Death is Final

[Elf Witch]

Yep. I make my players go to the local chapel or druidic circle, and I throw in flavor things along the lines of possibly ending up a new race/sex/hair color. Aside from the big cities, resurrection isn't perfect, and druids may do you a favor and bring you back as a "higher lifeform" like a bear.

In my current campaign the only come back from death is by a druid casting resurrection right now there are no clerics in the world with that kind of magical power as a matter of fact healing is very limited too.

It fits the campaign world which is why I would rather see the different types of raise dead available and let the DM decide how much is available in their world.

 

[Lanefan]

I still enjoy Resurrection percentage.

Death is not insured, but neither is staying alive. If you have the means to trade for it, you can be brought back to life. However, you still need to roll and the character loses a CON point for every roll used.

This means death is almost certainly not forever the first few times, but it depends on the situation. Very early death may best be scratched off. Also each character is more unique as CON isn't static. And permanent death is still possible - for PCs and their enemies.

This.

The resurrection survival roll needs to come back.

Lanefan

 

[Mattachine]

As others said, death rules have always varied in campaigns. Why not just have 5e explicitly tell DMs: whether or not PCs come back from death is a campaign decision.

Then, examples can be outlined.

Some people like D&D to be a sort of competition.
Some people like D&D to be a sort of gamble.
Some people like D&D to be a sort of story.
Some people like D&D to be all of these and more.

It's always been this way, and likely will continue to be this way. Why not finally just recognized these ways of playing the game in the rulebook and accommodate them?

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

As others said, death rules have always varied in campaigns. Why not just have 5e explicitly tell DMs: whether or not PCs come back from death is a campaign decision.

Then, examples can be outlined.

Some people like D&D to be a sort of competition.
Some people like D&D to be a sort of gamble.
Some people like D&D to be a sort of story.
Some people like D&D to be all of these and more.

It's always been this way, and likely will continue to be this way. Why not finally just recognized these ways of playing the game in the rulebook and accommodate them?

See, this is what the DMG has always supposedly been for, but I think that far too much ends up in the THESE ARE THE RULES sections of the PHB, leaving little space for nuance.

I very much like the idea of outlining a few different game styles - if you look at Trail of Cthulhu for instance, it explains 'Purist' and 'Pulp' style games and that different rules are suitable for the different styles. For D&D there are even subtypes - you can treat adventures like a videogame (hell, why not with save points, I bet some players would LOVE that), but the videogame might be low magic or epic fantasy.

So yes, the DMG definitely needs to lay out for new and old DMs: what decisions do you need to make when you start a campaign or adventure, what aspects of the ruleset should you therefore include or exclude.

 

[Elf Witch]

This.

The resurrection survival roll needs to come back.

Lanefan

I think it would be great as an optional way to do things.

If we are truly going for a modular approach rules should support more than one style of game play.

 

[Storminator]

Making death final in 5E would just be swinging the pendulum in the opposite direction after the near-immortal characters in 4E.

I won't even go into how ridiculously impervious your average PC with full daily healing and limitless healing options is, suffice it to say players have NO fear of death, a little bit of which makes games fun and combat suspenseful.

meh. My last 4e session had 2 PCs bleed out on the ground after the fight was over.

PS

 

[Storminator]

Now I have a very simple solution to the problem of "Bob the Fighter II". Every character starts at first level. Yes, that's right, every character. However, I allow for multiple characters per player and am attempting to find enough players that there will be both low level and higher level characters in the campaign (likely not adventuring at the same time, though). Furthermore, the player, if they have recruited a henchman, may opt to make the henchman they're new PC instead of starting from scratch.

That's how we used to play, back in our 1e days.

Every adventure, half the party would die. We'd roll up a new batch of PCs (each player taking 3 or 4) and send 'em thru a 1st level adventure. Half of them would die. Then we'd bash the 2 groups together and go on a 2nd level adventure - and half the group would die. We used to joke that the "Varsity Team" stood on top of a pyramid of death.

Then once we were 4th level and had no thief. We didn't want to start a whole new party, because we just needed a thief. So we made 26 thieves with brilliant names like A1, B-52, CO2, D-Day. . . and went on the Darwinian Crime Spree (tm). The only survivor, H2O, joined our party with an outrageous pile of loot.

I don't really miss those days. . .

PS

 

[Endur]

Don't make death matter by making it harder for people to play their characters. Make death matter by giving it value within the game. Hold a funeral for Randy, get the King to make a nice little speech(since Randy's death saved him and his Frilly Kingdom), maybe get the princess to admit she was madly in love with him but could never be with a poor adventurer(I mean, we've got more gold than the king, but it's about land ownership and that's a lineage issue).

comments on this:
1) This is exactly how it should be. If someone dies, hold an entire game session for the ramifications and funeral. Make it a rare event.

2) Don't design adventures that force someone to die (i.e. one adventurer must sacrifice his soul to save the kingdom). It is one thing if luck and poor choices result in death; its another if it was unescapable.

3) If you are facing a monster with a higher than normal chance of inflicting death (save or die gaze, etc.); then you should have alternatives for smart play to reduce or minimize the chance of death. i.e. seeing statues ahead of time to realize that you are facing a medusa and can use mirrors/blindfolds to combat the Medusa's gaze, etc.

 

[howandwhy99]

This.

The resurrection survival roll needs to come back.

Lanefan

That reminds me. IMG, death is insured. Your character will die, it is only a matter of when. It's natural death by average life cycle for each race which is unavoidable. Even elves "go off to the west" and all that, so time is still a finite resource for them. Sit on one's hands long enough and the PC's time will be up.

 

[Ariosto]

This is one of those things, I think, that's better to include in the package for use or not than to leave unaddressed.

I threw out most of the D&D levels and spells systems for some games back in the day, but minimalism and DMs needing to make up lots of tailored material is not necessarily a plan for a commercial success.