Closing the Rotating Door of Death

[ruemere]

If you're "closing revolving door of death" you're also telling your front-line characters to switch to casters (or at least middle liners). In my experience, it's the front-liners who get to die most often - take criticals and spells to the face, get stomped into ground by CR equivalent monsters or encounter traps.

Regards,
Ruemere

PS. Enforcing wealth guidelines suggestion is a thread winner here (it is also a great way to take off that surplus treasure). Another winner is challenging players in a way they can pull through without hauling dead bodies afterwards. The former requires reading rules by GM, the latter expanding GM's repertoire.

PS.2. Apologies in advance to everyone who has been offended by implied lack of familiarity with the rules or inadequate skills. It's just that with 5k to 25k gold pieces per death, it does not take long for clerics to run out of diamonds... just mark those diamonds on player's sheet and remember that such diamonds are not necessarily in the treasury of nearest temple.

 

[Starfox]

I think death is a part of most good stories. A story where none of the important characters die despite repeated mortal danger is - IMHO - too unrealistic.

This, of course, depends on what you're simulating. When simulating heroic literature, one or two deaths for the entire campaign seems about appropriate. If simulating rl, about 20% casualties makes more sense for each major battle (beyond that point morale breaks), circa 1/3 of which are fatalities. But what are the fireballs doing there?

I think this is a matters of personal preference, and think that's all right. The "simulationist" card is often used as an excuse for what is really personal preferences.

 

[Bleys Icefalcon]

Quite a bit of input on this - my thanks; and my concern about everyone always coming back from the dead - generally isn't when I am at the helm. If you are the lone survivor of a party of 5, if you do somehow manage to find some hair, a severed finger, the partially eaten foot - etc, of each of your comrades, and then somehow find that neutral-at-best nomadic plains village, and it does happen to have a witch doctor, and they are willing to help - said witch doctor is going to look at you like you're a crazy person when you ask him to restore your friends. Go a separate direction, and our intrepid survivor manages to make his way all the way back to civilization, walks into the High Temple of Donblas in Specularum, and even somehow gains an audience with Murzcul, the High Priest - again, he'll be looked at like a crazy person. A) Our hero is what? 5th level? Not even up to being a Nobody yet. B) Our hero isnt rich (not at 5th level he ain't). C) Our Hero doesn't believe in Gods persay, he's an Animist. D) NONE of the fallen worshipped Donblas. E) No powerful patron in the city backing them/willing to influence the temple. F) etc etc etc... all equal no raising on nobody.

My concern is actually with those games I have played in, recently, that make Dungeons and Dragons PEN and PAPER version, the equivelent of a MMORPG. You die, bammo, you're back. At your spawn point, at your lifestone, fade to black and wake up, it was a dream, whatever. IMHO the threat of mortality is a key element to Dungeons and Dragons, all versions. If that rogue screws up and doesn't disarm the pin trap in the lock, and then, when he goes to pick what he believes is a now trap-less lock - and bammo, get's a small wound in his finger from a poisoned needle - then his fortitude better save his butt - in my world, if it doesn't, and there's not the right kind of help available, and it IS a deadly poison as opposed to something that reduces CON, or DEX, etc - then there's to Fade to Black, no lifestone, no back to restart point, he's DEAD.

For me, I am not interested in a game where I am immortal, and no matter my mistakes, ultimately I win. That, for me would be seriously boring. I need the following things: Story, Purpose, Continuity and Risk/Reward. If I am somehow dropped into an erupting volcano (an earlier example in the thread) unless I happen to have a Necklace of Adaptation on, or, I am part Fire Elemental, I am expecting to be dead.

 

[Umbran]

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

From inside the player's heads.

I played in a live-action campaign for three years (5 sessions a year, each an entire weekend event) that had a rule - you didn't die unless you wanted to. The rule existed for good reasons: many of us drove 8+ hours to get to the events and were paying for hotel rooms for a weekend; if you died on Friday night, your time and money were wasted, and if someone had written stuff that expected you to be there Saturday afternoon, the scene could be screwed for everyone else, too.

You had "survival points" you could buy with XP, just like skills. The first death cost you one SP, the second death 2, the third three, and so on. If you got offed in a fight, afterwards the GMs would confer to see if it was really a legal death, and nobody'd screwed up. If you were dead, you could spend your SP, and you had been "just this side of death", and come back okay. Three years, 60+ players, and not a single case of someone dying when they didn't want to.

This didn't keep fights from being exciting. It didn't mean that we weren't careful dealing with enemies.

Excitement at these things is a matter of mindset - it may be easier to keep the mindset if the rules back it up, but by no means should it be impossible. That's what your imagination is for, after all.

 

[smetzger]

On a side note, when characters die, what do you do with their gear?

Prior to 3e, my groups redistributed the dead individual's gear to other party members and new PCs started with mundane gear only (wills were often ignored; the idea of burying someone with their favored gear didn't even cross our minds).

3E presented a problem with the wealth-by-level guidelines for repacements, and I never came up with a good solution to the "extra wealth" this could end up generating.

I let the player who lost the character and is creating a new one choose...

Dead Characters gear kept by the 'party' - then new character starts at NPC gold.
dead character gear not kept by party - then new character starts at PC gold wealth

Whichever is chosen we come up with an in game rational.

 

[Bullgrit]

I'll skip over all the hyperbole in the OP, and just go to this question for everyone:

Why is permanent PC death a desire for so many DMs? You want the Players to fear PC death? Really, what's to fear? If that dead PC doesn't come back to life, it's not like the Player isn't right back in the game with a new PC as soon as the DM can work it in.

In my experience, PC death is more a headache/problem/complication for the DM than a fear for the Player.

Someone explain this concept to me, (in simple terms), because I really don't see why DMs want dead PCs to stay dead. How does permanent PC death improve a game? How is making a new 10th-level character to replace the dead PC better than just letting the group revive the fallen 10th-level character?

PCs dying is part of the danger of an adventure. Taking the corpse to a temple and raising them back is part of the D&D conceit. Only at very high levels is reviving dead characters relatively "easy." At low levels it's relatively improbable, at mid levels its relatively possible, and at high levels is relatively probable.

But no one has a problem with a new 2nd, 6th, 10th, 15th, 20th level character walking into the story to replace the dead PC?

Bullgrit

 

[Michael Silverbane]

In my group, when a PC dies, we also kill his player. If we find a new player to replace the old one, they can get the previous character resurrected if they like. It doesn't happen very often, though.

 

[Umbran]

Really, what's to fear?

That depends on how you play. If you're the Beer&Pretzels sort, not much.

Take a guy who makes ships in a bottle for a hobby, and threaten to take a baseball bat to one he spent a year or more assembling. Or threaten to take a box cutter to a painter's favorite work. Watch how they react.

If you're the sort who does immersion roleplaying, there's a significant investment of time and creativity in a long-standing character. Folks can become emotionally attached to the fictional construct, having invested some of their own emotions into its creation.

 

[Bullgrit]

Take a guy who makes ships in a bottle for a hobby, and threaten to take a baseball bat to one he spent a year or more assembling. Or threaten to take a box cutter to a painter's favorite work. Watch how they react.

I understand what you're meaning, but these aren't quite good analogies. In both these cases, the creators don't routinely, and by design, take the bottles and canvases into dangerous scenarios with the intent to put them into destructive activities.

If you're the sort who does immersion roleplaying, there's a significant investment of time and creativity in a long-standing character. Folks can become emotionally attached to the fictional construct, having invested some of their own emotions into its creation.

I understand this concept. But do DMs enjoy putting this fear of loos of emotional investment into players? Do DMs enjoy watching Players squirm under the threat of loosing something they've put emotional attachment to? I would think, if emotional value has been placed into a character, then the ability to bring that character back to life would be considered a good thing.

How about DMs who invest a lot into building a campaign or world. If the party TPKs, should the DM have to give up the emotional investment he's put into the creation of the campaign and world? If the party TPKs, should the DM have to drop the campaign and world, and have to build another? I mean, if all the main characters of the story die, and they can't come back, why should the DM get to revive his own creation with another party?

Bullgrit