D&D General If not death, then what?

[Lanefan]

There was nothing I saw in anyone's post that death is a meaningful consequence because it costs money. By that same token, just destroying their money directly would have the exact same impact, sans death.

Yes, but 5e as written doesn't allow this to happen.

In 1e a failed save vs AoE damage could cost you half your magic items given even slightly poor luck; every one of them had to save and a meltdown was certainly possible. And magic items usually ain't cheap.

Never mind your mundane items, jewelry, etc. also (in theory) had to save.

Wealth/item loss is one of those Bad Things that just can't happen in 5e.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Wealth/item loss is one of those Bad Things that just can't happen in 5e.

What happened to DM empowerment? I thought you were free to do as you liked.

 

[James Gasik]

What happened to DM empowerment? I thought you were free to do as you liked.

Yes, it's not that it can't happen, but generally, you have to step in to make it happen. Items don't make saving throws, and there is no Sunder/Disarm maneuver. That having been said, some spells (fireball, for example) do talk about effects on objects, and there are rules for destroying objects.

So you could rule that, "sorry Fighter Joe, your Broom of Flying had all it's bristles burned off by that pyromancer!". Of course, whether or not magic items can be damaged/destroyed/repaired is again up to the DM, just as whether or not NPC thieves can rob you of them.

What I think Lanefan is really saying (and correct me if I got the wrong impression) is that loss of money doesn't matter very much in 5e, and by default, you're probably not at risk of losing magic items as frequently (whether or not you even have magic items, as they are deemed "optional" content, is kind of up in the air, but I assume most groups use them, I just cannot say to what degree).

5e not being about building fortresses or gathering followers, it comes down to- spend a few gp between adventures on refilling ammo, buying rations or healing potions, maybe pay for a lifestyle if you want.

Armor users tend to have one big budget purchase, but beyond level 5 at the latest, it's all money that exists primarily to pay for spells. Wizards have a huge cash drain if they want to get all the spells they can, but other classes really don't. Your money primarily sits around unless you need to pay for transportation expenses (horses, ships, airships, what have you) until you need to pay for a heroes feast or something.

Now again, I'm sure some DM's find ways to make money matter, but by default, the game doesn't let you do much with your accrued cash, so when you're 10th level and sitting on thousands of gp, the big problem becomes where do you store your wealth? In one game I played, the Paladin just took 50% of his money and used it to tithe to his church and build orphanages, and he was still never strapped for cash.

In this environment, once you have access to casters who can bring back the dead, death is really a speed bump...between adventures. The problems of a player dying mid-adventure still remain.

I could make a game where characters who die return to life between adventures and it wouldn't really affect anything. The only real detriment to death is not being able to play your character until the adventure is over.

Which is really where I've had all the problems with character death.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yes, it's not that it can't happen, but generally, you have to step in to make it happen. Items don't make saving throws, and there is no Sunder/Disarm maneuver. That having been said, some spells (fireball, for example) do talk about effects on objects, and there are rules for destroying objects.

So you could rule that, "sorry Fighter Joe, your Broom of Flying had all it's bristles burned off by that pyromancer!". Of course, whether or not magic items can be damaged/destroyed/repaired is again up to the DM, just as whether or not NPC thieves can rob you of them.

What I think Lanefan is really saying (and correct me if I got the wrong impression) is that loss of money doesn't matter very much in 5e, and by default, you're probably not at risk of losing magic items as frequently (whether or not you even have magic items, as they are deemed "optional" content, is kind of up in the air, but I assume most groups use them, I just cannot say to what degree).

5e not being about building fortresses or gathering followers, it comes down to- spend a few gp between adventures on refilling ammo, buying rations or healing potions, maybe pay for a lifestyle if you want.

Armor users tend to have one big budget purchase, but beyond level 5 at the latest, it's all money that exists primarily to pay for spells. Wizards have a huge cash drain if they want to get all the spells they can, but other classes really don't. Your money primarily sits around unless you need to pay for transportation expenses (horses, ships, airships, what have you) until you need to pay for a heroes feast or something.

Now again, I'm sure some DM's find ways to make money matter, but by default, the game doesn't let you do much with your accrued cash, so when you're 10th level and sitting on thousands of gp, the big problem becomes where do you store your wealth? In one game I played, the Paladin just took 50% of his money and used it to tithe to his church and build orphanages, and he was still never strapped for cash.

In this environment, once you have access to casters who can bring back the dead, death is really a speed bump...between adventures. The problems of a player dying mid-adventure still remain.

I could make a game where characters who die return to life between adventures and it wouldn't really affect anything. The only real detriment to death is not being able to play your character until the adventure is over.

Which is really where I've had all the problems with character death.

Right, but this takes us back to the questions at hand. If the point of death in old DnD wasn't "you're dead Jim, roll a new character" but "You died Jim, now we need to spend precious money to revive you" then it seems like the "no death" situations where items and money are lost instead of the character's life are essentially identical.

This isn't to say I don't agree with you, the game designers dropped the ball on consumables and crafting and other uses for party wealth, while still handing out massive sums of gold. I do agree you need to find or make more uses for money if you expect it to be any sort of reward, but if there is something you can do other than killing characters, that certainly seems to be the viable route.

 

[Medic]

Now again, I'm sure some DM's find ways to make money matter, but by default, the game doesn't let you do much with your accrued cash, so when you're 10th level and sitting on thousands of gp, the big problem becomes where do you store your wealth? In one game I played, the Paladin just took 50% of his money and used it to tithe to his church and build orphanages, and he was still never strapped for cash.

I believe that this is a part of the reason why many people in this thread and those like them view permanent death as the only tangible consequence in 5th Edition. If you strip a player character of their money, the only loss they've suffered on a mechanical level is the privilege of paying to come back to life if they die.

Systems like Vampire and Call of Cthulhu have very important non-death consequences baked directly into the game, and even an RPG like Dark Heresy (where the death of a PC is a factor of "when," not "if") has non-lethal outcomes for failure that will make you wish that your character was killed, while the current iteration of D&D ain't really delivering here.

 

[Lanefan]

What I think Lanefan is really saying (and correct me if I got the wrong impression) is that loss of money doesn't matter very much in 5e, and by default, you're probably not at risk of losing magic items as frequently (whether or not you even have magic items, as they are deemed "optional" content, is kind of up in the air, but I assume most groups use them, I just cannot say to what degree).

I wasn't thinking so much of the "it doesn't matter" angle - though it seems to be a valid one - but more the "it can't happen" angle, as per 5e RAW. Now sure, there might be corner cases within the RAW that allow for item destruction, but in comparison to 1e where items are very much easy come easy go it's nothing.

And true, I do assume that magic items are part of the game even if 5e as-written might not.

Slightly further afield from 5e as written, I also assume magic items have value, be it monetary, sentimental, or emotional; and thus that the loss of said items would count as a Bad Thing.

In this environment, once you have access to casters who can bring back the dead, death is really a speed bump...between adventures. The problems of a player dying mid-adventure still remain.

In some adventures, true. In many, however, the party can always choose to leave the site, head back to town, resupply, and refresh. Oh, yeah, and get Jocantha raised while we're there.

Or, if levels and spells allow, someone could teleport or planeshift out, get the dead character revived, then return with said character via the same means while the rest of the party hole up and hunker down for the day. I've seen this done on various occasions.

 

[Lanefan]

Right, but this takes us back to the questions at hand. If the point of death in old DnD wasn't "you're dead Jim, roll a new character" but "You died Jim, now we need to spend precious money to revive you" then it seems like the "no death" situations where items and money are lost instead of the character's life are essentially identical.

Don't forget that in pre-2e* D&D revival wasn't guaranteed. You'd drop the money in sacrifice, sure, but then have to make a d% resurrection survival roll; and while the odds were usually well in your favour they weren't unity unless your Con was 18 or higher. And you lost a Con point in the process.

Repeated deaths in 1e were almost assumed, I think, given that there was a hardline rule saying no character could be revived more times than its starting Con score. (in 40 years of moderate-lethality play here there's been maybe two or three characters got close to this line; yes, one of them is mine...)

* - 2e might have had this too, I don't recall. 3e mitigated this somewhat, 4e and 5e dropped it entirely.

 

[pemerton]

Yes, it's not that it can't happen, but generally, you have to step in to make it happen. Items don't make saving throws, and there is no Sunder/Disarm maneuver. That having been said, some spells (fireball, for example) do talk about effects on objects, and there are rules for destroying objects.

It seems to me that, if our only (or even primary) conception of how a character might suffer material loss is by being fireballed or having their weapon broken in a sword fight - as opposed to all the other reasons that might cause people to suffer material loss - then we're already in a zone of play where it makes sense that death (and perhaps irreparable stat/level loss) would be the only real consequences that might be suffered.

The idea that there can be losses other than death and stats/levels assumes a type of significance of the shared fiction that would also open up possibilities of material loss beyond having a bad encounter in the dungeon.

 

[James Gasik]

What I'm still wrestling with is the impact on play when someone snuffs it in a dungeon or mid-adventure. This affects more than just the individual player, as the group is now weaker until they can bolster their numbers again. It really feels like not only does the dead character's player have to deal with not being able to play until they can get brought back or reintroduced to the campaign, but the party as a whole is now adversely affected.

And the only real solution here is to have extra characters on hand at all times, or for there to always be convenient "guy locked in jail cell", which can be verisimilitude breaking in of itself.

Thinking about it more, I've played computer RPG's where a party member can die, but unless everyone dies (TPK), they can be revived after battle. It really feels like an ok compromise- you aren't dead, but you can't be reckless either because if your death leads to the party's demise, then there won't be any coming back.

 

[tetrasodium]

What I'm still wrestling with is the impact on play when someone snuffs it in a dungeon or mid-adventure. This affects more than just the individual player, as the group is now weaker until they can bolster their numbers again. It really feels like not only does the dead character's player have to deal with not being able to play until they can get brought back or reintroduced to the campaign, but the party as a whole is now adversely affected.

And the only real solution here is to have extra characters on hand at all times, or for there to always be convenient "guy locked in jail cell", which can be verisimilitude breaking in of itself.

Thinking about it more, I've played computer RPG's where a party member can die, but unless everyone dies (TPK), they can be revived after battle. It really feels like an ok compromise- you aren't dead, but you can't be reckless either because if your death leads to the party's demise, then there won't be any coming back.

When the player with a dead PC who can't be raised right now needs "to deal with not being able to play until they can get brought back or reintroduced to the campaign" they are subject to the social pressure of how that adversely affects the entire group as you say. It's easy to ignore pleading from players trying to play a support character when there's no consequence but not so much when the other players can apply pressure to cooperate more in the future by rubbing it in when someone is dead because they weren't working together as a group.

Sure there might be the occasional unforeseen case of bad luck but it's not like returning from the dead without the GM simply declaring it so is a high bar in d&d.