D&D General "Hot Take": Fear is a bad motivator

[Coroc]

Would you disagree that, by page or word count, the rules are predominantly about combat?

Might be that many rules cover combat but still, I would disagree based on that D&D is a RPG, a Role Playing Game, not a CSG a Combat Simulation Game.

I do agree, that the mechanical aids for role playing situations are less than in other RPGs, but ideally you would not have to use these much, other than if in a social interaction some player tries something extraordinary, or some player wants to do a social interaction but is not that fond of roleplaying it, therefore only describing what he likes to do. Still the tools are there, whether there could be more or not.

Just that many people do not use the role playing part of the game and others do, does not change that. The eight encounter / day suggestion enforced that, some people seem to think, that that is all, that D&D is about. But the best games imho, are those, where multiple solutions to some situation are possible, one of these well migh be combat.

 

[Maxperson]

Ok, I'm confused. I thought your entire point was that without the possibility of permanent character death, no consequences of any sort will ever be permanent because one could just wait to high level and use high-level resources and/or get a god to retroactively fix all the past consequences. Doesn't that necessarily imply that using high-level resources and getting favors from gods are sufficiently trivial that such amelioration of past consequences can be successfully pursued faster than new otherwise-permanent consequences arise?

No. There are going to be many ways to accomplish a goal, especially at powerful levels. Gods may not ever play into it and even if they do, it doesn't mean that it's a trivial thing. Trivial would be calling up a god on commune and being like, "Hey Sune, I need you to come down and take care of something else now." Having to go on quests meant for 20th level groups in order to curry favor with a god is not a trivial thing.

Without the assumption that using high-level resources and accumulating divine favors are trivial, how does one address the new otherwise-permanent in-game consequences from all the quests failed while the party is busy trying to fix the older consequences?

Because very few of them will need a god. Most, if not all will have other solutions as well.

 

[Mort]

This is entirely the case when I run a game for adults. The table tends to be made up of people who are communicative, considerate, and there to make the game work.

Lord help you, though, when running the game for kids. Boundary testing is one of the many things you need to be ready for. I wonder if we have a good thread around here about running games for kids vs. teenagers vs. adults. They are such different experiences.

Yeah, running for kids is different. I ran a few games for my son and his 13 year old friends (with the additional challenge of it being over zoom). They are always testing boundaries and will pounce in a heartbeat if they sense weakness! Plus they seem to speak in memes, it's almost a foreign language. It was a bit jarring, as I'm used to my long-running group where the youngster is 36.

I think there was a thread around here somewhere, but maybe a new one is warranted.

 

[Remathilis]

You might be joking, but seriously I am one of those people: if the map has borders or the program has limits I want to go beyond them; and if the program doesn't allow for that I'm disappointed.

This is why I get - or got, when I played them back in the day - annoyed with a lot of geography-based computer games. Take a typical car race game. The programmers expect you to try to stay on the racetrack, where sooner or later I want to get off the track and explore the city in my racecar (and maybe find a shortcut, or maybe get completely lost...).

It's not the programmers' fault for not including those things - it's not like they're part of the basic mandate they were given - but I still find it unnecessarily limiting, once I get bored of going round and round the racetrack.

Every game has boundaries.

I mean, I once played (once being the operative word) with a guy who was obsessed with Dragonlance. So much so he asked to play a kender (red flag 1) in my homebrew. I relented. He came though a magic portal from Krynn. Once here, he complained how stupid things were that no one knew he was a kender and decided his goal was to find another portal so he and the other PCs could go to a "real campaign setting" while still expecting me to run the game, just on Krynn! He wasn't invited back.

You can argue he was just pushing against the map boundaries and expecting there to be content. You can argue he found a loophole and was just exploiting it (magic portals between settings). You can also argue he was a massive jerk who tried to hijack the game and went against the spirit of the game.

I'll let you decide which was applicable.

 

[jmartkdr2]

General SOP here is that if revival is possible and enough of the corpse is left then Speak With Dead is cast, with the first question almost always being "Do you desire revival?" This makes it an in-character question as well as a player-level question.

The second question, if the first gets a "yes", is almost always "How would you like to pay for it?"

Yup. It leaves room for the dm or even other party members to decide not to move forward, though I've never seen them choose not to try to revive a character that the player wants revived.

And some things, e.g. being turned into an undead or disintegrated to dust, can't be fixed even with Resurrection; you're in to full Wish territory there - and if you have to ask, you can't afford it.

True costs are fun, IME.

The threat of Reincarnation sends players and characters screaming for the hills around here!

I mean, who wants to have a common badger - with the brains etc. of a common badger - as their PC?

We use the 5e version, which at least keeps you humanoid. The point is to not violate the Ship of Theseus-type continuity of the character, while making it something the player will need to actually deal with, for some time.

 

[Xetheral]

No. There are going to be many ways to accomplish a goal, especially at powerful levels. Gods may not ever play into it and even if they do, it doesn't mean that it's a trivial thing. Trivial would be calling up a god on commune and being like, "Hey Sune, I need you to come down and take care of something else now." Having to go on quests meant for 20th level groups in order to curry favor with a god is not a trivial thing.

Thanks for clarifying.

Because very few of them will need a god. Most, if not all will have other solutions as well.

What other types of solutions do you have in mind that are able to retroactively correct consequences from past failures?

I understand how high-level spells (or political influence, or even, in some cases, simply tons of cash) can change the current situation, but I'm not aware of easily accessible options that allow retroactive correction. So while you may be able to restore something/someone that was lost, you can't make up for the fact that it/they were gone between the time of the original failure and the eventual high-level correction.

For example, say the party fails to save the infant crown princess at 5th level. Once they reach high level they may be able to track her down (and/or ressurrect her if necessary) using spells, but there's no way to fix the fact that the kingdom was without an heir in the meantime. Plus, even after you restore her, she may lack the upbringing she would need to be a successful queen (or be brought back as an infant in the ressurection case). Bringing her back later also won't undo any political upheaval caused by the lack of an heir.

And this isn't an isolated example. Bringing anyone back from the dead later on will cause them to now be a different age than their former peers. Widows and widowers may have moved on and remarried in the interim, or died of old age. Survivors of destroyed cities may now be scattered across the continent, unable or unwilling to migrate back to repopulate the city you eventually rebuilt. These are all permanent consequences that it would require extraordinary means, such as a favor from a god, to correct yet they are going to be common consequences of nearly every failure.

So if favors from a god are rare, but otherwise-permanent consequences are common, how do you justify your claim that there can be no permanent consequences without the risk of permanent character death?

 

[Maxperson]

Thanks for clarifying.


What other types of solutions do you have in mind that are able to retroactively correct consequences from past failures?

I understand how high-level spells (or political influence, or even, in some cases, simply tons of cash) can change the current situation, but I'm not aware of easily accessible options that allow retroactive correction. So while you may be able to restore something/someone that was lost, you can't make up for the fact that it/they were gone between the time of the original failure and the eventual high-level correction.

For example, say the party fails to save the infant crown princess at 5th level. Once they reach high level they may be able to track her down (and/or ressurrect her if necessary) using spells, but there's no way to fix the fact that the kingdom was without an heir in the meantime. Plus, even after you restore her, she may lack the upbringing she would need to be a successful queen (or be brought back as an infant in the ressurection case). Bringing her back later also won't undo any political upheaval caused by the lack of an heir.

And this isn't an isolated example. Bringing anyone back from the dead later on will cause them to now be a different age than their former peers. Widows and widowers may have moved on and remarried in the interim, or died of old age. Survivors of destroyed cities may now be scattered across the continent, unable or unwilling to migrate back to repopulate the city you eventually rebuilt. These are all permanent consequences that it would require extraordinary means, such as a favor from a god, to correct yet they are going to be common consequences of nearly every failure.

So if favors from a god are rare, but otherwise-permanent consequences are common, how do you justify your claim that there can be no permanent consequences without the risk of permanent character death?

It doesn't have to be retroactive. It just has to fix the problem. If you failed to save the royal family, eventually bringing them back to life fixes the failure. I was never talking retroactive. Just eventually being able to succeed.

 

[Xetheral]

It doesn't have to be retroactive. It just has to fix the problem. If you failed to save the royal family, eventually bringing them back to life fixes the failure. I was never talking retroactive. Just eventually being able to succeed.

How does later bringing the royal family back to life fix the failure? The royal family has been gone in the interim. Isn't that an unfixed permanent consequences for failure?

 

[Mort]

It doesn't have to be retroactive. It just has to fix the problem. If you failed to save the royal family, eventually bringing them back to life fixes the failure. I was never talking retroactive. Just eventually being able to succeed.

But, as @Xetheral stated - it may be too late to resolve - or at least problematic.

Lets say you fail to save the royal family when your characters are 5th level. You don't have the resources to bring them back until your characters are 13th level - many, many years later.

In that time, the game world has had a whole succession issue (either resolved peacefully, by war or by some other conflict). There's a new family on the throne. Bringing back the original royals isn't going to solve the problem, it's going to create a mess!

 

[Maxperson]

How does later bringing the royal family back to life fix the failure? The royal family has been gone in the interim. Isn't that an unfixed permanent consequences for failure?

Someone ruled the country while they were gone. I guarantee it. People don't leave countries without leadership. You may have to remove those who stepped up if they won't step down, but that's a different problem. It may even be that the PCs stepped in to do it. Lots of ways to play it. Also, consequence does not equal failure. The failure was in letting the royal family die. The correction was in bringing them back. A consequence OF the failure was different leadership. The new leadership was not the failure, though.