Death Penalties

[Umbran]

Really? I don't recall that, but I haven't looked at older iterations of D&D (I assume that's what you mean?) for a long time.

My 1e DMG is inaccessible at the moment, but my recollection is that it speaks to these assumptions. I'll have to dig it up tomorrow and check for a quote.

The death penalty is a houserule, isn't it? Has it ever been an official rule of anything?

Well, Raise Dead spells in 2e and 3e imposed a penalty. I recall the 1e DMG has a note about bringing in replacement characters at lower level than the rest of party - I'll have to get the text to be sure.

 

[scourger]

The ramifications of character death is a particular issue for me, with D&D especially. As a player, it is harder for me to enjoy the game when I have to bring in a character of lower (power) level. It's not just the XP loss, there is less money & magic - at least in the editions in the way we played it through 3.5.

As a DM, I had to find a different solution. Once the death spiral starts, it can hurt a particular player especially if the character deaths are not really the players "fault". The replacement PC is less effective, and the items of the past PC accumulate in the hands of the survivors. My solution was to eventually give a player the option to bring in a lower level (XPs) character with the recommended amount of items (GPs), or a higher level PC with virtually no stuff. The player wisely chose the latter, and much more fun was had by all.

And thinking of it in terms of "fault" reminds me that the concept of character death penalty is really about negatively reinforcing what the game designers considered "poor" play. In D&D terms, tactical & strategic (careful) play is positively reinforced whereas power (bold) play ultimately is negatively reinforced. Put plainly: if you play boldly (heroically) then your character eventually will die and the replacement will be less powerful.

And the class niches reinforce the problem, too. Fighter-types in the front lines will eventually die with less powerful replacements. Rear echelon characters have better odds of surviving by careful play or escape, living to higher levels, and getting more stuff - including the equipment of fallen PCs. Eventually, who wants to play a fighter or in any manner other than very carefully (strong emphasis on tactics & strategy)?

I believe the dynamic comes from D&D having its roots as a tactical war game. For me a game like Savage Worlds solves the problem through several means: power levels are less dramatic; characters can be equally effective at different ranks; and there are many extras to take on the risk of death.

The last concept is the most important & portable for me. Having the risk of death present in the game is important, but it needs to be spread to the extras by whatever name: hirelings, henchmen, NPCs, etc. So having many allies, usually front line troops of fighter types, is important to keep the risk of death present but spreading it away from the player characters so that the death penalty is less a factor in play.

 

[Campbell]

I'm not a fan of death penalties for the most part. In general, I don't want to discourage taking risks - I want to encourage it because in my experience it makes for a more rewarding game*. In the edge case of a player who plays his or her character with blatant disregard for the rest of the group and reasonable concern for the fiction of the game I would rather talk to the player. That's either a case of the player being a jerk and trolling the group, or a mismatch in genre expectations.

That being said I don't really have a strong preference for games that revolve around "smart play". I can see the appeal in a dungeon crawling game where PCs may not gain much in terms of fictional advantages that exist outside their character sheet. I also feel there is plenty of consequence attached to losing a PC in the type of game I play - the group loses access to alliances made by the character, must deal with the fallout of losing them, and must integrate someone new into their circle with all the trust building required therein. I prefer consequences to be handled mostly through the fiction.

 

[Jhaelen]

What are your feelings on death penalties in RPGs?

They're pointless in most systems. We used a DP in D&D until 3e; 4e made it irrelevant.

 

[delericho]

We use the rules as they exist in the game we're playing. So, in 3e (the game we play most often) a character who dies and is then raised loses a level in the process, but then gains XP at a slightly faster rate until they've caught up again. That said, I'm not a huge fan of that approach - IMO, 4e got that pretty much right by imposing a penalty that was gradually reduced as milestones are achieved.

(In my 3e games, if a player elects not to have the character raised, or who brings in a new PC to replace one who is retired, or a new player joining the group, starts at the same XP total as everyone else in the group, and equipment as per the WbL table in the DMG. However, I tend to give out much more treasure than that table would indicate, so that's something of a penalty.)

In general, my players have treated PC death as punishment enough. I certainly haven't had any problems with them being too cavalier with their characters' lives. (And, actually, I don't think I'd want them to be realistically risk-averse, as I'd much rather their adventurers be bold and get themselves into all sorts of trouble!)

 

[Psion]

Short story: I find that there is some justification in making the character death significant to the player, but in actuality, I find that mechanical reinforcement of the same is seldom necessary and almost never worth any additional effort. These days, no matter the game, all characters in my games tend to have the same experience/build points.

 

[Sunseeker]

There's no point. Either it leads to re-death, or it chafes the progress of the group.

"Hey well Jimmy is level 3 and we're all 4 and 5, so we need to go back and grind kobolds until Jimmy is level 4."

I think it's a reasonable suspension of disbelief to say that your party is going to attract qualified members, but also that your party is only going to "hire" or partner with someone nearly, or as equally skilled as the rest of the party. IE: Superman isn't really going to have little Timmy tag long while he goes and takes down Darkseid.

If your party does not take steps to limit the danger of their battles, then generally speaking the new lowbie becomes a liability, not an asset, and is more prone to getting killed, partly because the party's desire to protect him will be less due to 1: he's new, and 2: he's weak.

My only rule on character death is that the dead player cannot make a clone, unless he provides secret information to me, the DM that the character is actually an "evil twin", some sort of magical clone, or resurrected in some unforseen way, perhaps by the villain who implanted magical orders in him to betray his companions at some sort of important moment! So, give me plot hooks or make something newish.

 

[Janx]

There's no point. Either it leads to re-death, or it chafes the progress of the group.

"Hey well Jimmy is level 3 and we're all 4 and 5, so we need to go back and grind kobolds until Jimmy is level 4."

I think it's a reasonable suspension of disbelief to say that your party is going to attract qualified members, but also that your party is only going to "hire" or partner with someone nearly, or as equally skilled as the rest of the party. IE: Superman isn't really going to have little Timmy tag long while he goes and takes down Darkseid.

Sounds logical to me.

It's a given meta-game concept that the players will automatically accept a PC into the party from a fellow player.

This is often in contradiction to an vetting process they might invoke on an NPC.

Therefore, forcing a Level 12 party to accept a Level 1 PC is taking advantage of that meta-gaming behavior.

I think the core risks of player abuse of replacement PC opportunities are:

• truly reckless (not the same as bold or heroic) or stupid playing
• using the new PC to increase the magic item level/quantity to the player/party
• carbon copy PCs (usually including a number on the end of their name)

In the past, I'd considered house rules to encourage a player to let his PC remain dead, as one group I play with pretty much NEVER has a PC die (almost as if the DM always made sure a PC could come back).

So I don't see such abuse. I can think of maybe 2 players in the last 20 years who may be of the Death Abuser type. In which case, PC Death Opportunities was just one of many exploits they'd be guilty of taking advantage of.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Mechanical penalties after resurrection are perfectly sensible but are NOT at all of practical use in trying to alter future gameplay. Dice don't care about whether a character lives or dies, how careful or reckless he's been, etc. IME, the more penalties and lingering baggage (no matter how benign) attached to death the more that players will simply RESENT it, not avoid it. So for my games:

1. PC's can certainly be brought back to life but don't expect to be fighting the next round. Heck, you likely will not be fighting for several weeks. Still, it will be an inconvenience to ongoing events but one that will then sensibly FIT into the ongoing game and usually not make the experience any worse than it already has.
2. NPC's almost never are raised/resurrected because THEY sensibly choose to remain in a "blissful" afterlife. Player characters can do what they want. Resurrection magic is in the game for an EXTREMELY meta-game purpose - to let the good times continue to roll for the people at the table with a minimum of bother. It is not now and never was a game world design motif to kick the players or the game world with.
3. NPC's who witness or know of PC's accepting resurrection will treat them VERY differently. Not necessarily badly treated, more likely warily or perhaps a bit fearfully. After all, to an NPC, "everybody knows" that resurrection is possible, it's that nobody ever IS resurrected. 1 in 100 NPC's... less than that, 1 in thousands or tens of thousands will ever be resurrected and they will almost certainly have VERY purposeful lives. They only come back FOR AN EXTRAORDINARY REASON. Even so they have to have had access to the magic to enable it and even having extraordinary motivation to return to life and swearing up and down that they'll come back from the grave they still so very rarely do. Most such people come back as revenants or the like anyway. PC's don't need any reason at all and often don't have even a vague one. NPC's react accordingly. PC's have strong roleplaying motivations to take NPC reactions into account for how they handle both their own death and the deaths of others, especially those close to them - the other PC's. Cavalier attitudes towards death and resurrection will draw disrespect and ostracism. That works much better to change gameplay. It isn't the dying itself that's the issue so much as the bizzare and unwanted effects upon a game world that resurrection magic otherwise has.

If a player character dies, as the DM _I_ don't necessarily care whether the player continues with a new PC or one that's been resurrected. Unless I'm quite foolishly hanging my game upon that characters fate my game won't suffer either way - unless the player and/or his PC perpetuates the unwanted feel of, "Drop another quarter in and pick up right where you left off." If you're enjoying playing that PC then the game I run as DM is almost certainly better for it and it would be preferrable to let you resume playing that character rather than have to start a new one (unless that's what you want). For the sake of "appearances" there has to be some consequence for the character dying but my goal should never be to punish you for it. Well, maybe if you had it coming for being a prat... But then the issue isn't that you were so gauche as to have died - the issue is you're being a prat.

 

[Tom Strickland]

If almost nobody in any group abuses death penalties (to hear it told), let alone finds occasion to use them in the first place, I say: Let them stand! (Nevertheless, 'house rules' will always tweak or dispense with altogether the disliked bits according to group tastes.)

Two thoughts:

1. Numerous "older" fantasy, swords & sorcery, and other genres included gritty tales of wonder and woe that proposed certain experiences whose depictions may have fallen from favor over time. The prototypical experience of weakened heroes in the aftermath of tangling with horrifying undead, or else being imperfect in the aftermath of being raised (like a Frankenstein's monster perhaps) spoke to the results of supernatural injuries or recoveries after having died. If the consequences are "just" variations on a theme of inconvenient encounter results, there is something perhaps unique lost from the full palette. This is where discussions of art and science in other threads shed light on gaming aspects: in this case, the mechanic captures an experiential process which quite reasonably results in character angst at the implications.

2. Leading to: There is a school of thought which states that excellence is developed by experience (over time). As contrasting examples: some universities have a pass/fail only (or even no grade at all) measurement system, whereas others have some accredited grading scheme. I subscribe to the theory that including some challenges with terrible consequences in the full spectrum of possibilities is beneficial to players and their characters. It is a type of mechanic which ought to be specified regardless of whether it is actually used. The rules designers could even specify 2+ levels of consequences and implications in the game for DM's and players to choose.

I am glad the challenges I have faced and even run afoul of included the potential for serious consequences. The tactical side puts a weighted value on certain actions, goals, places to visit, spells and items to select, etc. The role-playing side enjoys a verisimilitude in that--even though it is fantasy--it is similar enough to familiar concepts of life and death, risk and reward, failure and consequence, that the struggles to return can become as sagas because of the difficulties (as when Cugel is flown away to a distant land, a king is banished from his throne, a party lands in Limbo due to a misfired spell, and so on). [Or perhaps more pertinently, when Jack in Jack of Shadows by Roger Zelazny must fight his way from the dung heap where dark-siders are reincarnated, past soul-sucking dangers though wastelands patrolled by enemy forces.]

There is an entire sub-system of effects, abilities (by certain undead or extra-planar creatures), magic, and consequences which are bypassed without the more-serious-than-other-effects of death: requires break enchantment; requires dispel magic; cannot be raised; cannot be resurrected; is lost forever... The Sphere of Annihilation. Stormbringer?!

I personally want integrated mechanics which handle certain fictional narratives. I fully respect when others do not want the same mechanics. But I appreciate when game designers in their element and according to their fortes build in something--especially with official or suggested variants--so it need not be extensively home-brewed.

Disclaimers: Also, even prior to reading the recent posts and adding an additional comment, I thought of mentioning that I have raise dead magics set at easily a 10x multiple--it is a big deal to choose to do that. And people do sell and borrow to bring back a treasured character. Players in my campaigns do not "burn through PC's" at all. They have bristled in the past at the penalties, but have become better tacticians by using increasingly effective choices and timings of abilities, actions, situational awareness, manipulation of opponent motivations and weaknesses, etc. And then there is "True Resurrection"!