Death penalties - what is too steep?

[Aust Diamondew]

Death

IMC you can only be raised/ressurected 3 times. The first time your XP is lowered so it's just enough to retain your current level. The second and third time you lose 1 level.

 

[Sammael99]

I my campaign the current restrictions are as follows.

Raise Dead - Can only be cast in a temple of the same faith as the caster. Target cannot not be of a directly opposed alignment to the god in question. (Neutral deitys count LG, CG, LE and CE as opposites), and must at least pay lip service to deity.

Resurection - as above but must also be a holy day, and targets alignment can only be one step different than deities.

True Resurection - as above but Target must have been a worshipper of deity and of the same alignment.

You still the have the penalties as listed in the PHB.

New characters start at the same level as the lowest level member in the party (so this does not always mean a level loss).

I have similar restrictions for "resurrection" magic. The willingness of a given cult to perform the miracle is rp-ed, si the in-game restriction is mainly the number of clerics needed to perform the ritual. For Raise Dead it's 3, for Resurrection it's 5 and for True Resurrection it's 7.

Raise Dead can be cast as described in the PHB, ie. as a spell. However, it raises the body in the state that it was in death. In other words, unless it is performed only a few rounds after effective death, the Raised character would be forever rotten and decayed. Needless to say only evil cults usually resort to this option. FWIW my idea for this came after reading GRR Martin's Fire and Ice books. Those who have read them will know what I'm talking about...

[Edit : New PCs come back at the xp bottom of the lowest character level. Since there's little variability in levels, it's fairly balanced and no one ever complained...]

 

[Fenes 2]

Well thanks for comparing DMs who do things differently to Warhammer Battle players...

For what it's worth, my game is nothing like the tactically oriented game you describe above. That does not make character death impossible, even due to bad luck. I like my players to be on the edge also, not just their characters. I also find that pulling no punches as a DM makes my NPCs a lot more realistic and the few rare combat encounters a lot more interesting and memorable.

Now I think the way you do it is great if that's what you and your players want to do, but you're definitely implying that the way you do it is better... The possibility of character death does not imply a more or less mature game...

Also, you might want to go read ForceUser's Vietnamese Adventures Story Hour to have a feel for what his game is like.

I did not want to imply that my way is better, nor that your game is like that I described - just that my way is better for me. I do not want my players to be on edge - I hate fearing for my PC myself, and it seriously hampers my fun. It also was not meant as a statement about the maturity of gamers.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I am hard on my players, you have to be faithful to the gods to come back. This means you have to visit temples, giving to the gods, you have to perform deads that strenghten good and weaken evil. Then you get to come back.

Now the coming back is interesting. The player will come back at the level he was as of the last holy worship. This mean if you are blessed in combat and die, you come back at that level. The reason I do this is to empower clerics, to give them a greater role and to make the gods more real in my games.

I also have WIL rolls for wanting to come back, which get harder after you come back a few time.

 

[Carnifex]

I have made it quite clear to the players in my homebrew campaign (the one my SH is about) that I have plenty of restrictions on raising the dead. Not all religions have access to raising spells at the same levels; some don't have access to raising spells at all, not even Raise Dead at a higher than normal level.

Even then, it has added complications. The gods don't simply allow people to be raised upon a cleric's whim. A war god is unlikely to grant a ressurection to someone who died as a coward, running from battle. He's also not going to raise a warrior who died valiantly in glorious battle, because they died exemplifying his religion - they died trhe best way they could. He *might* let a cleric raise a warrior who still needs to complete an important mission for him. Of course, raising means the once-dead person loses a level, but IMC it can also drain the cleric casting the spell of a level, or the church doing the raising may demand a pretty hefty favour from the party, usually something that is non-monetary.

 

[Bagpuss]

Thinking more about the question "Death penalties - what is too steep?" I've come the conclusion that nothing is really too steep, unless on your character dying you are thrown out of the game like in a Jack Chick story.

I suppose that's because I'm use to playing in roleplaying games where if your character died that's it they are dead. I'd be happy if all the resurrection spells were removed from D&D.

 

[Sammael99]

I did not want to imply that my way is better, nor that your game is like that I described - just that my way is better for me. I do not want my players to be on edge - I hate fearing for my PC myself, and it seriously hampers my fun. It also was not meant as a statement about the maturity of gamers.

'kay. Sorry for misinterpreting, that's the way it came over to me.

I usually run fairly low death ratio campaigns (if only because I have prudent players) but reading Stry Hours like Doc's Knights of Spellforge Keep I can see how it's fun to have a high-death ration campaign as well. I know it would certainly disturb me a lot less in D&D than it would in other games...

 

[Fenes 2]

Well, considering the fact that I put a lot of work in a PC, with background, history, important NPCs, sketch etc., and as A DM I rely heavily on player character-driven plots and subplots, pc death would bother me a lot in either role.

In answer to the original question: Any penalty that ruins your group's fun is too steep. It does not matter if Gary Gygax himself came and told you how to do it - if it is not fun for you and your group it is wrong.

 

[Psion]

This rule is the basis from which I take my slant on character death. When I started my campaign I had intended to play by-the-book as much as possible. Characters who died and got revived were to lose a level. New characters to replace fallen ones were to start one level lower.

That's what I do, too.

Due to the fact that level loss upon being raised is an extremely unpopular idea with my players, some of whom argued at great length against it, I opted for an XP deficit method instead, in which you don't lose a level but instead go in the hole XP-wise as though you had lost a level.

This is where we differ. I bring in new characters at 1 level below the party average, and raised characters 1 level below their previous. Fractions of a level translate into fractions of the XP of a level the new characters have (so if a the party average was 11.5 level, the new character comes in at 50% of the XP between 10th and 11th.)

Now, I can also see that I don't want PC levels all over the place, and I don't want raised and new characters and characters who make magic items to lag too far behind, so I give characters below the party average bonus XP of 20% per level difference (or, if you use the CR method of doling out XP, you could simply use the method of calculating XP described in FRCS.) That is a fair compromise, I think.

Am I being unfair? Should I approach character death situationally, rewarding those who die heroically and penalizing those who die because they did something stupid? How do you handle character death?

A character who goes into combat heroically should know he may die. If the PLAYER thinks that this earns him some special reward is certainly not portraying a heroic character facing down the possibility of death.

For me, the possibility of a real penalty associated with death helps maintain the mood of the game. If the players treat it blithely, I think the game looses some of its mood and the player's immersion in the game. And that, IMO, "ruins the fun" as Fenes puts it.

Death should have meaning. Characters should be aware that their actions could place them in mortal danger sometimes. They should know (or learn) when it may be prudent to run.

Absolutely.

 

[Mark]

From the Player's Handbook regarding revivification:

"The passage from life to death and back again is a wrenching journey for a being's soul. Consequently, any creature brought back to life usually loses one level of experience. The character's new XP total is midway between the minimum needed for his or her new level and the minimum needed for the next one."
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Am I being unfair? Should I approach character death situationally, rewarding those who die heroically and penalizing those who die because they did something stupid? How do you handle character death?

Not unfair, I don't think. I prefer to keep the rule as is, and if someone dies and wants a new character they begin at the level of experience held by the lowest level character and not below by a level. This does reward the survivalist since along the way some characters will lose experience from some means such as dying and hanging on to their characters through being brought back to life. However it gives a dying player a choice to begin fresh with no real penalty at the table as a player compared to his co-players. If he is so attached to a character, and that character keeps dying, it is his choice to keep losing the levels since he has alternatives (being more careful or enjoying the variety of playing many characters throughout his reckless playing time.)

Seems to me that the problem can often be separating the player from the character. On the one hand they like to maintain the continuity of having the same character throughout a campaign and they become attached to the role-playing investment they have made in that persona. On the other hand they can be worried that not having the same experience points as the other players might leave them with the short end of the gaming stick. Often a player faced with this situation will argue one of the possiblities while actually being more concerned with the other, leading to a situation that is hard to resolve since they will not admit where their real concerns lie.

The method I use tends to avoid having to figure out what the true concerns are and leaves a relatively fair choice firmly in the province of the player. I've never had any complaints.