On the Importance of Mortality

[Raven Crowking]

RC do you really percieve a no-death camp in this thread?

Don't you?

How can you argue against "The possibility of death is an integral and important part of D&D" otherwise?

I have found that as long as you have hit points recorded on your character sheet, death remains possible despite any houserules to reduce its probability.

What about "Whenever a character would otherwise die due to loss of hit points, the character survives, but something else happens by DM Fiat"? Wouldn't that remove all possibility of PC death?

RC

 

[Fenes]

Reincarnation as a dog after divine intervention, and having to do a great deed to become (demi)human again is one possible DM fiat I used - although my current campaign takes place in an alternate Mulhorand, where the gods still live in the city of gods, and tend to meddle a bit more directly with the mortals.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Reincarnation as a dog after divine intervention, and having to do a great deed to become (demi)human again is one possible DM fiat I used - although my current campaign takes place in an alternate Mulhorand, where the gods still live in the city of gods, and tend to meddle a bit more directly with the mortals.

I've no problem with this sort of thing....quite the opposite, in fact. It makes for interesting gaming.

My problem occurs specifically when the players know that, regardless of their actions, and regardless of their choices, they're always going to have another chance. No consequence is final. IMHO, that turns the games into Snakes & Ladders....except that you have to start over whenever you might have won until your kids succeed. Winning is hollow (although the degree by which you win might not be) because you can just keep slogging away until you happen to succeed. And after the sixth or seventh time that the BBEG tosses you into an inescapable death trap, or a slave labour camp, or whatever, instead of just killing you, the voice of Scott Evil seems to get overwhelmingly loud.......

Conversely, when you know you can lose -- not just have a setback, but lose -- then you know that you've earned your victory. It may be true that D&D is "always a bunch of people sitting around a table rolling dice and talking about the imaginary things their imaginary friends did" but chess is likewise always two people pushing pieces around a chessboard....that doesn't mean that it's okay to cheat, or that you want your opponent to throw the game to give you a false sense of victory.

IMHO, of course.

RC

 

[Fenes]

I've no problem with this sort of thing....quite the opposite, in fact. It makes for interesting gaming.

My problem occurs specifically when the players know that, regardless of their actions, and regardless of their choices, they're always going to have another chance. No consequence is final. IMHO, that turns the games into Snakes & Ladders....except that you have to start over whenever you might have won until your kids succeed. Winning is hollow (although the degree by which you win might not be) because you can just keep slogging away until you happen to succeed. And after the sixth or seventh time that the BBEG tosses you into an inescapable death trap, or a slave labour camp, or whatever, instead of just killing you, the voice of Scott Evil seems to get overwhelmingly loud.......

Conversely, when you know you can lose -- not just have a setback, but lose -- then you know that you've earned your victory. It may be true that D&D is "always a bunch of people sitting around a table rolling dice and talking about the imaginary things their imaginary friends did" but chess is likewise always two people pushing pieces around a chessboard....that doesn't mean that it's okay to cheat, or that you want your opponent to throw the game to give you a false sense of victory.

IMHO, of course.

RC

First, I do not play with players who are unable to play a character that fears death even though they know characters don't die. Quite the contrary - one mage is very timid, to say the least, and other characters are rather unwilling to enter combat.

Second, it's not as if no matter what characters do they cannot die - it's simply that I inform players that the consequences of certain actions may be death (or will be death, in the case of "I jump into the lava").

Third, I consider "winning" at D&D when everyone had fun. "Earning a victory" sounds just a bit odd, considering that the DM is voluntarily restricting his ressources for any given fight, and usually doesn't go all out either (even if only to avoid the "you metagamed, your NPCs can't know my character is vulnerable to silver" accusations).

 

[Raven Crowking]

First, I am not claiming that your game is one I'd have a problem with. I started out, in fact, by saying that I like the sort of solution you mentioned.

Second, this is especially true in your case as your games have a possiblity of character death.

Third, simply because D&D is a cooperative game doesn't mean that there cannot be victories and defeats. The DM creates what seems to him to be a fair challenge; the players (through their characters) try to deal with that challenge. They succeed, or they do not, or some combination of the two.

When I sit down to play chess, my goal is to have fun, too. I just don't find having the other person let me win, despite whatever boneheaded moves I might make, to fall within my definition of fun. The same with rpgs where I know it can't die. It seems hollow to me. Definitely un-fun. I have known a great many players that would push a DM to see if they could, in fact, die within a given campaign world as a method of determining whether or not they really wanted to play.

What happens when I do something stupid in a game is at least as important as what happens when I do something smart. IMHO, of course.


RC

 

[Shadeydm]

Don't you?

How can you argue against "The possibility of death is an integral and important part of D&D" otherwise?



What about "Whenever a character would otherwise die due to loss of hit points, the character survives, but something else happens by DM Fiat"? Wouldn't that remove all possibility of PC death?

RC

I do think death is important, I just happen to think that the rules encourage it to happen too often. My use of the AP mechanic is to reduce the probability/frequency of death not to eliminate it entirely. Perhaps I have been projecting my usage of the mechanic on to others who have been posting in this thread. I just don't recall anyone saying outright that death can't happen in my game.
I believe the possibility of death to be very important, I just don't believe PCs need to die very often to make the threat any more credible.

Well when you consider that characters can roll to stabilize while they lay there bleeding, I don't personally feel its too much of a stretch to allow expending APs to achieve the same result.

 

[Mallus]

And whereas I can understand the points some have made about death being disruptive to the game mechanically, and some have made some good points, the idea of "death-lite," that too strikes me as humorous. Kinda like pregnant-lite, or living-lite.

I get a chuckle out of the idea that death in D&D can be something other than death-lite, since one of the game's basic assumptions is that a player can always create a new character and rejoin play. D&D is the original game to feature "unlimited continues". I'd warm to the 'death being a serious, meaningful consequence' position if character death meant the player had to sit out for the rest of the campaign. "Sorry about Ragnar, Bob. Why don't you come back next Spring?". Now that would really raise the stakes...

I'm going to respond here to your earlier post about death being an opportunity for character transformation, and not an end to the characters story (where they come back as a shade, angel, or shady angel perhaps...). Short answer: I like that too, plenty of interesting play opportunities in there. But for the sake this discussion, let's define "character death" as that which forces the player to create a new and separate character; to switch actors. In your example the player is still playing his or her original character, albeit in a modified form. You're still describing the kind of death-proofing mechanic that allows a PC to continue using their preferred in-game actor.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I do think death is important, I just happen to think that the rules encourage it to happen too often.

I would tend to agree that the "balance mechanic" of 3.x needs some alteration, and that Action Points are a good mechanic to do this. I would also agree that PCs don't need to die very often to make the possibility of death credible.

RC

 

[Mallus]

It may be true that D&D is "always a bunch of people sitting around a table rolling dice and talking about the imaginary things their imaginary friends did" but chess is likewise always two people pushing pieces around a chessboard....that doesn't mean that it's okay to cheat, or that you want your opponent to throw the game to give you a false sense of victory.

Far be it from my to mention that the victory conditions in chess are non-negotiable and the victory conditions in D&D are.

 

[Mallus]

Question for the No-Death folks: Under what circumstances can the PCs in your games ultimately fail?

I don't see where you're going with this... but okay.

In my current campaign the PC's can fail under virtually any and all circumstances, they famously suffering a humiliating defeat and significant material loss while shopping one session. But said failure(s) will not result in the permanent removal from play of their preferred PC unless they want it to.