D&D 5E Are there any penalties from coming back to life in 5th edition?

[AaronOfBarbaria]

This is the tricky part though. If raise dead is no big deal, the game is less challenging...

That gets into heavily subjective territory since what is "no big deal" to you looks like "a particular character with a particular spell chosen, a substantial monetary cost that has to be planned in advance to be sure its even an option, a significant cost in resources, plus a potentially huge detriment to the party's goals" to me - or to phrase differently, seems like very much a big deal.

As for degree of challenge, I have never found that the expediency of being able to continue on after a failure actually changes how difficult something was to begin with. I mean, Super Mario Bros. isn't made easier by having effectively unlimited chances to try each level - you still have to actually make it through the level. Sure, one could say that the game would be harder if every time you died the game completely reset and you had to start from world 1-1 again - but that is a different sort of goal; that's the game being harder to finish, not harder to play.

I've never seen any players behave as if it doesn't matter that a character died - even when running with experimental rules that there were no penalties at all for coming back, no limit to how often it could be done, and no cost to it beyond a character having and casting the appropriate spell, and even when I gave the party a rod of resurrection at the beginning of a campaign - the players tried to avoid character death because to die was to spend more resources than if not to die, to take longer than if not to die, and often enough to fail to achieve some goal because to die was to miss the opportunity needed.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Of course, if after the first character dies and is replaced by a lower level character the entire party is then scaled back to face challenges more appropriate to the new character's level than their own (whether that is because the DM tailors challenges to particular levels, or because the players are in direct control of what level of challenge they face) so that the lowest level character can contribute more noticeably to the party effort - then it might not be as significant a problem as I have seen it be.

Presumably, the party is aware that it is less capable than it once was, and pursues less dangerous adventures for a while. They will probably also be more cautious during those pursuits. If the DM is railroading them down a particular path, then they'll have to perform a course correction to account for this turbulence.

And if the level gap would be too wide - if everyone else is around level 15, and a level 1 character would never survive with them - then you could retire those characters for a while and have everyone make new characters. Then, once they're all up to level 7 or so, some of the new characters could start going on adventures with some of the old characters. (Although, that may not be feasible if you're in the middle of a long quest.)

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Presumably, the party is aware that it is less capable than it once was, and pursues less dangerous adventures for a while. They will probably also be more cautious during those pursuits. If the DM is railroading them down a particular path, then they'll have to perform a course correction to account for this turbulence.

My experience, being the DM staggeringly more often than one of the players, is that it doesn't matter if the DM is "railroading" the party - the players of the characters that didn't die can feel resentment that, because of a ruling that could totally be made differently, their characters have to change gears from whatever goal they had at the time of the character death, so it can feel very much like "Well, Jim's character died so now we have to carry some newbie through the rest of this lich's tower to finally get our payback for that evil thing it did, or we have to go do something more newbie-friendly and as a direct result let that lich get away with that evil thing it did because there is no way it is just going to sit and wait for us to be ready to come back."

And if the level gap would be too wide - if everyone else is around level 15, and a level 1 character would never survive with them - then you could retire those characters for a while and have everyone make new characters. Then, once they're all up to level 7 or so, some of the new characters could start going on adventures with some of the old characters. (Although, that may not be feasible if you're in the middle of a long quest.)

I can honestly say that I don't think I've ever personally played D&D with anyone that would choose putting the entire campaign on hold at the death of one character in order to start up a secondary campaign at starting level that is meant to be closely related enough to the first campaign that at a certain point everyone playing, except the player whose character necessitated this whole scenario, could switch over to their original characters over the option of trying to finish up the campaign without the player whose character died - let alone any that would consider it a superior alternative to the player being able to continue playing the campaign at the same level as the rest of the players (whether it was their character that died, or someone else).

 

[pukunui]

Gain a Flaw?

A role-playing drawback (that's an opportunity and a challenge) but not an irksome mechanical penalty.

This is how I've been handling resurrection in my campaign. I was inspired by Beric Dondarrion from Game of Thrones. He says that every time he gets resurrected, he loses a bit of himself in the process. So when a PC gets resurrected in my campaign, one (or more) of their traits gets changed, or a flaw gets amplified, or they gain a form of indefinite madness. Sometimes they lose body parts too.

 

[Sunseeker]

This is how I've been handling resurrection in my campaign. I was inspired by Beric Dondarrion from Game of Thrones. He says that every time he gets resurrected, he loses a bit of himself in the process. So when a PC gets resurrected in my campaign, one (or more) of their traits gets changed, or a flaw gets amplified, or they gain a form of indefinite madness. Sometimes they lose body parts too.

An old 4E game I played, one of my first, had the players roll a check, raw 20, kind of a will to live check when being resurrected. It was more a check on how well the resurrection went rather than if it succeeded or not, a nat 20 could potentially give you something cool and a nat 1 would be the opposite. Everything in between was a guide for the DM to get creative. It only actually came into play once, when a person rolled a nat 1 and the DM ruled that they came back with a gimp leg, which reduced their speed by 5. Not a HUGE punishment by any means, and since he was a caster it wasn't a real problem for him anyway since he didn't move around much.

But it was enough to cause some impact in the game, and he got creative with it so we all had a good time.

Which was really my point. Penalties for the sake of penalties doesn't add anything to the game.

 

[Psikerlord#]

This is how I've been handling resurrection in my campaign. I was inspired by Beric Dondarrion from Game of Thrones. He says that every time he gets resurrected, he loses a bit of himself in the process. So when a PC gets resurrected in my campaign, one (or more) of their traits gets changed, or a flaw gets amplified, or they gain a form of indefinite madness. Sometimes they lose body parts too.

I could definitely get behind a fluff style madness trait that cannot be cured. That would be fun and still be a meaningful "penalty", from time to time.

 

[Psikerlord#]

An old 4E game I played, one of my first, had the players roll a check, raw 20, kind of a will to live check when being resurrected. It was more a check on how well the resurrection went rather than if it succeeded or not, a nat 20 could potentially give you something cool and a nat 1 would be the opposite. Everything in between was a guide for the DM to get creative. It only actually came into play once, when a person rolled a nat 1 and the DM ruled that they came back with a gimp leg, which reduced their speed by 5. Not a HUGE punishment by any means, and since he was a caster it wasn't a real problem for him anyway since he didn't move around much.

But it was enough to cause some impact in the game, and he got creative with it so we all had a good time.

Which was really my point. Penalties for the sake of penalties doesn't add anything to the game.

That's the thing though. If you give out the right kind of penalty, like a gimp leg or madness, it does add to the game in a positive way. Having no penalty however, or a very transient penalty like -4 hit for 24 hours, takes something away from the enjoyment (if you like the game to be challenging - I know! subjective, what is challenging!))

 

[Sunseeker]

That's the thing though. If you give out the right kind of penalty, like a gimp leg or madness, it does add to the game in a positive way. Having no penalty however, or a very transient penalty like -4 hit for 24 hours, takes something away from the enjoyment (if you like the game to be challenging - I know! subjective, what is challenging!))

The -4 penalty lasts for 4 (potentially more) days, per the rules, reducing by one each long rest.

I don't think the point of death "penalties" should be to "increase the challenge", but to increase flavor. A -5 to movement speed doesn't increase the challenge of the game in any substantive way. Now, halving the speed of a player, that does. But there's a fine line between increasing "challenge" and making a game unplayable. For some classes, even halved movement speed isn't much of a burden, for others its HUGE. A gimp leg that gives disadvantage on dex checks could take a rogue off the board, for good. A gimp leg that gives disadvantage on dex checks could mean little to a strength-based sword & board fighter who is perfectly content to stay in one spot and hold off the enemies.

This is why "standard" penalties tend to be bad ideas because the impact of the same penalty on different characters is naturally, different. So when in that 4E game out DM told us "good stuff happens on a crit, bad stuff happens on a fumble, everything in between is made up as I go" we were fine with that, because it meant the DM was giving some level of consideration to each situation.

I don't think there should be "rules" for this sort of stuff. Guidelines? Sure. I think the -4 penalty is a little bland but I also feel it is a reasonable compromise between people dying and "getting better" and people coming back so mangled that they can't even function (which sort of defeats the whole point of resurrecting!)

Guidelines are HARD though, real hard. You can't code them into a game without some DMs thinking they're absolutely useless or "not getting it" or thinking that they're absolutely mandatory and that everyone who comes back to life is a twisted wreck. And with that some people are going to see the Madness chart as a limit to the types of madness one can suffer from, or merely suggestion. Some people may include new things that may not be table appropriate, some people might remove things. Some people will think it's 100% on the DM; I don't think anything is ever 100% on one side or the other. The game is a conversation and input from players, especially when "things happen to them" is important. A DM unwilling to accept input, even on things the characters have no say over can make for a very bad game.

So, long story short: it's very hard to code "guidelines"

I don't play D&D for the "challenge", as I don't find D&D very challenging. I never have, it's a fairly simple game with simple rules that are easy to master. I want to have a good time with friends, beat up some bad guys, take their stuff and come away with a story I can tell later. Whatever adds to that is something I'm cool with. Anything else I'm largely ambivalent towards.

 

[pukunui]

I could definitely get behind a fluff style madness trait that cannot be cured. That would be fun and still be a meaningful "penalty", from time to time.

Yeah, so like one of the PCs had "Glory in battle" as his ideal, so when he died and got resurrected, I gave him the added flaw that he was now *obsessed* with earning glory in battle, to the detriment of other things in his life.

An NPC ally who was killed by an incubus' kiss and got revivified by the PC cleric came back with her infatuation with another PC turning into a full-blown stalkerish obsession, and she's now even gone so far as to enter into a warlock pact with Graz'zt.


Aside from not liking mechanical penalties, I decided to go with this method mainly because I'm running an episodic campaign with indeterminate periods of time passing between each adventure. Since any dead PCs would mostly get resurrected between adventures, the -4 penalty would be pointless, so I opted for something more permanent that adds as much as it takes away.

 

[Psikerlord#]

Yeah, so like one of the PCs had "Glory in battle" as his ideal, so when he died and got resurrected, I gave him the added flaw that he was now *obsessed* with earning glory in battle, to the detriment of other things in his life.

An NPC ally who was killed by an incubus' kiss and got revivified by the PC cleric came back with her infatuation with another PC turning into a full-blown stalkerish obsession, and she's now even gone so far as to enter into a warlock pact with Graz'zt.


Aside from not liking mechanical penalties, I decided to go with this method mainly because I'm running an episodic campaign with indeterminate periods of time passing between each adventure. Since any dead PCs would mostly get resurrected between adventures, the -4 penalty would be pointless, so I opted for something more permanent that adds as much as it takes away.

Yeah I really like this, I believe this is the best way to handle madness - interesting flaws that the player can experiment with and make the game more interesting for everyone, rather than a chart of results such as "stunned" or "incapacitated while babbling incoherently" etc (which I consider too strong and too combat focused).