And, you know, if I run into such a person who wants to play at my table when I have an opening, then I'll worry about it.
Death Penalties
- Thread starter Morrus
- Start date
And, you know, if I run into such a person who wants to play at my table when I have an opening, then I'll worry about it.
the Jester
Legend
Well- I am of mixed mind on this.
First of all, I favor a game style where resurrection, though possible, is rare. I prefer it if raising the dead is costly on the front end but comes with no penalty for the raised person.
I also really prefer a game that allows all pcs to start at 1st level, even in a higher level party. Older (pre-3e) D&D worked pretty well with mixed levels, and I'm hoping that 5e will, too (though the damage escalation by level makes me a bit nervous, to be honest). So I like starting new pcs off below "party level" (at 1st), but not if the game system won't support it (3e, 4e).
Currently, in my 4e game, a new pc enters the game with somewhat less xp than the pc he or she is replacing. Let's say the dead pc was 23rd level with 300,000 xp. The minimum xp for 23rd is 255,000, so that pc had earned 45,000 xp at his highest level. What I do is start one level lower, and add that 45,000 xp to the minimum for the lower level (22nd in this case)- which is 210,000. In this case, as it turns out, the pc starts at 255,000 xp- just at the bottom of 23rd. (It could easily have worked out that she starts a level lower, though.)
Another thing I do, since 3e and 4e are so level-dependent, is give "catchup xp" to the lower level members of the party. The way this works at the moment is that at the start of each session and each time there is a new "highest level pc" (so if the party is largely 5th and 6th but someone hits 7th after an encounter), each pc who is lower level than the highest level pc gets xp equal to the value of one monster of the highest level pc's level.
Example for clarity: The party at the start of the game is levels 5, 5, 6, 6 and 6. The level 5 guys get "catchup" xp equal to a 6th level monster. Later, one guy hits 7th; everyone else immediately gets "catchup" xp equal to a 7th level monster.
First of all, I favor a game style where resurrection, though possible, is rare. I prefer it if raising the dead is costly on the front end but comes with no penalty for the raised person.
I also really prefer a game that allows all pcs to start at 1st level, even in a higher level party. Older (pre-3e) D&D worked pretty well with mixed levels, and I'm hoping that 5e will, too (though the damage escalation by level makes me a bit nervous, to be honest). So I like starting new pcs off below "party level" (at 1st), but not if the game system won't support it (3e, 4e).
Currently, in my 4e game, a new pc enters the game with somewhat less xp than the pc he or she is replacing. Let's say the dead pc was 23rd level with 300,000 xp. The minimum xp for 23rd is 255,000, so that pc had earned 45,000 xp at his highest level. What I do is start one level lower, and add that 45,000 xp to the minimum for the lower level (22nd in this case)- which is 210,000. In this case, as it turns out, the pc starts at 255,000 xp- just at the bottom of 23rd. (It could easily have worked out that she starts a level lower, though.)
Another thing I do, since 3e and 4e are so level-dependent, is give "catchup xp" to the lower level members of the party. The way this works at the moment is that at the start of each session and each time there is a new "highest level pc" (so if the party is largely 5th and 6th but someone hits 7th after an encounter), each pc who is lower level than the highest level pc gets xp equal to the value of one monster of the highest level pc's level.
Example for clarity: The party at the start of the game is levels 5, 5, 6, 6 and 6. The level 5 guys get "catchup" xp equal to a 6th level monster. Later, one guy hits 7th; everyone else immediately gets "catchup" xp equal to a 7th level monster.
That seems reasonable.
I'm pondering if player's burning through PCs abusively is an actual problem (or at least more common than really rare)?
Is the concept of a Death Penalty trying to solve an abusive game play style that is in actuality a rare exception?
Well, looking back at the game's roots in tactical wargaming, it makes sense. From a tactical view only, if death only costs some gold, or some time making a new character, there's not a whole lot of reason to worry about it. Players making their decisions from the meta-game tactical point of view might well choose to burn through characters.
I, personally, don't have any such in my game. But I don't doubt that initially, in Gygax's day, it might have been more of an issue. But then, Gygax also spoke of players each having a stack of PCs they might play, sometimes several at the same time, and that doesn't seem to me to be the usual thing these days, either.
What other games published in the past decade or two have such rules? Not many come to mind...
Torg Smith
First Post
The life span of the player character is only important to the player. If a player does not want their character to die, then they will try to keep it alive. The only real concern for the life span of a character is that player's happiness. As a GM, I go through a huge number of characters, otherwise know as NPCs.
I tend to view the game as a shared story telling experience.
That's an excellent observation.
But it hints at a more important observation. Repeated burning of PCs is not an problem; it's a symptom. In fact, it's not even a symptom: it's just a realistic observation.
Perhaps games are missing a fundamental player desire to "try something new"? We, as a group, exhibit character, GM, and system burnout every 3 minutes. Are games which try to punish us for that rather than work around it missing the point?
There are other aspects to a heavy turnover among PCs. It can affect the rest of the table in terms of dropped plots, variable resources, and group ability to deal with their current situation. It certainly affects the stories available to the group.
I've had a generally consistent player base for about 30 years. We play a lot of different systems. I've had runs of quick character turn-around a few times that I recall where I've had to step in and address the issue directly. There are different root causes and each is best addressed differently.
One of the ways to address it for some games where power acquisition is a core activity like D&D is through a replacement tax. For D&D style games, my typical rule is replacement characters are generated about one level lower than the party average. When I was running a multi-year CHAMPIONS campaign, the rule was you built a new character using the original creation guidelines though by the end, the 100+ experience point gap was becoming a bit of a meta-issue for me and I was relaxing that restriction.
My most draconian response was over 15 years ago. The group had fallen into a rut of constant character churn regardless of the system in play -- generally from silly/exceedingly foolhardy play. I decided to run a horror "limited edition" game planned to be about 10-12 sessions long. The character replacement rules were there would be no character replacement. If your character died or you wished to retire it, I'd let you know when the game was over and invite you to the next campaign.
There was a single PC death in the first session and nothing thereafter. Surprisingly, the rate of PC death fell dramatically after that extended adventure pretty much across the board and has never come close to the levels seen prior.
I've never understood that policy. So the quickest route to level gain for 50% of the group is suicide? How does your game not devolve into people stabbing themselves constantly until they've done it so much that enough higher level folks have unfortunately died and become average that everyone is at the party average?
Nope. It means that if you've managed to fall behind enough, you have a quick route to recovery at the cost of your current circumstance.
If you are with 5 10th level PCs and you managed to be lower than 8th level, then retirement becomes a way to close that gap by getting to 8th level partially on the way to 9th... The other 5 PCs will lose out if they retire.
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