A player with a problem: Death and level loss

[akbearfoot]

I don't like any of the in game effects that cause permanent damage to a character or his gear. I'm just not that kind of player.

Level loss from dying
permenent level drains.
Stat draining in low magic games where restoration is nearly impossible to find.
Sundering players magic items.
Mordenkainens disjunction.
Item saving throws if the player rolls a 1.
Characters having below average hitpoints(not counting con adjustments)
Creatures that destroy PCs items.
Save or die effects.

All of these things detract from a games fun imo. In my experiences characters don't buy their magic gear and then enjoy watching it get destroyed. They also don't work hard to survive dungeons and gain levels only to get hit by an unlucky crit and then lose a level and possibly several months of real life time investment. Characters who roleplay their transactions or customize their items with neat component or special looks suffer even more from stuff like this....Huh the sword I quested for 2 years for made out of the backbone of a shadow dragon that we tracked down IN the plane of shadow that nearly killed us all is gone for good now because I rolled a 1?

It's not a matter of removing threats from a game. Because fighting still has a lot of potential to kill players. I view D&D as a team sport, with the players all working together to achieve goals, and the DM designing an immersive adventure and giving us the tools we need to have fun. With the DM occasionally having fun beating on the PCs or even killing a few of us to make sure we know there are consequences if we play sloppy. The penalty for dieing is not being able to do anything until your PCs can go bring you back to life. Lets face it, being dead and watching a combat happen and not being able to participate SUCKS, especially if it is a long fight or a pivotal one where the players worked a long time to get to the showdown. It also probably lowers everyone elses morale because they are gonna be feeling sorry for the guy that died, unless they are the elitist types whos idea of fun is being in the spotlight 24/7.


It's hard not to take it personally when you invest a lot of time into gaining something for your character and then it gets destroyed. Afterall the DM is the one who put it there in the first place, or allowed it to be there in the case of modules.

I'd rather retire a character that I spent months developing and make a new character with no background or ties to a party at the same level as the rest of the group then end up being a level behind, with nothing to show for it. Especially if I died from unlucky rolls, or because I was trying to save another character who was using poor tactics.

Same goes for characters that rolls hitpoints and end up rolling several low rolls. PCs are supposed to be heroic, and modules these days assume your characters can stand up to a certain amount of punishment....a fighter with below average hitpoints is a liability and unless they enjoy playing lame-ducks will not have fun when he's having to beg for heals all the time during combat and costing the druids and clerics and bards their valuable actions.

I played in a game where we spent like 4 levels without getting to a town to spend our cash, then got to a resting point and everyone upgraded their gear and spent all their money, then 1 day out of town the DM threw some magic item destroying thing at us that was 3 or 4 CR higher than us and required DC 25+ saves every time we got hit or our armor was destroyed. It destroyed 50% of our party's wealth...and had no loot. Yay fun fun fun!

 

[Lord Zardoz]

The long term penalties on character death are one of the things in D&D which are better on paper than they are in practice.

Your only real options are to either tell your complaining player to shut up about it, or to kill all your other players at least once and raise them the same way to level it out.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Crothian]

The long term penalties on character death are one of the things in D&D which are better on paper than they are in practice.

They aren't really long term though. If the PC really wants to make up the extra XP then he should be out doing things to make up the extra XP. Without resorting to house rules there are still ways to make up for lost XP. It takes some work and thinking and it's better then just complaining about it.

 

[Pbartender]

So, I was wondering if anyone has an in-game solution for restoring his level. If they can do something, find something, or even make something to restore his level, then I can stop hearing him complain. Any thoughts would be helpful, at this point.

Although there are many good suggestions for house rules to get around it, it's already done. Don't retcon it.

Instead, tell him to knock off the whining and to get to work earning all sorts of bonus XP for good roleplaying, problem solving insights, ingenious plans of action, heroic acts and the like... Let him start looking for ways to earn "extra credit" and catch up, and you can start looking for excuses to give it to him, "That was an great tactical combination of spells -- you really saved the party's bacon that time. Take a bonus 500 XP."

 

[Mallus]

1) If you use the standard XP rules, lower level characters will catch up pretty quickly.

2) If one of your houserules is, "PC's are always the same level, regardless of death, missing sessions, swapping characters, etc." then this issue doesn't come up.

3) If not, the 'go on a quest' fix is always a good suggestion.

 

[mmu1]

The big problem with penalties for death and being brought back from the dead is that sometimes they are unfair - and even when they're not, they sure feel that way.

- Some classes - tanks, mainly - take more risks than others. You end up being a meat shield for the rest of the party, and as your reward you get killed and lose a level.

- The better you design your character and the better you play, the more dangerous your PC is - and the more negative attention he's going to attract. (generally speaking) Needless to say, that doesn't improve the PC's life expectancy.

- For whatever reason, the one time your character is in big trouble, the party fails to bail you out, and the PC dies. You think of the four or five times the party clown (playing a Str 12 Bard with a greatsword) had to be saved from certain death, and fume.

- Another PC does something stupid that gets the party involved in a fight even though they're unprepared, but it's your character that dies.

- PC death happens so rarely in the game you're in that it feels less like one of the necessary risks of adventuring and more like a freakish accident that just cost you a level, and you wonder what's the point of playing with a random 1:10,000 chance someone will get royally screwed.

- As Creeping Death points out, the rules are lousy when it comes to the math - sometimes, you lose a lot more than just a level's worth of XP.


Most of these issues can only really be resolved based on what the people you play with want as a whole.

Though I find that having a better system for calculating XP loss helps... I've been using the following:

1. Calculate the XP for the encounter as if the PC didn't die.
2. Subtract (current level -1)*1000xp from the dead PC's total.

And I find that it works pretty well.

 

[roguerouge]

One campaign I'm in allows you to write journal entries in character to gain action points, which can be traded in for XP when you're behind the rest of the party in level.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I'd need to know more about the campaign.

For example, if using the standard 3.5 experience point rules, the guy whose the lowest level gets MORE experience points and will quickly catch up with his fellows.

 

[Lanefan]

While you obviously believe in what you said, not everyone approaches D&D as a competition between the players to score individual victories or to see whose characters manage to survive. Some do approach it as a team sport, and for such players, the idea that removing the level loss from a raised character reduces the victory for them is as alien as a the idea that a basketball (or football, or soccer) player who suffered an injury during one game and had to leave the field, but managed to recover and return at full health for the next, somehow lessens the victory for the other players.

That's one analogy. Another is that the injured player leaves the team, to be replaced by a younger, fitter, but less-experienced rookie.

Someone who complains about character death - assuming honest rolls and DM fairness are a given - has no place in my game. That said, the penalty coming back is loss of a point of Con, rather than a level. (and you *don't* want to know about the death count in my new campaign; despite this, I've got some old jaded players showing more enthusiasm in that game than I've seen from them in decades...and they're the ones have been doing most of the dying!)

Lanefan

 

[Samuel Leming]

Someone who complains about character death - assuming honest rolls and DM fairness are a given - has no place in my game.

Well said. Some of the rules are designed to see if these so called 'heroes' have anything in their bags other than hot air. Sure, your fighter willingly braces the Tarnish Monster, but will he be so brave against an actual Rust Monster? If not, will someone in the party figure a good way around it? Or will they just sit there and lament the unfairness of it all?

Like others have said though, if all players are in agreement, you can have house rules. There are other games then D&D also.

What I can't get behind is something like this infamous quote from page 75 of the D&D Rules Compendium:

Sadly, death isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a character in the D&D game. (That distinction falls to level loss, which totally sucks and is best avoided at all costs.) At its best, death might inspire the player to create a new character. At its worst, it’s a costly inconvenience that keeps one player out of the game until his buddies spend the party’s gold to cast a true resurrection spell. (Raise dead and resurrection don’t cut it, folks. Save these spells for NPCs and cohorts.)

Feh. That's the D&D Design Manager? One could suspect that 4e will play a bit differently...

Sam