D&D 5E Looking for unique suggestions on making player resurrections punishing.

[Taneras]

The sort of campaigns I enjoy running are more on the brutal side, not as in graphic details but with respect to how punishing mistakes are. I have no issue with TKP's if my party makes a series of bad decisions, but I am wondering how I could go about homebrewing in some relatively hard consequences to player resurrection. I'm looking to add additional hurdles to leap ontop of what 5e rules demand. Obviously "hard consequences" is a subjective measurement and everyone will have their own estimation on what that exactly entails. But I'd just like to see what some other DM/players do or have seen done.

Thanks

 

[DeathMutant]

In the olden days, I believe that you lost 1 point of CON -- permanently -- when you were resurrected.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

What I did was this:

When you die and get raised/resurrected/brought-back-to-life, you immediately make a "death save" (10<, fail, as normal). If you fail this, you fill in one of your Death Circles...permanently. This means you only have two "fails" left if dropped to 0 or lower. If you die again, and get brought back, do it again; make a Death Save. Fail = fill in your second Death Circle...permanently. Now, every time you die and get brought back to life, there's a 50/50 chance it just doesn't work. If you fail that Death Save, fill in the final Death Circle. Your character is no longer able to be raised from the dead by any means. His soul is too weak with this world (or to strong with the other...).

So, while this doesn't really 'stop' the treadmill of characters dieing, then being raised the next day (or round!), eventually the characters luck will run out and it won't matter. Dead is dead.

ALTERNATIVELY: You could make a newly raised character make an immediate trio of 'death saves'...as if they were dieing again. No help will work (no magic, no Medicine check, Healers Kit, etc...just flat d20 rolls). The player rolls d20's until he gets 3 successes or 3 failures...whatever happens first...that result is his Final Result. In other words, if he rolls 11, 8, 9, 14, 3...he failed 3 times before succeeding 3 times. The character is DEAD. Does not come back to life and can NEVER be raised/returned again. Perma-death. If you REALLY wnat to be serious, have each dead automatically perma-fill a circle. So each character simply has 3 "ressurections"; with three filled in Death Circles, the next time the character hits 0hp or lower, they are just dead. Period.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[delericho]

I like [MENTION=45197]pming[/MENTION] 's idea about permanently filling Death Save boxes - that's really nasty.

However, I'm generally of the view that death is (mostly) it's own punishment - the player is forced out of the game until his allies can bring him back, so that's enough. That said, I like death having consequences, so I encourage players to take the opportunity to change some stuff about their characters when they come back - particularly their Bonds, Flaws, Ideals, etc. I haven't got around to it, but I'd also like to introduce a few Backgrounds specifically for characters who have come back (the Revenant may already cover this), in which case the player could even switch that aspect of his character out.

That way, the character is somehow permanently marked by his experience but he's not permanently penalised. YMMV on the value of that, of course.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

What is the specific goal in making coming back from the dead more punishing than the current consumed number of diamonds and spell slots, and having a -4 penalty on all d20 rolls that reduces with each long rest?

Wanting a campaign to be "brutal" and "punish mistakes" is not at all specific enough to provide any suggestions that have a hope of achieving your actual goal - especially since those are entirely subjective so one could say "The rules are already brutal and punish mistakes - especially the mistake of not swinging by a jeweler and buying up a suitable number of diamonds before setting out on a deadly adventure."

 

[iserith]

The sort of campaigns I enjoy running are more on the brutal side, not as in graphic details but with respect to how punishing mistakes are. I have no issue with TKP's if my party makes a series of bad decisions, but I am wondering how I could go about homebrewing in some relatively hard consequences to player resurrection. I'm looking to add additional hurdles to leap ontop of what 5e rules demand. Obviously "hard consequences" is a subjective measurement and everyone will have their own estimation on what that exactly entails. But I'd just like to see what some other DM/players do or have seen done.

Thanks

The challenge here is that if you make something prohibitively costly, then it's effectively the same as banning resurrection outright which is probably the easiest option anyway. But here's another question for you: How many times have you actually seen a player choose to have his or her character resurrected? If it's rare even without the "hard consequences," then I'd suggest not fixing what ain't broken.

My games tend to be pretty brutal as well, so I do ask players to always have a backup character at the ready. And while I get a lot of my players in terms of character development and interaction, they always seem to be eager to try out another characters when their PC buys the farm. So perhaps that's another option for you - have them make cool backup characters that you write into the emergent story. When their character dies, they can pick up their backup character and play on and, in my experience, they'd rather do that than get the dead character resurrected.

It also depends on what your rules are for new characters. Do characters start at 1st level regardless of the party's average level? Do they start a few levels behind? Or do they create characters at the level where they left off? This will also factor into how attractive raise dead or the like is. The lower the cost in character levels to create a new one, the greater the appeal to do so.

And while you're considering "hard consequences" to encourage a particular behavior, think about the alternative: Fun incentives for not resurrecting the character. You may find this works better.

 

[ZeshinX]

I use the -1 to CON rule from the 1e/2e days, but in escalating fashion. First time raised, -1 CON. Second time, -2. Third -4, fourth -8, and so on. The mortal shell simply is not meant to go through that kind of trauma and come out unscathed (if your CON would be 0 or lower, you're character is dead for good).

At all times though, a player can choose to stay dead. It's up to that character's soul to determine if they wish to be raised or not. If they don't want to be raised, then they don't come back.

Certain other things can prevent it as well. Such as fulfilling a pact or contract with a god or other equally powerful planar entity (i.e. a soul willingly sold to Asmodeus or other demons/devils....the soul is now their property and they determine its course).

 

[Savage Wombat]

I came up with the idea of having each player (that wants to anyway) come up with a story idea of "fate worse than death". Something horrible that you're allowed to do to them if they die instead of killing their character. Permanent maiming, abduction by a monster, weird curses, whatever.

The reason you have the player do this is so that you avoid saddling them with an idea that makes them unhappy or uncomfortable.

 

[Taneras]

What is the specific goal in making coming back from the dead more punishing than the current consumed number of diamonds and spell slots, and having a -4 penalty on all d20 rolls that reduces with each long rest?

I probably misspoke, not necessarily the coming back more punishing, but the act of resurrection itself a more difficult process. Something more than just diamonds and spells. Maybe I can ground this idea more by pointing to various movies/anime where to bring someone back from the dead didn't just require you to bring some money to a guy and boom its done.

So I guess in a sense its more punishing because it would be harder to set up the process and possibly even complete it, but perhaps I should have also thrown in also a focus on thematic/dramatic elements to make it less cut and dry.

 

[Taneras]

The challenge here is that if you make something prohibitively costly, then it's effectively the same as banning resurrection outright which is probably the easiest option anyway. But here's another question for you: How many times have you actually seen a player choose to have his or her character resurrected? If it's rare even without the "hard consequences," then I'd suggest not fixing what ain't broken.

My games tend to be pretty brutal as well, so I do ask players to always have a backup character at the ready. And while I get a lot of my players in terms of character development and interaction, they always seem to be eager to try out another characters when their PC buys the farm. So perhaps that's another option for you - have them make cool backup characters that you write into the emergent story. When their character dies, they can pick up their backup character and play on and, in my experience, they'd rather do that than get the dead character resurrected.

It also depends on what your rules are for new characters. Do characters start at 1st level regardless of the party's average level? Do they start a few levels behind? Or do they create characters at the level where they left off? This will also factor into how attractive raise dead or the like is. The lower the cost in character levels to create a new one, the greater the appeal to do so.

And while you're considering "hard consequences" to encourage a particular behavior, think about the alternative: Fun incentives for not resurrecting the character. You may find this works better.

You're correct, its not very often that I come across this. And I guess in a sense the extreme cost is a serious hurdle early on to low level parties/characters. I misspoke and placed too much emphasis on difficulty. I should have mentioned that I was looking for more thematic suggestions to change/modify it from "bring this large bag of money (diamonds) to this dude and your friend will be alive again) to a more difficult series of hurdles for flavor sake. So I guess my request is more of flavor suggestions that are tougher than what's currently listed.

As far as new characters goes, they start 2 or 3 levels behind and lose the equipment of their original tool. We homebrewed in that death doesn't remove attunement, but I've also loosened up a tad on the magic items being rare, at least later on in the game when the party moves from fighting kobolds and goblins to giants and dragons. So in a sense if a character dies all those really cool items are locked to them and can't just be passed around - unless you bring them back via a resurrection.