Death and Dying: Annoying new subsystem reduces fun.

[Haffrung Helleyes]

By the way

I completely disagree with the original poster. I like the system , and furthermore, I _love_ they way it is communicated to us -- with a history of its adoption and a lot of explanation of the reasoning for it.


To me, this article is a perfect example of what is _good_ about the 4E rollout. I would love to see more articles like this about 4E subsystems.

Ken

 

[robertliguori]

Realism be damned. I'm not concerned with "realism" in a game that's got mind flayers and wizards who stop time. What I'm concerned with is a) internal consistency, and b) a fun and exciting game.

For a), I find spells that bring back the dead to be a serious internal-consistency issue for most game worlds. One could certainly design a consistent world containing resurrection magic per the 3E rules, but it would be a very, very different place--a place where the wealthy simply didn't die until old age took them off, a place where people coming back from death was a regular occurrence. Even taking into account the bit about how the soul must want to return... seems like keeping well-connected villains dead would be all but impossible. What soul would want to stay in the Nine Hells, or the Abyss?

For b), I think it makes the game much less fun if death can be reliably reversed. Character death should be very rare, but when it happens, it should be serious business. That increases the tension, and it allows PCs to make heroic last stands and die glorious deaths which wouldn't be possible otherwise. It also means that threats to important NPCs have meaning. If there's a plot afoot to poison the king, the quest to uncover it takes on a lot more urgency when the party cleric can't just requisition a diamond from the treasury and bring him back to life.

The quick way around this is to world-build assuming that governments and institutions have access to characters of about 3th level reliably, and 5th level under dire circumstances, and that when a CR 10 challenge happens along, the government/institution will probably fall, or at least lose a large percentage of their strength felling the beast...unless the heroes do something. Past this point, rewards for character action tend to be less "a load of cash" and more "My daughter's hand in marriage, and half the kingdom."

 

[Rechan]

Or an action-movie or fantasy movie hero. Boromir, who is "riddled with arrows" before he falls. Inigo Montoya, who is flat-out dying when he finally confronts the six-fingered man, but pulls himself out of it through sheer force of will (and some creative wound-staunching). The Game, who was actually shot directly in the heart, went into a coma and lived to come out of it a couple years later. Bullet Tooth Tony was shot six times (in one sitting) and was still alive enough to gut the shooter.

IIRC, King Arthur speared Mordred through the stomach, but Mordred pushed himself UP Arthur's spear so he could hack the king with his sword.

In the Vietnam war, the VC were even more of a threat when they were mortally wounded, because then they just tried to take everyone with them.

Off-topic: Bullet Tooth Tony?

 

[Cryptos]

For instance, what if a pc party is facing an npc party (all of whom have heroic levels). They fight; now all of them have negative hitpoints, all of them have tomake stabilizing rolls, the results of each could vary wildly.

Thoughts?

That would be a bit silly. I wouldn't have everyone sit around and make stabilization rolls until someone wakes up to finish off everyone on the other side (or heal everyone on their side) regardless of what the rules say.

Unless you want to risk a TPK x2 (or declare one), the above is the probable outcome, so just take it down to as few rolls as possible. And that's assuming you don't just decide to use the default "monster" rules for the NPCs (the easiest solution.)

It's an extraordinary circumstance, something unlikely - one of those things where DMs are supposed to step in and take matters into their own hands. It's one of those things where you're likely to throw your hands up and make your own call regardless of how well designed the rule.

Off the top of my head, if we're talking about two groups of characters that are simultaneously unconscious and bleeding with no one left standing, if I wanted to keep it random I'd just say, "Ok, that's sort of impressive, I guess. Let's cut to the chase. Everyone roll a d20. The highest roller recovers. If it's a tie for highest, then both/all of those people recover. Everyone else is stable only as long as it takes for the recovered characters to deal with one another and decide what to do with the rest."

That would keep it cinematic... either a good guy finds some inner resolve to enact vengeance on his foes or help his friends recover and get to safety, or a bad guy gathers his nasty mojo to put the smack down on the latest group of heroes to defy him (in the case of a minion, perhaps becoming the new big bad for the next PCs), or you've got two people fighting for the fates of everyone on their side (a tie split between people on two different sides for highest roll.)

You can always take an extreme situation and use it to show how "flawed" the rules are... you can make any rule broken by coming up with an unlikely scenario. That's why there are DMs to improvise and adjudicate the rules or house rule as needed.

 

[Mistwell]

Starting a thread by calling a new thing annoying is an invitation to controversy.

I understand it's your opinion, but the thread is about the issue itself and not your opinion.

I just fail to see how starting the thread out with that level of bias is useful.

 

[Rechan]

I had a friend do the math. The probability of rolling 1-9 on the stablize roll 3 times in a row (resulting in death) is 9.11%.

 

[Deep Blue 9000]

Starting a thread by calling a new thing annoying is an invitation to controversy.

I understand it's your opinion, but the thread is about the issue itself and not your opinion.

I just fail to see how starting the thread out with that level of bias is useful.

It's not biased to title your thread with the opinion of your post. Would say "Game rules are not the physics of the game world" is biased? How about I want 4E NOW!?

 

[kenmarable]

I had a friend do the math. The probability of rolling 1-9 on the stablize roll 3 times in a row (resulting in death) is 9.11%.

It's not 3 times in a row. It's just 3 times (at least as explained in the Try It Now section). So odds are (rough math in head) generally within 6 rounds without healing or a 20, you're dead. There's no mention of the rolls needing to be in a row.

 

[Rechan]

It's not 3 times in a row. It's just 3 times (at least as explained in the Try It Now section). So odds are (rough math in head) generally within 6 rounds without healing or a 20, you're dead. There's no mention of the rolls needing to be in a row.

Oh. I interpreted it to mean that if you rolled a 10-19, you didn't have to roll again.

 

[LEHaskell]

PCs die at negative 1/2 total hit points, eh?

With all the healing and self-healing that can be done in the new system, that makes PCs pretty darn hard to kill.

I think the important, unanswered question here is: how many times (per encounter, per day) can you count on that healing? Is there a limit to the number of times you can use your Second Wind?

One of the design paradigms that the devs seem to be focusing on is resource management -- giving the PCs useful abilities but limiting the number of times they can be used in a fight or even per day in order to force tough but interesting choices on the players. One example might be: assuming that healing abilities ARE only once per encounter, do you use that ability right away to keep the fighter in top shape or do you wait until he's unconscious and use it to keep him from death?