D&D 5E Why penalize returning from death?

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Not sure why you're laughing. Yeah, I put "IME" because I can't speak for others, but I feel pretty comfortable in saying that in general, players were more cautious in 1e than they are in 5e because that's how the rules are designed. We can have different preferences and playstyles, but the rules are objective:

* In 1e, PCs were much more fragile because they had much fewer HP due to things like lower hit dice, and no longer getting CON bonuses or rolling for hp after level 9. A 10th level magic user in 1e is going to have an average of 23 or 24 hp. In 5e that's going to be much higher. So 5e PCs can take a lot more punishment than their 1e counterparts
* In 1e, there are a lot of save or die effects. These don't exist in 5e
* In 1e, there are level drains. Not in 5e
* In 1e, traps and frequent dungeon hazards are much more deadly (slimes, damage from traps, etc)
* In 1e, you didn't get raise dead until 9th level. In 5e you can raise a dead ally at level 5.
* In 1e, level gaining was much slower than it is in 5e.

All of those things means that you need to be more cautious as a player in 1e because you can't afford to make a mistake. 5e is much more forgiving. And it's a fact that peoples' level of caution is reflective of the amount of risk in any given task. The more risky, the more cautious, as a general rule.

I think the two bolded are huge, you level so fast in 5e. You might play a couple modules in 1e before leveling to 2nd. In 5e you are hitting level 2 after the first session it seems. You hit level 5 very quickly, where in 1e, L5 took a while and quite a few adventures. .

 

[Sacrosanct]

Wow... Just wow... Over blown drama much.

Says the guy who equated losing a PC in a game to a guy losing his home in a gambling game, and just implied that unless you don't allow the player to play again until the next campaign, you're cheapening the effects of PC death in a game.

Are you familiar with irony?

Linking rpg rules differences to murders is really going a long way to suggest you might ought to be less worried about society decision making.

Perhaps a vacation.

In my experience in RPGs the varying degrees of death taxes have not significantly altered behavior across the board.

That, listen closely, is not me saying no rule in any context has never altered any behavior.

Really, it does not.

Its a discussion of specifically death taxes and play in RPGs.

The closest to it that i have sern is that for **some players** removal of significant death threats, not death taxes, the threat of death, has allowed them over time to spend more brain cycles and pay more attention to non- survival aspects of the game, sometimes making more sub-optimal choices for non- optimization reasons.

Some, not all.

But i have never, not once, in decades seen a given player who when playing in a game with death tax rules played "cautiously" or "reasonably" but who when in a different campaign without death tax went all video game resave mode.

Not once.

I have seen players of each type and many in between, but not seen them swap between those modes because of core game death tax rules or lack thereof.

The **real** death tax is not doing stuff. Sitting by while other play is not fun. You can get players really hackled up with hold monsters or petrify or even just frequent stuns.

In my experience, its inaction thay most players want to avoid most.

Not some added after the fact bookkeeping

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Anecdotes do not equal evidence. I'm telling you, it is a proven fact, regardless of context (real life, a game, whatever), the behavior of people will be modified by perceived risk and reward. Because you haven't seen it personally means nothing. This is well established proven conclusions.

 

[Grainger]

I think a lot of these issues are mitigated by running a slightly more old-school campaign (but it can still have modern sensibilities, instead of being a roleplaying-free meat-grinder).

If you do slow levelling (PCs only level when the DM says so, and he/she is stingy with the levels), and apply some of the optional rules like slow healing, then 5e is a lot more deadly than it is with the rather "superhero"-esque defaults. It certainly makes it feel a lot more old-school, and a fair bit more strategic (they really have to plan those long expeditions with regard to supplies, if they have to rest up for weeks to heal).

Also, if you have a currency-light more authentic medieval game setting, that makes it much harder to use reviving spells (and if they do, it really costs them).

In short, there's no need to throw levels, healing and cash at the PCs unless you want to.

I see to remember a guideline (in the DMG, or maybe it was an idea on this forum) that when a PC dies, the player starts another character at the start of the current tier. That way there's a mechanical cost to it, but the new character can at least contribute to the party. If you make them start at 1st level, even if the rest of the party is "only" level 6, how is that supposed to actually work without the new character dying instantly, or hiding at the back for months, contributing nothing?

 

[iserith]

I see to remember a guideline (in the DMG, or maybe it was an idea on this forum) that when a PC dies, the player starts another character at the start of the current tier. That way there's a mechanical cost to it, but the new character can at least contribute to the party. If you make them start at 1st level, even if the rest of the party is "only" level 6, how is that supposed to actually work without the new character dying instantly, or hiding at the back for months, contributing nothing?

How it generally works in my experience is the character contributes just fine due to the game's math, but is more fragile, so they have to play smart like being choosy when to get into melee. I've DMed for 1st-level characters going along with up to 8th-level PCs more than a few times. The low-level PC ends up at 4th-level by the end of the first session and catches up to the rest of the party quite quickly.

 

[5ekyu]

Says the guy who equated losing a PC in a game to a guy losing his home in a gambling game, and just implied that unless you don't allow the player to play again until the next campaign, you're cheapening the effects of PC death in a game.

Are you familiar with irony?



Anecdotes do not equal evidence. I'm telling you, it is a proven fact, regardless of context (real life, a game, whatever), the behavior of people will be modified by perceived risk and reward. Because you haven't seen it personally means nothing. This is well established proven conclusions.

Again, maybe it will sink in even thru your studied bias... Saying a specific rule/incentive wont produce specific results is **not** disputing the totality of the notion of carrot and stick.

Remember, the comnent you launched on with you murder kick was about how some would respond to it and others would not...

Have you encounted a different perspective? Is it your own experience that all players change from reasonable cautios play to video game resave maniacs as soon as death tax rules are gone?

I am not able to make any conclusive statement of death tax rpg play sociology studies, so i am only able to speak from my own experience, and i have **not** once seen players flop around playstyles to that degree based off death tax mechanics. Not once.

Partly that because as said inaction is its own tax.

Partly thats because players like what they like and as in many cases of preference, that doesnt just change all around that often

Partly that is because players and grpups tend to seek out like minded activities. Someone who wants a reckless action game will more gravitate towards group with that and so on.

Obviously, players can change and adapt to settings, but the very fundamental video game resave reckless as death tax rules change thingy is not something that i have sern or know of anyone who has sern outside of forum boogeyman discussions.

Again, not the same as disputing the whole of holy sociology.



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[Sacrosanct]

What you're doing is refusing to believe something that is widespread and universally accepted among the people who are experts in this topic because you personally haven't seen it. That's like arguing the world is flat because you personally have never seen the curvature of the earth. I'm not asking you to believe me personally, I'm saying this is proven fact by experts in the field of human behavior. Even if you haven't seen it yourself, you should be able to make a conclusive statement just like you should be able to make a conclusive statement that the earth is a globe despite you never actually traveling around it in space.

So to argue against someone and say they are wrong (what you did to Caliban) in spite of the overwhelming evidence is just silly. What you're arguing is that penalties for death won't change behavior because you haven't seen it personally, and have not give any reasoned objective argument why it would be exempt from every other context of risk v reward that drives human behavior in literally every other context.

 

[Celebrim]

I guess, now that I read the thread and notice people are fighting over these things, I should say I feel there is no "right answer". Everything is a trade off, and the only real question you have is, "What consequence for my game am I willing to live with?"

If you don't want death to occur except when it is narratively meaningful, you are ultimately - however much you want to argue otherwise - giving up on the aesthetic of challenge in the traditional sense. You are now playing a fully cooperative game where you are cooperating together to tell the story that is collectively preferred and most especially preferred by the player. In that sense, if the player doesn't want death, then he's not going to die. But this means that the game really has no victories. If the player "wins" the scenario, defeats the bad guys, saves the world, and gets the girl - it's because that's the story he ordered at least in its broad outline. No real challenges were overcome, because one of the social contracts here was that they would be overcome because overcoming them leads to the story everyone considers most satisfying.

In theory, such a priority of play should lead to stories with narrative arcs that closely resemble the narrative arcs of other story-telling mediums.

And all of that is perfectly fine, unless everyone at the table highly prioritizes challenge as an aesthetic of play, in which case being protected by the power of plot feels like being robbed of victory, glory, and shining moments of awesome because there was no real adversity to overcome. Everyone was going to get the participation trophy in the end and while set backs and failures will and did occur, your ultimate victory was in some sense assured.

On the other hand, if you leave life and death up to the vagaries of random chance then you introduce Gygax's notion of skilled play, where the player is facing an adversary, and the character is exposed to risks of every sort, and outcomes of every sort including a short life and a meaningless death.

In theory, this can lead to shining moments of awesome where the player can revel in the victory every bit as much (or more) than his avatar in gaming world. In theory, your survival and heights of power are something that can in some sense be said to be earned, because another player facing the same problems might not have succeeded.

But, as a consequence, you must give up the idea that the majority of play will process stories that closely resemble the majority of stories produced in other media. Your characters awesome story arc might be cut short at a completely meaningless moment, or may pitter out and never go anywhere. You might at times have to deal with 5 hours of play to get 15 minutes of fun, and situations where no matter how skillfully you played you lose the game to random bad luck.

Pick your poison. There is no perfect answer.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I think the two bolded are huge, you level so fast in 5e. You might play a couple modules in 1e before leveling to 2nd. In 5e you are hitting level 2 after the first session it seems. You hit level 5 very quickly, where in 1e, L5 took a while and quite a few adventures. .

Yep. In effect, you gain access to raise dead spells after 4-5 sessions in 5e, and it may take a year of game play to get that in AD&D, assuming you even made it to level 9.

 

[5ekyu]

I think a lot of these issues are mitigated by running a slightly more old-school campaign (but it can still have modern sensibilities, instead of being a roleplaying-free meat-grinder).

If you do slow levelling (PCs only level when the DM says so, and he/she is stingy with the levels), and apply some of the optional rules like slow healing, then 5e is a lot more deadly than it is with the rather "superhero"-esque defaults. It certainly makes it feel a lot more old-school, and a fair bit more strategic (they really have to plan those long expeditions with regard to supplies, if they have to rest up for weeks to heal).

Also, if you have a currency-light more authentic medieval game setting, that makes it much harder to use reviving spells (and if they do, it really costs them).

In short, there's no need to throw levels, healing and cash at the PCs unless you want to.

I see to remember a guideline (in the DMG, or maybe it was an idea on this forum) that when a PC dies, the player starts another character at the start of the current tier. That way there's a mechanical cost to it, but the new character can at least contribute to the party. If you make them start at 1st level, even if the rest of the party is "only" level 6, how is that supposed to actually work without the new character dying instantly, or hiding at the back for months, contributing nothing?

What would **you**consider slow leveling to be in terms of say a group which runs one three to four hour session per week?

One level a month? Two months? Three months? Year?

Not disagreeing but "slow" is basically meaninglessly unspecific. What would be slow for you?

Also, am not assuming its a clock. Could be milestones such as quest ends etc. But you reference time so regardless of the trigger, am curious as to what rate you picture when discussing the benefits of slow leveling.

As a reference, in my current game, we play most weeks one session of three hours and leveling rate currently is one level every two months roughly. The system is somewhat close to the milestone referenced in XGTE - not tied to experience points for monsters and all that.

In a previous game, supers, advancement was much slower akin to a level a year but characters started higher of course.






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[Sacrosanct]

To address the video game analogy, people (in general) played Ninja Gaiden much differently than they play Call of Duty. If you died in Ninja Gaiden, you had to start at the beginning. Call of Duty has save points you can load from infinitely. Heck, the web is loaded with articles about how modern video games are too easy. Because of the "death tax", people played a game like Ninja Gaiden much differently than a modern game with save points. They played more cautiously, and didn't just rush in without planning nearly as much. This is no surprise, because it aligns perfectly with typical human behavior with everything else when faced with risk vs reward. There is no evidence that I've seen that D&D is exempt from this.