DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 37D: Affairs of the Evening
“He’s going to come looking for us,” Agnarr said.
“Not if he can’t get out of the prison,” Elestra said.
“If they couldn’t keep him in his cell, how likely is it they’ll keep him in the prison?” Tee asked.
“If he hasn’t gotten out already,” Tor said.
When Sera Nara arrived at the beginning of Session 37, collected Dominic, and disappeared into the night with him, this was because, sadly, Dominic’s player was leaving the campaign.
Dominic was gone.
I’ll have more to say about Dominic’s departure (and the ensuing consequences) in future installments of Running the Campaign, but for the moment I want to discuss the most immediate consequences: The party had lost its most powerful and dedicated healer.
One of the most basic foundations of tactics and strategy in D&D (and many other RPGs) boils down to a simple mathematical question: How much damage can you take vs. how much damage can you deal out? There are obviously A LOT of variables here that complicate things substantially, but on the “how much damage can you take” side of the equation the big X-factors are:
- What are your maximum hit point totals?
- How many hit points of healing can you do each day?
An important secondary consideration with healing is how fast you can add hit points to the active pool. (A periapt that can heal up to 1,000 hp per day at a rate of 1 hp per round is an incredible “deep reservoir,” but probably won’t help you keep standing in the middle of a fight where your opponents are dealing out 30 points of damage per hit.)
The departure of Dominic hits the group across the board:
- Their maximum hit point total has been reduced by his hit point count.
- Their maximum healing potential per day is drastically reduced.
- Without their specialized healer, their rate of healing per round is also drastically reduced.
- There are now fewer PC targets in combat, meaning damage will become more concentrated.
This is a really risky moment for most groups. In my experience, far riskier than they may realize.
The trick is that most groups – even groups with a lot of experience and skill – don’t really think deeply about this sort of stuff. They aren’t, for example, doing explicit analysis of their hit points vs. healing vs. damage output. Instead, over the course of the campaign, they’ve developed a sort of evolving gut instinct for what they can handle and how fights are going to play out.
It can be really easy to know that you’ve lost a PC and understand that it’s going to have an impact, but then drastically underestimate the actual impact it’s going to have. The loss of a PC – particularly a primary healer liker Dominic – isn’t a linear loss of capability. It’s more like an exponential one.
That means the group’s gut instinct is going to be LYING to them. Not only will they be prone to biting off more than they can chew, but when a fight goes south on them it’s going to go really bad and spiral out of control much faster than they anticipate.
Fortunately, in this case, the players were at least partially aware of the danger. Throughout Session 37, you can see it affecting their decision-making: They’re more conservative in the dangers they’re willing to face, and they’re more cautious in engaging with those dangers.
Complicating this even further, however, is that YOUR gut instinct, as the GM, is also going to be skewed. So it can be quite possible for you to push them into the abyss without meaning to. When you lose a player (and corresponding PC), therefore, you’ll want to spend a few sessions being hyper-alert to this until your gut has a chance to readjust.
Tip: One way you could help adjust for this a bit is to level up the other PCs in the group ASAP after losing a player. The extra power up will partially compensate for their diminished capacity.
You can, of course, experience this same danger even if a player is only missing for a session or two, rather than permanently departing.
So check your gut.
Campaign Journal: Session 37E – Running the Campaign: Newssheets
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index
Had a party that decided to take on a boss fight when down a person instead of finding an NPC to cure the debilitating ailment. I was gobsmacked that they (generally a risk-averse, sensible party) would do something so reckless. What’s funny is I’m sure of you asked anyone “Could the party take on a big fight without *you*?” they would say no, but when it’s another PC it doesn’t seem like a big deal
That’s too bad — Dominic was my favorite! (At least, to the extent that it makes sense to have a favorite character from someone else’s campaign 15 years ago…)
This is also interesting because my group recently lost our cleric as well, due to some scheduling issues (she may or may not be back later in the campaign). And I don’t think we thought about it in quite these terms, but it’s definitely true, modulo the differences between 3rd Edition and 5th. (“We’re using hit dice more” rather than “we’re buying more healing potions”.)
Also, it seems to me that having another PC who does a particular thing (e.g. healing) tends to be a disincentive for other players to pick up spells or features that do that thing (due to the desire to cover as many bases as possible, not step on toes, etc.). So if the cleric leaves, we’re left with the other casters who could have taken healing spells and didn’t, and may now be scrambling to adapt. Whereas if we had created a cleric-less party in the first place, perhaps more people would have taken healing abilities.