Should D&D Have an Alternate Death Mechanic?

[Doug McCrae]

I remember in a LARP adventure someone was killed by a tarrasque leaping out from behind a bush - we still talk about it 15 years later

F--kin A

 

[Doug McCrae]

I removed the level hit, so death is just a cash sink. My group very much dislikes any level disparity, it feels a lot more unfair than a cash disparity.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Serious question: If death is not a risk, why roll the dice?

Why not just handwave all the fighting and say, "You meet a bunch of monsters and kill them. The loot you find is..."

In WoW, death just costs you a little time and a little money. And yet I hated to die, I'd do anything to avoid it. It's soo embarrassing.

Same in D&D, you could make death cost no cash and no level hit and people would still hate to die. I dunno why, it's deeply ingrained.

 

[Arkhandus]

Insert "impassioned arguments about how dying builds character, and that without the threat of PC death, the game can never be truly challenging and fun?" here.

I'm just too lazy to bother arguing right now.

 

[Vrecknidj]

There are some different topics here.

I like the "save or die" converted to "save or dying." It's simple, and simple is good.

As far as penalties for being raised, a permanent hit point drop is good (so long as it's not many points)--this is an incentive to not die. So too, though, would be -1 Cha. (Not that this is the only such imposable penalty, but, for in-game purposes, if Charisma is associated with force of personality, then, it might be feasible for having died to mean having lost a little bit of the self.)

Dave

 

[I'm A Banana]

One of my pet peeves with the current version of D&D is how fatal it can be. So many save or die options out there and potential triple-damage-digit attacks that fatalities are almost impossible to avoid.

Death isn't really a problem due to the abundance of resurrection-type spells. But that usually costs you a level.

You pretty much summed up the death situation in D&D: Death is fairly common, but also about equally as easy to fix (for PC's).

If you'd like to have less death, mechanics like Action Points, "Luck Points," Drama Dice, etc. are probably the most common ways of avoiding it (but most settings that use this, like Eberron, have resurrection magic being significantly rarer). There's the "0 hp = Unconcious" rule that doesn't go through bleeding or anything, but rather simply assumes that, given a few hours, you'll come back around. Mechanics like Reserve Points support this further.

In FFZ, the concept of "Camp" is introduced, basically being a safe zone where the PC's can rest and recuperate, even if "dead." If a TPK occurs, NPC's at the camp (such as clerics, etc.) can raise the PC's.

You might find that this supports a much more "narrative" style of game, where characters are very consistent between sessions. You may also find that you can be all that much crueler to the characters, knowing that they'll pretty much always come back from the brink. It also allows you to develop some depth to their history, their goals, and their dreams, with some reliable consistency.

Of course, you don't want to remove true risk from the game, so their failure needs to be all that more significant. Think of it more in terms of Greek tragedy: death is one of the simplest horrors that evil can inflict on the hero. If you are a heroic figure and towns keep falling to necromancer lords and vile dragons, your failure is all the more painful than your simple demise.

 

[Warbringer]

On a killing blow (one that, well would kill) I allow the PC or NPC to elect that the blow is subdual (no penalty). So, instead of fighting to the death, we fight to the disable.

Afterall, hps are simply an abstract for how much damage you can withstand.

And no, no -4 nonsense

 

[shilsen]

Serious question: If death is not a risk, why roll the dice?

Why not just handwave all the fighting and say, "You meet a bunch of monsters and kill them. The loot you find is..."

Serious answer: To expand on what hexgrid put so succinctly above, because death is only among the possible repercussions for failure in the game. And, IMNSHO, one of the more boring ones. In my games, PCs are almost immune to death, since I allow usage of action pts (and now, swashbuckling cards) to survive a killing blow/effect at -9 hp and stable. In nearly 60 sessions in my Eberron game, we've had 1 PC death (without the rule, we'd have 30). But PCs are constantly being challenged during combat. If taken down, PCs have been kidnapped, lost valuable equipment, prevented from achieving some important objective, failed to prevent the BBEG from some objective, lost valued friends and allies, been magically mutated, etc. They constantly face the risk of defeat, without death being a common one thereof.

I joke that if I kill a PC that's a failure on my part because it means he escaped and his suffering stopped, but I'm only half kidding. A permanently dead PC can't suffer and doesn't have to live with the repercussions of his failures. A temporarily dead PC isn't dead anyway, so the repercussion for failure isn't death but the associated issues, which one can have without death. In short, I get all of the benefits of death in my game without any of the negatives.

And one last thing. Whether death is or isn't on the line, players will usually be just as invested in winning a fight, because players hate for their PCs to lose. Especially to theoretically weaker opposition, which is something I tend to use a lot.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Where are all the impassioned arguments about how dying builds character, and that without the threat of PC death, the game can never be truly challenging and fun?

Well, back in 1e we didn't have any of this 'fun' I see the kids raving about and the game was much better. And there weren't any five-foot steps. If you took a five-foot step you'd most likely fall into a pit trap. Or have to make a save versus poison. Happy days.

 

[SteveC]

Once again, I must invoke the old chestnut "it depends on the campaign."

I'm currently running the Shackled City Adventure path, so in that game I have a rule where characters die at Con + level, and can use Action Points to heal themselves up. That game has still had one death in it, and several near deaths.

In a campaign where I expected to give the characters the opportunity to see things all the way to the end, I would most likely use the rule where "dead = disabled" and allow characters to raise a "death flag," to gain extra action points in scenes that were particularly intense.

The thing is, it really depends on what you want your campaign to be. A meatgrinder campaign where advancing even a single level is a badge of honor can be fun, but at the same time, a GM that runs one of them shouldn't expect characters to go out and be heroic very often.

If I had to update the D&D rules, though, I'd suggest going back to the Final Fantasy Tactics rules where death is something that can be remedied within a short period (say, 1D10 rounds), so there is an opportunity cost associated with it (in that a character has to spend an action stabilizing the character), but the only way the whole group is sure to go down is if everyone drops unconscious, and there is a total party kill.

--Steve