Removing the "Revolving Door of Death"

[Lord Zardoz]

Players are generally pretty good about making characters they like to play the first time. Losing a character can be greatly inconvenient. On top of that, later levels assume that death is not that big an obstacle, and even the monsterous manual states that if your customizing a monster, and in a test it drops one of the players, that its all good.

If you want to close that revolving door, you may want to make the lobby much larger. The players should have plenty of chances to stabilize. You may want save or die spells to result in hitting -1 unstableized instead of dead.

Also, do not close the revolving door for the players but keep it open for plot critical NPC's. If my PC has to bite it when I eat a critical hit from a low level archer who managed to roll consecutive 20's, then Lord Doom also has to bite it when I score an unlikely hit as he was escaping.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[newgrace]

I agree with you, I like death to be more permenant as it creates more stress and excitement. Plus when you do pull it off and everyone is barely alive, thats a good feeling. Other people like it different, but your not alone in wanting life to be more valuable (And combat taking more strategy/planning).

I believe its in Heroes of Horror that I got my ideas. I just made the "im alive again!" spells much harder to cast, rare to find, and require expensive components / quests. I was going for a horror game (Cthulhu and DND, yay).

My True Resurrection required someone to take the dead persons place "a life for a life", and even then, only "evil" temples or worshipers of dark gods would perform the rituals needed for these "im alive again!" spells. So the party would have to search out groups that wanted to remain hidden, convince one who had the knowledge of what to do, and then pay a horrific cost (a child's body, no more then a week dead) thats hard to come by legally. It made the spells possible, but life a lot more valuable.

And I kept all the "Gona kill you sucka" spells as I wanted the more dangerous element. Taking out the Slay Living just because resurrection is no longer a viable option creates balance, but does not make life more valuable as your removing the spell to come back to life, and the spell that instantly kills. I say leave in the death effects, your players should be smart enough to get plenty of protection vs death effects, and give them hints and time to research fights before they stumble on the Bodak.

 

[roguerouge]

The one solution that I've seen that's not been mentioned is to allow players to spend an action point to stabilize at -9 hp. It helps in every situation except TPK.

Also, be very careful to give monsters a reason to capture, not kill, party members when the PCs are TPK'd or flee the scene.

 

[Shallown]

I have three rules that affect that within my game.

first is death occurs at 10 + or - your con modifier.

second no matter how negative you are you don't die for one round. Gives the other players a chance to save you and triggers a sort of "Oh Crap" momnent when everyone tries to figure out how to bring them back.

Third - Each of my campaign specific gods has thier own spell list and only three have the ability to raise dead so Only certain clerics can raise dead. gives it more flavor and makes sense to me. It also limits bringing people back to life in the field/adventure.

Later

 

[eamon]

If you want to close that revolving door, you may want to make the lobby much larger.

Great way of saying that!

That's exactly what people are trying to achieve when they let save-or-die become save-or-drop-and-almost-die, or when they extend the negative hitpoint range.

 

[nittanytbone]

Action points also vastly increase the odds of character survival. I use a system as follows:

Spend 1 AP - Gain HP = to 1/2 level
Spend 1 AP - Add 1d6 to any D20 roll before you roll it
Spend 2 AP - Add 1d6 to any D20 roll after you roll it

Each of these counts as an immediate action. I award about 1 AP per session. Sometimes more for bravo roleplaying performances and such, sometimes less if the party really didn't do well.

 

[sukael]

In our high level Planescape campaign, True Resurrection is 'easy' to come by, and the DM didn't want to change the flavour of the campaign by suddenly restricting it's use.

Instead, he and a couple of the players came up with a reasonable way to compensate for it. Each time someone dies, he will go to the afterlife (paradise, heaven, etc.). As it's very nice there (being paradise and all), if the character is called out to return to the planar life, he will have to make a Will Save to avoid the compelling thought of staying in the afterlife. It starts with a DC 5 + half character level (something that most of us only will fail with a natural 1). Each time a character dies again and gets to the afterlife, the DC is increased with 5. So after two or three deaths of 1 character, he'll probably stick around in afterlife anyway.

By the way, the Will Save is unmodified, so only base save + wisdom mod. No trinkets to buff the save beyond that, in order to get ridiculous high plusses on the saves.

This way the players are very careful not to let their character die, lest they face the chance of having to make a new character (with the level loss that comes with that). So avoiding lethality in combat is still a big issue to us.

This isn't something I've (forcibly) applied to PCs, but the simple fact that the afterlife for most Good or even Neutral people is much better than the living world is a good in-setting way to say "no, you can't Ressurect (NPC ___), because he doesn't want to come back". Generally, only PCs and those particularly devoted to given ideals in the mortal world are willing to be raised...

And in some cases even that doesn't apply, because a devoted champion of a given cause or alignment might (a) find it an easier one to promote after progressing through to become an outsider, or (b) effectively lose memory of his/her mortal life after becoming a petitioner.