D&D 5E D&D 5e death and consequences?

[aramis erak]

Pretty much every popular RPG has a way to do this. Probably because people enjoy their characters and would rather continue to play the one they already have rather than roll up a new one they have no attachment to.

Not true. FFG Star Wars lacks such. Traveller lacks such. Fate doesn't either, nor any of the Cortex Plus games.

GURPS does, but it's bloody hard to get to.

 

[mcbobbo]

Pretty much every popular RPG has a way to do this. Probably because people enjoy their characters and would rather continue to play the one they already have rather than roll up a new one they have no attachment to.

"Some" people some of the time.

Again rerolls are a factor and power creep significantly drives that. Games with less splat or less splat-induced power creep would see more resurrection spells getting used.

Think RIFTS, if you've played that. I can't recall a time where anyone even asked about coming back from the dead in that game. Same with 3e and Pathfinder, IME. In old school Basic it was a bigger deal because we didn't have so much new shiny tempting the players.

 

[ExploderWizard]

that's two, only tangentially related questions...
1) are the rules based upon organized play or at-home play
2) should the rules be based upon organized play or at-home play

I think in both cases, the answer is "Organized play".

See, at home play is always going to be all over them map, due to house-rules, bull-headedness, willful misinterpretations, accidental misinterpretations, and 3rd party supplements.

Organized play, however, has no provision for house-rules, nor for 3rd party supplements. Therefore, it needs to be played closer to the rules simply to preserve the experience. And that is easiest if the rules are written to directly support organized play.

The correct answer is:

Whichever way inspires more people to want to run the game.

A game spreads and becomes successful based on how many people become inspired to run it and get groups together.

Organized play rules, designed for the blandest common denominator, do not inspire DMs.

 

[Paraxis]

So why does D&D need such lax "return from the death" rules or needs them at all?

I don't think it "needs" it but it has it, it is part of playing D&D to me. Death is only a minor setback, the cleric says some words and poof you are back on your feet. If I wanted to play in a gritty fantasy game I would run warhammer fantasy. Cheap resurrections go hand in hand with beholders, dominatrix drow elves, metallic/chromatic dragons, and hit points D&D isn't D&D without them.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Have you ever wondered why D&D is one of the only few non-humor RPGs out there which even has a hardcoded and easy way to revive dead characters?
Why is this even necessary?

Nope, never wondered. They were the first RPG and Gygax/Arneson et al. included Raise Dead because I assume it seemed like a type of magic a god might give his/her faithful. And with no other system to compare it to... there was no reason to consider whether it was or wasn't a good idea to include it. Seems pretty self-explanatory to me.

Now 40 years and countless other RPG systems later, sure it seems "easier" to raise characters from the dead by comparison to those other systems... but so what? That's D&D. So what difference does it make? They include rules that an individual DM might have to change or remove because they don't like it. Seems to me, that's the quintessence of D&D right there.

 

[KarinsDad]

In a straight up white room simulation, we can calculate the survival odds of a party based on their stats and the monster stats to determine if the encounter is overly deadly. Lets say we run the simulated combat ten times and the party has at best a 30% chance to win the fight.

In actual play, the party does a good job scouting, recognizes the threat, a formulates a plan to deal with it. They could prepare a nasty trap, lead the monster into it and kill it with relative ease. They may locate another monster and lead it to the problem monster, start a fight then mop up the winner. The circumstances of their approach are everything in this case. A probable TPK is turned into a solid victory based on encounter circumstances being under the players' control.

In order for the players to be successful in scouting, etc., it requires the cooperation of the DM. If he makes the DCs too difficult, the group might be back at the 30% success level. If he makes it too easy, then the PCs are getting easy XP under the illusion that the PC actions actually mattered. But in reality, the DM was helping.

The fact is that if the DM sets up the 30% chance to win encounter and the players do NOT come up with a good solution, or even have bad dice rolls, or even did not figure out that they needed to come up with a non-direct fight solution, and the DM has a punitive Raise Dead, he's screwing over his players. He's the one who set up the encounter and he's the one who set the DCs for a workaround solution.

To me, that's bad DMing. Not the 30% encounter, but the fact that the DM is blaming the players for not being good enough on a given day to figure out a solution to his mega-problem and on top of that, he is penalizing the players for failing and having PCs die. Sorry, that's lame. It does not matter how one plays the game, sets up the encounter, or how well the players figure out a way around it. Combat will occur, cold dice rolls will occur, and PCs will die sooner or later in most games. Penalizing the players for it when it happens and saying that it is their fault because they did not come up with a good enough solution and the DM not taking partial responsibility for the outcome is weak.

There's nothing wrong with PC death. There's nothing wrong with players making mistakes. There's something wrong when the DM does not understand that players are at his table to have fun and a lot of that fun comes through the cooperative and continuing storyline. The latter part of this is the word "continuing". When the DM tries to harshly modify the characters (e.g. giving them mental quirks, or lowering their ability scores, or punishing them with resurrection, or whatever), some players will wonder what the point is. Why is this DM being a jerk over this?

Some of the least satisfying games I have ever been in have been ones where some PCs die and the players are discouraged by the DM from getting their PC back. The story just, for all intents and purposes, stopped. Sure, the campaign might have continued, but the story stopped because Regnar is no longer part of it. Meh. There's nothing wrong with the players having to strive to get Regnar back, but punishing the players and not comprehending that the DM is also responsible for Regnar's death is where I draw the line. A DM who cannot figure that out, maybe not the DM for me.

 

[ExploderWizard]

There's nothing wrong with PC death. There's nothing wrong with players making mistakes. There's something wrong when the DM does not understand that players are at his table to have fun and a lot of that fun comes through the cooperative and continuing storyline. The latter part of this is the word "continuing". When the DM tries to harshly modify the characters (e.g. giving them mental quirks, or lowering their ability scores, or punishing them with resurrection, or whatever), some players will wonder what the point is. Why is this DM being a jerk over this?

Some of the least satisfying games I have ever been in have been ones where some PCs die and the players are discouraged by the DM from getting their PC back. The story just, for all intents and purposes, stopped. Sure, the campaign might have continued, but the story stopped because Regnar is no longer part of it. Meh. There's nothing wrong with the players having to strive to get Regnar back, but punishing the players and not comprehending that the DM is also responsible for Regnar's death is where I draw the line. A DM who cannot figure that out, maybe not the DM for me.

If you are playing for story lines instead of finding out what happens next, then yes, character deaths will have a huge impact on your fun.

What if your fun isn't bound to any specific characters and what they may be up to? Lets say you don't know which players will show up for a particular adventure. The only story line possible in such a campaign must be setting related because that is the only constant. Focusing on telling the story of character who might be there for two games, out for three, then back for a couple more quickly becomes problematic.

There are different campaign styles, and assuming the same players every session is only one of them.

 

[Sacrosanct]

In order for the players to be successful in scouting, etc., it requires the cooperation of the DM. If he makes the DCs too difficult, the group might be back at the 30% success level. If he makes it too easy, then the PCs are getting easy XP under the illusion that the PC actions actually mattered. But in reality, the DM was helping..

I think the big disconnect here is illustrated by the above paragraph. The DM does not cooperate or punish players when he or she sets DCs (or encounters, or whatever else). The DM does these things (or should) based on what makes sense, regardless of what the PCs do. I.e., if a particular check is hard, it's going to have a hard DC value. The particular level of the PCs, or their prof bonuses, or whether or not that check/encounter is hard for them isn't relevant. The challenges are there to exist in the game world and adhere to the rules of the game.

In order for the scouting to be successful, it doesn't require cooperation of the DM at all. It only requires the DM to be consistent within the world. There is a reason the DM was originally called the referee. It's just like a sports game. A team doesn't need the referees to give them favors and change things to benefit them in order for the team to win. The team just needs to beat the other team, and ideally the referees are impartial, only enforcing objective rules. Just like a DM should be.


*edit* to add to this and put it in a gaming context of why it's important, what it does is create a world where it sends the message to players that the game world doesn't cater to them, but exists independent of them. Take a DC 25 locked door. The DM isn't punishing a low level group of PCs by having the DC that high. The DC is that high because it's a very hard lock meant to keep most people out. It's that level of a DC regardless if it's a very hard or easy challenge for the particular party. If the PCs want in, they need to find another way (get a key, break it down, gain experience and come back, etc). Same with encounters. If there is a clan of ogres in the hills, it's not the DM punishing the players if their group of level 1 PCs decide to go exploring up there anyway and get killed. The opposite is also true. If the group of level 20 PCs decide to go into the woods where there is a clan of goblins living, it's not the DM being unfair to change those goblins to something more level appropriate. The goblins have always lived there. If the PCs didn't want such an easy encounter, perhaps they should have gone somewhere else. Point is, players make the choice, the DM just enforces the rules and runs the world.

 

[KarinsDad]

If you are playing for story lines instead of finding out what happens next, then yes, character deaths will have a huge impact on your fun.

What if your fun isn't bound to any specific characters and what they may be up to? Lets say you don't know which players will show up for a particular adventure. The only story line possible in such a campaign must be setting related because that is the only constant. Focusing on telling the story of character who might be there for two games, out for three, then back for a couple more quickly becomes problematic.

There are different campaign styles, and assuming the same players every session is only one of them.

Of course. But before changing the penalties, the DM should find out which style his players prefer. Some people might enjoy changing PCs like their underwear, but I do not think that it is the default style at most tables. And hence, I'm glad that the default rules allow for a mild penalty that eventually disappears.

 

[Joddy37]

I always took death as a serious business in my campaigns. I don't like players freely use their vast resources without much thought on raising everytime someone is dead. I make the access to the spells way harder and more difficult. The churches may not even give the service unless the dead character is one of their high ranking member and it is imperative that he should be resurrected. He is expected to accomplish many things in his life and they believe it is too early for him to die etc. Material components for the spells need to be discovered and earned rather than simply acquired. The players should feel resurrection magic is always a little beyond their reach. It should get them into a dilemma. But on the other hand, I make dying a little harder. I hate to see my player die as a result of a few bad die rolls. I throw them challenges at varying risks and take note how much risk they take. If they make reckless actions the danger of death is high. If they act very safe I don't punish them ever. I didn't experiment on it yet, but I plan to make death saving throws secret to add a level of uncertainty. With this and the rare access to resurrection magic, I want to make my players take death very seriously.