Why does epic level play entail treating death as a "speed bump"?

[xjermx]

In response to the OP, I think you've got two perspectives, at either end of the spectrum. On the right, old school players, those of us who have been around since yada yada colored box and so forth, for whom death is a part of play, and you either pay the price for raise dead/ressurect/reincarnate, whatever - or you roll up a new character. The "rolling up a new character" is such a staple for some groups that I play in, that we have some players <i>reknown</i> for occasionally killing their own characters off in bazaar ways, and gleefully rolling up a new character of the month.

On the other hand, for me, and others I'm sure, character death is a real buzzkill. It just ain't fun. I know, I know - consequences, smart play, etc. Still, all of that aside, if I have charged in to do perilous combat against terrible foes (which is what D&D is about mechanically, right?), and I die - it sucks. More than just a buzzkill, its potentially a play stopper.

Remember too, you've got hard core players and casual players, and I've seen the endless discussions about how 4e seems to have casual players in mind easily as much as the more hardcore. When my wife's awesome druid that she's been playing for a couple months dies, she does not respond by chalking up another one, and grabbing her ability-rollin' dice. No, its frustrating, annoying, and perhaps upsetting to her, and gamers like her.

Its a show stopper/buzzkill because the dead character's player gets to stop playing. And we're here to play D&D, right?

[edited: I tend to ramble without making a point. semi-fixed]

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

plot/possible npc

besides, at least from the movie, Gandalf fell after slaying his foe. unless he as poisoned, how did he die after killing his foe in a d&d world? I say it was more of a level up then a death.

His Rage timed out, and Con loss did him in.

(I think I might be the first person in the history of the world to suggest that Gandalf had Barbarian levels...)

Brad

 

[WheresMyD20]

Since the question is actually "Why does 4e still treat death like a speedbump?", then the answer would be, "to continue D&D's 30-year emulation of video games."

D&D has been emulating video games since 1978? That's funny, because my 1e Player's Handbook doesn't say anthing about a pong paddle character class...

 

[DM_Blake]

Let's break it down logically, from a game play point of view:

In low levels, you basically hit stuff with your sword, and they hit you with their claws and teeth or their swords. Maybe some spellcasters hit things with spells, but those don't do much more damage than hitting things with swords or teeth.

That's fine for low levels, but as you move up to intermediate levels, you probably expect more fireworks.

What you don't want, from a game design, is that your intermediate levels mean hitting tougher stuff with your same old sword, same old spells. No new tricks or items or feats or powers for you. The stuff you fight is tougher, so all you have to do is hit it lots more times. That's no fun. D&D isn't designed to do this.

In D&D intermediate levels, you hit stuff with a really uber sword that does neat stuff, and you wield that sword with nifty feats and powers to make it truly magnificent to behold. And your spellcaster friends hit stuff with really awesome spells, fireworks galore, special effects and body parts flying all over the battlefield.

In return, the stuff you're fighting hits you pretty dang hard too. They have their own special effects and neato powers that would annhilate low-level heroes. But you're not low level, so you survive all this awesome damage in heroic ways.

That's all fine for intermediate levels, but now you move up to top levels, epic levels.

Again, the design could be that you fight bigger and tougher foes, but you just use your same old rusty intermediate powers to hit them a lot more times.

But, D&D doesn't do that. It gives you new powers that are far superior to the stuff you could do before. You go from fireworks to mushroom clouds, from magical swords and platemail to miniguns, canons, and tanks (figuratively speaking). In return, the baddies you fight have their own tricks and powers that can rattle continental shelves off their plates.

OK, that may be a bit overstated, but you get my meaning.

Now, with all these bad guys tossing around that kind of firepower, death is going to happen.

Why?

Here's the important part: the outcomes are decided by rolling dice.

And here's the next most important part: Each monster you fight only has to roll a few dice in its lifetime (from the moment you meat it to the moment you defeat it), but your heroes have to roll thousands of dice in your lifetime. Sooner or later those dice will betray you, unless you cheat.

Given all that, any game like D&D absolutely needs a "get out of death free" card, in the form of resurrection (et. al.) because you will, absolutely, without fail, be betrayed by dice if you play long enough at those levels facing those kinds of destructive forces.

The only alternative is to give all characters all kinds of abilities to avoid death. "Oh, crud, I rolled a 1 on my save. But, I still have my Omega 13 power, so I use it to reverse that save so I don't die".

Which is fine, but ultimately, this means players are invincible. "Hey, let's go attack that army of dragons. What do you mean we will die? Don't you all have your Omega 13 powers ready to activate? And your Omega 14, Omega 15, and Omega 16? There's no way we can die. Attaaaaaack!"

That's not really a better solution.

At least the D&D solution allows the PCs to fail, but recover from their failure, where the Omega 13 solution guarantees no chance of failure.

And choosing neither option, no way to avoid failure from bad dice, and no way to resurrect or recover, simply means epic characters are doomed to sudden and unpredictable deaths.

Seems to me that resurrection is the lesser of three evils, here - from a game design point of view.

 

[Dausuul]

In response to the OP, I think you've got two perspectives, at either end of the spectrum. On the right, old school players, those of us who have been around since yada yada colored box and so forth, for whom death is a part of play, and you either pay the price for raise dead/ressurect/reincarnate, whatever - or you roll up a new character. The "rolling up a new character" is such a staple for some groups that I play in, that we have some players <i>reknown</i> for occasionally killing their own characters off in bazaar ways, and gleefully rolling up a new character of the month.

On the other hand, for me, and others I'm sure, character death is a real buzzkill. It just ain't fun. I know, I know - consequences, smart play, etc. Still, all of that aside, if I have charged in to do perilous combat against terrible foes (which is what D&D is about mechanically, right?), and I die - it sucks. More than just a buzzkill, its potentially a play stopper.

Remember too, you've got hard core players and casual players, and I've seen the endless discussions about how 4e seems to have casual players in mind easily as much as the more hardcore. When my wife's awesome druid that she's been playing for a couple months dies, she does not respond by chalking up another one, and grabbing her ability-rollin' dice. No, its frustrating, annoying, and perhaps upsetting to her, and gamers like her.

Its a show stopper/buzzkill because the dead character's player gets to stop playing. And we're here to play D&D, right?

[edited: I tend to ramble without making a point. semi-fixed]

I completely agree on the buzzkill nature of character death. (I'll add that I don't like it as a DM either; it plays havoc with my attempts to establish a sense of continuity in the campaign.) But why do we need a resurrection mechanic? Why can't we instead have a mechanic to keep the character from ever dying to begin with?

The only alternative is to give all characters all kinds of abilities to avoid death. "Oh, crud, I rolled a 1 on my save. But, I still have my Omega 13 power, so I use it to reverse that save so I don't die".

Which is fine, but ultimately, this means players are invincible. "Hey, let's go attack that army of dragons. What do you mean we will die? Don't you all have your Omega 13 powers ready to activate? And your Omega 14, Omega 15, and Omega 16? There's no way we can die. Attaaaaaack!"

That's not really a better solution.

At least the D&D solution allows the PCs to fail, but recover from their failure, where the Omega 13 solution guarantees no chance of failure.

I don't think you're putting enough thought into the possible alternatives. Avoiding death does not equal avoiding inconvenience; perhaps you're out cold for a while, and suffer penalties until you recover from your grievous injuries.

If you wanted to, you could house-rule that "dead" actually means "severely wounded and unconscious," and resurrection spells are actually healing spells that can bring you back from this state, which no lesser magic can do. This would be mechanically the same as the current system, while not allowing actual resurrection. It's a clunky fix, and I'd prefer something cleaner, but it demonstrates my point.

 

[jaer]

D&D has been emulating video games since 1978? That's funny, because my 1e Player's Handbook doesn't say anthing about a pong paddle character class...

Cause it's a weapon not a class. Look again.

 

[Domon]

Well, it depends to the scene. If Aerith gets smashed by the Omega Weapon, she's only unconscious. But if Sephirot stabs her, she's really dead.

yep, but she did it on purpuse, because the soul of the caster joining the lifestream is needed in order to guide the spell Holy

 

[Ulthwithian]

On the whole 'console games don't have real death' issue, I'll point out that at least in the first few Suikoden CRPGs for the Playstation, if you lost one of the recruitable characters in a mass engagement, they were dead. And if you didn't have all of them (but the one about to be mentioned), you couldn't get the last one.

So, yes, there were at least a few games where the specter of death loomed.

 

[Counterspin]

Whose to say that these knew abilities aren't exactly that? They may very well be substitutes for death, rather than resurrections. In fact I find that to be far more likely, at least for the non divine classes.

 

[WayneLigon]

Why must epic play treat death like a speedbump? Can't a game be epic and still treat death seriously. The heroes of greek mythology fought alongside and occasionally challenged the gods, but even Achilles wasn't able to be "raised".

You're comparing apples and oranges, though. As long as it's possible to die from random means, player inattention or miscalculation, there's probably going to be a means of bringing characters back into the game, especially at higher levels. I'm sure that if Homer had to take each series of verses to his drinking buddies, who would then dice to see who lived and who died, he'd have written in some means of bringing back his favorite characters from the dead.

Glaucus: "Homer, you metagaming bastard, you can't do that! Achilles is dead! The guards got lucky. Create a new guy."
Homer: "Do you want this sucker to end on page four? I have, like, all these plans and stuff. This whole war story and all. So, Athena brings him back to life."
Aeschylus: "Can Athena do that? What domains does she have, again?"
Homer: "She can do whatever she wants! She's a goddess."