D&D 4E death and 4E

[Fenes]

Death might not be fun, but awareness that you cannot die is even less fun. Therefore, death's in.

We play without the threat of PC death in game. The PCs themselves though are afraid of death, and act accordingly. I'd not play with a player who could not roleplay a character fearing death even though the player knew the character could not die.

It is also telling that death is nothing but a small setback in the higher levels, once true ressurcetion and such arrives. "Save or die" becomes "save or get resurrected".

So, I'd not mind death being removed from 4E.

 

[Szatany]

I don't want death gone, but I want it to have lasting consequences. Constitution drain is one idea, resurrection sickness is another, but there should be some penalty (i wouldn't call gp and xp cost a penalty because you recover those quickly). Perhaps there is no serious penalty, but each character can be only brought back, say, 3 times, before they are gone forever.

 

[jasin]

This is an interesting question for me. Our group doesn't buy in to resurection magic; if your character died then that's it, they're gone. High level play in D&D is pre-suposed that death is just another type of damage, and resurection just another type of healing.

How do you deal with this in your game? I've toyed with the idea removing resurrection or making it more difficult, but it would require significant changes all over (in all the places that are source of death) if you wanted an even remotely reasonable chance of playing the same character from 1st-20th.

I would prefer the 'instant death' type effects of D&D to instead give you -5 condition levels or such, so that they KO you. If the entire party is knocked out, then they might be killed or might be taken captive. As long as someone in the party is still standing then the other party members can be put back on their feet.

This seems a reasonably workable solution: anything that would take you to -10 instead takes you to -1 and dying. Or -9 and dying, or -9 and stable, or... depending on how much of a threat of death you want there to be.

Still, it somehow feels weird that it make power word kill or death touch actually just power word coma and knockout touch... there's a certain storywise appeal to having monsters or people that kill with a glance.

But then, it can well be argued that these monsters are more impressive when they put you near death in a world where death is permanent, than when they kill you in a world where death is just a major inconvenience.

As an aside, I'm finding that the best way to deal with the cognitive dissonance that comes from D&D's uberpowerful magic in the context of the assumed pseudo-medieval world is to enjoy it and wonder at it to the extent that it deserves. Instead of saying that raise dead cheapens death, I prefer saying it makes the heroes truly awesome: these are people who can raise the dead and are fighting giants fair and square!

 

[Li Shenron]

If the designers of 4E in thier infinite wisdom decided that death was no fun and therefore removed the threat or possiblilty of death from the new edition would you be ok with it?

No.

In our campaigns death is rare compared to the average games. Still, without even the THREAT of death it becomes a game for sissies. :\

Dying itself may not be much fun, but immortality is the death of fun. Surviving with skillful play is 1000 times more fun than being immortal.

 

[Baumi]

I don't believe that they will ever kill the possibility of death

But I think they will make it harder to die, like in Star Wars Saga ... where you can prevent death as long as you have Action Points left.

But to theorize ... I found the solution of Neverwinter Nights 2 very interesting: It's only over when ALL Members of the Group dies in a Combat, if there is at least one Surviver then all will be brought back to live (at 0 HP) ... so they were just out of combat.

 

[jasin]

In other words, the character risks death when the player thinks that the in-game objective is worth it, e.g. "death flag" rules.

I've only heard a little about this. How does it work in practice? What's the incentive for the player to use the "death flag"? Do you get an increased chance of success for a task that's so important to you that you're willing to die?

 

[Szatany]

This is an interesting question for me. Our group doesn't buy in to resurection magic; if your character died then that's it, they're gone. High level play in D&D is pre-suposed that death is just another type of damage, and resurection just another type of healing.

I would prefer the 'instant death' type effects of D&D to instead give you -5 condition levels or such, so that they KO you. If the entire party is knocked out, then they might be killed or might be taken captive. As long as someone in the party is still standing then the other party members can be put back on their feet.

In short, having no risk of death would cheapen the game, but then so does roll-or-die combined with easy resurection.

Cheers
Dan

You could achieve something similar with a very tiny house rule - make it so resurrection magic works only on characters killed with death effects. That way both spell groups are more or less unchanged, but they sort of cancel each other in the brokeness department.

 

[Visceris]

If the character runs out of hit points then he or she is dead. If there is no consequence then there is no fun.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

How can a character gain true glory without heroically dying in battle in an attempt to steal an extremely large tresure horde?

How can a DM live with himself if PCs don't die after a string of incredibly stupid decisions?

 

[Li Shenron]

At this point, I think it would be more realistic to introduce a SAVE AND RELOAD feature.
It would kill suspension of disbelief in a more tolerable way...