Should D&D Have an Alternate Death Mechanic?

[maddman75]

Oh, I missed this first time round.

Does your game not have henchmen, side-kicks, associated NPCs, or other similar bit-part characters who can be brought in as PCs? And if not, why not? I've found such a character usually has a rich background and can easily be integrated with the group.

Yeah, killing off a high-level character and replacing him with a level 1 is harsh, but replacing him with his henchman, son/daughter or sidekick that's two thirds of his level and has his old hand-me-down gear and is a major beneficiary in his will, not so much.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. There are NPCs around if there's a reason for them to be around, but normally no they don't travel with an entourage. I mean if they're in town sure but the middle of some conflict? Probably not. In general there's only an NPC travelling with the group for a story or character development reason. If that reason no longer applies, I generally can't resist killing them off to make for some drama.

And yeah, I've done the whole 'think of a reason for the new guy to join the party'. It was an interesting GM challenge the first 30 or 40 times. I've spent plenty of time as a 'kill em all' GM, and did not like the net results. I'm also not too interested in punishing a player for their character dying, or them wanting to change characters. I want everyone to be playing the character they really want to play.

 

[Hussar]

Its imo a better explanation than "If someones game is lethal than the game is wrong"

And what would that be? Money loss? XP/Level loss? Its hard to take a geme serious then the players are more concerned about wealth and XP than the survival of their characters.

Going to swim upthread a touch.

I gotta say, "Buh?"

Take any CR from 1-20. Look at the damage that creature can pump out in a single round of full attacks. By and large, that creature can conceivably kill most PC's in a single round. Not likely, true, but certainly possible. Any of the giants, dragons, and demons and devils by and large can do this. A bog standard ogre CR 2, does 25 points of damage (max). That's more than enough to whack a 2nd level PC. Never mind the possible 50 points he does on a crit.

3rd Edition D&D combat is lethal with a capital L. Killing PC's is bloody simple. After running the World's Largest Dungeon, I was racking up a PC fatality every 3 sessions. My players aren't particularly stupid, nor were the challenges overpowering. It's a simple fact that the critters in 3e are capable of putting down a PC in very short order, even without counting save or die effects.

If you're running 3e combat and not whacking PC's fairly regularly, without any mitigating mechanic like hero points, you're probably fudging die rolls.

As far as taking some of the sting out of death goes, something to remember is no one is saying that you NEVER die. A TPK still means that everyone dies. It's just that, in any encounter short of a TPK, you don't die. So, charging into that dragon's lair doesn't work since you'll all be knocked unconcious and die.

I kinda like this idea. I have no problems slaughtering PC's. My problem is keeping them alive.

BTW, what is this "death flag" thing I read about. Color me intrigued.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Does your game not have henchmen, side-kicks, associated NPCs, or other similar bit-part characters who can be brought in as PCs? And if not, why not?

No one ever takes the Leadership feat. The problem is that it's a very good feat. If one player takes it, they all have to, otherwise it's unbalancing.

Our group has four players, plus GM. If everyone had a cohort, not to mention animal companions and any other hangers on, there would be too many die rolls, combat would take a long time, the group wouldn't fit in a typical corridor and the importance of each PC would be diminished.

I've gamed with literally hundreds of people and no group has ever taken the vast army approach to adventuring, which is extremely old school. It's almost always been one PC for each player, with occasional exceptions being druid's animal companions or a sidekick in a superhero game. And no one dies in superhero anyway.

 

[Doug McCrae]

A bog standard ogre CR 2, does 25 points of damage (max). That's more than enough to whack a 2nd level PC. Never mind the possible 50 points he does on a crit.

Ogre's are CR 3 now, granddad!

 

[Hussar]

Ogre's are CR 3 now, granddad!

Oh bugger.

My point still remains though. Even at CR 3, it's not unreasonable for your fighter to have 25 hit points at 3rd level. One round drop. Don't get me started on Behirs.

In any case, people who whine that 3e combat is too wimpy haven't been reading their rules too closely.

 

[RFisher]

But what's the point of creating DM Plothooks... er... friends and family if your character dies before they have a chance to get used?

'Cause it's fun!

Besides, you can always reuse them. If they didn't actually come into play, then why not pretend none of it was really background for the ex-PC & appropriate it for a later PC?

I sorry. I have a hard time seeing how this is really such a tragedy.

[...] versus the rogue fails their disable trap by a lot and I'm standing in the unlucky spot.

You choose to stand nearby while the rogue attempted to disarm a trap.

Who knows why the DM chose to have the mage cast a spell at me - but it was the DMs choice, not mine.

How often are you really a completely innocent bystander in this situation?

Who knows why the module writer chose to have that trap drop a poisoned spike from the cieling in that square but that was the writers choice and not mine.

& you didn't know you were in an area with potentially deadly traps? You couldn't have taken more precautions than you did?

But I don't like characters keeling over for arbitrary reasons.

I've already said that I think DMs need to be sure that players have a reasonable chance to recognize potential save-or-die situations. & despite my answers above, I don't necessarily think any of those examples are appropriate for save-or-die. (In any case, it would depend upon the full context that a rhetoric example will never really have.)

Doing a one shot of say... Tomb of Horrors is one thing. It's a one shot and the players know its a meat-grinder; but I don't want to have a year's worth of personal back plot go up in smoke because of a decision that was out of my hands.

A DM that let's you go into a Tomb of Horrors style dungeon with veteran PCs without clear warning is a jerk. If you choose to take your veteran PC into such a place, then it was in your hands.

I don't care if the sudden decapitation because of a party-member's misstep in the dungeon is more realistic or whatever.

I'm not going to argue reality. Being the fatal victim of truly random violence isn't fun. You'll get no disagreement from me on that.

If the DM isn't being a jerk, save-or-die depends just as much on player choice as dying in combat.

If the DM is being a jerk, then eliminating save-or-die effects isn't really going to fix anything.

 

[Li Shenron]

I simply think that whatever you try to do this death-problem in any RPG is unsolvable.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I would like death to still carry some weight, but on the other hand I don't like the problems it causes when our group already has very little time to play. So I was thinking of instituting a new house rule:

Reaching -10 hp is no longer death. Like another poster above mentioned, death would be caused by a deliberate act under this houserule. Reaching -10 hp becomes a 'mortal wound.' Any time a character receives a mortal wound I would roll randomly for which stat the character loses a point in permanently. The mortal would could then be described as a damaged tendon, a broken bone, internal organ damage, a head injury, damage to the eyes or ears, or the shock and trauma of the combat encounter. I would pick something that matches the stat that lost the point. The character and party would not lose time and money getting the character raised over some random death, but you would want to avoid death because it could impact your character's career. Raise dead (et al) would still be useful in cases where a villain deliberately succeeds in killing the PC (coup de grace).

 

[shilsen]

I simply think that whatever you try to do this death-problem in any RPG is unsolvable.

Unsolvable in what way? I think many (if not most) of us posting in this thread are running games where we've made the role of death in the game precisely what we want it to be.

 

[JDJblatherings]

I would like death to still carry some weight, but on the other hand I don't like the problems it causes when our group already has very little time to play. So I was thinking of instituting a new house rule:

Reaching -10 hp is no longer death. Like another poster above mentioned, death would be caused by a deliberate act under this houserule. Reaching -10 hp becomes a 'mortal wound.' Any time a character receives a mortal wound I would roll randomly for which stat the character loses a point in permanently. The mortal would could then be described as a damaged tendon, a broken bone, internal organ damage, a head injury, damage to the eyes or ears, or the shock and trauma of the combat encounter. I would pick something that matches the stat that lost the point. The character and party would not lose time and money getting the character raised over some random death, but you would want to avoid death because it could impact your character's career. Raise dead (et al) would still be useful in cases where a villain deliberately succeeds in killing the PC (coup de grace).

call it something else..."mortal wound" means lethal wound. Maybe Grievous Wound? I like the word Griveous it's serious indeed but doesn't mean "dead" .