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

[Henrix]

Organized play, however, has no provision for house-rules,

Curiously, there is a fairly hefty pdf on Wizards site describing the rules for their organised play.


Most of the D&D games are not "organised play".

 

[aramis erak]

Curiously, there is a fairly hefty pdf on Wizards site describing the rules for their organised play.


Most of the D&D games are not "organised play".

And the "house rules" for organized play can be summarized in a paragraph:

"No rolled attributes, no feats, no evil PC's (with a couple exceptions for certain LE concepts), must work as a team, must share treasure, only a handful of spells available for purchase, no disruptive behavior, and only basic and the PHB allowed for classes."

A lot of that is administrativa, rather than house rules.
And a significant chunk is setting materials.

Let us look at the pagecount...
1: cover and credits
2: introduction 0.75p
3-4: character generation. 1.5p (campaign rules restrictions, nothing NEW.)
4-7: Logging Experience 3p (administrativa)
8-11: DMing in organized play 3.1p (administrativa)
11: Spellcasting Services (0.5p)
11: Disease and death 0.5 (campaign house rule - mostly a clarification)
11-12: DM advice 0.6p or so
12-13: Organizing Organized Play (administrativa)
14-15: Code of conduct and consequences
16-18: setting fluff - factions
19: faction benefits (houserule - seriously new material)
20: FAQ
21: links and resources.

So, it looks like 2p of actual additional rules.
It looks like 10pp of administrativa - stuff that shouldn't normally affect play, except by removing problem players.
And the DM advice is just that.

 

[Sadras]

As a DM, I can totally understand banning these. Banning them definitely makes the game feel more dangerous and exciting, and I can stand by that. But that wasn't just a steep price to bring their friend back, that was needlessly unfair. In 5E, losing the highest ability score is permanently crippling (a high level character going from a 20 to a 19 with no way to bring it back could make a hundred different things worse) and doling out the years of the deceased could outright kill some characters that have shorter lifespans (Halflings for instance).

My thoughts on the matter are this: They purposely made those spells as they are because letting the characters play more often outweighed the minor loss of a feeling of danger. I know from personal experience that having severe penalties for dying simply makes the characters frustrated, especially when it's the dice that caused the death, not the players. Imagine if you were playing a game like Skyrim or Dragon Age and you died part of the way through, but instead of simply restarting you quickly, the game forced you to wait several days before you could play again. And when you did, your whole party was less powerful, and therefore couldn't stand up to the monsters ahead. That sort of punishment is disingenuous to the players, who simply want to have fun.

I hear you, but I cannot agree with your assessment at all.
Firstly, halfling lifespans quoted from 5e Handbook: "and generally lives into the middle of his or her second century."
Secondly, you make the claim that you can in no way to bring back ability scores in 5e. I am surprised by this statement, putting magical means aside, as it seems you have completely ignored ability score improvements which all characters receive at various intervals in their level progression.
Third, you have equated tabletop RPGs to Skyrim and Dragon Age. I do not share that sentiment.
Fourth, from your reply you essentially make the claim (IMO) that people who play with level drain and loss of constitution are not having fun.
Fifth, you ascribe that my players are not having fun or that I am having badwrongfun. That is pretty brazen.
Instead of asking me how I came to that sort of cost for the resurrection for this particular PC and how I painstakingly weaved it with the lore of the setting in a campaign where there is no option for resurrection, you instead make an awful claim about the way I play.

 

[KarinsDad]

I hear you, but I cannot agree with your assessment at all.

...

Instead of asking me how I came to that sort of cost for the resurrection for this particular PC and how I painstakingly weaved it with the lore of the setting in a campaign where there is no option for resurrection, you instead make an awful claim about the way I play.

I agree with his assessment. Your handling of that Paladin situation seems excessively punitive for no good reason. Your play style is just not a play style that everyone shares. As he said, "They purposely made those spells as they are because letting the characters players play more often outweighed the minor loss of a feeling of danger."

Take a step back and ask yourself: "If I were a player playing my PC and he died, would I want my DM to make it this difficult to get this PC back?". If I were playing that game, I would straight out tell the other players to not even bother with this crap. Let my Paladin die.

It's a game. It's not the end of the world if a player gets his PC back, especially since there is already an in game cost associated with it.

In fact, you punished the entire team of players, not just one player. Yup, I definitely do not like your play style where you punish multiple players under the guise of "a cool storyline". Meh.

DM: "I'm going to rake you all over, but I'm going to do it in a really really cool way for the story."

Yeah, that's what I want my DM telling me. I "painstakingly weaved it with the lore of the setting in a campaign". I would tell my DM to step away from the caffeine if he told me this.


And then, "Six sessions later the party suffered a TPK." Seriously. Why am I not surprised?

 

[ExploderWizard]

It's a game. It's not the end of the world if a player gets his PC back, especially since there is already an in game cost associated with it.

Conversely , it's a game. It's not the end of the world if the player needs to generate a new PC and keep playing.

 

[Sadras]

And then, "Six sessions later the party suffered a TPK." Seriously. Why am I not surprised?

Well, since you don't have all the facts and you're a big fan of implied assumption, let me fill you in. Campaign is around 5 years old. We migrated from 4e to playtest material. No TPKs, no deaths in that time. I don't do this every other week if that is your impression.
Although they do say once the DM has tasted blood...

Take a step back and ask yourself: "If I were a player playing my PC and he died, would I want my DM to make it this difficult to get this PC back?". If I were playing that game, I would straight out tell the other players to not even bother with this crap. Let my Paladin die.

Actually the option was put to the remaining characters to raise him - he (player with dead character) had no say in the matter (player was out of the room, it was a surprise). They knew the level of sacrifice it required and yet they decided to go for it. It also brought in some new story-hooks. And it wasn't all doom and gloom.

Your play style is just not a play style that everyone shares.

Sure, I can accept that. I do not however go around calling other people's playstyles "disingenuous" or imply it is badwrongfun though, hence my abrupt reply to the previous poster. I'm not calling out my playstyle for that particular campaign as superior or anyone else's worse. I'm actually surprised you got involved in this debate, my reply post was not malicious in anyway.

As he said, "They purposely made those spells as they are because letting the characters players play more often outweighed the minor loss of a feeling of danger."

It really depends on your playstyle preference, the setting and those you play with. This session was also deemed one of our better ones - by them, so to each their own I suppose.

Just to let you know, I have recently been asked by 2 of my 5 permanent players, along with another outside my regular group, to run a 2e campaign using as much as we can the RAW rules of 2e for they feel 5e is too safe and very much everyone is too "samey". In fact they described the 2e campaign we are to embark on as Diablo 3 on Hardcore mode. This is what my players asked for.
So we will be rolling for treasure, using speed factor, rolling for hit points, abilities, using rod/staff/wand saves, dealing with level draining undead...etc They think this is fun!

In fact, you punished the entire team of players, not just one player. Yup, I definitely do not like your play style where you punish multiple players under the guise of "a cool storyline". Meh.

No problem, as long as you're having fun with your group of players. Great!
There are lots of DMs who post on Enworld different styles to mine. I do not call their style badwrongfun or disingenuous. In fact I love learning of various styles which are different to mine or what their playgroup prefers. Some groups play heavy logistics or heavy dungeon adventuring, others prefer more political campaigns, more roleplaying than combat. Others prefer a deadlier environment with hard consequences. Whatever - I say it is all good.

Variety, spice and all that.

 

[KarinsDad]

Conversely , it's a game. It's not the end of the world if the player needs to generate a new PC and keep playing.

True.

The problem is that it often takes a long time to create a PC, especially if the player is unsure of what he wants, if the PCs are higher level, and/or the PC is a spell caster.

So yeah, dying in the first hour and then sitting around creating a PC for a few more hours while the other players play kind of sucks.

 

[KarinsDad]

Variety, spice and all that.

Yup. It's all good. Game on.

 

[Sacrosanct]

True.

The problem is that it often takes a long time to create a PC, especially if the player is unsure of what he wants, if the PCs are higher level, and/or the PC is a spell caster.

So yeah, dying in the first hour and then sitting around creating a PC for a few more hours while the other players play kind of sucks.

You know, I think you'd get a lot more receptive responses if you would stop with all the crazy hyperbole in yours. Just say'n.

For one, you seem to shift the goal posts from one sentence to the next. You're talking about high level, and then shift to a brand new level 1 PC to support the previous sentence (assuming brand new, since you're talking about the very first hour of game play). Then you follow that up with saying it takes a few hours to create a new PC?

As the ESPN NFL gameday crew says, "Come on man!"

 

[the Jester]

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?

I just wanted to say that I found this to be a very interesting and thought-provoking observation, even if there are exceptions. It does seem as though D&D is more forgiving of character death than most other rpgs.

True.

The problem is that it often takes a long time to create a PC, especially if the player is unsure of what he wants, if the PCs are higher level, and/or the PC is a spell caster.

So yeah, dying in the first hour and then sitting around creating a PC for a few more hours while the other players play kind of sucks.

While I agree that a player could spend hours making up his mind about his choices, I think actual pc generation in 5e is pretty quick. I can't imagine it actually taking hours. Then again, I haven't rolled any pcs up above first level. (Then again, in my 5e game, everyone will start at first level.)