Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dragonblade" data-source="post: 5803433" data-attributes="member: 2804">I think there are a couple of different questions here.In a micro sense, how often should PCs fail and how severe should the penalty be when they do? (e.g. How difficult should swinging across a chandelier be and what happens to the PC if they fail?)In a macro campaign sense, how likely should PC's "fail" and how often does failure mean death?And I think it vastly depends on the game and the people playing it.For example, in a micro sense, I dislike excessive checks or high DCs to see if actions succeed. I think a high chance of failure when a PC tries a stunt or some cool action that they should reasonably be able to do teaches players that they have to min/max or powergame to be successful. Or teaches them to turtle up and never try anything new or different.I like cinematic action scenes where the PC's swing across a chandelier, or run up the huge monster's back and try to stab it while it tries to fling them off. I want keep some chance of failure, but I set the DC low enough that most of the time the PCs can succeed (80% or more). I want to encourage them to try such things in the game.Now in a macro sense, I have no problem with PC failure/death if it is the end result of a series of poor choices or tactics by the PCs. I dislike games where the threat of death or failure largely results from random chance (i.e. one or two poor rolls). Also in story driven games, death can be a huge setback if a particular character is heavily invested in the story. I've seen campaigns end over a key PC dying unexpectedly. Not only because it derailed the story, but also because the player in question lost their enthusiasm for the game once they did die and it snowballed to the other players.In my Pathfinder game which is heavily story based, the DM has created the "Final Fantasy" rule. If a PC ever "dies" they are instead treated as "Swooned". They are out for the rest of the combat (i.e. they can no longer be healed and get back into the fight) and their status is frozen until the battle is over. If its a TPK, well then everyone dies (or is captured). If at least one PC is left standing, then all swooned or negative HP PCs, immediately recover to 1 HP.</blockquote>

Verification