Edit: i have since learned that was in fact the end of this series of podcasts so Aoefel’s death isn’t nearly as gruntling to me.
I will make a prediction that Aoefel will return as a warforged. The ambershards will take his remains from the acid and convert him to a warforged revenant. That’s what I’d do and it makes perfect plausible sense.
I listened to the latest episode of the Penny Arcade Podcasts last night. I thought it was pretty funny in a lot of ways, quite possibly to me the most LOL episode yet. My wife and I have been listening to DnD podcasts a few times a week for a little bit after putting the kids to bed and before going to sleep and all in all it’s pretty enjoyable way to spend an hour or so.
I was talking to her last night about Al’s death and thought it would make a reasonable blog post. Frankly I didn’t like it for a number of reasons and I’m harsh, note the byline of this site for goodness sake. I strongly believe that killing Al in that fashion, unrecoverable, hearkens me back to losing a corpse in EQ due to bugs with lava flows and losing a corpse in EQ meant you lost all your gear.
I would like to state up front that I could be wrong in my “What was he thinking?!” in regards to Chris Perkin’s because obviously we don’t know what happens next. So bear in mind I’m only basing my reaction on what I know happened so far.
When Whil aka Aeofel rolled that 18 to climb out of the pit I would have immediately retcon’ed the DC of the pit to a 15. No one knew what it was and it would have made for a good story. That would have been a instant reaction / no brainer move on my part. If he’d of rolled a crap roll, I’d of had him roll a Perception roll with a non-announced DC of 1 for him to notice where the acid was shallow due to bones or rocks or whatever and given him a place to stand and given him quarter or half damage per round rather than 12 damage per round. For a character that apparently has only 26 hit points (???) that was already wounded to inflict 12 points a round…??? That would have made for a good story too, the avenger trapped with his feet and calves slowly dissolving in the acid as his friends struggled to break someone free to go rescue him while the remaining two finished up the bad guys? Epic storyline.
And I would have done that as a reward for his roleplaying. An Avenger is a single target focused class. They pick a single enemy and attack it until it’s dead. Hell without buying a feat they can’t even shift the target of their Oath of Enmity which is their very schtick. The character was behaving exactly as it should have been doing, any other actions would have been OOC. You don’t punish that kind of play.
In addition I’m a very strong believer in not letting the dice force the story. Random is too random for a good story. Certainly the dice influence, flavor and nudge the stories I try to tell as a DM, most certainly they do. But I never let the dice dictate the story. And making a character’s permanent death hinge on a single die roll at fairly bad odds? I would guess he had less than a 25% chance at making that roll. That should have never happened.
Other reasons I’d of worked some way around it -
Aeofel is a very well developed, enjoyable and obviously loved character of the player. You don’t permadeath that kind of character. With the exception to fit storyline reasons at the end of a campaign storyline. That last I have done, several times.
The conditions of their play time/session time. The players and DM have all traveled to some central location to play this game which is a one off game with months between sessions. You don’t kill off one of the characters after 4 hours of game play in such a session by letting a single random die roll do it.
The permanency of the death. His corpse was dissolved by acid in the middle of a bad guy infested stronghold. There’s simply no plausible way to get that corpse back for a raise dead ritual before it’s dissolved into its component parts.
Now if Chris has some plan in mind, maybe he wanted Aoefel dead so he can bring him back in some fashion, perhaps a cyborg undead given the obvious artificer nature of the bad guy? Then I can forgive him some of this although a cyborg Aeofel would be directly ripping me off. Been there and done. 
I would like to say in closing that I really like Chris Perkin’s. I think he’s a very good DM especially after he’s gotten used to his players, even in the first PA podcasts with complete unknown’s he was good and now with the third podcast they really gel as a group. I also want to say that it’s not Aoefel’s death that I strenuously object too (although killing a player in the middle of a game session under these session circumstances is bad), it’s the apparent permanency of it that bothers.
October 16th, 2009 at 10:27 am
At Penny Arcade Expo at either the first Q&A or the PA Draws a Strip panel, the PA guys mentioned that Chris Perkins *really* wanted to kill *someone* during this session. I can also only think that this is actually a blessing for Wil in disguise because he can go back to booking more jobs and doing more writing.
Scott Kurtz *was* a bit of a dick, though.
October 16th, 2009 at 11:00 am
If that’s the case then there’s probably a plan for it. Chris strikes me as a good dm and good dm’s aren’t just arbitrarily vindictive that way or they’re not good.
Yes I’m not sure of how serious that whole intra-group play by play was. Given Wil’s what seemed to me to be obvious attachment to the character I do hope Chris has something up his sleeve.
I also really would have liked to have seen the other characters have done something to help resolve the issue. Without actually seeing the map it sounds like Jim Darkmagic could have used a combination of Move, Expeditious Retreat, Action Point Move. But again I don’t know if Chris didn’t have a real idea of how many HP Al had and that a single failed climb check would kill him. I was a little surprised that Al was still only a Level 1 character though though. A level 2 character would have been enough to have given him another round to absorb the acid without dying.
Heh, as far as giving him more time for doing other things, it has been only 2 days in roughly over the first half of this year. Even if you give him a day before and after for travel time that’s only 6 days out of 6 months devoted to playing.
October 16th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
I know Chris Perkins has a reputation for not holding back on character death, but I believe he only does it if the players have made a serious flaw.
Storywise, both Binwin and Aeofel were being RP’d well. Binwin was torn between his revenge and his friends. He was trying to do the honourable thing – stay with his friends. However, Binwin split the party by trying to get Aoefel to enact his revenge for him. Lying to his friends originally, and not fully committing to protecting his friends by pulling Aeofel back cost an innocent their life (two assuming the prisoner will not have a nice end). And there was no ‘reward’ in terms of revenge, just a hollow coat (the one that got the others except Aeofel to join in the first place).
That’s a brilliant story and character beat for Binwin.
The fact it was also a loss to an innocent player doing aa darn good RP job as Wil was doing really hits the story point home. Character and player shame making it a great ending, though not a happy one.
Just a thought!
October 16th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
With the exception of not adjusting the DC of the pit I think it was a fair death. It seems unfair to give a PC extra chances to live based on how much backstory they’ve written, and sooner or later the players are gonna pick up on that.
Also, giving the spoiler warning after the actual spoiler (which is in the title) doesn’t help all that much
October 16th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
I agree, players need to know there are consequences to actions even well RP’d actions. My biggest source of… gruntleness, is what I can only see as permadeath for the character in this situation. At their levels (1-2?) they simply wouldn’t have the resources in any plausible way to revive him. I’ve never really enjoyed fiction where the writer kills off characters. If Aoefel is dead-dead will Wil continue playing? And if not that’s going to be a darn shame.
October 16th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
True on the spoiler. I didn’t even think about that.
As an aside I strongly believe that it was Wil’s determination to RP a ‘real’ character in spite of the others that brought them to the RP well to drink and they found it good. Go back and listen to all the podcasts over a short time and it comes off to me that Wil’s unabashed, unself concious roleplaying taught the others that hey it was okay to try it. Of course he has the huge benefit IMO of being an actor where RP’ing is a fact of life.
October 16th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
I’m sure Wil will be back for the next podcast, all the same. Whether as Revenant Aeofel or not, they won’t screw up the group dynamic.
Also, Scott Kurtz and Wil are friends. Most of that was all good natured, as you can tell by Wil’s later blog post.
October 16th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
For those interested, Wil posted about it on his blog, http://bit.ly/1R4neP. Worth noting that his death was at the climax of the session as well, not the middle. This was part 8 of the podcast, after all.
Personally, I think Chris was in the right on both counts. While the DM’s story is important, the player’s story is just as if not moreso, and that story is built on the player’s actions and the dice they roll. Every time the DM fudges a difficulty or gives a pity reroll, it steals some of the thrill from the critical hit that takes out the boss or the lucky skill roll that saves the day.. and denies them the shock of seeing a character fall into darkness because they tripped on a dangerous ledge without a belay, or get roasted alive because they assumed narrative causality would save them from the angry dragon. Just look at how this one turned out: If Aeofel had slipped out of the pit by DM fiat, the adventure would have been a rather bland partial victory. The artifact retrieved but no loot, the big bad escaped. Instead it’s, as someone on Wil’s blog noted, Aquisition Inc’s Empire Strikes Back. They’re beaten down and demoralized by the loss of their ally, and now bound and determined to track down his soul and restore him by any means necessary or at least get vengeance on the Ambershards. What was a rather slapstick series with Aeofel as the straight man has developed an epic story.
More than just letting the dice rule, though, I think it was an appropriate fate. True to the Avenger’s nature, Aeofel charged after his prey not once but twice, the first time blindly following a teleporter away from his allies, the second lunging at the dwarf who had just rang the gong, seemingly confident even in his bloodied state and within charge range of the avenger that he now had the upper hand. And though it’s hard to judge without being able to see the map, I suspect that the rest of AQI could have gotten to him in time for a save had they been willing to take some lumps from opportunity attacks and falling damage, but greed and self preservation won out in the end. Chris even had the opportunity in the end there to let Jim pull up Aeofel’s half-dissolved skull, but I suspect he felt that doing so once the rest of the gang had accepted the permanence fo Aeofel’s death would have cheapened it. And now he and Wil have another 6 months or so to plan his return, either through a lucky bit of bone left dangling from his iron bands and an expensive resurrection, Aeofel’s return as a revenant, or as another new hire joining them on their continuing quest.
PS: Dude.. apostrophes for contractions and possessives, not plurals. Unless you’re a greengrocer. http://bit.ly/pddBG
October 16th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
I did say, even empasized it several times, it’s the permanency of the death that bothered me the most. Obviously this is apparently a two camps situation.
And p.s. I am fully aware of what ’s are for. That doesn’t mean I won’t make mistakes. I’m long done with term papers where I might actually pay attention to what I’m typing much less go back and check something I type. It’s always been interesting to me that “s always seem to be the target of punctuation superiority complexes.
October 20th, 2009 at 9:28 am
Aeofel’s 18 climb check was obviously one of the major turning points, but I feel that you’re letting the other PCs off the hook a little easily. Sure, it’s easy to blame Chris Perkins for not retconning the DC on the climb check, but Aeofel was in the acid for, what, two rounds? As another commenter said upthread, the PCs could have made it down to him and either assisted his climb (which surely would have allowed Aeofel to pass the climb check with his 18) or healed him such that a failure wouldn’t have meant death.
As to whether or not an acid pit that inflicts double-digit damage per round is a fair trap for what I think was a first-level character, well, that seems like a legitimate beef.
Bottom line: the PCs had their chances, and Aeofel died a proper avenger’s death. Wil seems genuinely excited about where this goes next, as am I. Hopefully, the story will become even more compelling because Aeofel died. We’ll see.