Player Character killed Darth Vader

So I decided to drop Darth Vader into my RPG's final battle for an appearance to scare the players a bit (all in good fun of course). It was going to be just an appearance and a little sparring with the PC's before making a dramatic exit, but alas, the battle plan did not survive contact with the enemy.

The young Jedi Knight of the group (just went from Padawan to Knight the game before) squared off with Vader after Vader had axed my level 20 NPC Jedi Master. The player character Jedi Knight was first on the initiative pass at the point that he joined in the duel. The player made his first attack and scored a crit. threat and then he rolled the threat and succeeded. Suffice it to say, Vader went down in a hopeless pile of damage and didn't even get an attack in. So much for the scourge of the galaxy I guess.

Fortunately, it didn't quite affect any of the other major moments at the end of the campaign, but it would have been a different galaxy from then on had the game gone forward.

Anyone else have experiences like this in the d20 system where a vital member of the timeline made an early exit (thanks to the wound point system) or was altered in some other permanent way?

 

This is where "GM discretion" comes into play. The DR on his Dark Side armor reduced the damage, he was badly wounded and fled from combat.

Your folks get XP for defeating the challenge code and Vader lives to kill another day...

 

Yes, I've had PCs kill Darth Vader (but that's not d20's fault, the first time it happened was with WEG rules - you know a Wookiee using the Force and punching Ol' Anakin) and also killing Joruus C'Baoth.

When these things happen you can either say "uh, well, he survived and will have a grudge against you for the rest of your life" or think creatively like "oookay, so you killed the decoy, very well, looks like somebody impersonating Vader was around", whatever works better.

I'm with dp4m: they deserve the XP reawrd, even adjusting it for an impossible encounter a la D&D.

 

You can also accept it and use it as an advantage. You can then plan adventures in this "alternate" SW universe which would be interesting because it would be completely unknown to you and your players which lets you play with the universe some more.

 

This is why I do not use characters from the films in my games very often. I would rule that Vader was badly wounded and survived the encounter, but that is because I do not like drastically changing the events of the movies.
However, this situation could be used to your advantage. It could be used to open up many plot possibilities. I doubt that the Emperor would be very happy about having to find a new apprentice, after he had gone on a campaign to rid the galaxy of Jedi.

 

Emperor: there must be a least one force sensitive person left in this entire galaxy!
Emperor: lets see (reaches out with force)
Emperor: im sensing some dark power from dagobah, hmmm........

 

I had a player fight Vader once.

I told the player that he couldn't win. the player happily accepted this, he just wanted to go down fighting. We pre-scripted the scene between us, the other players were very surprised that no dice were rolled.

It was very emotional when Vader surprised him with a Kinetite and blasted him away.

A good player knows when to give up and go down gracefully, we were playing a pre ANH adventure, so the Jedi player knew his character would die when he made him.

 

JediBendu, I had exactly the same experience a few years ago. One of the players in my group played a Jedi Knight and another one a young Republican pilot (back to the times when we thought there was a Republican navy before the Clone Wars). We played the PT campaign as a prequel to our old WEG Rebellion era campaign. The young pilot had been a NPC in our old campaign, the commander of the Rebel base the heroes operated in. In the end we decided we had to link both campaigns.
I made the story continue a few years before ANH. The pilot was now an ISD captain and he received orders to hunt down a dangerous traitor to the Empire and was told he was going to be supervised by the right hand of the Emperor, the dreadful Lord Vader. Of course, ther traitor was the other PC, the Jedi (and the captain didn't realize it until he captured him). Vader fought the Jedi and killed him (we had talked before and the player agreed). When Vader left, the captain joined the Rebellion -and the campaigns were linked.

Ah, good memories...
The "prequel" was funny... and hard. What if the captain had died in one of his earlier adventures? We ruled that if he was killed, he would be just badly injured -but the player would have to roll a new character.

 

Should have bluffed!

 

In my campaign I used to run, I did have frequent run ins with SW Universe characters, including General Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Mon Mothma, Jerec and some of his dark jedi from the computer game JEDI KNIGHT, and others.

Basically, while I never said it, the fact was that certain things were simply not going to happen no matter what. When one of the Jedi in my campaign confronted Anakin Skywalker about his betraying the order and a duel ensued, I made sure, no matter how good the Jedi rolled, that Anakin would survive in one way or the other. Or having Jerec and Boc and Gorc and Pic and Sarriss ultimately survive as well. I made it clear to the Jedi character, at the end of the campaign, when he was about to be the first Jedi that was going to die at the hands of the newly emergent DARTH VADER, more or less that nothing was going to stop it, and he was cool with it.

It is ultimately, though, up to your story. I consider myself a storyteller as much as anything else, so in the end, I got to do what I wanted.

 

I play D&D, not SW, but I?ve had moment like that. Except it was a hero my players killed. They saw Drizzt, figured that since he was a Drow he was evil, and they killed him. Disintegrated him, actually. That was annoying, because he was the plot hook.

I got my revenge though. For killing Drizzt, they ended up incurring the wrath of Mithril Hall, the Ten Towns, Waterdeep, and pretty much all of the Silver Marches. They ended up having to team up with the Zhent in order to save their necks. As things turned out though, they made the best of it. Everyone but the Paladin started shifting their alignment over towards evil. The Paladin wasn?t too bright (the character, not the player; he had an intelligence of 6) and the player had a great time RP?ing him as being really, really confused by his allies. He eventually had a moment of epiphany where he realized that the Zhent were evil, and went on a bit of a rampage. Killed the rest of the party, killed Lady Darkhope, and got in a few good whacks on Fzoul before he finally succumbed to his wounds.

That was a fun campaign.



Players killing NPC's is what you made of it.

 

Poor Drizzt...
Why does every player try to kill him?

 

In a surprise critical hit, one of my lvl 2 characters disposed of the Galaxy's most feared Bounty Hunter, Mr Boba Fett.

More details coming soon when I have time to update my "SW IV: The Loss of Hope" thread.

 

Poor Drizzt...
Why does every player try to kill him?

I think that there are three possible answers to that question.
1) In character, it is natural for a good aligned party to assume that Drow=evil. If the characters do not recognize him or do not know of him, it is somewhat understandable for them to attack. Of course if he tries to explain himself or does not fight back and they still kill him...DSPs for everyone.

2) An evil aligned party that does recognize Drizzt might think "We need to kill this guy; he gives Drow a bad name."

3) Out of character, who doesn?t want to be able to say, "I killed Drizzt.?

 

I don't like the Critical Hit rule regarding Heroic Classes. Yes, it enhances danger for the PCs, but it makes BIG VILLAINS, such as Vader et al. too easily killed.

Plus, it's anti-climactic if a villain like Vader gets whacked from a single stroke.

 

Which is why the GM should use his power to prevent it from happening. The GM always has the ability to fudge the rules for the good of the game.

 

Agreed. But what I'm saying is that the rule should never have been included in the first place, because it means, essentially, that Darth Vader's or anyone else's 137 effective 'hit points' could be rendered meaningless.

I might say 1/4 damage goes to WP, but since Crit damage is doubled, most characters aren't going to have 25+ WP to stave off such an attack, especially from a lightsaber, which ignores armor.

 

Huh, if I'm not wrong, a lightsaber ignores hardness but not armor. But I have to partially agree with Kier: the critical rule is a bit... extreme... specially when compared to WEG. I personally like it: I prefer high combat risks and and it makes me create new enemies (who can obviously be killed) instead of saying "Hum, let's see, a 18th-level party... yeah, Lumiya will do good".

 

but since Crit damage is doubled
Crit damage is not doubled; the damage is just applied directly to the wound points and bypasses the vitality.

Lightsabers ignore all DR including that of armor.

 

Crit damage is not doubled; the damage is just applied directly to the wound points and bypasses the vitality.

Lightsabers ignore all DR including that of armor.

That's true, but this brings up a good point. I'm not sure a lightsaber would ignore the DR of Darth Vader's armor -- considering it was almost entirely created out of Sith Alchemy materials. So the DR would likely apply (much like a cortosis weave armor -- the lightsaber would still do damage, then shut off... but the DR would probably still apply -- at least for the first couple of hits).

 

Yeah, you're right, I was confused with the OCR rules. I have a mess of different d20 rules into my head . My fault.

 

For the lightsaber I would have had Vader use the Absorb/Disapate Energy feat and drain the blade. It'd sure shock the heck out of the PC. Then I'd give them a 'lucky' escape option.

 

See... I always views Absorb/Dissipate Energy as NOT working with a lightsaber as its continuous energy to absorb, rather than a single-point of energy (like a blaster).

 

I believe Energy Absorption could work, but not easily. Given Vader's mastery of the Force, though, it's likely to make the difference between badly wounded and corpse.
Thus, I have a neat, in-game justification for his survival, even though he collapsed in a heap. Of course, the PCs do get the XP. But they also voult into the Hundred Club, and probably higher yet. BTW, can you imagine them coming back to HQ saying they killed VAder, only to be confronted with a report that he recently took out a Rebel base somewhere?

 

Corran Horn's father (Can't remeber his name right now) sacrificed himself to save his friends by allowing himself to be stabbed by a lightsaber, then Absorbed all the energy out of the saber and used it to crush the attackers.