D&D General If not death, then what?

[tetrasodium]

I'd look in rising from the last war about erandis vol/lady illmarrow for why undead can't be trivially returned to the living. Her inability to unlichify herself is a big part of the Setting's lore despite the sloppy wording of natural language surrounding raise dead type spells.

Iedit: I'm in bed & not near any books

 

[JiffyPopTart]

No they're not, they're being a player.

In any game, be it an RPG or something else, it's the player's duty to, within the rules, push for the optimal outcome...which in many games simply means playing to win. In an RPG, where win-loss conditions are much fuzzier if extant at all, it means pushing outward against the rules envelope until the rules or the DM pushes back. This falls squarely under "advocating for your character".

If the rules at your table say my character can't die then you've given me that "out", or loophole, and I'm going to exploit the hell out of it.

This is a bad look, my friend.

Ruining a game by exploiting a rule one doesn't agree with would, indeed, make one a jerk.

If one wanted death on the table one could just opt in for any and all character death from the start and not have to play with the safety net that bothered them so much.

One word probably find their character had little to no long term personal stories happening in the narrative, but I assume one would be OK with that if emergent stories were all they sought out.

 

[pemerton]

While I completely get your point, there's a significant subset (as in, a whole lot!) of players out there who don't care about much other than being able to show up every Sunday night, knock back a beer or a Coke, have a laugh at whatever antics their characters get up to in the moment, and chuck some dice when the shootin' starts.

And do those players care how the rules and procedures of play carve up the terrain of possible adverse consequences, and how prominent PC death is as one of them?

 

[Chaosmancer]

I'd look in rising from the last war about erandis vol/lady illmarrow for why undead can't be trivially returned to the living. Her inability to unlichify herself is a big part of the Setting's lore despite the sloppy wording of natural language surrounding raise dead type spells.

Iedit: I'm in bed & not near any books

Because you can't create a corpse when it disentegrates and reforms at a random location (not near her phylactery which would give her more options)? So nothing I've said actually has any impact on Lady Illmarrow whatsoever?

 

[tetrasodium]

Because you can't create a corpse when it disentegrates and reforms at a random location (not near her phylactery which would give her more options)? So nothing I've said actually has any impact on Lady Illmarrow whatsoever?

Her walking around as an undead with a physical corporeal body for thousands of years rules out the whole target the zombie & similar ideas thrown about. The spells themselves are worded in ways that practically beg the gm to flesh them out because creature & such was never explicitly defined

• Revivify: "You touch a creature that has died within the last minute.".
  • A dead creature (typically )leaves behind a corpse. A corpse is an object. The GM must either define what is a valid target or allow it to target the corpse object that was a creature within the last minute...
• Reincarnate: "You touch a dead humanoid or a piece of a dead humanoid."
  • This one works as written but you might need to have a piece from before they became undead since f/ex a zombie is a medium undead & no longer humanoid
• raise dead: "You return a dead creature you touch to life, provided that it has been dead no longer than 10 days."
  • again creature was never defined and a corpse is an object. The GM must define what is a valid target or modify the spell to allow targeting of a corpse that was a living creature no longer than 10 days ago... of course the undead are not alive so even if targeting a corpse is allowed there is a timer running
• True Resurrection: "You touch a creature that has been dead for no longer than 200 years and that died for any reason except old age."
  • Again corpse=object not creature, gm needs to step in & all.

Your interpretation would be stronger if the spells were worded better & three of the four the spells didn't require the GM to define a valid target.

 

[Lanefan]

And do those players care how the rules and procedures of play carve up the terrain of possible adverse consequences, and how prominent PC death is as one of them?

Likely not. That's already way into overthinking-it territory.

Death is a known possible outcome, just as are other Bad Things e.g. limb loss, level loss, item/wealth loss, ability loss, forced alignment change, etc. etc. That 5e has taken most of those Bad Things right off the table is what has led to the current focus on death: it's all that's left.

Also worth noting that most of those other Bad Things can be recovered from or adapted to while still playing the same character, even at low level where death would usually be permanent.

In a system like this, if death is also taken off the table what's left to present as a credible threat to either an individual PC or a group that the character - and thus player - has to take seriously and can't just shrug off? Sure, if you're into deep immersion etc. there can be serious emotional threats to the PCs, but casual players (which are, I think, the vast majority) aren't likely to care too much. They're not there for emotional angst, they're there to pull off some derring-do and laugh at the antics their characters get up to; and if some of those characters meet some Bad Things in the process, that's just part of the game.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Likely not. That's already way into overthinking-it territory.

Death is a known possible outcome, just as are other Bad Things e.g. limb loss, level loss, item/wealth loss, ability loss, forced alignment change, etc. etc. That 5e has taken most of those Bad Things right off the table is what has led to the current focus on death: it's all that's left.

Also worth noting that most of those other Bad Things can be recovered from or adapted to while still playing the same character, even at low level where death would usually be permanent.

In a system like this, if death is also taken off the table what's left to present as a credible threat to either an individual PC or a group that the character - and thus player - has to take seriously and can't just shrug off? Sure, if you're into deep immersion etc. there can be serious emotional threats to the PCs, but casual players (which are, I think, the vast majority) aren't likely to care too much. They're not there for emotional angst, they're there to pull off some derring-do and laugh at the antics their characters get up to; and if some of those characters meet some Bad Things in the process, that's just part of the game.

What you are coming up to here is partially cultural.

I am not making a value judgment about the relative value of gaming cultures either! But for my group:

A. Earning levels is not a given. It’s likely but it takes time and risk.

B. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Adventuring war are dangerous. Nothing is given, it’s earned. And sometimes escaping with your life is the greatest reward of all.

C. Danger is part of the thrill. Character decisions, victories and defeats are the story. Character plan? Could be a casualty of war! DM story? Could be a casualty of war!

NOT everyone is gonna like that. For us, no death is not worth the game even its loss of Poker chips and not cash.

We took it to the extreme this weekend. The group could not play so three of us used donjon, made a random loosely held together dungeons and just saw what happened. A one shot. That too would not have been fun without some risk of death. At two hit points I was begging for us to short rest!

 

[pemerton]

Likely not. That's already way into overthinking-it territory.

Death is a known possible outcome, just as are other Bad Things e.g. limb loss, level loss, item/wealth loss, ability loss, forced alignment change, etc. etc. That 5e has taken most of those Bad Things right off the table is what has led to the current focus on death: it's all that's left.

Also worth noting that most of those other Bad Things can be recovered from or adapted to while still playing the same character, even at low level where death would usually be permanent.

In a system like this, if death is also taken off the table what's left to present as a credible threat to either an individual PC or a group that the character - and thus player - has to take seriously and can't just shrug off? Sure, if you're into deep immersion etc. there can be serious emotional threats to the PCs, but casual players (which are, I think, the vast majority) aren't likely to care too much. They're not there for emotional angst, they're there to pull off some derring-do and laugh at the antics their characters get up to; and if some of those characters meet some Bad Things in the process, that's just part of the game.

Why would a player with the low level of emotional engagement that you describe care whether or not their PC dies and they have to bring in a new one ("Bob II")?

If they're turning up with their friends to play beat the module, wouldn't they care about winning or losing vs the module as much as whether or not they have to change their game piece?

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I grapple with this a lot, I think about death as a vegetable mechanic (in the sense of 'eat your vegetables!')-- its not enjoyable in and of itself, but it helps to make other parts of the game more enjoyable. Good design can maximize the thrills it provides, while minimizing the pain, but I don't think it can be fully avoided because the whole point is the game play created by having something to avoid.

Honestly, I think even 'failure that isn't death' might run into trouble because it just abstracts the answer to whether or not the player is attached to the thing that they're losing as a result of the loss, if they don't, then its not useful as a mechanic beyond being able to claim it addresses the problem, but if they are then its just going to bother the way losing a character might. The best case scenario is that those things are things the player is less invested in than their character's life, but still invested in emotionally. But you still run into the issue of those things not being immediate to most situations.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I grapple with this a lot, I think about death as a vegetable mechanic (in the sense of 'eat your vegetables!')-- its not enjoyable in and of itself, but it helps to make other parts of the game more enjoyable. Good design can maximize the thrills it provides, while minimizing the pain, but I don't think it can be fully avoided because the whole point is the game play created by having something to avoid.

Honestly, I think even 'failure that isn't death' might run into trouble because it just abstracts the answer to whether or not the player is attached to the thing that they're losing as a result of the loss, if they don't, then its not useful as a mechanic beyond being able to claim it addresses the problem, but if they are then its just going to bother the way losing a character might. The best case scenario is that those things are things the player is less invested in than their character's life, but still invested in emotionally. But you still run into the issue of those things not being immediate to most situations.

Sure, losing something you have no attachment to has no meaning. But, again, most of us aren't using the "no death" rules in such a way that there is nothing of value lost. And if the player has nothing of value to lose... then the DM has not done a good job engaging them in the world.

I think it is a bizarre statement to say that death is more meaningful than other consequences, because death "always matters" while at the same time people are claiming that those for whom death matters... don't care about their characters beyond "Race x Class" and will casually replace the dead ones. Then death isn't even something to avoid.