This is a weird one, but have you ever had a campaign abruptly end because a pet character got killed?
We had an Eberron campaign about a mysterious insanity-causing plague. After a lot of investigation, it turned out it was caused by a formerly-thought-dead leader of the Blood of Vol.
But it turned out that he was dead, and his sickly teen genius daughter had taken over the organization, talking to her father's mummified corpse like a schizo.
Anyway, when we finally caught up with her, she was about to give a long speech from her wheelchair...Until the Barbarian bull-rushed her out of a window, and (I quote):
>"I hold on to her on the way down."
That was pretty much the end of the campaign right there, mostly because there were no more leads to go on and she was clearly important. But the mental image of a Barbarian giving a sickly waif the ol' Atomic Piledriver off the top rope was a pretty funny way to end things.
>"We're going to take a short break from the campaign, but we'll get back to it once X is over. Maybe some of us who can still meet on game night can use the time to try out (different game), but we'll all get back together and finish this eventually."
>That was pretty much the end of the campaign right there, mostly because there were no more leads to go on and she was clearly important.
You have a lousy GM then. Any GM worth their salt will tell you that GMing is actually a game of smoke and mirrors, and shifting things "behind the scenes" as the actions of the players warrant it. If your GM were actually any good then he would've came up with an alternative means to keep the game rolling in spite of the important npc dying - if some key piece of information that only she knew about didn't exist in some other form somewhere else, then it should have popped into existence (without telling the players that's what actually happened) the moment she died and the Barbarian player rerolled his new character. Only literal autists are unable to grasp or refuse to rewrite the script on-the-fly like that.
But then, if your GM just flat out got sick of running a game for your group (some guy suicide-charging some teenaged chick for the lulz is a good hint that this might be the actual case) and wanted to just end it right then and there, that's his legitimate call to make. Or maybe the rest of you just got sick of this game, did silly suicidal shit because you just didn't care anymore, and the GM rightfully took that as a hint to end the game and move on to something else.
I believe she was supposed to be kind of tragically justified, but at that point I don't think we cared. She was fishing so hard for sympathy it was a turn-off.
>I believe she was supposed to be kind of tragically justified, but at that point I don't think we cared. She was fishing so hard for sympathy it was a turn-off.
Fair enough. But that just convinces me even more the GM who came up with her needs some help putting together a better game with NPCs that would provoke their players into a literal suicidal rage. The GM ending the game, whatever the reason for doing so, was probably for the best for all the players' sakes.
>with NPCs that would provoke
*would NOT provoke
or maybe the GM just cut his losses and went to find another group since people were suicide suplexing off of towers
Yeah, interrupting a major NPC at the end of a long investigation to commit suicide sends a pretty clear message of "I am not engaging with the premise of this game and I am removing myself from it in the most disruptive way possible."
>present villain
>get mad when a barbarian of all people kills them instead of listening to their gay monologue
Did the barbarian give any inclination that his character really wanted to die in this scenario? The whole murder suicide thing belongs in a revenge plot.
this
>What do you mean you pushed the conveniently placed button that drops Bowser into the lava?
>You can't do that yet! His introductory roar isn't finished!
Yes, but it also would've been way more funny to just push her.
I think it was actually the character who suicide suplexed off the tower
This. In fact the new opening is created by her death and someone approaches them because they get arrested for it or want an object form her corpse etc etc. the fact is that OP just as a strange fetish for women in wheelchairs and there is in fact no game at all and OP has quite possibly never played a table top game in their life but is just desperately lonely and wants people to talk about his girl in a wheelchair art and fetish. Wheelchairs don;t really work in places where they are no slab pavements or floors OP. Take on to a muddy field or laneway and find out yourself.
>wheelchairs don't work in settings
flying carpets, levitation, and hoverchairs. you're welcome
>Wheelchairs don;t really work in places where they are no slab pavements or floors OP. Take on to a muddy field or laneway and find out yourself.
It's really more a matter of tires, casters, and arm strength. My wife is stuck using one and does a lot of gardening so we set it up so she could use it to get thru the garden even when muddy. They're are deep ruts in the ground from the wheels these days and my living room is always full of mud from the tires. Basically the same as any wheeled device in the end.
ey wise guy don't break kayfabe
theres a difference between making up a justifiable reason for the game to go on and bullshitting a half assed reason to continue. is there realistically any character that could have filled the schizo NPC's role? if not, then it doesnt make sense to continue the story. making things up on the fly encourages behavior like the barbarian where he just says frick it and leaps out a fricking building to pile drive an NPC. the players dont care, why should the GM care at that point?
Even like 10 stories of fall damage, shouldn't kill a mid-level barbarian, let alone a potential boss. To me it just sounds like the GM was tired of playing with ADHD morons.
Bet the daughter had a repeating crossbow...
>Anyway, when we finally caught up with her, she was about to give a long speech from her wheelchair...Until the Barbarian bull-rushed her out of a window, and (I quote):
>>"I hold on to her on the way down."
>That was pretty much the end of the campaign right there, mostly because there were no more leads to go on and she was clearly important. But the mental image of a Barbarian giving a sickly waif the ol' Atomic Piledriver off the top rope was a pretty funny way to end things.
Your DM was obviously riding too high on storyhomosexualry but your barbarian player sounds like an insufferable fricking c**t. The kind of dysgenic moron that thinks LEEROYYY JENKINNNSSS HURDDURRR shit is funny. Shame on you all.
I just want you to know that barbarians that jump out of windows have feelings too you know. Do they not bleed when you cut them?
>Do they not bleed when you cut them?
Sometimes it sure doesn't seem like they do.
I saw a player ragequit a campaign once because the DM asked for really elaborate backstories. Said player went through a ton of effort to meet all the GM's backstory criteria, and had written quite a bit about their character's family. Mother, father, younger siblings, neighbors, etc.
Yeah, the DM basically killed them all off-camera in a way they players couldn't have known about, let alone affected in any way. The player was absolutely crestfallen, and for the rest of the session you could tell he had just sorta lost interest. The week after that he just stopped showing up, and we see him online talking about the new D&D group he joined. Truthfully I don't blame him.
>Yeah, the DM basically killed them all off-camera
Why even request these elaborate backstories if you're going to kill off 100% of the people in it?
to filter powergamers that can't roleplay
>filter powergames that can't roleplay
>also unintentionally filter the your desired playerbase by killing off all the NPCs you requested
Genius GMing style.
You're generally not supposed to kill them all in one go but piecemeal through the campaign.
Just stop posting, you're a moron and your "advice" shows your head is so far up your ass you don't even realize WHY you're a moron.
>DM requires absurdly long backstories with detailed family backstories
>Is still worried a player might be a power-gamer after doing all this
>Kills off that player's detailed family who are probably essential anchors for grounding that player in the world and making their character care
Holy frick, are you this dude's DM? Goddamn you're a fricking moron.
Found Anon's moronic shit-tier GM.
>"I want to filter non-roleplayers out of my games."
>"My genius idea for doing this is to kill the main roleplay hooks I specifically requested my players write for me."
>"This surely won't lead to the players feeling like I wasted their time or that anything they care about will just be killed off camera for cheap shonen-anime-tier "drama" and railroading."
This has to be bait. There's no way you're actually THIS stupid, right? Actually, don't answer that.
>wants to filter minmaxers
>minmaxer makes up an elaborate backstory and describes his extended family
>GM kills the family
>Minmaxer says that now his character is hellbent on revenge and will destroy everything that stands on his path to achieve it, using any means necessary and minmaxes away
What now, DMbabs?
>kick them out of the game
That must have sounded way cooler in your head gayman poster
>GM kills entire NPC cast of backstory he demanded
>Half the players quit
>GM kicks the rest out for minmaxing
Sounds like a great solo game.
>Have atrocious table policy that repulses anyone that isn't solely interested in powergaming
>Insists it keeps out powergamers
Your mother shouldn't have been smoking while pregnant.
>moronic take
>moronic spelling
Go figure.
DMs killing off a player character's family and friends is such an unbelivably overdone premise that it accomplishes the opposite effect, it's literally bottom-barrel capeshit writing, the moment it happens I completely lose all immersion and investment in the world because the veil is lfited and my suspension of disbelief collapses as the shitter DM shoves everyone's faces in the fact that this ISN'T actually a living, breathing world but is really a shallow cardboard stage with a handful of pre-baked stage actors shuffling about. When you make it so obvious that the backstory NPCs only exist to be killed off for cheap drama, you are reinforcing that these NPCs are literally not people, they're cheap plot devices, they're names and faces and personalities and actions don't matter, you could skip the whole thing by not even bothering to name them, you don't even have to describe the events, you could just say "okay so your character is now batman" as shorthand and it would have the same effect.
it's the ultimate midwit approach to running a game and I fricking hate it. in my own games I try to encourage players to be invested in the world and care about people and places and things, tossing all their fictional ties into a woodchipper does the exact opposite. They're more motivated to slay the dragon and save the day when they have a wife and kid to come back home to, if you kill off their family and shoot all their friends they're not """""motivated""""" to get revenge, they're gonna scowl and check out of the game, and when they die they're gonna shrug and roll up with as many rootless murderhobo replacements as needed because now that their ties are all dead nothing prevents them from re-rolling as many new characters as are needed to finish the campaign, they'll go full Tomb of Horrors meat grinder if they have to just to finish things out of obligation.
>and when they die they're just gonna shrug and roll up with as many rootless murderhobo replacements as needed
Simple, force each new reroll to have its own elaborate backstory and its own laundry list of relative NPCs
At no point will the players care about the NPCs they make in the backstory, it will just be a generic garbage to be done with it, or more likely, players will leave.
NTA, but I've seen other DMs do a similar thing under the misguided belief that killing something the players put effort into is supposed to make them "care" and REALLY want revenge on the BBEG or whatever. It usually does the opposite, as it did there, and makes the players not want to get invest in anything.
Personally I feel like a character's family/backstory NPCs should be off-limits, or at least have some degree of plot armor, unless they're actual combatants of some kind that are expected to fight with the party (and thus face the same risks as the party).
>the misguided belief that killing something the players put effort into is supposed to make them "care" and REALLY want revenge on the BBEG or whatever
Thing is, you have to motivate people through murder they feel they could have prevented.
Just killing character's mom because the BBEG did it is bad.
Having the character's mom get captured and then dies in the rescue attempt...
That motivates the desired revenge.
Pretty much this. Killing backstory characters out of hand in the first session is bad and will make players mad. Killing backstop characters several sessions in after the players thwart the big bad for the first time and he decides to attack their home base while the party's family members are visiting is how you do it.
Bad attempts to create drama
>Wow look at that backstory
>Yeah I like it
>I bet you’re attached to those npcs now
>Yeah, looking forwards to side quests with them
>Yeah I killed them all
>What?
>Yeah I bet now you’re really pissed at the bbeg and invested in getting revenge
We had a GM who did this literally every campaign, so eventually we just stopped having any important people in our backstories and were all murderhobo orphans because otherwise the entire first session would just be us watching orc raiders(it was always orc raiders) sweep through and murder everyone in our backstories, with any attempt to stop them getting a "No you don't" in response.
>DM asked for really elaborate backstories
Just stay home and write a novel. Because the DM is going to finish your prerequisite character novel with "and then they all died but he met some friends and they went to the dungeon and killed le dragon"
>"and then they all died but he met some friends and they went to the dungeon and killed le dragon"
That is pretty dope story tho. You lose your blood family but you make a new one from friends and conquer the difficulties of life.
>That is pretty dope story tho. You lose your blood family but you make a new one from friends and conquer the difficulties of life.
I mean to be fare the writing on the wall is pretty obvious. Nobody's gonna ask for a relative or old lost friend if they're not gonna show up again later evil or dead or something generally unpleasant. I understand being annoyed with the DM because it sounds like a pain but it still but it's pretty clear he was fishing for hooks.
I dunno dude, one of my gms asked me for my character's family and romantic situation and somehow my character's father was CIA, my character's mother was KGB, and the ex-girlfriend ended up becoming the dictator of Russia
I came up with a family for my character, and my DM didn't kill them. Another character didn't even find her parents until a few years into the campaign, but she did, and they were alive and well. Not every character's family in these games are going to be killed off.
What a waste of time. Why do you put up with that sperg of a GM?
>This is a weird one, but have you ever had a campaign abruptly end because a pet character got killed?
I wouldn't call the npc a pet character but yes.
>13th Age campaign
>The PCs on the run from marauding Orcs
>PCs decide to rest for the night in a farm they stumble upon.
>They convince the farmer to let them sleep in the barn
>After a few checks they wake up in the night, noise coming from the house
>The orcs are raiding it.
>They rush, but arrive just in time to see the farmer being slaughtered in front of his family.
And that was it. Campaign ended. They thought that the farmers death was such an unjust and cruel act on my part that they didn't care about the campaign no more. I am still baffled to this day. They hardly spoken to the man, I have no idea where such attachment to him came from.
they blamed you and not the orcs? honestly, your players kind of let you down there.
>They blame the guy who controls the setting including the orcs instead of the ficticious concept with no will?
Yes? Are you moronic or autistic?
>my enemies I'm going to slaughter for months in my combat focused dungeon crawl shouldn't be too evil cause that would be icky
kys
im btfo'd, that's a great reaction image
It's LITERALLY a no-name NPC. Please have a nice day, moron.
Without more context, it COULD be that our anon was describing the butchery a little more in-depth than is healthy?
Also PC's get irrationally attached to all sorts of inconsequential things. I had a Star Wars session derailed once because, in passing, to establish the area being a bit shitty, I mentioned someone was beating a mule-equivalent. The Rebellion very quickly became about animal rights...
I was thinking that too. maybe be got way too gory for his players tastes which is a legitimate complaint from them.
Not really. I am not that kind of GM. I am more of a PG13 kinda guy. I don't remember exactly what I said but the gore shouldn't be a problem. I mean we moved to SotDL after this.
Have you considered that this wasn't the sole reason, but perhaps the last straw? Did this event come on the heels of a long series of losses, defeats, and general misery?
You can't help everyone, but I've always gotten extremely discouraged in games where it didn't seem like we could help anyone.
It was like the 3rd session. They were slaves in a mine, they escaped, killed the mine boss and fled. The orcs were essentially slavers that were trying to recapture them.
It was literally their first "loss". I really have no idea why they reacted like that. They never reacted in a similar way before or after this event. They explained that they felt that they should be able to save him and him dying like that was cruel and unjust but they never acted like that for other minor npcs in this or any other campaign we played together.
maybe the setting was to grimdark for their taste?
did you play with them before?
I get where the players were coming from. The whole thing sounds like a cutscene kill that they were forced to watch instead of stumbling upon the horrifying scene in the morning. Why let them see it if they can't influence it in any way? When I decide to kill off friendly NPCs, it's almost always done "offscreen". If they had opportunities to act and hesitated and still complained about the consequences, then it was better they veto the campaign early and give you time to prepare.
>Why let them see it if they can't influence it in any way?
To make them feel like they are on the run from a horrible force and bystanders will inevitably get hurt and keep getting hurt unless they resolve the situation once and for all. Pretty standard trope-y stuff. Don't know, seemed like a good idea at the time.
They are my standard group. We moved to SotDL after this failed campaign where we completed 2 campaigns before moving to 2e.
More important question: why doesn't her chair have footrests?
It's ai slop obviously.
Had a player once complete the villains' plan for them because he somehow got it into his head that their really straightforward and obvious plan was actually some kind of reverse psychology fakeout.
>Be me in an online game with bunch of randos
>One of the players is fairly new, a bit shy, and latches on to this idea of having a Sprite or Pixie or fairy or whatever pic-related is as a way of roleplaying because it gives her a mouthpiece to speak up when her character would normally be quiet, and gives her a mouthpiece that could be a little more brash, opinionated, humorous etc than her own character
>This provides genuinely good roleplaying from the player, and despite the fairy being a bit of a smug shit, we all enjoy it.
>Combat happens
>Player specifically mentions several times that she's NOT using her fairy in combat and that it's hiding under her hat.
>DM suddenly has every fricking enemy go for headshots and kills the fairy
>Player goes quiet and the game 2 sessions later because the whole mood has changed and there's no chemistry anymore.
I get that adventuring is supposed to be dangerous and everything, but for fricks sake let your players have nice things every once in awhile, especially if they're getting alot of roleplay out of it.
*game dies 2 sessions later
jfc, how shitty. stories like this has why i avoid online rp. sorry that happened to you (and her)
Did the DM take *any* flack for this? Unless the fairy was popping out of the hat in combat to taunt enemies, there's no way the enemies know there's anything inside the hat to target. Was the character an obvious caster or a similar enticing target? I guess it's different online, but this kind of shit always makes in-person games pause long enough to hash everything out.
NTA, but considering Anon said the game died like 2 sessions later, yeah, probably.
Last time someone asked me for a big backstory I copy paste Don Quixote and tell them to frick off then make a farmer with a stick just to spite them or a power hungry wizard that just wants power, people just can't understand that sometimes you just want to roll dice and see where the game leads you since it's supposed to be a fricking adventure
Normally I hate roleplayers that do nothing in combat, but that was complete c**tish behaviour
Holy fricking based
Also
>Player
>She
You brought the drama on yourselves
Frick playoids. Only thing he did wrong was not killing the players in real life.
Did you at least try to keep contact? What a fricking c**trag GM.
>That was pretty much the end of the campaign right there, mostly because there were no more leads to go on and she was clearly important
What about
>checking her notes and documents
>asking her servants
>cast speak with dead
>commune spell
>have the girl reappear as a ghost or some shit
>a mysterious benefactor slips you some intel
There are many ways you can come up with some shit to deliver new clues
I've had campaigns end for all sorts of reason. It's not really that weird for something stupid to just become a brick wall. A lot of the time we just get bored a barely before we started. You don't HAVE to finish your campaign.
Had two campaigns go breasts up within a season of each other.
>Started a DnD campaign
>DM made our friend the main character
>Game just becomes the DM interrupting our time to talk about the times HE did stuff in older games
>Campaign stalls after it more or less becomes a guessing game from the DM to see if we can pin point where he lifted this puzzle/dungeon layout from
>DM decides where gonna start a campaign in Alternity
>He makes our friend the main character, again
>That friend goes to the Marines because he dropped out of college
>Alternate between DnD and Alternity, but it becomes very obvious that the DM isn't advancing the story without our one friend there
>Stopped playing mostly because marine friend only came back once in a very long blue moon and it wasn't fun waiting forever to advance the plot
>We also stopped playing with that DM because he interrupted our game to tell us the story of how he thought it would be funny to "troll" the Canadian government by downloading a shitload of CP when he was 15, and couldn't understand why we where all so disgusted by him
Oh, also forgot to add
>During our Alternity campaign, we had another friend of marine friend join in for awhile
>Actually knows how to RP and can be useful without min maxing, etc
>Even though he was a complete nerd, did actually enjoy playing with him
>Eventually, he stops coming to sessions
>Turns out, he started to date someone, that both him and DM knew outside all this
>DM was butt hurt because she chose cool nerd over him, and stopped inviting him, but didn't tell us
>Address where his character is during a session he's absent, DM makes us do some in game investigation to find where his character went
>Character is dead. Killed by petty thugs.
>I press the DM because cool nerd's character was too combat knowledgeable to have some thugs take them out.
>DM spins it and says it's my fault for "not keeping track of your crew" and rips up the guy's character sheet in a hissy fit.
>Me and our other friends decide to end the session since DM was gonna act like a brat, but he wouldn't leave no matter how many times we told him.
Why the frick is the DM making any player the main character? I know every party has a leader or a face character but that should be chosen by the party and it shouldn't mean they get more input.
I have not read a single other post in this thread, just wanted to say your campaign and players sound awesome.
No, but I had a campaign that came apart, because the GMPC died.
>Anyway, when we finally caught up with her, she was about to give a long speech from her wheelchair...Until the Barbarian bull-rushed her out of a window
What system did this story take place in? Was the bull rush really that easy?
Why should bull-rushing a person in a wheelchair ever be hard? An average high-school american "football" player would destroy anyone in a wheelchair like it was nothing. I would assume the barbarian is heavier and stronger than said athlete. I wouldn't even ask for a roll.
>I wouldn't even ask for a roll.
Oh, you have to in the off-chance that he rolls a 1 and you get to describe how he misteps at the crucial moment, the wheelchair falls backwards catching his feet, and the momentum propels him onwards and out of the window.
On a semirelated note, only an amateur DM begins his session without a slapstic SFX soundboard on hand. Nelson laughing, Tom and Jerry pain noises and Wilhelm scream are all mandatory.
What system allows you to move across the map, grab someone, and pull them through a window all in one turn without any roll? It's bullshit to just allow it, because you couldn't do it in a combat round at all, let alone without a roll. Why not roll initiative? Makes no sense.
Makes you wonder if this supposed BBEG had any defensive measures whatsoever after initiative is rolled. If she can't stop Grug pelvic thrusting her out the window then how would she stop him cleaving her in two with his axe or pushing her stupid wheelchair over? Makes one wonder if OP has ever played an RPG in his life.
>What system allows you to move across the map, grab someone, and pull them through a window all in one turn without any roll?
D&D 3.Xe. It technically has an opposed strength roll and an opportunity attack granted to the defender, but the cripple would have a severe penalty on the strength roll just for being a cripple on wheels and technically a size smaller than the barbarian. An opportunity attack would just break the flow of the scene. It's not like it could one shot a Barbarian.
> An opportunity attack would just break the flow of the scene
Thats a weird argument to make considering that the barbarian is literally breaking the flow of the scene to do this. He deserves to get slapped with a nonproficient unarmed strike for 1 damage and be forced to stop dead-ass in his tracks like a moron, gormlessly standing there because the rules say he wasted his action.
Bull Rush is not a spell, the action can't get interrupted.
I must have missed the paragraph Adventurers' Tactics primer which states you should stand around drooling like an invalid while a literal invalid delivers a villain monologue
It's actually in the Adventurers Guilds Codex, revison 3, booklet IV, page 356 under Rivalry, Common Courtesy and Customs. Failing to follow said rules can and will result in an XP cut and a docked pay. Please report to your nearest branch HR department ASAP.
Its the same common courtesy that stops the GM from interrupting your characters when YOU do shit. The sword cuts both directions.
RPGs are story games, not tactics games. What you want is Age of Sigmar, not DnD.
If our party is confronted by an enemy combatant and my smartass bard decides to walk up and try to talk it out of attacking us, I am not going to complain when my bard takes an axe to his smartass neck before he can finish his sentence. Yes the sword cuts both ways. PCs and NPCs alike do not get access to voice-activated timestop spells whenever they open their gobs.
Revision 3 was a joke and the brass knows it. Every time they try to discipline an adventurer for disobeying the RCCC policy the envoy gets bum rushed out of a window
Why would someone in a wheelchair be technically smaller? If anything they're bigger.
From beginning to end, this gm would just be super autistic about everything while also misinterpreting dnd's rules. This was also combined with the fact the setting was "grim and inspired by dark souls" thus everything was le grim.
On our last session we're running through some massive mine and end up tumbling into a forgotten dungeon. There ends up being some door that's locked and we all roll and fail to open it. As a joke, someone in our party says "haha I fricking jack off on it and cum on the door knob" to everyone's surprise the dm asked for a roll and the guy got le natty twenny and the door opens. Afterwards, we all walk into a room full of gas traps we all fail our checks and pass out from it. The gm then says he's gonna prepare content for next session. This was 4 years ago and he never ran that next session.
>this gm would just be super autistic about everything while also misinterpreting dnd's rules
That's every DM ever.
Go back to your containment thread
If this happened in my game, the end result would be that the barbarian died from the fall damage by the villain did not, and escaped. Why did the sickly waif have more HP than the barbarian? Because I never once have NPCs interrupt a player in the middle of their actions or scenes 'because they are impatient', and I don't appreciate players who don't offer the same courtesy. You don't follow the genre conventions, you don't get protected by the genre conventions. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
>being a slave to genre conventions
>being proud of this
Do you also mewl and piss your pants when your players ignore your token love interest NPC?
NTA, but when you sign up to play a genre-forward game like DnD there is a certain reasonable expectation that you are there to engage with that genre. Players that refuse to do so are being That Guy, whether it be the 'I refuse to leave the starting town and insist you indulge me playing farmville' or 'The king said more than 4 words in a row, I'm bored SNEAKATTACK!' variety. Just because you in particular don't want to play by the social contract of the game does not mean everyone else at the table agrees with you, the more you insist on bucking convention just because you can the more likely you are to be getting in the way of what the rest of the table is here to do.
There's a difference between engaging with the game's premise and conforming to the DM's personal bookmarked TVTropes articles.
>I refuse to leave the starting town and insist you indulge me playing farmville
This is just being an obnoxious c**t and refusing to play the game at all
>The King said more than 4 words in a row, I'm bored SNEAKATTACK
This is one small step above the first example because the game can continue from this point, but you are still forcing its entire direction to change for no other reason than to be lolrandom
>Oh look, the BBEG is sitting right in front of us. I shall rugby tackle her out the window and if necessary sacrifice my character to end her evil plans
This is entirely within the premise of the game and the scope of reason any PC who gives a shit about the stakes involved. If the DM didn't want it to be an available outcome then he shouldn't have placed his crippled waifu in front of a window on the 20th floor like a moron. Whining that this is "breaking genre conventions" is the same logic as complaining that your players aren't abiding by the Hero's Journey template during roleplay.
masterful bait
cool story
I call bullshit, anyone who is relevant villain to the campaign would have enough HP to to survive a fall from any sort of plausible building even if she had only commoner levels and like 3 CON.
It's more likely that the DM read the room and realized the PCs weren't going to do what he wanted them to do. Rookie mistake, really. Always consider that at any moment any PC might go hostile (especially if the enemy surrendered).