Should D&D Have an Alternate Death Mechanic?

[Moon-Lancer]

Meh, leave the rez spells in. Won't make that much of a difference really.

But, Moon-Lancer, I do like that last idea. I would go with Rounds=1+1/2 level rather than Con bonus. It just makes it more likely that our higher level heroes might survive - but a TPK will still be a TPK.

I still like using a con bonus, as i feel fighting off death is the very core of constitution. Not letting the body give up... etc. But i wonder if their is room for levels to also play a role. I was thinking 1/4 your level + con, or something to that effect.

 

[maddman75]

See, here's where my disconnect comes inn, there's a lot of posters in this thread who treat their games as a storytelling device first and a game a distant second. The attachment to PC's being paramount to most else and the worry of upsetting the players if their PC's are killed or the idea of PC deaths "disrupting the story". In a way, it's kind of creepy. I mean are your players going to wig out if their PC's die? If that's the case I really dont want anyone like that at my table. I've been playing a 11th level Cleric off and on for the past few years in my buddy's ultrasporadic game, in fact it's the only D&D game I've played in for the past few years. But if Vandronic (my PC) dies, guess what, I'm gonna say "He was pretty cool, a bit too pius sometimes, but real cool. I'm gonna miss playing him" and then start thinking about what other type of character I want to play.

No, my players are not going to go all 'NO NOT BLACKLEAF!' if they lose a PC.

Is my game a game first or a storytelling device first? Neither. It is a form of entertainment for myself and my guests. One of my main principles (which may or may not be true, but it seems true to me) is that the primary determinant of how memorable and enjoyable a night is depends not on if the characters succeed or fail, the story the GM is trying to put together, the rules used, the imagined setting, or any other external factor. It is the pace and the flow of the game. If the pace flows well, following a natural story progression of intro->rising conflict->climax->coda, then it is remembered by all as a great game. Now I don't care about what particular story is told, so long as the pace follows this plan I get an awesome game.

Therefore, anything which interferes with this pace is bad and should be eliminated. I tend to lean toward simpler rulesets, though I'll admit that more complicated rulesets such as D&D and Exalted lend their own pace to the game. But PC death disrupts the heck out of the pace. As I mentioned, one player is out of the game either making a new character, waiting for him to be introduced, or waiting to be brought back from the dead. This is unacceptable, not to mention all the work put into that PC is now lost.

I'm not abandoning strategy and tactics, because the resolutions and even the conflicts themselves are not set up ahead of time. I'm not interested in controlling what happens - that's up to the players actions and the rules being used. I'm interested in guiding how that happens to make it the most fun. Death can come, but I'd rather have a system where that requires player consent.

 

[Numion]

I agree there are other ways to make things interesting for the PC's, but in my experience there's almost nothing that PC's hate more than having thier stuff taken from them and or being imprisoned. A fair number of my players past and present would prefer straight-up DEATH than that.

BTW, that's something people hate really lot in real life too. Up to the point of committing suicide if they lose everything they own or are imprisoned. And up to fighting the police to death instead of surrendering.

So, since those people exist in real life it's not hard to believe that adventurers would be like that also; after all, they value loot (belongings) and freedom above all.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

No, my players are not going to go all 'NO NOT BLACKLEAF!' if they lose a PC.

Is my game a game first or a storytelling device first? Neither. It is a form of entertainment for myself and my guests. One of my main principles (which may or may not be true, but it seems true to me) is that the primary determinant of how memorable and enjoyable a night is depends not on if the characters succeed or fail, the story the GM is trying to put together, the rules used, the imagined setting, or any other external factor. It is the pace and the flow of the game. If the pace flows well, following a natural story progression of intro->rising conflict->climax->coda, then it is remembered by all as a great game. Now I don't care about what particular story is told, so long as the pace follows this plan I get an awesome game.

Not trying to be a jerk here or anything but you state that your game isnt a storytelling device then jump right into talking about natural story progression structure. Maybe I'm misunderstanding but it seems like story does play a bigger part in what you and your players want in a game than the mechanics and if that's your thing that's cool, just say so.

, anything which interferes with this pace is bad and should be eliminated. I tend to lean toward simpler rulesets, though I'll admit that more complicated rulesets such as D&D and Exalted lend their own pace to the game. But PC death disrupts the heck out of the pace. As I mentioned, one player is out of the game either making a new character, waiting for him to be introduced, or waiting to be brought back from the dead. This is unacceptable, not to mention all the work put into that PC is now lost.

That's cool if you feel that character death disrupts your game. It's not something that I feel is disruptive in mine, it comes with the territory and for the longest time in the history of the game I thought that was the default. I mean you're playing Dungeons & Dragons, your character is doing dangerous stuff so there's a chance that your character can die. Part of the discussion seems to be focused on the work put into the PC being lost if the PC dies. That doesn't make sense to me at all. It's like because that particular PC dies, everything that happened before is negated? Is that what people are getting at? or is it the need to play out the PC's story by keeping the character alive until the end of their story? That seems really artificial, but I cant deny that it's some peoples spot of tea. It's not mine.
Whenever that character dies, it's their time. I think that if people want that type of story maybe they should, I don't know, sit around and have a round robin story group with no dice or rules except to just keep the story going. Playing a game implies risk and in most cases in D&D that risk sometimes means some sort of irreparable bodily harm to their characters.

 

[Quasqueton]

No matter what mode of play is in vogue, GMs desire player approval. Players, while interested in GM approval, are more interested in personal gratification. Whether this comes through having the most powerful PC, the one that is "always in character," or whatever, it means a game persona that is extant, not dead. The only satisfactory PC demise is one so remarkable that the character thereafter lives on in the legend of the campaign.
-- Gary Gygax

Quasqueton

 

[ShinHakkaider]

Quasqueton

This from the man that gave us one of the most save or DIE modules of all time:

TOMB OF HORRORS.

also G1-3 is pretty frakkin' deadly if I remember correctly.

 

[maddman75]

Not trying to be a jerk here or anything but you state that your game isnt a storytelling device then jump right into talking about natural story progression structure. Maybe I'm misunderstanding but it seems like story does play a bigger part in what you and your players want in a game than the mechanics and if that's your thing that's cool, just say so.

Basically the story structure is a means to an end, not the end itself. Nor am I interested in railroady games where the GM tells the story and the PCs play along. I'm an interested in the dynamic creation of the story, which I hold is what all RPGs do, and by focusing on the intro/rise/climax/coda structure you can get really awesome games.

I'm really not waving the flag or anything, I'm sure there's plenty of other ways to make awesome games. Some people have said they can't imagine having fun in a game where the GM tends not to kill PCs. I'm explaining how that is so. Heck, most of the fights in my Buffy game were more exciting than D&D, even though in that game it is not within the power of the GM to kill a character!. I mean you can kill them, but they can spend points to come back. If they don't have enough, they can owe. And the fights were exciting. What makes a fight exciting isn't that the players don't want their characters to die. Its that they don't want them to lose. The Buffy game it was easier for them to lose, so the fights are more exciting. The fact that they couldn't be forcibly removed from a character didn't seem to matter at all.

That's cool if you feel that character death disrupts your game. It's not something that I feel is disruptive in mine, it comes with the territory and for the longest time in the history of the game I thought that was the default. I mean you're playing Dungeons & Dragons, your character is doing dangerous stuff so there's a chance that your character can die. Part of the discussion seems to be focused on the work put into the PC being lost if the PC dies. That doesn't make sense to me at all. It's like because that particular PC dies, everything that happened before is negated? Is that what people are getting at? or is it the need to play out the PC's story by keeping the character alive until the end of their story? That seems really artificial, but I cant deny that it's some peoples spot of tea. It's not mine.
Whenever that character dies, it's their time. I think that if people want that type of story maybe they should, I don't know, sit around and have a round robin story group with no dice or rules except to just keep the story going. Playing a game implies risk and in most cases in D&D that risk sometimes means some sort of irreparable bodily harm to their characters.

By the 'work' I mean the relationships that the character has built up through gameplay. Those relationships are valuable, and are what drive conflict and make the game interesting. With a new character you have to start over.

And I find the comments about how I shouldn't play a roleplaying game and should just do group storytelling whatever rather insulting. Yet they crop up no matter how carefully I try to explain it. What in the things I've posted make you think the game portion is unimportant to me? I've stated clearly that I don't have a particular outcome in mind. Part of the challenge, for me, is to add together the scenario I've set up, the actions of the PCs, and the way the ruleset handles it and try and guide all that into the story structure to make a memorable game. I don't want to abandon the ruleset portion of that, I just don't consider it more important than the other ingredients. And the overall mission to make every game session the Completely Freakin Awesome means that if anything makes the game less fun, its out.

 

[Pyrex]

I'm going to be running Expedition to Castle Ravenloft shortly.

For most of the campaign, the players won't have access to Raise Dead (they'll be too low level most of the time, and there are no high enough level NPC's around).

Also, there will likely only be a finite number of NPC's available to step in as replacement PC's.

Ergo, I'm going to use something like the following:

He's only Mostly Dead
Any character killed by HP damage is Mostly Dead.
Most effects that outright kill a character (i.e. Phantasmal Killer) leave a character Mostly Dead
Characters killed by a [Death] effect or any other effect which would otherwise prevent Raise Dead is just plain Dead

At the end of the current combat, Mostly Dead characters are discovered to be Slightly Alive. Also known as -9, Stable and with one Negative Level.

Negative Levels from being Mostly Dead cannot be removed normally and stick around until the next time you gain a new level, at which time half (round up) of these negative levels go away.

 

[Mallus]

I think that if people want that type of story maybe they should, I don't know, sit around and have a round robin story group with no dice or rules except to just keep the story going.

Or maybe the should play in their successful, long-running D&D campaigns... that's what I do.

Different people enjoy different aspects of the game. Threads like this should offer incontrovertible proof that what one gamer might think is indispensable to the game, others discard as unimportant or an outright hindrance to fun.

Playing a game implies risk and in most cases in D&D that risk sometimes means some sort of irreparable bodily harm to their characters.

Following that logic, superhero games must be risk-free because PC death is usually out of the question, thanks to the difference in genre conventions being emulated. Should Mutants and Masterminds players chuck their books/dice and just talk to each other about their guys in capes?

 

[ShinHakkaider]

And I find the comments about how I shouldn't play a roleplaying game and should just do group storytelling whatever rather insulting. Yet they crop up no matter how carefully I try to explain it. What in the things I've posted make you think the game portion is unimportant to me? I've stated clearly that I don't have a particular outcome in mind. Part of the challenge, for me, is to add together the scenario I've set up, the actions of the PCs, and the way the ruleset handles it and try and guide all that into the story structure to make a memorable game. I don't want to abandon the ruleset portion of that, I just don't consider it more important than the other ingredients. And the overall mission to make every game session the Completely Freakin Awesome means that if anything makes the game less fun, its out.

Okay, D00d relax. I was very careful in how I responded to you about the story thing as not to come off as insulting. I wasnt telling you what YOU should do, only you can decide that. What I was saying was that maybe people who value story over mechanics and see mechanics as getting in the way of story should play something without said mechanics. I mean, I'm seeing that as the heart of this thread. Death mechanic = bad, Death of PC's in game = bad, come up with something that doesnt involve PC's dying = good, at least for you. Once again, I wasn't being snarky or trying to offend.