D&D (2024) The Problem with Healing Powercreep

[Lanefan]

me, i do, because i would like to play the character i started with and not have them become 'old' before others based on species choice.

I tell people up front that there's going to be character turnover no matter what, usually because they get killed and not revived but also because players are free to retire a character between adventures and roll up or cycle in another (new ones rolled up at slightly lower level). Aging out is just one more means of character turnover, and probably would end up way less common than the others.

Though I've seen it happen, playing your starting character all the way through is going to take a great deal of good luck, enough that you might want to visit the local lottery booth...

 

[CreamCloud0]

There are races with long lifespans, picking one of those allows for sticking with it longer.

this is just another way of not letting me play the character i actually wanted to play.

Bizarrely though like the more a player is likely to express that kind of quoted sentiment the more I find they are also the type to force me into killing their PC so they can play a different PC. Even though I'm totally willing to let pc-alice retire in town so they can walk in with pc-bob, there is this weird demand to bring it to a specific close that details the session... It's a huge disruption for everyone except that one player both with the gm being forced to kill a PC because the player wants a new PC and everyone having to work a new PC in mid dungeon [or whatever] all because the player of that PC wants to swap

uh, genuinely, which quoted sentiment? it doesn't seem like it would be mine due to character milling being the opposite of what i was desiring. (the 'identical legacy' being used to create the illusion of preserving a short lived species)

 

[CreamCloud0]

I tell people up front that there's going to be character turnover no matter what, usually because they get killed and not revived but also because players are free to retire a character between adventures and roll up or cycle in another (new ones rolled up at slightly lower level). Aging out is just one more means of character turnover, and probably would end up way less common than the others.

Though I've seen it happen, playing your starting character all the way through is going to take a great deal of good luck, enough that you might want to visit the local lottery booth...

other groups however, choose to take character death off the table.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

this is just another way of not letting me play the character i actually wanted to play.

uh, genuinely, which quoted sentiment? it doesn't seem like it would be mine due to character milling being the opposite of what i was desiring. (the 'identical legacy' being used to create the illusion of preserving a short lived species)

Calm down mate, no one is forcing you to play in a campaign that covers decades. It was just something that seemed like a cool idea to me. (I've actually done it in Exalted.)

 

[CreamCloud0]

Calm down mate, no one is forcing you to play in a campaign that covers decades. It was just something that seemed like a cool idea to me. (I've actually done it in Exalted.)

i'm not annoyed insofar as not sure they really understood the issue i actually had.

 

[James Gasik]

Calm down mate, no one is forcing you to play in a campaign that covers decades. It was just something that seemed like a cool idea to me. (I've actually done it in Exalted.)

I've always heard tales of extremely long running campaigns where characters end up spawning dynasties- never been in one but I always thought it would be cool!

I think the first time I really considered it was a thousand years ago when I was playing Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom, which has multiple scenarios and endings depending on whom your main character marries at the end of a scenario.

Sadly, keeping a gaming group together that long has proved mostly impossible- even the 2e campaign I'm in has hemorrhaged players to the point that there's not many of us left.

 

[tetrasodium]

i'm not annoyed insofar as not sure they really understood the issue i actually had.

Going to tackle this first & go into it deeper in the rest of this post while addressing your earlier outrageous comment.

Are you sure that you understood what was being discussed because this comment down below only seems reasonable if you lost track & made a mistake.

this is just another way of not letting me play the character i actually wanted to play.

WHAT I didn't see a post that even hinted that anyone might be looking for players in this thread... If you don't want to join that kind of game then don't join it if someone offers you an invite. That's very different from a player hearing the pitch & joining it then blasting the gm with this kind of thing if someone offers to suggest some options they feel worth considering like I did in 337 & 340 where I brought up the long lived races and how the generational turnover turbo charges the ability to remake the character a player wants to play..

Where the heck are you finding support that makes this kind of accusation coming from a player who agrees to join the game that was described by Crimson Longinus and myself earlier anything but unbelievably entitled? Nobody is forcing you or anyone else to play a game by talking about a style of game they might enjoy & mentioning options they think that players might not consider such a game opening up.



Look Back at how it started with what was written in 329

Spoiler: 329

I have been using gritty rests, but I feel for certain sort of campaigns even longer long rests would be beneficial. Like three months or something. You would have an adventure, then retire to a safe place to recuperate for a season, and perhaps do some downtime activities to craft and manage the bastion. It would create more meaningful passage of time, where the character reaching high levels would perhaps take decades. It would allow the world to evolve, the decisions of the characters to have an impact, and the different lifespans of the species actually become noticeable.

Or 335

Spoiler: 335

Frieren does a fabulous job of highlighting how well differing lifespans can be used to change the scope of the game's story. I've done similar with a game that involved time travel & a broken timeline with the old 1200+ year elf lifespan/??maybe forever?? warforge lifespan & the shorter lived races taking more direct time hops while the first two tended to take the long way.

Were I to do it over again I might push for the party to do it Frieren style where the comparative mayfly races rejoin the party for a last hurrah before handing their legacy over to a kid/nephew/apprentice/etc & feel like it could maybe be done without the time travel just by making long rests [dieroll] years.

uh, genuinely, which quoted sentiment? it doesn't seem like it would be mine due to character milling being the opposite of what i was desiring. (the 'identical legacy' being used to create the illusion of preserving a short lived species)

"i would like to play the character i started with" that one right there is the sentiment I was talking about back in 340. No amount of working with a player expressing it is likely to meet the bar of player expectations for the PC's exit unless it's done in a way that disrupts the session as I described when those players pick up the new hook and decide they want a pet dragon or whatever it allows. IME it's never the right time when the group is at a good place for a character swap for them. IME no off screen solution isever seems good enough for them, IMRE just by all that is good and true, the GM certainly must never try to force it by saying "now is the time" or "it's just another way of not letting that player play the character they wanted to play"

 

[Staffan]

I have been using gritty rests, but I feel for certain sort of campaigns even longer long rests would be beneficial. Like three months or something. You would have an adventure, then retire to a safe place to recuperate for a season, and perhaps do some downtime activities to craft and manage the bastion. It would create more meaningful passage of time, where the character reaching high levels would perhaps take decades. It would allow the world to evolve, the decisions of the characters to have an impact, and the different lifespans of the species actually become noticeable.

I feel this would be overkill for general adventuring resources, but I could see some kind of low-key accumulating debuff which you need long-term rest to deal with. For example, I could see something like your max HD/healing surges/hp going down by a certain number every X days and you'd need a week of rest in an actual bed eating properly cooked food and such to recover. That, or some kind of additional downtime-based resource – I could see a cleric's divine intervention be that sort of thing, which you'd need time in prayer and stuff to restore.

I don't think more than a week is appropriate for "enforced" R&R though. I'd rather see a carrot than a stick for longer downtime.

 

[Micah Sweet]

this is just another way of not letting me play the character i actually wanted to play.

uh, genuinely, which quoted sentiment? it doesn't seem like it would be mine due to character milling being the opposite of what i was desiring. (the 'identical legacy' being used to create the illusion of preserving a short lived species)

What exactly is it that you want to play? Different species have different lifespans. Are you objecting to that concept, because otherwise I have no idea what you're talking about.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Going to tackle this first & go into it deeper in the rest of this post while addressing your earlier outrageous comment.

Are you sure that you understood what was being discussed because this comment down below only seems reasonable if you lost track & made a mistake.

i do not intend to offend or shift blame but i think it is you who has made a mistake in the point in which you think i am making.

WHAT I didn't see a post that even hinted that anyone might be looking for players in this thread... If you don't want to join that kind of game then don't join it if someone offers you an invite. That's very different from a player hearing the pitch & joining it then blasting the gm with this kind of thing if someone offers to suggest some options they feel worth considering like I did in 337 & 340 where I brought up the long lived races and how the generational turnover turbo charges the ability to remake the character a player wants to play..

Where the heck are you finding support that makes this kind of accusation coming from a player who agrees to join the game that was described by Crimson Longinus and myself earlier anything but unbelievably entitled? Nobody is forcing you or anyone else to play a game by talking about a style of game they might enjoy & mentioning options they think that players might not consider such a game opening up.

i'm not going to respond to this as i think it is directed against a point i am not actually making.

Look Back at how it started with what was written in 329

Spoiler: 329

I have been using gritty rests, but I feel for certain sort of campaigns even longer long rests would be beneficial. Like three months or something. You would have an adventure, then retire to a safe place to recuperate for a season, and perhaps do some downtime activities to craft and manage the bastion. It would create more meaningful passage of time, where the character reaching high levels would perhaps take decades. It would allow the world to evolve, the decisions of the characters to have an impact, and the different lifespans of the species actually become noticeable.

this started with me replying to 329 with

i'm not sure i especially enjoy highlighting the different lifespans bit but the rest of this sounds good

primarily this was about not desiring the experience of some members of the party reaching old age faster due to having shorter lifespans but i think the real confusion started here with my semi-serious response of playing the identical decendants trope to dismiss a character actually having to age at a different rate and your response to it

but what i more meant is what if i don't want to see my human or my halfling turn into an old veteran simply because of my choice of species? should i just make their identical kid every time they start getting growing up too much because i imagined the character concept at a specific stage of life, like the old 'endless identical families' of previous editions, bobby the fighter died? don't worry here comes cobby to avenge him!

Who says that it needs to be identical? Talk to your GM & change it up a bit.

i admit some of the fault lies on my shoulders here for not asking you to clarify what you thought my post was saying rather than just giving the response i did, but regardless I did and you responded to that with

There are races with long lifespans, picking one of those allows for sticking with it longer.

which came off to me as 'if you don't like that your short lived species that you want to play ages sooner, simply play a longer lived species' as well with a paragraph that i could not fathom how it was related to my perspective

Bizarrely though like the more a player is likely to express that kind of quoted sentiment the more I find they are also the type to force me into killing their PC so they can play a different PC. Even though I'm totally willing to let pc-alice retire in town so they can walk in with pc-bob, there is this weird demand to bring it to a specific close that details the session... It's a huge disruption for everyone except that one player both with the gm being forced to kill a PC because the player wants a new PC and everyone having to work a new PC in mid dungeon [or whatever] all because the player of that PC wants to swap

i have come to the conclusion that it must be based on some difference in our interpretations of the meaning of (variations on the phrase of) 'i just want to play the character i wanted to play'

"i would like to play the character i started with" that one right there is the sentiment I was talking about back in 340. No amount of working with a player expressing it is likely to meet the bar of player expectations for the PC's exit unless it's done in a way that disrupts the session as I described when those players pick up the new hook and decide they want a pet dragon or whatever it allows. IME it's never the right time when the group is at a good place for a character swap for them. IME no off screen solution isever seems good enough for them, IMRE just by all that is good and true, the GM certainly must never try to force it by saying "now is the time" or "it's just another way of not letting that player play the character they wanted to play"

my intended use of the phrase being 'i would like to play the character i started session 1 with throughout the campaign, i would not wish to explore the dynamics resulting from them aging at a different comparative rate to some of their party mates as i feel this would be altering the nature and focus of the character.'


now i do not like writing this kind of 'i said and then you said and then i responded' post, but i think it was required at this point for untangling the knot of misunderstandings, hopefully when i return tomorrow morning i will find that this post has managed to of cleared some things up between us.