Balance and Character Death

[jgbrowning]

Okay, I'll bite: what's the difference between "the undesired" and "negative?"

The undesired is intra-character power imbalances. A negative would be any other penalty.


joe b.

 

[JoeGKushner]

The situation I thought off when writing the question was when the party's fighter died three times in one day (he was 14th level or so). Once by save or die, once on a BIG crit, and once heroically protecting the wizard from death by acting the meat shield. He ended up three levels below the rest of the party after the game. That wasn't pleasing for me, him, nor everyone else. This triggered my thought pattern concerning the design choices.

joe b.

I guess my next question is how are you determining experience points? If you do it by the 3.5 RAW, those three level diferences will make sure that the fighter gets a huge amount of XP in comparission to his comrades unless you ruled that since he died he gets no XP.

 

[Belen]

Ok, the idea behind D&D classes is that they should be roughly balanced to increase gaming fun. Now, when you die you lose a level. This disrupts the concept of balance. In higher level games, it's possible to have one character die several times while another doesn't die once leading to even more power discrepancy. I'm trying to justify a death penalty involving level loss, when the holy grail of 3E is character to character game balance.

Thoughts?

joe b.

In my campaigns, if you die and decide that you want to be brought back to life, you take a negative level until you would naturally gain another level. The effect stacks, but when you gain the next level, you are normal.

 

[gizmo33]

I guess this is where we disagree. The guy only needs a new character because of the punishment mechanic that's counter to the balance design of the rest of the game. Story wise and character wise everything was still perfectly ok.

I'm wondering why they went with the level loss instead of CON loss.

I'm mostly with Fusangite, balanced character classes and opportunity is not the same thing as balanced characters.

Also, the "punishment mechanic" as you call it IS DnD, I don't think there is a "rest of the game" outside of that. When your character does well, he gets treasure, experience, fame/status, achievement of personal goals, continued life, etc. If not, he loses one or more of these things.

You cannot remove the risk of gain and loss from the game without turning it into a novel. In fact, IMO I don't think you can overly manipulate the randomness of the game without players losing their sense of belief in the game world.

 

[Jubilee]

I'm wondering why they went with the level loss instead of CON loss.

joe b.

I would say it's likely because experience is much easier to get back than CON. I've suffered level loss from death before, and while it isn't fun, it's easier to rebound from than lost CON, since you only get to raise a stat once every 4 levels - plus, losing your character level in HP perminently is never a good thing.

 

[Evilhalfling]

I just mentioned this on another thread, but it is more appropriate for this one.

I would prefer Raise Dead to adding new characters. New PCs need new plot hooks, and force abandonment of old stories. They need new motivations to travel, and sometimes become difficult to explain. ie the party is in an underground deserted city, how does the new PC show up? What if the group makes it to the forgotten isle of Hale'Tul, where teleports and planar travel are cut off?
This is a worse problem on high lethality dungeon crawls like CoSQ and RttToEE.

Players have refused to comeback from the dead, on the grounds that the 5k cost and the level loss will put them at a liability, while a new PC brought in at a level equal to the lowest level survivor will be better off. Compounding the problem is that the most regular players tend to die less often, and thus are ahead xp already.


I could lower the starting level for new characters, but in my democratic group that would require a vote.

 

[Arnwyn]

I'm trying to justify a death penalty involving level loss, when the holy grail of 3E is character to character game balance.

Thoughts?

Any unbalancing due to some discrepancy in character levels due to death and raising are highly overrated. IMO/IME.

Edit: Oh, yeah. And what fusangite said.

 

[Kid Socrates]

Or just give them a number of "lives" to use up. Like in a video game. Let them take a feat to gain two extra lives back. Yes, it's silly. But with enough flavor text it could be cool.

I did this for a character in my 2-PC game who seemed to find a way to be at the source of every explosion/fireblast/critical hit in rhe game. Since then he's toned down the recklessness he approached the game with, but still takes crazy risks, as that's just his style. Is the character dying through poor play/management, or just the way the dice fall?

I recommend against penalizing the whole group; that could lead to tension and "I didn't jump into the otyugh's mouth, so I don't see why -I- need to pay!"

 

[sniffles]

I know some folks will tar-and-feather me in effigy for this, but I think after the second time the PC died in the same session it was time to fudge some dice.

I tend to agree with Evilhalfling that finding some way to keep the same character is preferable to trying to find a way to introduce a new PC, unless the PC has suffered numerous deaths, in which case it is time to retire from adventuring. One GM I play with has a house rule that if someone can administer healing in the same round in which the PC fell to -10 HP, the character doesn't die. His roleplaying explanation is that the soul hasn't departed for the afterlife quite yet. I could see adjusting this slightly to say that if the healing is administered before the fallen PC's next action would normally occur, death can be averted. I might further rule that even if said healing brings the PC back to positive HP, the character is still unconscious or otherwise unable to take any action - the PC did nearly die, after all. And if more effect is desired a temporary Con loss could be applied. I admit I'm not as rules-savvy as many on these boards, so there may be some other effects of this that I'm not taking into account.

 

[green slime]

Joe, I think you are defining "balance" like a Swede instead of an American. Balance is about equality of opportunity not equality of outcome. Balance merely serves to place players on a level field of play with one another; it is not designed to harmonize character power.

If people play equally well, they have equally powerful characters. But if people play badly by
(a) not showing up for games
(b) not playing well enough to earn bonus XP (if such is awarded in a game)
(c) multi-classing inappropriately
(d) getting killed
(e) playing a powerful character inefficiently or incompetently, failing to make effective use of the XP/levels he or she has
they get to be less powerful and do less stuff. That's balance; now I think you can distort balance into equality of power but that entails some minor rule changes.

EDIT: As to the dying several times problem, my typical solution to major XP disparity is to let the player introduce another character at close to the average party level. Dying that many times and surviving starts to hurt the story; at that point, the mechanics should pressure a player into retiring their character, whether it's his fault or simple bad luck.

But that disregards the fact that certain character classes, are due to their roles within the party, subject themselves to more risks than others. For instance Fighters, which are often meat shields, and get mangled.