D&D 5E Where does the punitive approach to pc death come from?

[Henry]

For every group I've been in for 15 years now, we let the player of the dead character bring in a new PC at the same level as the old. When I used to play in high school and college, we did it this way also, just because it was the way the group I knew back ten did it - I really never asked why we settled on that.

These days, it makes sense because we only meet for a campaign twice a month - none of our DMs want to put that much effort into trying to balance a lopsided game with a spread of levels in it. Besides, for us, there is a punishment involved with permanent character death -- it's not being able to play a character we like again in that campaign, which is punishment enough. Our unspoken group contract is that if your PC dies and you bring in a new one, they must be different significantly from the previous one -- no "Erac's Cousin" or "Bob the IVth" business. If you want to fill the same niche, a wizard might become a sorcerer, or a cleric might become a paladin, a fighter replaced by barbarian, etc. but they must be different.

If we ever started 5e, given the way The encounter system works, I might give it a go, with 1 level lower, but its possible the group consensus might not allow it.

 

[neobolts]

Player death adds the essential element of risk to the adventure. One of the things I tell a new DM is that they have to create a "sense of danger". It's part of the what makes a roleplaying game a "game", rather than simple roleplay. Individual character death I'm not so worried about, and players have options to get back in the game. TPK is my hard line, a "game over". If the party is all dead, then the party has failed.

In our group's games, when a character dies, there is typically a story-integrated way to get the character back to life. If not, they can bring in a new character in at party level, complete with a backstory of where they came from and why they are arriving now.

 

[I'm A Banana]

This has the unstated assumption that the normal and primary reason to play D&D is to tell a literary story.

That would be part of what the Death Flag helps you do, and that would be something that your game should value if you're using the Death Flag, and that seems to be one of the OP's problems with D&D death as it is now.

It's not an unstated assumption, it's just the design goal. I've mentioned many times that it's not what everyone wants from the game.

 

[I'm A Banana]

For me that would be about as dull as playing a shooter in god mode. Doesn't matter if I get hit, doesn't matter if I screw up, I'm still going to finish the level.

But you're not, really. If you die, you don't finish the level. You just have to actually play through the consequences of the evil overlord actually winning.

 

[Celebrim]

It's not an unstated assumption, it's just the design goal. I've mentioned many times that it's not what everyone wants from the game.

IMO, it's only a suitable mechanism if having a literary story is the only goal of everyone at the table. I like the transcription of play to have literary merit as much as anyone, but its not the only reason I play nor has it ever been the only reason for play of any group I've ever participated in regardless of the system being played. I think I would like to perhaps sit in on such a group, just for the sake of experiencing it and having that narrow focus and learning from it, but as I've said before, my approach to an RPG is similar to my approach to a meal - I don't just want desert, or just an entre, or just meat, or just vegetables. I like all those things.

 

[I'm A Banana]

IMO, it's only a suitable mechanism if having a literary story is the only goal of everyone at the table. I like the transcription of play to have literary merit as much as anyone, but its not the only reason I play nor has it ever been the only reason for play of any group I've ever participated in regardless of the system being played. I think I would like to perhaps sit in on such a group, just for the sake of experiencing it and having that narrow focus and learning from it, but as I've said before, my approach to an RPG is similar to my approach to a meal - I don't just want desert, or just an entre, or just meat, or just vegetables. I like all those things.

It's not the only reason anybody plays. But it can be an important reason at some tables, and those tables may understandably have issues with the way D&D treats death by default, and for those groups a mechanic like the Death Flag might be really useful. For groups that have other priorities, it's less useful. I mean, no one is proposing that everyone must use this rule.

 

[Ranes]

As I DM, I'd rather see a TPK than the death of one PC. At least that way, no one feels any more despondent than anyone else about the outcome. As a player, I'd like to be able - if my PC should die - to bring in a new first level PC and not be ridiculously out of the picture, if only because it relates to how we did things when I started playing (although it's true that within a couple of years we were allowing replacement PCs at -1 or -2 levels).

Crikey, I remember losing a character in one game and being reincarnated as an ogre. I wasn't too happy at first but by the end of the session I loved playing the ogre that everyone else was trying to relate to as 'me'. Does anyone even do that any more?

PC death has to be one of the things we risk as players. Only by having taken that risk and survived are high level PCs truly appreciated. And I don't think it should be a given that everyone's alpha PC makes it through a campaign.

When PC death does happen, it's up to the other players, as much as the DM, to accommodate replacement PCs. I sympathise with players and DMs for whom the replacement PC is uncannily within a level or two of those who have survived thus far. That works for a lot of people, myself included, for plenty of those reasons discussed above. But I do love that rare game that enables all PCs to start from first level, irrespective of where the campaign is. I think that games that do that have a dimension that others lack. As a DM who regularly allows replacement PCs to come in at approximately the average party level, I wish my game was so good that my players wouldn't think twice about bringing in their replacement PCs at first level.

 

[Eirikrautha]

The reality is that many of us play the game for different reasons now than we did in the past. I never played the really high mortality games in the late 70s/early 80s that I know was popular at the cons. But the guys playing at the cons were playing one-offs whose goal was to see how far they could get before they died. Likewise, the vast majority of my campaigns back then were sandboxes, where character power was the primary focus. Death meant that you lost that round, so you rolled up a new character and started all over again. Starting at the same level as the dead character would be like starting a game of bowling in the tenth frame with all strikes given to you in the previous nine.

But now, the expectation is that my campaign will be more narrative-based. And stories don't work well with a continuously changing cast of characters. Likewise, as an adult with less time, I can less afford to lose all of the time put into the characters. Luckily, so far 5e has been really hard to die in (especially the higher the level). So my players get to choose when they want to start over.

 

[Lanefan]

But now, the expectation is that my campaign will be more narrative-based. And stories don't work well with a continuously changing cast of characters.

Actually, they can if you approach it just a little differently.

The best analogy I can come up with - and I've been using this one for ages - is that of a sports team. The franchise (campaign story) has a continuous history going back however many years yet none of the players on the ice at any given time (characters in play) have been around for all of it, and nor can they expect to be. They've each made a mark and added something to the overall history as will their future replacements; some lasted longer and-or did more than others, and while the 20 guys on the team (the 4 or 6 or 8 characters currently in play) are the relevant ones here and now in tonight's game (session) who's to say how many of them will be around next season?

In other words, the narrative can (and, I'd argue, should) be both bigger and longer-lasting than any of the individual protagonators within it.

Lan-"note this philosophy is intentionally different from that of most novel-writing where one sort of expects the key characters at the start will be around at the finish"-efan

 

[Eirikrautha]

Actually, they can if you approach it just a little differently.

The best analogy I can come up with - and I've been using this one for ages - is that of a sports team. The franchise (campaign story) has a continuous history going back however many years yet none of the players on the ice at any given time (characters in play) have been around for all of it, and nor can they expect to be. They've each made a mark and added something to the overall history as will their future replacements; some lasted longer and-or did more than others, and while the 20 guys on the team (the 4 or 6 or 8 characters currently in play) are the relevant ones here and now in tonight's game (session) who's to say how many of them will be around next season?

In other words, the narrative can (and, I'd argue, should) be both bigger and longer-lasting than any of the individual protagonators within it.

Lan-"note this philosophy is intentionally different from that of most novel-writing where one sort of expects the key characters at the start will be around at the finish"-efan

Eh, that is a useful approach, if I was really married to the high mortality campaign. Even using the "pathfinder society" type story, where the group (team) is what drives the narrative could work. But I'm just not as emphatic about it as I once was. My players (the same group from the eighties ... Isn't Skype and Roll20 amazing?) are having fun as singular narrators, so why fight the change?