How to avoid killing your player characters as GM

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Honestly, given the characters will often know things the players don't - because they have skills the players lack - I think it's appropriate to basically give everyone a free variant of Common Sense, where when the player says to do something the character would know better than to do, the GM can roll against a relevant skill and, on a success, inform the player their character would know better than to do that, and perhaps suggest alternatives... But when there's a burning truck hauling lithium, and the chemist PC's player (a player who's only real memory of his highschool chemistry class is that his lab partner was really pretty) grabs a bucket of water to throw on it to put it out, I think giving a chance for the character's knowledge to come into play is useful.

I would not tell the player not to throw the bucket of water, but I absolutely would tell the player the thing the character knows, which is that "if you throw that bucket of water on the burning lithium it will explode for 8d of damage about a second later," or whatever outcome the rules I'm using would have. It's my job as GM to be their window into the game world. It's not my place to tell them what decisions to make.

It's not a failure on my part if Dr. Einstein takes 30 points of damage from the explosion, but it is a failure on my part if Dr. Einstein is surprised that an 8d explosion occurred.

P.S. It's also my fault if Dr. Einstein and I disagree about how close he was standing to the explosion because I forgot to ask and made an assumption; so if he says "no, I was ten feet away" I will say, "sorry, my mistake; you only take 10 points of damage then, or 7 if you make your Dodge."