D&D 4E Hitting "reset": A counterpoint to "gritty" 4e

[DonTadow]

I don't want a grinding grueling game as i too like the cinematic effect rpgs provide. Gritty always feels too much gamey to me. However, I think that save or die spells have their place in cinematic games as does death.

I don't think that things like HP and abilities scores reset. If the only thing that resets are powers and abilities then thats ok. I think the system will be balanced. If they wanted to go all cinematic everything would be per encounter. if they wanted gritty everything would be use and burn.

 

[Jhulae]

I don't think I like the 'reset' idea, but I definitely don't think "Gritty" and "D&D" really go together. There are enough Gritty systems for people who enjoy that sort of thing (as I do, as well).

However, I'll say that under current 3.x, it's still fairly easy to get a 'meaningless' character death, and no matter how it goes, it *always* sucks. Characters in (most) stories don't die from random encounters. Deaths in novels usually mean something. Likewise, PC deaths should hopefully come at dramatically important moments, not because the person on watch couldn't spot a swarm of stirges and gets their blood drained before being able to do anything about it.

 

[Corinth]

There are no corpse runs in D&D. You stay dead unless and until someone decides to raise you from death. If that can't be done, then roll a new character and get on with it.

 

[Shadeydm]

Personally I stole Shil's idea about letting APs be spent to stabilize dying characters and it has worked out well. I could not allow a save point mechanic in my game nor would I be likely to participate in a game with one. It just wouldn't feel right to me.

For me the most disturbing thing posted by the OP was the comment by one of his players that if I die I'm done playing. As a DM I would definetly be put off by such a statement. Without the context of knowing the person or your group as a whole its hard to know how I would react, but from an outside POV its unlikely I would tolerate what stinks of some sort of tantrum or blackmail.

 

[Dragonblade]

Looks like there are some strong opinions on both sides. I think endless resets would be too much myself. And death has to mean something after all. But ultimately is it reasonable to have a valued friend and player leave the game over?

Although the story is important, and having a real sense of danger makes it more exciting, we ultimately game because we enjoy hanging out together. We enjoy the shared experience of gaming and the story continuity as well, otherwise we would all just play a board game.

I don't know if resetting will work out since we haven't tried it yet. It will probably only be used in the event of another TPK, which so far hasn't happened. But its one way to keep trucking. As far as action points go, we do have a sort of action point system but even so the game is still lethal and the DM doesn't pull punches. Nor would we want him to.

We started Age of Worms with an eclectic mix of unique and diverse characters. Then we TPKed in I believe its called Three Faces of Evil. A ridiculously difficult adventure by the way. Where you have the temple of Vecna, Erythnul, and Hextor all right next to each other in the mine. We decided after the TPK point that we would remake our characters and powergame the crap out of them. We tried to make a diverse group of non-optimized characters and got crushed for our trouble.

We decided we go 180 degrees the other way and make the most broken minmaxed party we could. We would make our characters complement each other and ensure that every class role was filled, every broken spell/feat/class combo was pushed to its limit. We also knew that AoW is undead heavy so we also focused ourselves on being the ultimate undead destroyers.

Our original group was as follows:

Changeling Rogue (emphasis on Disguise and Diplomacy)
Elan Psion (Not adequately filling any one role)
Human Cleric (Leader/Defender)
Akashic (More of a social than combat character, from Arcana Evolved)
Dwarf Fighter (Defender)

Our current group is:

Human Cleric (w/ Morninglord of Pelor (formerly Lathander)/Radiant Servant of Pelor)
Human Sorcerer (w/ Elemental Savant)
Human Paladin
Warforged Warblade
Human Wizard/Rogue/Arcane Trickster
Human Ranger
The Akashic (the only character left from the original party because that player had to drop out of the game for a couple months and missed the TPK)

We now have two tanks, one of which is completely immune to most undead special attacks, and one which can turn undead and cast some spells. The sorcerer is our artillery character, dropping fireballs and firebrand spells all over the place, with the occasional targeted dispel for good measure. The Cleric is the most ridiculous buffer and undead slayer ever. The cleric's player scoured the WotC boards for the most broken cleric builds he could find. And then artfully combined them. The human ranger is highly mobile providing focused ranged arrow attacks whereever they are needed. The rogue is our scout and with the advantage of spellcasting, can buff herself, turn invisible, or even drop some attack spells when needed. And finally with the Akashic, we have the ultimate skill monkey/knowledge expert. Our party is like a disciplined Navy seal unit.

As an example, we went back into The Three Faces of Evil adventure and annihilated it. We took on the entire population of the temple of Hexter in one massive pitched battle and wiped them out. We steamrolled through the next couple of adventures, and only ran into trouble when we got ambushed by the Black Dragon Illthane after winning the tournament in Greyhawk. The DM was able to ambush us and caught us effectively disorganized for the first couple of rounds. But we came back and killed the dragon without losing a single PC. The "reset" discussion came about after the game when we realized that the fight could easily have gone against us.

I should note that our DM has also made the adventure harder for us to compensate for our ridiculous party. For example, the Adamantine weapon-wielding Sunder loving dwarves in the tournament had their numbers doubled and their levels and stats boosted in order to give us a better fight.

 

[Black_Swan]

In my group the biggest problem with character death is that new characters tend to dilute the story. It just comes off as awkward and odd to have a new person join the pc's sometimes.

I think for our next game I'm going to suggest that Action Points can be used to keep a player alive after they've been dropped to negatives in battle. I like that idea a lot.

It allows the original pc's to stay in the game longer and provides a mechanic to do so.

Some games like L5R are meant to have a high character death rate. Others like 7th Sea aren't...D&D always walked the line in between for me. It seems like a game built for epic stories. Unfortunately our epic stories usually die out, generally because many of the quests become diluted or odd due to too many character deaths.

 

[FireLance]

While I don't have a "reset" button, what I effectively have in my campaigns is a "refresh" button.

Essentially, between the end of one adventure and the start of another, everything returns to the baseline: characters that are "killed" in the last adventure come back to life in the next; equipment that has been lost or used is replaced (and then upgraded, as the PCs usually gain a level between adventures); curses, petrification, and other long-term ailments are removed, etc.

How this gets done - whether the PCs have powerful patrons that watch out for them, whether the PCs found the necessary magic or gold to do so in the treasure they obtained, or whether the PCs have worked hard off-screen to do so - is handwaved.

As with the reset button, this is not a style of gaming that will suit everyone. However, it has worked well for my group. We happen to like the assurance that no matter how badly things go in the course of one game, they will always go back to normal at the start of the next.

 

[Wyrmshadows]

For me the most disturbing thing posted by the OP was the comment by one of his players that if I die I'm done playing. As a DM I would definetly be put off by such a statement. Without the context of knowing the person or your group as a whole its hard to know how I would react, but from an outside POV its unlikely I would tolerate what stinks of some sort of tantrum or blackmail.

After some thought, I have to say that I too am rather disturbed by the player's audacity to say that he might quit playing if he is forced to create another character. If the DM is playing fair, even hard but fair, and the player feels this way, maybe he needs to find a new hobby. This is manipulation pure and simple. Grow up, we have all lost characters.

It is certainly a brave new world when PCs are expected to be given success on a silver platter. I never thought that an entitlement mentality would creep so strongly into the game. I cannot stomach "killer DMs" but this is the exact opposite, a DM who is expected to hand-hold the players and make sure that they succeed no matter what.

I honestly don't know what the point of a tabletop role playing game is that you just push a button and make all negative consequences go away. Play Baldur's Gate I and II, Planescape Torment, Elder Scrolls Morrowind or Oblivion. All of these have save points that allow one to reset the game guaranteeing success.

Without the risk, RPG's become storytelling games of the worst sort. Playing in this kind of game is tantamount to playing in a novel where the characters have plot immunity. Why bother when you know the outcome? I love good novels, but I am not investing a lot of creative effort in reading them. As a DM, I do help build a story, but unlike a novel I can't guarantee the ending I desire because outside of the odd, very rare fudge, the dice fall where the dice fall. Its in the hands of the gods so to speak. I refuse to guarantee success because in doing so I make a joke of all the work I put into creating challenging adventures. I also rob the PCs of real achievement.

Of course its fine if individual groups play this way, if it works for them fine, though I don't see the point of adventure games involving violence that don't allow for death (even with action points). However this variant had better not rear its ugly head in the game officially because then I will know without a doubt that the game I knew is dead.



Wyrmshadows.

 

[FireLance]

Without the risk, RPG's become storytelling games of the worst sort. Playing in this kind of game is tantamount to playing in a novel where the characters have plot immunity. Why bother when you know the outcome? I love good novels, but I am not investing a lot of creative effort in reading them. As a DM, I do help build a story, but unlike a novel I can't guarantee the ending I desire because outside of the odd, very rare fudge, the dice fall where the dice fall. Its in the hands of the gods so to speak. I refuse to guarantee success because in doing so I make a joke of all the work I put into creating challenging adventures. I also rob the PCs of real achievement.

Actually, even with a reset mechanism, success is not guaranteed. The only guarantee is that you can try again. If the possibility of retrying means that there is no achievement, does that mean that all activities where people can keep retrying until they succeed - driving tests, obtaining college degrees, running a marathon, mountain climbing, etc. - are not real achievements? If not, what is the difference?

 

[ruleslawyer]

Actually, even with a reset mechanism, success is not guaranteed. The only guarantee is that you can try again. If the possibility of retrying means that there is no achievement, does that mean that all activities where people can keep retrying until they succeed - driving tests, obtaining college degrees, running a marathon, mountain climbing, etc. - are not real achievements? If not, what is the difference?

I'd say those are all bad ideas.

You can retake driving tests because the point of a driving test is to obtain a qualification and demonstrate competence in an activity. Likewise the point of a college degree. Running a marathon and failing still means you didn't make it; the fact that you can try again *in a different marathon* wouldn't be a consolation if you were actually a competitive runner as opposed to someone just doing it for a personal sense of achievement (in which case a marathon is largely about providing an organized framework for what you could do yourself).

Presenting challenge or risk might be a little closer to, say, a Formula One race; you might or might not win; you might be able to compete again; but you *also* might end up in a burning wreck on the side of the track. It's a bit different from your driving test.

Climbing a mountain is at least in part about both personal challenge and getting to the top, and as such is the closest thing to gaming that you listed, IMO. There's certainly a drive to "get to the end of the story" in an RPG, and the reset mechanic supports that. However, it's still subject to the phenomenon with which Wyrmshadows expressed discontent. Some people want D&D to be more like other tabletop games, in which there are winners and losers. Others are perfectly happy with the sense of achievement that videogames give you, and recognize that the existence of a save point doesn't destroy the excitement. YMMV.