Closing the Rotating Door of Death

[Bleys Icefalcon]

One of my personal frustrations - as a DM yes, but also as a player - was the high magic involved with the demise of a character. If we were low level, and any of us survived the fight, just gather up the dead and head to the nearest temple - bammo, somehow in the middle of nowhere, in this 3 horse hick town 170 leagues from anywhere the one, lone priest was somehow powerful enough to Raise the Dead. And if we were high level - the threat of mortality didn't exist. The players would actually get pissy about who got to raise said person and how. Battles, and dying became non-threatening, to the point that they didn't care if they died. Why? pop some Pheonix Down!

So I had to do something... and do it fast. I brought the old System Shock/Ressurect Survival % back from 1st/2nd Edition. And the 1st time they died, that's what they rolled on. Pretty high chance of survival, right? How I closed the rotating door is this: Each Subsequent death, the residual percentile is HALVED. So, 99% survival that first death, lose a point of con, the next death ISN'T 96% - it's 48%!!! Assuming they survive that - lose another point of con, not 93%, but Q U A R T E R E D - 23%!!! and so on. All of a sudden people started thinking about combat and in many cases avoiding it. They became a little more careful with that trapped chest instead of just attacking the damn thing with a mace.

I understand it's a fantasy game, and yeah, in fantasy, if you're powerful enough, you get to come back. But - in a high level campaign I was running a few years back we had character's with in excess of 50 deaths. Wishes, deals with demon lords, gods, high priests, items - etc - all allowing loopholes in the loss of constitution. Much of the damage wrought long before I took the reigns. I had to reign it in.

Initally there as resentment. But, afer a period of adjustment, the thrill of battle returned. There was passion instead of trying to see who could make the biggest mess jumping face first of of the cliff to the rock below. the PC's at the top of the cliff trying to see a pattern in the blood and gore...

 

[Votan]

One of my personal frustrations - as a DM yes, but also as a player - was the high magic involved with the demise of a character. If we were low level, and any of us survived the fight, just gather up the dead and head to the nearest temple - bammo, somehow in the middle of nowhere, in this 3 horse hick town 170 leagues from anywhere the one, lone priest was somehow powerful enough to Raise the Dead. And if we were high level - the threat of mortality didn't exist. The players would actually get pissy about who got to raise said person and how. Battles, and dying became non-threatening, to the point that they didn't care if they died. Why? pop some Pheonix Down!

So I had to do something... and do it fast. I brought the old System Shock/Ressurect Survival % back from 1st/2nd Edition. And the 1st time they died, that's what they rolled on. Pretty high chance of survival, right? How I closed the rotating door is this: Each Subsequent death, the residual percentile is HALVED. So, 99% survival that first death, lose a point of con, the next death ISN'T 96% - it's 48%!!! Assuming they survive that - lose another point of con, not 93%, but Q U A R T E R E D - 23%!!! and so on. All of a sudden people started thinking about combat and in many cases avoiding it. They became a little more careful with that trapped chest instead of just attacking the damn thing with a mace.

I understand it's a fantasy game, and yeah, in fantasy, if you're powerful enough, you get to come back. But - in a high level campaign I was running a few years back we had character's with in excess of 50 deaths. Wishes, deals with demon lords, gods, high priests, items - etc - all allowing loopholes in the loss of constitution. Much of the damage wrought long before I took the reigns. I had to reign it in.

Initally there as resentment. But, afer a period of adjustment, the thrill of battle returned. There was passion instead of trying to see who could make the biggest mess jumping face first of of the cliff to the rock below. the PC's at the top of the cliff trying to see a pattern in the blood and gore...

I think that just adding ressurection survival rolls (and costing them a point of CON) will have the desired effect. Death will be dreaded but there can be second chances.

 

[Stormonu]

Simply enforcing the GP cost (and limiting casting to communities with the proper GP limit) and loss of level/constitution was enough to dissuade abuse in my games. Pretty much players preferred to just roll up new characters who could replace the lost after a quick intro instead of being hauled back to the capital and be raised (and getting there in time) and suffer all the losses associated with the raising.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

*shrug*

My approach would be even simpler... "There is no way of coming back from the dead."

Every GM I had back in the U.S simply banned Raise Dead outright. That was just how D&D (BECMI and AD&D both) was played in any group I was in.

I personally don't subscribe to character death when I run games, unless the table insists on it. Yup, that's right... characters don't die. At least, not in the usual way. I'm an all or nothing sort of fellow when it comes to character death; either a character dies and stays freaking dead, or death is off the table as a consequence. Stuff like system shock rolls and all that just strike me as screwing around; people (both the GM and the players) need to actually commit to a course of action in my opinion.

If characters not being able to die "cheapens their effort" or "reduces the drama", then I don't see how simply charging extra money or making them make random rolls is going to suddenly increase the value again. My own opinion though and not really a popular one.

 

[ExploderWizard]

*shrug*

My approach would be even simpler... "There is no way of coming back from the dead."

Every GM I had back in the U.S simply banned Raise Dead outright. That was just how D&D (BECMI and AD&D both) was played in any group I was in.

I personally don't subscribe to character death when I run games, unless the table insists on it. Yup, that's right... characters don't die. At least, not in the usual way. I'm an all or nothing sort of fellow when it comes to character death; either a character dies and stays freaking dead, or death is off the table as a consequence. Stuff like system shock rolls and all that just strike me as screwing around; people (both the GM and the players) need to actually commit to a course of action in my opinion.

If characters not being able to die "cheapens their effort" or "reduces the drama", then I don't see how simply charging extra money or making them make random rolls is going to suddenly increase the value again. My own opinion though and not really a popular one.

With death off the table, where does the sense of dangerous adventure come from?

" We better be careful in here. If those cultists catch us then we are getting chewed out big time AND they're gonna tell our moms!!"

I completely understand the no raising dead concept. Death as a permenant fate makes dangerous undertakings even more thrilling.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

My "fix" for this was fairly cosmetic ... I just: (1) Got rid of true resurrection completely, (2) changed resurrection to resuscitation (which must be performed within minutes of "death"), and (3) changed raise dead to revivify (which must be performed within seconds of "death").

Death is still scary, because of the time limits and lingering effects of the replacement spells, but the balance of the game (in which a challenging encounter will often result in a death) isn't changed much.

I hate "cheap death," but I hate the disruption caused by character turnover more. (And I hate fudging to keep characters alive even more than that.)

 

[Puggins]

The first part of Scurvy Platypus' solution is the way to go, IMO- no raise dead, no resurrection, nothing. The -10 hp threshold in 1e-3.x could be expanded to a percentage or a character's hit points in order to prevent massive damage deaths. 4e already does this to a certain extent, but then trips over itself by making raising the dead almost foolishly easy.

Make it harder for characters to die, but make those deaths permanent. Yes, you'll lose your characters you've played a couple years from time to time. So it goes.

 

[JustKim]

With death off the table, where does the sense of dangerous adventure come from?

" We better be careful in here. If those cultists catch us then we are getting chewed out big time AND they're gonna tell our moms!!"

I completely understand the no raising dead concept. Death as a permenant fate makes dangerous undertakings even more thrilling.

I think making death permanent but special encourages greater attachment to a character and greater character development. Of course, there are a lot of things that encourage character development, taking death off the table is not required.

So where does the sense of danger come from? From the failure of the characters to meet their goals, which is intrinsically more powerful than the inconvenience of being dead. If the characters are defeated, it potentially means their goal is not met. If some of the PCs are defeated, maybe the goal is met only partly.

Say for example the goal is to defeat a madman with a death ray. The PCs need to defeat the madman before they can stop the death ray from activating. If they're all defeated, the death ray goes off and wipes Happy Town off the map. If some PCs are defeated, they only manage to interrupt the death ray or divert the destruction. Something they care about still gets deathed.

It doesn't always need to be a death ray. The PCs just need to have a reason to overcome the obstacle beyond "oh man, I could die". IMHO, that's a weak motivation. The threat of death only goes so far as a character trait.

Some of this comes down to your expectations for D&D. I appreciate that some folks want death to be the underlying motivator to not fail, but that's really not my style. I appreciate wanting to take resurrection away, and to some extent I agree, but I wouldn't want to make a character for a game where death is both random and permanent. To me that is not fun.

 

[ExploderWizard]

but I wouldn't want to make a character for a game where death is both random and permanent. To me that is not fun.

No it isn't. In a game that allows players to make meaningful choices death shouldn't be random.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

No it isn't. In a game that allows players to make meaningful choices death shouldn't be random.

"Random" is why I use dice, so I'm sorta puzzled.