Death in Eberron - What to Do?

[ValhallaGH]

So it doesn't eliminate risk or danger to the PCs. It simply removes, casual random death from the mix. Especially that due to DM misscalculation.

Which makes it a pretty good rule for many groups.

 

[Felon]

I'm not sure what all this discussion is about. A character died and can't be raised, so a new character gets generated. The OP even stated that the player didn't mind doing so.

I've played lots of RPG's where getting raised wasn't even an option. If you get in a fight, you might killed and go away. Deal.

 

[Grymar]

I think it is about how resurrection fits within the world of Eberron. Sure, they can reroll, but if a player wants a character resurrected, what barriers are there in Eberron and why?

 

[Vanye]

How about a group of Siberys shards somewhere nearby that have the unusual property of drawing in powerful souls of those that die nearby, and if you can cast a Restoration spell on the crystal with the PC's body nearby, the body and soul will be reunited.

Then, there are only 20 crystals left.....19....

 

[Grymar]

First there are worse things than death for PCs. It doesn't prevent PCs from being captured, robbed, humiliated or embarrassed. A lot of PCs would much rather be killed than those. As my mage in Shilsen's campaign has put it more than once "If you kill them, then the suffering stops."

In practice I've found a lot of what it actually accomplishes is that it insulates the PCs from mistakes the DM makes in terms of the lethality of foes. Mallus, the DM for my Tueday campaign is infamous for going "Oh... I didn't realize it would do that much damage" when the Power attacking giant gets a crit with the x3 large battle axe.

Shilsen the DM for the Saturday campaign can merrily swing away with his custom tweeked barbarian horde or CR 12 Tree monster vs the lv 8 party and not have to worry about the character who takes twice his total HP in a single round.

If the DM is running foes who REALLY want to kill the PCs there's nothing to stop them from doing so. For example, in a recent battle in Mallus's campaign (the tuesday) some pirate priests were getting set to do a coup-de-grace on a pc who'd been knocked down.

So it doesn't eliminate risk or danger to the PCs. It simply removes, casual random death from the mix. Especially that due to DM misscalculation.

So does it also work for "death effects"? Or does it only work in cases of HP loss?

I'm beginning to like it more as an option, but I'm interested to hear the limitations.

 

[Rackhir]

So does it also work for "death effects"? Or does it only work in cases of HP loss?

I'm beginning to like it more as an option, but I'm interested to hear the limitations.

To be perfectly honest. I'm not sure how death effects work into things. It hasn't come up in play. Off hand, I'd say it doesn't protect against them. However, action points can also be used to enhance or re-roll saves depending on the rules you use. I think it's worth pointing out as well, that by the time that they are encountering Death-effects, PCs are usually up to a level where one or more of the PCs can cast Raise Dead or Reincarnate on their own. So death is usually much less of an issue.

You might want to try reading the story hour for Shilsen's Saturday campaign, if you want a better idea of how it works in practice. He often has some "behind the scenes" notes and often mentions when a PC would have gotten killed without the use of action points. I think he's averaging what would be about 1 pc death every other session, if action points weren't being used. Both of the story hours in my sig have good examples of why "death" is often less to be feared than the consequences.

 

[shilsen]

To be perfectly honest. I'm not sure how death effects work into things. It hasn't come up in play.

Since I made up the system, I'll tackle this one. I let it apply against any effect that would kill one, whether it be a blow that takes one to -10 and lower, an autokill spell, etc. I think that you're right that it hasn't come up yet.

You might want to try reading the story hour for Shilsen's Saturday campaign, if you want a better idea of how it works in practice. He often has some "behind the scenes" notes and often mentions when a PC would have gotten killed without the use of action points. I think he's averaging what would be about 1 pc death every other session, if action points weren't being used.

Right. Without the action pt rule, it would be 1 PC death every 2 sessions, and that's even with PCs getting to use action pts for a lot of other things. If I didn't have the action pt rule, I'd either have to have very common raising from the dead, or have a procession of new PCs.

When I first came up with the rule, I had wondered if that would make combat boring or meaningless, since I basically took death out of the equation, but (as Rackhir has said) that's not at all the case. As long as the DM emphasizes the fact that there are many consequences for failure/defeat, PC death isn't really necessary.

 

[Mallus]

If you get in a fight, you might killed and go away. Deal.

This works great for some people, not so well for others. It really depends on what players get out of the game, and the nature of the campaign's challenges.

If survival is the main challenge, then yeah, learn to deal.

If the challenge (and therefore the enjoyment) arises out of long-evolving plots and interaction with the story environment, then metagame devices like action points are pretty handy.

While it may seem counterintuitive at first, the use of action points to reduce and/or eliminate character death is sometimes about preserving the campaign challenge. Not doing away with it.

 

[Rackhir]

Some additional notes

Since I made up the system, I'll tackle this one. I let it apply against any effect that would kill one, whether it be a blow that takes one to -10 and lower, an autokill spell, etc. I think that you're right that it hasn't come up yet.

It did get used once sort of, Korm used an AP to save his life when the mindflayer Naxalian would have pulled his brain out.

PC "would be" deaths without the use of action points, have gotten much more frequent as we've hit middle levels. (lvs 7-14, characters are currently at 10 in both campaigns). My character in Mallus's campaign was beaten "to death" in something like 3 out of 4 sessions at one point in the campaign. Part of this is the DMs, part of it is that the damage output from appropriate challenges means that the minus HP range is pretty much insignificant. Either you are standing or you would be significantly below -10.

It's also worth noting that both campaings feature much slower than normal PC level advancement (at least with regards to realtime). In Shilsen's campaign, we're leveling about once every 2-3 months (averaging 3 sessions a month). In Mallus's (Burne's Story Hour), we're leveling about every 6 months (averaging 1-2 sessions a month). So loosing levels from dying would be a substantially greater penalty than one where the PCs are leveling about once a month (the supposed "Standard").

 

[Atavar]

Epilogue

I thought I'd let you know that the player and I ultimately decided to have him create a new character. I had offered to let the party find a corrupt cleric willing to sell them a scroll of raise dead, but the player declined.

Frankly, I'm glad he did. He agreed with me that character death being the end of a character rather than a minor road bump made the game more exciting.

One thing I did a little differently, though, was the amount of starting X.P. to give the new character. The standard, as described in the DMG, is to have the replacement character start at the minimum number of X.P. to be one level lower than the character being replaced. Instead, I let him start at that level but let him have enough X.P. to be half way to the next level (the same as if he did raise his old character). Basically, I did not want the player to be penalized in X.P. terms for his choice of raising his old character vs. rolling up a new character.

His starting gear value is a good deal lower than the party average, though. I'm not too worried about that...SCAP seems to be making the characters pretty rich, and I'm confident he'll do just fine in that department with an adventure or two....

Thanks,

Atavar

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