I've been musing whilst at lunch over a couple of topics I've been reading here.
These thoughts were somewhat sparked by people saying that the styles of play advocated by the rulebook and the "average Conclaver" are somewhat different. I remember that when I read through "The Dweller Beneath", the original Inquisitor battle report, Enforcer Barbaretta was incapacitated to such a degree that by the next game, Tyrus had to bring along Lucretia Bravus instead.
I've never been to any of the Conclave events, and so I ask this question out of honest curiosity - How many characters have actually been killed? It seems that with the investment of time that modelling, painting and fluffing a character entails that players are understandably reluctant to kill off their creations. Does this perhaps have a bearing on their reluctance to allow powerful weapons and characters to roam on the battlefields of the Inquisitor game?
My philosophy is that I created the character and I get to decide when/if he dies, not the dice. Thus if a character does 'die' in a game, don't be surprised to find that he wasn't actually dead and has made a miraculous recovery (or some other unlikely escape) - that applies whether he's my favourite Inquisitor or just some underhive scum. It's amazing what Imperial medical science can achieve!
Remember 'time lines', your character could die in that epic battle and it is the end of their life but battles you have later just take place earlier in their life (admittedly this can only happen once).
All sorts of things. In most cases, characters don't actually 'die', they just get knocked unconcious, pass out through pain or are too injured to continue fighting, but still breathing.
In games of Inquisitor, a turn is supposed to represent about 10 seconds of 'real time' - ie a turn is what the character can feasibly do in about a 10 second window. Given the length of games, this can range from 2-5 minutes of real time - not very long at all. If there are friendly characters on the board (or you can say that there is backup waiting just outside of the conflict area) they can patch up the wounded and it can be part of their ongoing history.
These incidents give rise to really interesting developments in the characters - talk to your GM about it - but often if a character has performed admirably or adversely in an area in a game, they might warrant a small stat increase. I've experienced plenty of deaths, one way we dealt with it was saying that because the character had such good connections amongst Inquisitorial resources, they were able to get replacement vat-grown tissues and with a few games off to convalesce, she was fine again. I've had a man taken out of action from a critical hit to the chest - with some bionic organs and a hardened rib cage replacement, he was slower and more susceptable to EMP attacks, but had a heightened toughness to compensate.
I've even had small bit-part characters die in my campaigns, to be put at the back of the box of models and forgotten about, only to be taken out at the start of another campaign some time down the line and used as a completely different character. That said, why can't it be the same character? There is no reason why what your opponent 'saw' on the battlefield couldn't have been an illusion... What if your Interrogator was shot in the back by his comerade turned traitor in the game, orchestrated by your opponent, but if he turned up again later revealing it was a double-agent who was killed in the first place, revealing the traitor?
There are loads of reasons to explain it away and it needn't be the end of a character, all heroes live to fight another day!
I think people might be misunderstanding my point somewhat (though all your responses are certainly very interesting!)
I'm not against the miraculous reason after the game. I'm certainly all for it. One of the characters in my campaign, Inquisitor Ferox, is a master of manipulation. Rarely seen at the Conclaves, and suspected of using body-doubles when "he" does so, if he dies in a game I'll probably be able to say to my players that it was actually a double of Ferox, etc, etc.
What I'm trying to angle at is whether peoples' reluctance to use particularly powerful weaponry in the game is because they don't want their lovingly-created characters to be killed off. Given all your reasons how "dead" does not mean dead, you're only giving credence to my argument. Whilst I know that Inquisitor games are not about winning, and that the criteria necessary for "success" in any given scenario can change, it seems somewhat pointless if every Inquisitor scenario could be said to be an ineffectual skirmish where both sides make a lot of loud noise but don't really do that much before going home.
So: How often have characters died in your games? Regardless of whether they magically resurrected at the end of it, I'm curious to know just how often characters "die", and if that's a consequence of lower power levels, and if the two are linked.
Quote from: Molotov on March 02, 2010, 09:20:57 PM
What I'm trying to angle at is whether peoples' reluctance to use particularly powerful weaponry in the game is because they don't want their lovingly-created characters to be killed off. Given all your reasons how "dead" does not mean dead, you're only giving credence to my argument.
I've had a couple of characters 'die' in games and a lot go out due to system shock etc, but my point was that as they only actually die if I decide their story is over, then it doesn't matter if people 'kill' them during games. Sometimes I make up some story of how they survived, other times I simply ignore their death. I don't see it has any relation to using lower powered weapons - the better reason for lower powered weapons is that with just 3-4 characters pers side, if you use too many high powered weapons the game can be over very quickly.
Interesting theory. As I understand it though, using lower power characters/equipment increases jeapordy in the sense of "Will this shot hit? And if it does, will the hit cause damage?".
I don't know, I've got plans to model on battle damage on some of my figures, based on what keep's happening to them in game, and in a campaign, rather than a pick up game, the environment is different.
For example, in a Campaign, I'd be more than willing to retire a character if they die (so long as it's reasonbly plot coherent), but in a pick up game, or conclave event? Less So.
Ungen getting his leg's vaped constantly though, that might be impetus for me to get him a bionic.
I think I hold a similar line to most of the board here, though I barely play any more.
Low power games add more tension and uncertainty, make for longer, more interesting games, and help slow down or prevent power-creep in groups or across campaigns.
Also, while frequently dramatic, it can be really annoying when one character that should have significant narrative weight gets blown away by that twerp with the autocannon within seconds of the scene starting.
My first PC to die was Anton Blessed, who became his twin brother, Stefan, who then also died trying to avenge his brother's death at the hands of Inquisitor Cleops.
The second was Inquisitrix Kang-Ju Ki, who was murdered by her former pupil, renegade Inquisitor Richard Nemesov, who shot her in the face at point-blank range with a bolter.
The most recent was the unnaturally-lucky pariah, Marech Val, who finally bit the dust after taking on a Valkyrie in a shooting match. He took lascannon hits to the head and chest. Not even he could walk away from that.
R.
I've had an Arco-Flagellant die, but they don't have a huge amount of personality, so I can just use them as a different one. The two other main character deaths in my campaigns:
1. A Cultist, but he was being proxied by a Daemon or something so I just made a new character.
2. A Tech-Magos with an assault cannon. What's funny is, he was the only character to have a heavy weapon, and the only character to die, although a Space Marine came close--the same one that killed the Magos...
Characters don't die all that often within the games I play.
Other than the occasional crippled result to the head, an actual death rather than just system shock or unconsciousness is a rare occurrence. Most weapons don't have the power to take a character from conscious to injury total death in one with any reliability (although a freakish number of hits from Semi shooting can get around that), and usually, characters that are down and out don't get further attacked.
There was one case where I saw a character go from uninjured to dead in a single non-head hit. That is, enough injury total to exceed the character's toughness in a single attack. Given that the character's toughness is/was in the high 60s, I am somewhat ashamed to say that it was one of my characters that perpetrated said violence. The situation has since been remedied.
I'm not usually fussed about my characters dying - it's my choice whether it sticks or not. Usually, when the characters in my group "die" on the table, they're alive and kicking not all that long afterwards. Similarly, most in-game injuries don't hold - I'm not remodelling my characters every second game.
Any dislike I have for more powerful weapons is not that they might kill my characters, but that it could result in an unheroic KO on turn two - a game where a character is levelled off the table immediately isn't likely to be a particularly entertaining one.
I have allowed characters to die in games but it also add an angle to continued games for example in the now flourishing Carthaxian conclave Necris and Kaled have met several times
Necris has seen Kaled shot in the head by a bolter, and later has encountered him again (If I recall his first comment was "I thought you were dead?")
Necris has also been taken out of action by members of Kaled's warband and has returned to wreak revenge with similar outcomes.
Again Necris has also encountered Hanja and the two have had numerous dealings in which one or the other has been seriously wounded, Necris being left bleeding to death from a rather savage gut wound at the hands of Red Queen springs to mind.
We often forget that Inquisitor don't travel around with just the 2 or 3 characters on the table with them but often have a network of support operative that can come to their aid post games (In Necris' case it's usually Zion and Grace.) but they more than likely have ships in orbit or close by which contain specialist equipment to deal with combat related injuries.
Quote from: Necris on March 19, 2010, 10:07:03 AMIf I recall his first comment was "I thought you were dead?"
"I was. I'm better now."
He's possessed of the dark arts
burn him!
When I used to play at Games Workshop Enfield the character turnover was atrocious. Mainly because the regular Inquisitor players were shameless power gamers. I tried to make things a bit lower key when I ran a one off last year but one character's head exploded in the first turn!
I just remembered, that Saul XIII was killed on his first outing - decapitated by a mad monk with a power sword.
I replaced his head with a bionic skull and returned him to the table as Saul XIV. Oddly, he's been a lot luckier since then. Draw your own conclusions.
R.
I am going to go on record Molotov saying that I think your theory about the reluctance to use powerful weapons due to killing a character is 100% correct. While I do not think it is the only reason (more powerful weapons lead to shorter games) it's definitely a big factor.
Many have expressed the sentiment that it's "their choice" when their character dies, not the dices. I think we generally all feel that way, after hours upon hours have been put in creating background and motivation for characters combined with the seemingly endless process of getting the model just right we aren't going to let a little cube with divots tell us when the character dies.
However, getting shot in the head with a stubber and getting shot in the head with a plasma gun are two different things. If characters keep coming back game after game from injuries sustained by lascannons, assault cannons, powerswords and meltaguns then the magic wears off. The comparative "realism" that Inquisitor offers wears thin when the story is unaffected by characters repeatedly undergoing trauma that should kill them multiple times over.
If too many powerful weapons are on the field (IMO) it makes it impossible to enjoy Inquisitor as more than a scaled up version of 40K, and I don't think any of us want that.
Quote from: Alyster Wick on March 25, 2010, 04:04:35 AMIf characters keep coming back game after game from injuries sustained by lascannons, assault cannons, powerswords and meltaguns then the magic wears off.
In many ways, Inquisitor characters are like comic-book action heroes - and we all know how many times they can survive injuries that should have killed them, or die only to get subsequently reincarnated.
... pretty much until the company thinks there's no profit in it.Doesn't really matter to me what "killed" a character. If it was a stubber, they're tough enough to survive that. If it was a lascannon, then they're lucky enough that it was only a glancing hit.
Different excuses, but I have yet to see an in-game injury where there was no possible explanation for why they could have survived it.
A meltagun shot to the head - 'Tis but a scratch!
Personally I tend to avoid power weapons and such because you can have far more interesting duels with normal weapons, a duel where a character is killed in the first round is a lot less exciting than a drawn out fight between two individuals doing decent damage while a fire fight rages around them.
Also on a personal note most of my characters were created around spending long periods of time on low class worlds so I avoided having too many complex/high maintenance weapons, so more character than game reasons.
As for being killed off; most of my characters have incomplete 'stories' so I don't want to leave them unfinished. But attachment is probably a major factor, when you like a character it's hard to find them a fitting death (and dying a hero in battle never really feels satisfactory too me, it's like "they lived happily ever after", a bit hollow :-\)
QuoteIn many ways, Inquisitor characters are like comic-book action heroes - and we all know how many times they can survive injuries that should have killed them, or die only to get subsequently reincarnated.
I definitely agree, I just think that at a certain point when this happens game after game during a campaign the players may begin to feel as though their actions on the tabletop are being completely negated. True, you could find some excuse or just retire the character for the duration of the campaign but I still think this plays a bigger role in attitudes towards fancier kit than has been previously acknowledged.
Of course this isn't a problem in 1 off games where the results are completely ignored for sake of story anyway.
It's a bit of both, certainly - miraculous survival can always be justified, Lok got taken out by a lascannon at the GT, but fortunately is already horribly scarred (he did get dragged off the planet - that mercenary needs a pay rise). A chunk of it with me is not wanting to rework my models, which tend to be specific characters.
But characters being 'killed' also shortens the game considerably alot of the time. If alot of characters have power / carapace armour it can be important to have a few weapons to match though, otherwise a character can be almost invincible.