D&D 4E 4e Cartoon Mickymouse Roleplay - tame !!

[Istar]

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[Aegeri]

No, I am just rating his comment.

1/10 to you for pointing out the obvious.

Its tame, mickymouse roleplay, cartoonish, without some kind of penalty to death.

Death does have a penalty, it can be immensely expensive early on to cast raise dead and it's not always even feasible to begin with. Additionally you suffer a -1 penalty to nearly everything for at least 3 milestones - that can be quite a while in some cases.

By epic PCs are gods and so killing them now and again isn't a major issue anyway. There is even an epic destiny that can basically come back from being dead any time it feels like. But that's somewhat of the point of epic, death isn't the penalty it's what happens when you fail and enemies take that time while you're busy being dead to destroy everything that matters.

 

[Istar]

Death does have a penalty, it can be immensely expensive early on to cast raise dead and it's not always even feasible to begin with. Additionally you suffer a -1 penalty to nearly everything for at least 3 milestones - that can be quite a while in some cases.

By epic PCs are gods and so killing them now and again isn't a major issue anyway.

-1 for a few battles, well thats nothing

Once level 3 then 500 gold aint much really, and its peanuts at level 9.

I suggest that it at least scales like the cost of magic items, by level.

I mean come on, Death is meant to be feared is it not, otherwise its comic - and mickymouse

 

[Aegeri]

-1 for a few battles, well thats nothing

Once level 3 then 500 gold aint much really, and its peanuts at level 9.

And then 5000 gold by level 11.

And it's 50,000 gold by level 21.

Because it scales by tier. Given that 4th edition uses an inherent negative engine economy for magical items, rituals and anything else the PCs do such expenses bite into treasure pretty hard. My PCs in one campaign lost something in the order of 25,000 GP in raise dead - gold that could have been used for other more important things.

I suggest that it at least scales like the cost of magic items, by level.

It already scales by tier, have you actually read the raise dead ritual?

 

[DracoSuave]

You dont need to be as Draconian or as long winded as Draco

I tried, but I can only be exactly as equally draconian or long winded as that guy.

 

[doctorhook]

It already scales by tier, have you actually read the raise dead ritual?

If you look up his posting history, you'll find that not reading stuff is this guy's hobby...

To be fair though, he's sorta got a point about the ritual cost of Raise Dead; it doesn't scale very smoothly at all. It's very expensive to raise your dead allies at levels one, eleven, and twenty one, but it's dirt cheap at levels ten, twenty, and thirty. Ritual cost is scaling by tier, but character wealth scales by level, and the result is that in the high end of any tier characters are relatively wealthy. My suggested fix for this problem is for the ritual cost of Raise Dead to be as much gold as is equal to the buying price of a standard magic item of the character's level -- for example, a 1st level character costs 360gp to raise, while a 30th level PC costs 3125000gp to raise.

I tried, but I can only be exactly as equally draconian or long winded as that guy.

lol And every once in a while, people confuse me with some worn-out old musician.

 

[Piratecat]

[No message]

 

[Piratecat]

A quick note. I mentioned several of the folks above because pos-repping "you're a troll!" posts is something we'd prefer to avoid. My apologies for any confusion.

- PCat

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

To be fair though, he's sorta got a point about the ritual cost of Raise Dead; it doesn't scale very smoothly at all. It's very expensive to raise your dead allies at levels one, eleven, and twenty one, but it's dirt cheap at levels ten, twenty, and thirty. Ritual cost is scaling by tier, but character wealth scales by level, and the result is that in the high end of any tier characters are relatively wealthy. My suggested fix for this problem is for the ritual cost of Raise Dead to be as much gold as is equal to the buying price of a standard magic item of the character's level -- for example, a 1st level character costs 360gp to raise, while a 30th level PC costs 3125000gp to raise.

Yeah, the observation that it doesn't scale very evenly is quite true. It wouldn't hurt to house rule a different scale in there. OTOH the costs aren't quite as trivial as the OP makes them out to be. Consulting my wealth management spread sheet a party gets a total cumulative gold of 40,795 during heroic tier. So all told 500 gp isn't a HUGE big deal, but its measurable. During paragon you get just about exactly another million gp, which means 5k is 1/20th of your total gold for the tier. Its about 1/50th of your epic gold (50k out of 25 million).

Look at it this way though, the problem is if you jack up the costs to really punishing levels all it does is hurt the game. Lets say you made the cost 2500 gp at heroic, that's possible to afford but it means the PCs will be short a decent amount of stuff for a good chunk of the rest of the tier. Why does this make the game more fun? "Gosh, too bad, you died once and now the whole party has to suffer for the next 3 months of play, too bad..." Yeah, that's good, real good. Really promotes player enjoyment.

Consequences of death should be pretty much restricted to the story, not the mechanics of the game. Its the story that matters and it should be the story that the players care about. If its not then are you really playing an RPG or are you just playing tactical battle exercises using the 4e rules? Might as well play WoW or just draw up one shot characters for skirmishes at that point.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

A good point about the money per tier, but one also needs to keep in mind that the amounts you cite aren't disposable - the vast majority of it will be tied up in euqipment, either in the form of items the DM has given them (again, the majority), or in the form of items the PCs have bought with the cash the DM has given them.

Given the high proportion of party wealth is tied up in items, if you raise the cost of being risen too high, you actually compound the wealth problem - once a party has run through their disposible income, the only way (outside of plot/story mechanisms) to get more is to convert their magic items into gold, for which they loose in the "exchange rate" 4 GP for every 1 GP to pay for the ritual - in essence making the ritual 5 times as expensive!

So sure, 2500 doesn't sound like a lot, but if you need to cash in 12,500 GP worth of equipment it sure is...

Personally, I would rather have a character a player loves raised from the dead than tossed into the garbage - chances are the PC has developed interactions with the other PCs and with the game world that make the game interesting and enjoyable. Indeed, the very raising of the character can give a DM the opportunity to increase the various PCs connection with each other and the setting by imposing plot requirements/remifications for/to the use of the ritual.

So, I see no need to "punish" a player for loosing their character - if they love their character, chances are their death was either an accident or in a manner that either furthers or is appropriate to the story.

I like having the players engaged in the story I am telling. Indeed, its the players who aren't that can potentially be bothersome - and IMHO killing off characters without giving them an "out" is more likely to disengage players from the story I am telling through them than to be benificial in any way.