Quartas was a quiet but curious elf wizard. She loved the adventuring life, because she had a thirst for knowledge of the unknown. She survived six months of a slow, bi-weekly game that took her from level 1 to level 3. After her heroics in conquering the Sunless Citadel, she took two arrows to the chest at the entrance to the next dungeon adventure. Those arrows pierced her heart and ripped out her soul, resulting in Quartas's sheet being ripped up, never to be played again.
I was the DM in this situation. It felt wrong. Or at the very least, it felt different than what I've experienced before. I've had handfuls of characters die - not a lot - but not just a few. Quartas was a low-health wizard that was in the wrong place at the wrong time, with her allies being dumb and my dice rolling hot. So what gives? Why did I, after the game, drive home with this uneasy feeling in my heart that I had somehow wronged this player?
I know things didn't work out exactly how the players had planned, but they had counted on a relatively unknown NPC to be a key part of their plan - and I had rolled some not great things for that NPC. Beyond that, they spotted the potential ambush, and were literally just standing around arguing in front of a giant stronghold's door. I'm fairly certain I don't regret anything that happened, in terms of the fiction.
I've had a couple of days to mull it over, and I've come to realize that my DMing style has gotten way more loose, and way more creative, than it ever has been in the past. As I gain experience from running D&D, creating and running my own games, and running one-shots of other systems here and there, I am becoming more confident in just letting stories flow as they will, only consulting the dice when I really need inspiration or when I know a rule is being triggered.
I hand-wave complications, use Adv/Dis liberally, allow creative use of skills, abilities, and magic... and most importantly, I keep the numbers mostly in my head. I write down damage as it's being taken (for enemies of the players), and I read stat blocks for monsters before an adventure, but I'm taking an extremely liberal approach to how I do attacks, damage, saving throws, and basically everything on my side of the table.
There's no getting around it: D&D is a complicated game. I used to track enemies more closely, including spell slots, specific stats, and HP pools. Now I wing it. I follow the simple rule of fun, including what actions the enemies take, how long they survive, and how much punishment they deal out.
At this point, you can see my dilemma. How can I dictate that a character die, by the rules of the game, if I haven't been true to the game's rules in the first place? On one hand, this style has allowed me to move much more quickly, both in and out of combat. I've been able to balance encounters on the fly, keeping the drama interesting and the action intense. I pull upon my past experience and knowledge of D&D to keep things in the ballpark, but I don't fret about specifics, only that things keep happening in an interesting way.
For example, I know arrows deal a 1d8 in damage. That's just standard, and these were standard arrows. I also know that the type of monster firing has roughly a +3 or +4 in their stat, because this is what they do. But instead of just doing that, I left it up to fate, and added a d6 to the d8. The first arrow hit, and I dealt a grand total of 5 damage. Not great, but lucky for the elf. I rolled a 20 on the next one though, which meant double damage dice. The battle has just begun, so I don't feel the need to fudge anything just yet, thinking that the worst case is that Quartas goes down for a round while another party member casts a healing spell. I pick up the 2d8 + 2d6, roll it, and then whistle at the resulting numbers. "24 damage, coming at you Quartas."
"I'm dead." the player states, nose to her paper, double checking her math. "Wait what?" I lean over, not sure what to say as I look at her sheet. Sure enough, the poor elven wizard only has 14 HP at level 3. The 5 damage she took before, as low as that damage was, was actually a third of her health! Now this high critical hit of 24 damage has put her at -15, just enough to instantly kill her. Yikes!
It was a very random chance. The critical hit, the high numbered damage. But it all lead to this moment where game time stopped, and for a few moments even the players were silent. We broke out into a chuckle, and finished the encounter with as much style as we could muster, but it was the death of a 6 month character, and that's not nothing.
So I drive home, debating to myself if my loose, free-form way with the rules allowed this to happen unfairly. I think about that slight increase in chance for this to happen based on my use of a d6 damage might be to blame. Maybe I shouldn't have registered the crit. Maybe I should have just lowered the numbers an inch when I saw them too high. But I didn't, and the words left my mouth that she took 24 damage. That was it.
It's a weird feeling, but I'm not going to let it shake me. The rest of the games have been so much smoother with this style, and part of the whole fun of D&D is the constant threat of danger. Quartas: thank you for giving me a memorable experience - death with always hold your candle in it's hand when it comes for a character's soul.
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