Claiming the Throne, Part 4/5: Spotlight Moments
Looks like Wizard finally got interested in the plot! Just… maybe a minute too late.
Sadly, this seems to be something of a theme between our elven archmage and her not-so-favorite frontliner. The narrative arc is coming to an end, a satisfying conclusion is just around the corner, and suddenly Fighter finds a way to screw it up. As a giant diva myself, I feel for Wizard in this situation. Happily, there are ways to work around the problem.
Let me first preface today’s blog by pointing out that not every group wants or needs “spotlight moments” for individual characters. If the dice are sacrosanct and all the fun lies in turning chance into fiction, then there’s no such thing as “stealing the spotlight.” What the group does is the spotlight. Plainly, that’s not the case for Wizard. Homegirl may be a prima donna, but at least she’s up front about it: This is what her fun looks like. If you want a player like that to have a good time at your table, you need to take those preferences into account.
So as much as I hate to defend our resident That Guy, today’s spotlight thievery isn’t exactly Fighter’s fault. After all, how’s he supposed to know how many hit points Wicked Uncle has left? There he is hacking away, just doing his job and trying to contribute to the team victory, when all of a sudden a big steaming oops-he’s-dead plops out of Mr. Stabby. In those moments, there’s not much you can do as a player. Happily, you’ve got options as a GM.
- Dramatic Last Words: If you guys have ever played an Assassin’s Creed game, you know what this looks like in practice. There may be a dozen bodyguards standing around the merchant prince you just knifed in the market square, but that doesn’t matter. The game recedes into the background. You go into “cutscene mode,” and the party’s latest victim gets to hold a dramatically appropriate conversation before sighing his last. This can break immersion and strain credulity, but it is also a straightforward way to allow for spotlight moments.
- One Last Round: As a GM, I will occasionally write “HP: dead” next to my BBEG once he’s lost his last hit point. From there I’ll allow him to fight on until the “correct” PC lands the killing blow. If the sleight-of-hand is successful, this technique can preserve the feeling of the game while allowing for the fiction. Do it too often though and you risk cheapening both.
- Pass the Kill: Matt Mercer is famous for his catchphrase, “How do you want to do this?” Rather than letting the PC that landed the deathblow describe the kill, you can “pass the kill” to the appropriate PC and allow them to narrate the moment. This can feel a bit like a consolation prize, but it serves as a nod towards the spotlight player. In today’s comic, it would probably look something like, “As Wicked Uncle clutches at Fighter’s sword, the light fading from his eyes, I lean close and whisper, ‘I received your letter, Uncle. Now scooch off my chair please.'”
So how about the rest of you guys? How do you like to handle it when spotlight moments come around? Are they sacrosanct, or is stealing the spotlight not a problem for your group? Do you have any techniques to add to today’s list? Tell us all about your most dramatic kill steals down in the comments!
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I’m guilty of your “HP: Dead” trick myself, though I try to arrange things so that story appropriate villains are parcelled off into dramatic one person duels while the rest of the party deals with minions of various threat levels. It helps that most of my players don’t rightly know the meaning of “Support Role” and are generally a group of combat oriented monsters when I’m not in the party.
I’ve been on the receiving end of this though, as I wrote a story for a Half-Vistani Bard from Ravenloft who had a ghost bothering her. Seeing ghosts was not that unusual given my feat selection, but normally they went away when I composed a suitable requiem for them (The Ghostsight feat with some story flair.). This one had refused all previous songs and kept demanding I take up the family burden and the strange whip I found near his body. So eight sessions in when we are killing a party member’s vampiric sire, he starts bull rushing past the fighter and in a fit of panic, I pull the whip and try to trip him.
“Finally!” the Gm exclaims, then goes on to narrate how the whip burns the vampire’s unholy skin and the ghost appears beside me, striking with a spectral version of the same whip. The vampire shouts a last name that means nothing to my Half-Vistani but makes the whole room of players suddenly stare at me in shock, then bursts into flames.
I’m going to need a bigger bullet list by the time this thread runs its course. Solid strat right there!
Also, I’m guessing you were a Belmont? If that’s not the joke then I’m a bit lost.
Works better for games like Anima, Exalted, and stuff where a character has a high level of base competency as opposed to more “team” based systems like Pathfinder and D&D 5E.
Yes, I was a less than properly Christened Belmont.
Only now I realize that wizard as a woman is much scarier.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned…
Hell hath no fury as a wizard/rogue/barbarian/druid/succubus scorned.
Hell hath no fury like a woman who just got her kill ninja’d.
New body, same crazy: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/travel-time
Aristocrat: He cut my ear off and was going to flay me with a rusty spoon. I say we leave him dead.
I don’t know. I can see her wanting him to die twice, given that she appears to have suffered a bit already. Also, it’s just Breath of Life if they act quick. Though, given that you’re just going to kill him again, it might be an evil act for Cleric.
Wizard: *slow head turn. eye twitch. venomous glare.*
Aristocrat: I was the one he tortured and you’re the one that just let him stay on the throne all this time! You didn’t even remember I was your sister! He stays dead!
Wizard: My apologies, “Wizard.” We should of course defer to your unimpeachable judgment. It has served you so very well recently. How is your remaining ear, by the way? Mine must be somewhat clogged with the dust of combat, as I could have sworn you had said ‘thank you for rescuing me’ and ‘whatever you say, dear Brother.’ Erm… Sister. Whatever.
Aristocrat: pouts
I’m lucky to play with a pretty awesome group of my friends for my One Piece campaign. Pretty much everyone at the table is happy to prop people up when it’s their moment, and during the big Wrestling-themed-extravaganza event we’ve had going on recently, this came back to bite us a bit.
You see, one of the events was a straight up Ninja Warrior-styled obstacle course. Running, swimming, jumping, climbing, you name it! It was basically to give someone who was not a melee fighter a chance to show off. My character, as the ranged weapon specialist, is apparently who the GM had in mind.
…but man, when Keto, the spear-fisherman and loud boaster saw the course, his eyes, and his players, lit up like it was Christmas. He was STOKED! He was BORN to do this! For GLORY! For HONOR! FOR -…
…it ended poorly. Apparently part of the course was running from one challenge to the next, and I didn’t know or factor that in when me and my character, as well as half the crew, happily let him take the challenge. What none of us, including the DM who nudged us towards picking someone else (he had a different event with that guy in mind) realized was that Keto had baaasically the lowest possible move-speed you can have. He did pretty great at the challenges! But between each one he fell further and further behind. Was a bit disheartening to watch, and kinda brought down the game a bit, but we learned some things from it, and in-character he’ll be running laps in our downtime to get those numbers up, so it wasn’t all a waste.
I feel like that’s the healthy attitude to take here. I’m sympathetic to Wizard, but she is being a bit of a diva here. If the moment doesn’t come out like you pictured it, learn and grow and incorporate it into the fiction.
I’ve looked at trying to develop a campaign based on One Piece for my partner, but haven’t found a system that works well for it. What are you using if you don’t mind me asking?
I tend towards that HP: Dead trick myself. It can sometimes be tricky though, when a battle stretches on for several extra rounds as most of the PCs are doing a good job battling the bad guy and starting to wonder just how much HP this villain has, and the “correct” PC for this opponent is the sole member of the group who keeps rolling terribly.
Sometimes, you just have to work with the wrong PC getting the final blow.
…Or you can improvise a baddie escape mechanism. If it seems like the right PC isn’t going to manage to get the finisher, then in some circumstances, it can be appropriate to have the bad guy retreat and retry the fight at some other time.
That’s what I meant with the line about “you risk cheapening both [fiction and game].” When your players begin to get suspicious, you’ve got to adopt another strategy. That might look like one of my other bullet points, your excellent idea of kicking the can down the road and re-staging a later encounter, or simply giving up on the spotlight moment as not-meant-to-be.
The worst possible outcome is for players to see through the illusion and realize they’re being spoon-fed their dramatic moment. Nobody wants an asterisk next to their epic victory, you know?
What kind of combat prowess did Wicked Uncle even have to necessitate a whole party against him?
Also not pictured: Royal Guard, Treacherous Lieutenant, and Evil Treant.
Also also not pictured; blackmail material involving said individuals.
I’ve been lucky in that, when the party paladin went against the dracolich that slaughtered his village and kidnapped his mother, he managed to get the killing blow twice, and be the one to destroy the phylactery. Granted, as an optimiser he was the most likely to get the killing blow, but an element of luck was certainly involved.
However, in the same campaign the entire party got kill stolen. Over the course, of the campaign, they’d become enemies of an ancient red dragon, stealing his hoard, kidnapping his baby, fighting him, and escaping at the very last minute. As the PCs progressed in level, they began to gain a bit more of an edge and be able to fight longer before fleeing, before finally the great time came when the dragon was a level-appropriate encounter for them!
The teleported to the ruins of the city that they started in, the city the dragon had destroyed out of spite for the players. They gathered about them allies both old and new, and approached the corpses the ancient dragon had arranged in a great, macabre message. They formulated a battle strategy and attack their nemesis, with their careful planning and avoidance of gathering into a breath-weapon cone allowing them to completely go to town on the dragon, laying in massive amount of damage. After only a few rounds of these massive attacks, an NPC wizard threw some magic missiles at the dragon, and killed the long-time nemesis and main villain of the campaign. And so the party’s kill was stolen by an NPC and magic missile.
…except the NPC wizard also got kill stolen, because in fact it had been a mere simulacrum that had thrown the magic, meaning that the grand villain was killed by an illusion of an NPC.
Ouch. How’d the party take it? I can see myself being torn between amusement and annoyance in that situation.
There’s an old Dwarf saying: Nobody does anything alone.
If a valiant hero defeats a great threat in solo combat, the kill is not theirs alone. It belongs to the commander who sent them out to fight, the smiths who forged their gear, the allies who drew the other enemies away and kept them at bay, everyone who ever partook in their training, the family that is the reason you’re there to fight in the first place, the miners who provided the material to the people who smithed your gear, the brewers who give you the will to live, the farmers who provided the materials for the brewers, and the friends who give you something to fight for.
The party’s kills are your kills are the party’s kills. You made them happen even if you didn’t get the killing blow. Get over yourself.
TL;DR: We’re like all connected maaaaaaan.
I did mention that Wizard is a prima donna, right?
I tend to agree with you on the “killing blow” thing. In 99 fights out of a 100, it doesn’t matter which way the last hp goes so long as it goes. That said, if you’re running for Inigo Montoya, it’s a bit anticlimactic when Fezzik crushers the six-fingered man’s head with a rock. Those situations are where I’ll bend the game rules for the sake of the narrative.
It’s important to point out too that the “killing blow” thing is just the most dramatic example of spotlight thievery. Spotlight moments are fundamentally an RP issue. Nobody wants to cradle their dying sister’s broken body only for the bard to suddenly declare that he’d always had a crush on her and would now be undertaking a quest for vengeance. “Upstaging” is a real thing, and some gamers (cough Wizard cough) are more sensitive to it than others.
As an egomaniac who often sees himself in the role of party tactician, I know that my allies won the day with my plans. My brainmeats orchestrated that final blow, and as such it is mine. I would think Wizard would feel the same way.
See that could demonstrate character growth for both. Inigo learns that allies are more important than his grudge, and Fezzik demonstrates his loyalty to his friend by helping him avenge his father.
Spoilers for Captain Marvel:
eh, by the end of boss encounters we are usually all too happy to be mostly alive to worry about who got the killing blow.
Shadow Dancer saved everybody’s arse two sessions ago, a spotlight I could happily go without.
What makes you say that? Were you the shadow dancer? Did you feel put on the spot or some such?
well… the whole point of playing (a) Shadow Dancer is to not be seen, which is also how I saved everyone (one level of Oracle to heal in plain sight)
Too bad Barbarian then committed suicide by „I charge the giant with the spear“ on only 10HP.
Beeing the only survivor of a near TPK my Shadow Dancer is a bit traumatized in terms of near TPK experiences. It’s no good for me poor weak heart, all that excitement.
lol. Any advice for a shadowdancer to be? Laurel is looking at breaking into the class via Bloodrager (destined bloodline). What are the pitfalls and pro strats?
I‘d say:
skip the 5th level of bloodrager for one full caster of Oracle or Sorcerer. Inploved Uncanny Dodge will turn up at ShD Lvl 2 anyways and a full caster level is much more usefull than the one point on BAB.
With bloodrager 4 and oracle 1 she has also access to both arcane and divine spell completion items (not the full arcane list fortunately). plus fast movement and cinder dance stack for speed, then go towards Improved Spring Attack, she’s half way the with the prerequisite for ShD anyways plus fast stealth rogue talent to hide between attacks – no Dex to AC for enemies.
my ShD is optimised for speed, sneaking and touch attacks:
Gnome Pyromaniac with Eternal Hope, Reactionary, Magical Knack
Rogue 4, Minor Magic (Ray of Frost) Mayor Magic(Ex-Retreat)
Oracle 1, Haunted/Fire (cinder Dance)
Spells: Cure Light Wounds(to heal me and the cleric and touch sneak undead), Inflict Light Wounds(to heal the Shadow Companion and touch sneak attack), Recharge Innate Magic (to recharge the Produce Flame from Pyro subtype)
I meant to type „unfortunately“ there
what level is Cleric?
Wizard can save some gold, maybe:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/t/temporary-resurrection/
reading fail: Wizard can do that spell by herself.
Full honesty time? Cleric is whatever level it takes to make the day’s joke work.
ah, well…
then Wizard is probably the same level :-p
and can temporarily resurrect Wicked Uncle
that has the advantage that Wicked Uncle will just drop dead in case they loose the rerun.
My DM usually does the first for drama and plot or the second under certain circunstancies, the player who have a hard wood while fighting a vampire is the one to score. I suppose we could make the third one as team work, someone stabs the bad guy and then yells at me while he throws the bad guys over the air for me to cast “maximized bloody fatality”. Mainly a death scene in our table is the spotlight moment of the one who is dying, a moment for regrets, last words and trying to put his guts in the same room at least. The evil guy is dying at least he can get some last screen time 🙂
I’d never connected Mortal Combat style “fatalities” with this mess before. I find it an oddly pleasing juxtaposition.
“Dramatic moment… FINISH HIM!”
Why not? Read my comments, a lot of times i write about things different from tabletop rpgs to speak about tabletop rpgs. As long as two things make some sense or you can make a good connection you can go with anything. Haven’t you ever seen the Spanish inquisition in History of the World, Part I? With a show like that i want to see even more “Hitler on ice” 🙂
Huh, that’s interesting. The GM in my current game uses the “how do you want to do this” line for boss fights, but always for the player who lands the killing blow. I thought it was a nice little way to hand RP-control over to the players for a bit when dramatically appropriate moments. I didn’t realize that he was/could-possibly-have-been inspired by someone else doing it.
Or maybe it was just a case of convergent thinking.
Either way I thought it was pretty cool once I caught on- in my very first session the ball fell into my lap and it took me about a full minute to get what was going on and then there was a fair amount of “uhm…uh…I…that is…uhh…” while I adlibbed something. Kind of killed the drama 😛
The technique is older than Mercer. He popularized the shit out of it though, lol. Crazy how much influence that one show has in the community.
I guess I never realized, since I don’t watch the show.
Articles like this pop up all the time on feed:
https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/9/17549808/actual-play-critical-role-adventure-zone-kickstarter-graphic-novel
Hell, I see so much of it that I felt the need to write this comic:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/style
I honestly think that Critical Role has given TRPGs the lingua franca that our necessarily fractured hobby never had before (it’s hard to all have the same experience when we’re all having it in small groups in isolated rec rooms).
There might be a paper in that, actually…. Whether or not GMing styles have homogenized since the show achieved is popularity.
So has Unspecified School Wizard forgiven Aristocrat’s betrayal, or was she simply unaware because it wasn’t specified amidst all the “mwahaha”s?
I’m picturing it more as a, “You screwed up bad, but we’re family. Of course I’ll bail you out,” sort of situation.
Of course, that’s just head canon. It’s all a bit vague in the comic itself. Open to interpretation and all that.
But Wicked Uncle doesn’t get a “You screwed up bad but we’re family”?
Naa. As General Tarquin knows, the last few minutes of your live as a villain are going to suck. That’s the price you pay for the years (or hopefully decades/centuries) you got to lord it over all those NPC scrubs.
Of course since Targuin and Wicked Uncle lives in a dnd world complete with easily provable afterlives that is a very short sighted view.
The millennia and eons after your last moments are really going to suck too.
You could try getting in with an Evil God of some kind in the hope of reaping a dark reward in the afterlife, but even those has a tendency to be harsh rather than generous to failed servants, and odds are you’ll be one of those once you die the final death.
Also, she’s still technically the party’s NPC slave (now that they know she’s family, they don’t even need to pay her like other hirelings!). So it all works out. Assuming no further backstabbery.
Is there, like, some kind of child protection services organization for hirelings? I feel like that needs to be a thing.
I think I tend to do all of the End Boss Bad Guy Drama before initiative is rolled. That, and my players usually take enemies alive, so there’s always the opportunity for post-fight drama.
While I don’t doubt that Fighter is perfectly inclined to steal the spotlight, it is kind of his job to score killing blows and all other kinds of blows. If Wizard’s player wanted to get dramatic killing blows, they should have played a fighter or a barbarian or something.
One way to ensure dramatic killing blows by relevant PCs is by actually pairing them off with their nemeses – either outright with sliding walls, force fields and stuff, or through the vagaries of battle, especially if the PCs themselves make the decision to split up themselves. This worked well in the climax of my Shadowrun campaign, the one with Kevin the elf. He wasn’t the boss of the local Ancients – in fact, even the other Ancients thought he was a loser – but he’d developed a rivalry with one of the PCs, and I set up the battle in such a way that she got to be the one to take him down. It was a very satsifying motorcycle duel that ended with his own motorcycle throwing him off and then landing on him, which was livestreamed over the Matrix.
I think climactic duels work better with minor bosses than the absolute big bosses, then. It’s easier to give somebody a one-on-one fight with their nemesis if said nemesis is actually a lieutenant of the main boss.
And that right there is why I love the “rounds spent monologuing don’t count towards spell duration” house rule:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/villainous-monologue
Evil treant? I thought treants were more neutral / punchclock minions without much say in the manner vs their summoners.
Unless they’re made from evil topiary, shrubbery, or elm.
The first time I met a treant in game it was in a negative energy-suffused region. They were… not nice.