D&D with checkpoints?!

[Jester David]

One of my players expressed the idea of having "safe areas" where the party could rest and, if they suffer a Total Party Knockout, are returned to...basically making Checkpoints.

Does that take anything away from the fun of risk or is that a good safety net in case the dice "hiccup"?

(one of my players says his dice "Hiccup" whenever he gets a run of four or five bad rolls in a row)

The problem with this mechanic is that it would usually happen at a safe place early in a session, which would require re-playing an entire session to reach the boss again. Or at least multiple fights.
Repeating the narrative is much more of a pain in D&D.

It might be fun as a gimmick for a campaign.
Instead of rewinding the narrative, they might "respawn" at the saved location thanks to a magic item or ritual, but don't have to repeat the fights.
An alternate mechanic might be the ability to save mid-combat and then rewind back to that point in the same fight (ala Prince of Persian: Sands of Time)

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I'm not a fan of the idea of "save points" or "checkpoints" -- one of the advantages of D&D is that consequences of decisions matter, and save points remove that. There are perfectly valid alternatives that offer this options, i.e. CRPGs.

That said, I think periodic "safe areas" are good adventure design both for pacing and for balancing risk and reward. Many of the best adventures I've played plan this in deliberately, and it's a common feature of epic fantasy. Consider The Hobbit: adventure - break at Rivendell - adventure - break at Beorn's - adventure - break at Laketown - adventure - return home. Heck, The One Ring RPG (admittedly, sme source material) builds the game structure around this concept.

 

[pemerton]

Just because everyone is knocked unconscious (a Total Party Knockout as you put it) doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is dead.

<snip>

You (as DM) can see them all suffer a Total Party Knockout... but then have them wake up several hours later in chains in a cell somewhere if you want. Or tied up on a spit over a fire being built. Or strapped to an altar ready to be sacrificed.

The last time I had a TPK (when the PCs were 3rd level) I asked the players who wanted a new PC, and who wanted to keep going with his/her existing PC.

At the start of the next session, the PCs whose players wanted to keep their PCs awoke in a goblin prison cell. In there also was a strange drow (a new PC). And they could smell the smell of roasting half elf (the PC whose player wanted to drop his half-elf fey warlock in favour of a drow chaos sorcerer - "Wolfren, you were too beautiful for this world - but what a way to go!").

would explicitly remove the possibility of PC death from the game unless a player chooses a dramatic death scene (in which case death becomes possible for their PC who maybe gains a cool power up).

Old schoolers would balk at this, I know. The basic idea here is: "Threaten the quest, not the PCs." It requires the DM to come up with a variety of failure options that are meaningfully negative yet still keep the game going. I've run games like this and they were a lot of fun and I found there was more heroic risk-taking on the part of the players.

I've never played with explicit "death flag" rules, but I generally run my game in this sort of fashion - threaten the quest, fail forward etc.

Here is a link to some death flag rules designed for 3E.

The main thing I would emphasise is that those who say the possibility of failure matters are right, at least for most D&D games. So if you are going to use fail forward or death flag style approaches to take death off the table, you need to make sure that there are other stakes in play, so that even though the PCs aren't dead it still matters that they lost rather than won the fight.

 

[Razjah]

Does it take away from fun? It depends on the group's idea of fun. It certainly makes the game less deadly, and probably a lot easier. It removes the apprehension for pressing on. "We're low on health/spells/consumable resources" "Screw it, if we wipe, we just come back." There is no worry about going into a dangerous situation because the party will always come back (possibly growing less attached to the characters because there is no real threat). With death being so cheap, how will the players really care about their success?

There are a few approaches I can think of:

Embrace the "gamey" aspects. Dark Souls had a respawn mechanic that still penalized the player, you loose your souls and everything respawns. You can fight your way back to your souls to recover them (if you die before you get there you loose them for good). Also this game is really frickin hard. You will die, a lot. The tiny triumphs are all the more potent because you work so hard for them. You could make a really difficult dungeon quest and run the game like this. Constant enemies and loosing all the built up experience.

A sanity mechanic from coming back from the dead would be an interesting twist. You can keep being brought back, but you change as you go if you fail the saves.

Don't put death on the table. Encourage risks, and the PCs can only be KO'd at 0 HP of less. They don't have to worry about dying. (Already said)

Go play a video game, I have friends who love Wow this seems like it works there.

Fight out of hell- if there is a TPK, the party is captured by Death and brought to the Abyss. Here they must fight to reach or a spirit portal to be returned to their bodies. I would make the campaign without dungeons so that the Abyss could be a crawl/search mission to find a portal out of there. The time spent in the Abyss could cause the BBEG to gain an advantage in the campaign (better resources, spells prepared specifically for the party, more enemies to fight) which would penalize them without loosing characters or gear. If you use inherent bonuses from the character's power rather than from magic items, loss of gear matters a whole lot less. Sure your long sword was stolen, but you still have +3 fists and can kick someone's ass for a sword, or buy one if you are near traders. If you want to have the Flaming, Shocking, Frost, Keen, et al. weapons- make them inherent too or some magical brand that the PCs can be enchanted with. Now any weapon held in the fighters hand can burn an enemy, the wizard can always shimmer and make finding her harder, etc (don't skimp on Monks for this, they can use the help).

 

[Grogg of the North]

Couldn't you do the same thing by improving a little?

A TPK results in the party winding up in a dungeon, stripped of their gear, and having to fight their way to freedom. Or maybe they get sold as slaves to some far off kingdom.

If death has no consequence then monsters become less scary and more cuddly.

The Death Pact spell (CD) is 8th level and has HUGE consequences. -2 Con, XP cost and if its triggered you only get a raise dead effect along with the standard level loss!

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I would hate an RPG with restore points. They' can be good in video games so that you can progress and and don't have to redo a bunch of the content, i.e. so you can keep playing. With D&D you don't need a restore point to keep playing - roll up a new PC and they DM will have a new adventure next week.

One game that I thought did a "Get out of jail free" card pretty well was Shadowrun. You could buy a life assurance (not insurance) contract with DocWagon (?). If the transponder in your chest indicated a lethal wound they were there in a few minutes to get you with enough firepower to ensure that no one messed with their retrieval. They didn't take part in the fight, they just got their guy and went, and your PC was back in action shortly.

Other similar mechanics are D&D's Clone (not sure if that's the right name) and Paranoia's clones. The latter was a silly mechanic for a silly game, but it worked. Actual restore points point in D&D seem similarly silly to me, but if it works for you, why not?

 

[kerleth]

Okay, I have actually GM'ed and used "save points" more than once. One time was using a Final Fantasy rpg (they didn't include them, but I did, complete with a flash of glowing blue light and a sense of peace), but I don't think that really counts. Another time I gave the party an artifact that would rewind time 1 day, but only once. If they got TPK'ed it auto-triggered. That actually worked out really well. They all buttoned downed, because they figured if I gave them something like that "it was about to get real".

I would like to point out that there are things that a game with regular "save points" would be great for.
1) A more strategic game. Couldn't get through the scenario, go back and try a different tact. Figuring out how to beat a difficult challenge can be extremely rewarding. Having your initial "brilliant plan" go horribly wrong and then getting a second chance can actual INCREASE suspense.
2) A "what-if" scenario. There are any number of excellent fantasy and science fiction stories where a person tweaks a few small details.

The most common complaint I've seen is doing suicide runs and farming. That is easy enough to fix. Only allow one reset per adventure/session/sacrifice to Odin, whatever.

I think a good question to ask as well is;
Are the Pc's getting resurrected, or is time reseting so that none of those things ever happened? The answer to that really changes the dynamic.

I wouldn't want to play this way all the time, but I think it could certainly be fun for awhile. I just thought it would be a good idea to bring up perks to an approach like this, since pretty much everyone has highlighted it's flaws.

On a side note, I think it's great how so many people gave their opinion but said "Play what you want, if you guys are having fun that's what matters." or some variant of that. EN world is hands down one of the most respectful, open-minded, and thought provoking D&D forums I've been to.

 

[The_King_in_Yellow]

The spell raise dead is the equivalent to a 'check point', teleport is the equivalent of a safe area. D&D provides ample opportunity to make it so character death isn't permanent, if I was playing in your game I would become dissatisfied if it seemed there wasn't any risk involved. Also I don't want to be reminded of a video game while playing a roleplaying game.

 

[FireLance]

To balance the scales of the universe a little: I would love to play in a game with checkpoints/save points. IMO, the general tone in gaming has gotten too serious lately, what with all the talk of "challenge", and "risk/reward", and "consequences", and "simulation", and "real chance of character death" because "dying builds character and/or real men".

I mean, I'm sure it's a popular playstyle and all, but it frankly sounds too much like real life and work to me. Seriously (or rather, not seriously ), whatever happened to escaping for a short while into a fantastic realm of the imagination where your avatar adventures in the Dungeon of Monsters Just Strong Enough to Really Challenge You (now with extra Dice Hiccup Insurance)?

 

[Grazzt]

One of my players expressed the idea of having "safe areas" where the party could rest and, if they suffer a Total Party Knockout, are returned to...basically making Checkpoints.

Does that take anything away from the fun of risk or is that a good safety net in case the dice "hiccup"?

(one of my players says his dice "Hiccup" whenever he gets a run of four or five bad rolls in a row)

No right or wrong way to play, regardless of what peeps say , but the checkpoints idea is not for me. Definitely not something I'd play in or introduce into my game. Takes away too much from the risk IMO.