventually kill your character. If I spend hours and hours concepting, playing, and developing a character, I'm pretty much only okay with it being killed if that's part of a story development I explicitly helped plan and agreed to.
Like, only 1% of the playerbase ever actually wanted to play Diablo on hardcore. Power to the people who do want that, but I would feel like it was a huge violation of my time and extremely disrespectful if that got sprung on me without a whole ton of explicit metadiscussion and mutual greenlighting about how permadeath is a normal part of the campaign.
People's ideas about reality, even a fictional reality, are way too disparate; the capacity to communicate the elements of physical and social reality is so insufficient; the work required is tremendous; etc
It also just ends up being less fun, in my experience — people want the narratively pleasing arc of events, the cinematic or dramatic scenes, but they want them to feel more plausible, less arbitrary and thus more special because they emerged from simulationist game. I get that. But most of time, those scenes just didn't emerge at all, especially in games like D&D where dice are enormously swingy and random chance is so dominant in determining outcomes. What it produces is a zany, blood-soaked comedy of errors. Which is fine but didn't have staying power for me.
Sadly it's not, unless you mean like in a hilariously stupid kind of way
People usually roll new characters.
I gave windows 400 gigs, this game is going to take almost half of it when all is said and done.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Usually the second one. In kosh's thread about his game a character turns evil and the DM takes the character over and the player rolls a new one
The vast majority of games I've seen, you make a new character and keep going.
Dimension 20 would sometimes have a character sit out the next session to let the other characters deal with the ramifications of the death.
No!
That sounds like a breakdown of communication, and imo it's bad DMing to take a communication breakdown and then punish the player because it's 'their fault' for not getting what the DM was 'obviously' putting down
Disgusting. The evil player should be separated and make plans in limited cooperation with the DM, creating more than double the work for that DM.
Just start at level 3 if for some reason you play 5e
Depends on the game. D&D and similar are the kind of game where you are rolling the dice for a new character before the old one is in the ground and you are back in playing in 30 minutes. Cause D&D still is and always has been a game about fighting monsters and getting treasure.
The unfortunate thing is that one game has such a huge market share that it is pretty much synonymous with tabletop RPGs in general. Both from people outside the hobby and those inside it who try and bend D&D into being kinds game games it is absolutely terrible at.
Or it's bad playing, if the rest of the party runs from the ancient red dragon and you decide to poke it in the eye.
I like when a sandbox type game has things where you can say "oh, I'm gonna come back later and deal with that and it'll be awesome"
At least how I'm familiar with it, unless there's commitment to bringing the character back (in which case there might be entire sessions devoted to this sideplot), you just roll up a new one and the DM inserts you back into the party at some point in the near future where it makes sense.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Also it's made on a tiny, tiny budget
Yeah. A character tackling a situation that's too dangerous is probably underestimating the threat or overestimating their character's power, or the dynamism of that power. Your low level character is just going to roll one die a turn and hope for the best. You won't make any meaningful decisions that affect the outcome. The drama of the situation has no impact on the character's abilities.
It's up to the DM to communicate the facts of the world effectively.
omg that kind of game is just torture to run. If you have plot armor than for fucks sake just stop rolling dice. You are wasting everyone's time. For D&D, means set aside those books cause you aren't using anything in them. Play a different game. Or start at level 3 (that's what Gygax did in his games). Or play 4th ed where they fixed that problem by having characters start out not totally helpless.
This is simplistic and wrong, I think. The DL can say hey you know if you poke that in the eye your character might die, right?
The only way it would be "bad" playing is if the player was not comfortable with permadeath but knowingly did an action that could cause permadeath, without making their peace with it. Any time a character is surprised and upset by permadeath the question should be whether the DM did a good job of making it clear it was on the table and the player was okay with that.
I like counting out XP but sometimes it gets pretty annoying to tally that all up.
Yeah for all people talk (quite rightly) about the need for more diversity in the creative staff behind D&D there are maybe half a dozen people who have full time jobs doing game design on the game. There are a tiny tiny number of such jobs and they don't open up often.
In that situation I'd think it'd be prudent to at least have a brief OOC convo "you realize it's very likely your character could die if you do this, right?"
If they wanna do it anyway, but also don't want to die, and also the DM cannot or does not want to create bespoke hijinx for them... some people might not belong in the same playgroup
Talk about it like adults OOC / kick the player
I think it's actually only two FTE!
Oh, well yes, if a player is doing something that as the DM I am pretty sure is going to kill them, I might point that out, or do the ever popular "Are you sure you want to do that?"
If you give no indication that's on the DM. If you say "this is very likely to kill you dead!" and they do it anyway and then complain, that's not on the DM.
Session 1, Paladin: Holy shit why can the bard throw a guy through a tree?
Sessoin 2, Paladin: I think our bard is a vampire
Session 3, Paladin: I should probably destroy you....
Session 4, Paladin: Holy fucking god we're level 2 and that lady necromancer could cast FIREBALL?! Yeah, fucking hell, drink the blood of these cultists, we need someone who can heal and tank hits! What the fuck, who the hell balanced this module
(we avoided death by fireball because I snuck up to the necromancer and stole her arcane focus, I used Tavern Brawler to swing the large crystal on a chain at her like a flail and beat the shit out of her with her own arcane focus, we knew she could cast fireball because I Vampire Charmed her and convinced her that we were sent by "the master" to be a change in management, using my fangs to convince her. We still don't know who her master is and it's Charm, not mind control, so that was all we risked getting before sending her outside to be treated fairly by the police)
It's the Grim Hollow kickstarter Vampire transformation, so I only have a few vampire powers, and I have to use a resource to do the extra attack - an extra attack that behooves more blood drinking. I also can't be healed so
if I need health it involves me grabbing our gnome wizard and drinking him like a juice box while using my spell slots to heal him, because he was the only one who was cool with this (his background is as a slave to the Drow so, really, being a vampire's beverage holder doesn't crack the top hundred most demeaning things hes done)
this is honestly more for new players to the table and game itself
skipping right to third level doesn't let someone who's new to the whole thing get to experience how it all works, and someone's first time that character is extra special even if p&p rpg grognards don't think it should be
I bet he lasts 1 session.