In the past, I've been notorious for giving my characters grievous injuries- either in past, present, or future plotlines. I started doing this for two big reasons.
1) In my RP group at the time, our characters went through a lot of dangerous situations and plotlines, but in many of them none of the PCs got seriously injured. Logically, this didn't make sense to me. But I wasn't DMing the events, and I wasn't about to tell someone else what to do with their character!
2) My character was not being careful with her own personal safety. So, logically, it made sense that sometimes she would get significantly wounded.
I've followed the approach ever since. And I like it a whole lot! Leaving the possibility for gratuitous injury open creates harsh consequences for my characters. Additionally, I feel it gives more weight to dangerous circumstances.
But most of all, it's created some very interesting RP situations- where my characters have to cope with significant and/or permanent damage in some way or another.
Character death is another matter. I've killed off a couple alts here and there to further plots... but alts are one thing. Main characters are another. Killing off a character so beloved to me that I can't put them down? I don't know if I could do it. Or if, for that matter, if I'd even want to.
1) In my RP group at the time, our characters went through a lot of dangerous situations and plotlines, but in many of them none of the PCs got seriously injured. Logically, this didn't make sense to me. But I wasn't DMing the events, and I wasn't about to tell someone else what to do with their character!
2) My character was not being careful with her own personal safety. So, logically, it made sense that sometimes she would get significantly wounded.
I've followed the approach ever since. And I like it a whole lot! Leaving the possibility for gratuitous injury open creates harsh consequences for my characters. Additionally, I feel it gives more weight to dangerous circumstances.
But most of all, it's created some very interesting RP situations- where my characters have to cope with significant and/or permanent damage in some way or another.
Character death is another matter. I've killed off a couple alts here and there to further plots... but alts are one thing. Main characters are another. Killing off a character so beloved to me that I can't put them down? I don't know if I could do it. Or if, for that matter, if I'd even want to.
Characters:Â Ojene Suinuet, Jophoix Suinuet