Are players more afraid of PC death or lack/loss of magic items?

[IceFractal]

First off, I'm assuming that by "item loss" you mean loss of pretty much all your items, for an extended period of time - not just drinking some potions or having to leave your magic sword home when you go talk to the king.

In most cases, I'd say players fear item loss more - and that's for a good reason. That's because D&D is a game, and games need players. Therefore, you can't "lose" the game by dying - you still get to play, whether or not Raise Dead is available. However, you can be forced to play a characters who's much weaker than everyone else, and that's not fun.



Let's imagine this as a real-life situation: Reincarnation works, all the time. Not only that, but you keep your personality intact (or you can change it, if you want), and come back as someone of roughly the same age, in roughly the same situation, with roughly the same friends and relations. Sometimes you even come back with a more exciting job.

Now in this world, you have a choice: die - or go broke, have your friends and family all hate you, and contract a disfiguring disease. Now which one seems more appealing? Die and return as someone similar, or be living a really crappy life that may just end up killing you anyway?



This is, incidentally, the reason why most players hate being captured, and would rather fight to the death than be captured by even non-evil authorities. Because TPKs don't really exist - you can kill the characters, but you can't kill the players, and if you try to impose some out-of-game punishment like "you have to sit out the next three games because you died" then people will just leave the game. However, you can make things bad for the characters, or make people play maimed and weakened characters (for a while, then they may suicide). So players - accurately - look at being captured/helpless as the real danger.

 

[Nifft]

Several PCs have lost some or all of their loot in my game. Dead PCs haven't come back. I think they fear death more than poverty... but I chose level loss, because that's really frightening!

(IMC, I try to make loot easy come, easy go, with some limits on that first part.)

Cheers, -- N

 

[Holy Bovine]

Loss of magic items. Levels can be regained but the permanent loss of a treasured magic item is a great fear in my games.

 

[Quasqueton]

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=181403

Basically the same thing.

Note the major difference in these two polls is that Crothian's asks for the voter's choice, but this poll is asking the voter to choose what others would choose.

It's like one poll asking: "Do you vote liberal or conservative?"

And the other poll asking: "Do people vote liberal or conservative?"

One poll gets actual, the other gets perception. Comparing these two polls is interesting.

Quasqueton

 

[phindar]

I've always admired from afar the way Supes games tend to handle Gear. Gear are powers, it doesn't matter if you wear magical chainmail, a kevlar vest or have gamma-irradiated skin, 10 Armor is 10 Armor.

Losing Gear and dying and getting Raised are different ways of losing abilities. (It helps that Wealth and XP are just different advancement mechanics. I'm not sure why we bother to keep them separate. Well, I'm sure they'll fix it in 4e. Or 5e. 7e, tops.)

 

[Numion]

Losing stuff is worse. I don't see this as a big problem. I've said this before, but here goes: some people are like that IRL. Every year many people commit suicide if they lose everything they own. Obviously they feel losing gear is worse than losing life.

Thus, I don't see this PC behaviour as unrealistic, since most adventurers seem very obsessed about loot and stuff in the first place.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Most of the people I play with are more concerned with character death than the loss of their characters' magic items.

I don't really care about either. My personal style of play has nothing in it of the old Gygaxian "test your wits against the monsters/dungeon/DM and see if you can survive" mode; I enjoy seeing if my characters can overcome the challenges they face, but I don't care either way whether they do or not because my interest in the game is based on what happens to these little fictional people - the story which results from play, you might say. The story doesn't have to involve my characters' succeeding for me to find it interesting.

 

[WayneLigon]

Much more afraid of PC death and level loss. Can't get those back. You lose a magic item, eh; you can always get another one.

Then again, we're playing in Eberron. Right now, their cleric just got access to Raise Dead. That brings the total number of people Sharn, the largest most cosmopolitan city on the continent where anything can be had for a price, who can cast Raise Dead to 3. Now they are a little more likely to rush in, but they also know they need the body for the spell to work. If you fall into a massive lava pit, well, you're outta luck. The sheer cost also keeps them from treating death as a speedbump.

Magic item loss? They have an artificer with them. Magic items are no problem.

 

[Quartz]

Death is the worst. Items can be recovered or new items found. XP can be regained, but you can't do either of those things if you're dead. More to the point, you've invested a lot of time, effort, and emotion in that character. And until very high levels resurrection depends on the body being recovered, which is not always possible. The BBEG may want a downed PC's body for Speak With Dead, undeadification, or worse.

 

[DragonLancer]

IMX, players are more concerned with item loss than levels or death. I've never understood that as I would be more fearful of losing the character than his stuff.

Without meaning to sound like a rules basher, maybe its because the system assumes/expects you a character to have X amount of stuff that players feel naked without it.