What are some good ideas and mechanics for punishing players for fricking up without killing their characters?
I will be running a oneshot scenario and I don't want players to be out of the game for half of the evening if they screw up, but still want opponents and obstacles to feel real and meaningful. The final encounter will be life-or-death with no mercy, before that I want to find some other way to keep them on their toes.
Obvious solutions are critical, permanent injuries reducing their stats or losing important gear, but I want to know if you have other ideas, possibly without introducing lameness feedback loop (they suck so they lose and then they suck even more).
Capture is often a good way introduce a failure state into the game. They could be captured sold as slaves to a far off location and they have to travel all the way back.
Putting some kind of time limit on adventures also helps.
You don't need to innovate "Death & Dismemberment" tables OP.
Scouts. They run away and inform the others.
> Destroy tools and Equipment
> Displace them (capture and thrown in dungeon, tunnel collapse / cave in which shunts them to a different area, portal / teleport them , etc)
Pretty hardcore game you're running, if you're crippling your players.
It's a Blackleaf situation.
Temporary injuries or losing equipment, ie they have to complete some miniquest to be cured or find their lost gear (or even better gear).
Dismember and disfigure them.
The player can turn a failed roll into a successful one if he lets you punch him in the balls.
Threaten love interests, family members, and communities. Don’t kill them off at the first frickup—follow the frickup with those things being threatened, with subsequent frickups leading to them getting killed off. That gives the PCs time to respond, which paradoxically makes them feel the punishment more—by giving them the opportunity to fix things, you put pressure on them to do so, rather than conditioning them to just write off loved ones, families, and communities as not something to invest in because you’ll just kill them off anyway.
Go with this suggestion.
Make the deaths and plight of npcs matter. For instance, if the werewolf kills the inn keeper then the party should have a harder time resting. If the old lady making potions gets her face clawed off then suddenly the price of healing pots should skyrocket. If the one eyed drunk that watches the gates doesn't get his booze then maybe he wanders off and something bad sneaks through. It doesn't have to be grand, but having the world react and change goes a long way to making a game feel fun.
>oneshot scenario
either roll up a new char or have backups premade. It's a oneshot, you don't need some elaborately planned character. Death is a great consequence and removing it just cheapens the experience.
Curses, diseases, chronic injuries, and bad reputations.
Even motherfricking DnD, the old editions, had this explained in thick, bold letters, you never-game homosexual spammer.
OP may be a nogame gay but you are a brainrotten moronic autist
Kill them if the situation calls for it. Fake danger for the sake of drama is no danger at all, and thus only make believe drama. That said not all threats need to present themselves with the aim of slaughter, giving the foes your players face other motives will give them reason to do things other than murder, but a fight is a fight, and when weapons are drawn the situation gets hairy, don't shy away from that. Be wary of dismemberment. Playing a cripple could be worse than the PC dying.
Cut their cars brake lines.
Take away their stuff
Threaten or kill their favorite NPCs
That's really it.
why not let them play the opponents for the rest of the session
Have a lich curse them how are you a dm
Kill them anyway and have backups. Henchmen, rescueable enemy prisoners (more fun if they have an agenda and you reward the player for following it), pre-rolled mercenaries, just giving every player multiple characters.
If it's non-lethal stuff you're looking for, then try things like statistic damage, losing time or food or delicious henchmen, or simply have a sack of cookies that good players get to snack from and bad players must gaze upon longingly.
If you have a risk of death, always have spares. Just play it at normal lethality but have the PCs accompanied by henchmen, hangers on, servants, mercenaries, etc, so when a main PC dies, you hand them one of the backups to play. Game continues without you having to mollycoddle them or them having to sit out half the game. This was one of the many things from 1st ed that has been lost to current players.
>punishing
Gay söy homosexual phrase. Sick and tired of this trash jargon that is artificially shilled by grifter YouTube homosexuals and réddit beard stroking bloggers meant to subliminally sow division.
>"bro how do I PUNISH my players"
>"bro if you take that option you're PUNISHING yourself"
This is stupid shit meant to enable players to have a victim complex like the spoiled snowflakes they are. They think their character died it's the DM punishing them. They think they don't have the exact spell for the job the DM is punishing them. They think the DM having a homebrew rule that slightly disadvantages their class is punishing them. It's meant to couple with low IQ grievance politics, which has saturated the western world for years now. It's gay, passive-aggressive, submissive language. It's for cucks. It's for homosexuals. No, you aren't "punishing" the players snd if you are you are a shit DM. However, running the world in a genre-realistic (inb4 fantasy Black folk seethe about Muh realism in muh fantasy dude dragons flying haha natural20 lmao) way, is NOT "punishing" anyone. have a nice day if you think this.
games usually punish you for fricking up
suck it up homosexual