How awesome is resurrection in 13th Age???

[Tequila Sunrise]

I don't believe it has a cost.

So it sounds like 13A is trying a new take on res costs -- i.e., the 'five lives' approach rather than the monetary cost. I wanted to clarify because for those of us who don't know 13A, your OP can easily be interpreted as "Look at all the great restrictions and penalties that 13A puts on resing in addition to the traditional D&D gp cost!"

It's hard for me to say how rare character death is in 13A. But I don't think rolling up disposable iterations of the same character is going to be an option in most cases. I mean, first of all, the DM would have to allow it. Would you?!

Bob XIV is just a possible outcome of players treating their PCs as disposable toons; lots of players have a zillion character ideas and are happy to roll up completely different characters when the last one dies. And treat the new one exactly the same.

But to answer your question, no I don't really like the idea of Bob XIV, but if a player really loves a character, I've got better things to do than negotiating just how different his new PC has to be. For example, is it enough to simply change the PC's name? What if a feat or two get swapped out for different ones? What about picking different icons for the new PC? Or how about a good explanation for why Bob has so many clones? (Alias from FR comes to mind.)

Sure, I could hash it out with the player, or I could just say "Your new PC cannot share any similarities with the old one," but...well, I just feel like I've got better things to do than telling players what they can or can't play.

Secondly, unlike in D&D characters have mechanical links to the game world and story: Icon relationships, backgrounds and 'One Unique Thing'. Character OUT's ought to cut-down on cookie-cutter characters since pretty much by definition you shouldn't have two characters with the same 'unique' thing. More importantly, these mechanics should ideally make the player more invested in their character and in the game world. A player's OUT is explicitly intended to give them some design input into the world, and Icon roles give them some influence on how the story plays out.

As I understand icons, and I could be totally wrong, they're simply formalizations of the sort of PC-NPC relationships that D&D has had since day one. I don't have any idea what you mean by OUT or 'One Unique Thing.'

Nagol is right that in some types of games, and 13A could definitely be one, character death might really throw people for a loop. 13A features an optional rule where characters can only be killed by Named Villains. This rule doesn't appeal to me personally, but I suppose in a long campaign where people were heavily invested in their characters it might be worth considering.

This is true; as DMs we should be aware that more character deaths and/or restrictive resing rules tend to cut down on player investment. Kill PCs often enough, and/or make resing enough of a hassle, and even the hard core role player will become jaded and start treating their PCs as disposable toons.

If you're okay with that possible outcome, hey, it's all good on your end!

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

If it makes you feel like the character only has five lives then the normal D&D way of unlimited Raise Deads must seem like you entered a cheat for infinite lives.

A cheat would let me activate Super-Sonic mode and never die in the first place.

GP-for-resing is just how the game world works; like HPs, it's a convenient way to create tension without making things so dangerous that PCs say "Screw this dangerous adventuring , I'm going back to papa's farm!"

Personally, I like to make players come back in with first level characters so they don't get to just skip ahead.

This might work, or it might just make low-level PCs progressively more impossible to play in a higher-level group, depending on how 13A math works. How do attacks and defenses scale?

 

[Gadget]

TS, you seem to be operating under the assumption that unlimited res and the associated game style that goes along with it is the only way to role play and always has been. That has certainly not been my experience over the years, and many players have complained about the easy res rules in 3e (and many like it as well). I remember res being very difficult in AD&D. Such things tended to vary a lot from campaign to campaign. I haven't played 13th Age either, but the idea sounds intriguing. Easy res is certainly not a fundamental part of the game the way, say Armor Class and Hit Points are.

 

[Agamon]

One thing to remember is that dying is not super easy in the game. If you have PCs down and out, the party can just decide that they escape the fight and it's all good, they just need to explain to the GM how they go about doing it. Well, not all good, the GM decides on a campaign loss for the retreat, so there is setback, just not death. With how narrative the game plays, players will much rather take a setback to losing a PC.

That said, it is possible to be killed outright from way too much damage, but that will be rare.

 

[Dungeoneer]

As I understand icons, and I could be totally wrong, they're simply formalizations of the sort of PC-NPC relationships that D&D has had since day one. I don't have any idea what you mean by OUT or 'One Unique Thing.'

Well, I think you're assuming that this game is 3.x with some extra rules tacked on. It's a bit more complicated than that. Try this review for a good overview.

 

[Dungeoneer]

But there is another rule one needs to known to really understand what how the limit works and that is if you come back as a new character how is that going to work? Personally, I like to make players come back in with first level characters so they don't get to just skip ahead. It can be hard in some campaign but with the seemingly 10 level limit of 13A it is probably more doable. Knowing that a player has to start again at the beginning make resurrection more likely a choice and then make these rules more meaningful. Fearing their character death is not a bad thing and can make players play not so carelessly with their characters.

Like in most TRPGs this is left up to the DM.

I feel like the difference between levels in 13A is pretty SIGNIFICANT, though. There are only ten levels, but they've made them all count. A rogue at level 1 might do 1d6 damage with his dagger, but a rogue at level 5 does 5d6 damage. Hit points scale similarly. I'd be hesitant to throw a level 1 character into a higher level sandbox.

For myself I'd ask the player to roll up a character that is in some way relevant to the current campaign, and then work it into the story at the same level or MAYBE a level below. The player has already been 'punished' by losing a character that presumably they were attached to.

 

[Dungeoneer]

One thing to remember is that dying is not super easy in the game. If you have PCs down and out, the party can just decide that they escape the fight and it's all good, they just need to explain to the GM how they go about doing it. Well, not all good, the GM decides on a campaign loss for the retreat, so there is setback, just not death. With how narrative the game plays, players will much rather take a setback to losing a PC.

That said, it is possible to be killed outright from way too much damage, but that will be rare.

Yeah, fleeing is easy. Of course the players still have to DECIDE they want to flee. Which players aren't always great about doing! You speak about them as if they were rational people.

 

[urLordy]

Aside from the resource mgmt aspect, I like the story implications that resurrecting someone is a big deal and takes a lot out of you. The Number Five Limit reminds me why I wouldn't play 13th Age though, as its purely narrative.

 

[I'm A Banana]

13th Age res is one of those 13th Age rules that seems half-baked, like a great concept that's not followed through quite to the level it should be.

Meaning, it's great copy -- great story. It's big and significant and rare and unusual, and it "fixes" cheap-feeling resurrection magic.

It seems like part of the design rubrick of 13th Age: Tweet & Heinsoo wanted character life to matter, and death to be a significant event. They wanted a more narrative-sytle, character-centered kind of game play (that's evident from the OUTs and the Relationships and the Escalation Die and in other ways).

But then they didn't take that all the way through. I mean, why have a Resurrection spell in the first place? As thing that just pops up on a spell list? Why not have it be an effect only accessible through special items or rituals or events? Why have PC's who can die from random kobolds and traps (the optional rule of Named Villains being the only killers -- why was it OPTIONAL?)?

And why Five? I mean, what omnipotent, petty divine accountant is sitting up there going "Okay. You can have FOUR more chances!"?

It's like someone looked at the Resurrection spell and thought, "How can I make this better?" rather than looking at the system that the Resurrection spell is embedded in and asking "Why do we even want this thing?"

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

One thing to remember is that dying is not super easy in the game. If you have PCs down and out, the party can just decide that they escape the fight and it's all good, they just need to explain to the GM how they go about doing it. Well, not all good, the GM decides on a campaign loss for the retreat, so there is setback, just not death. With how narrative the game plays, players will much rather take a setback to losing a PC.

Well that's an interesting rule, and certainly takes some teeth out of the res rules.