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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Berandor" data-source="post: 1433675" data-attributes="member: 225">Phew... the end of the thread. Hi, there <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Do your players still roll dice in combat? Dice are a factor of chance, and chance doesn't seem to be too important when I already know the outcome of it. I don't mean that harshly, by the way.But what is success without the chance of failure? No real success. And if survival is important, it's equally important that survival is at stake. Because otherwise, why would survival be special or something to strive for in any way? It's just a given.You can already see where I am coming from, but let me elaborate. I play D&D and role-playing games because I like the role-playing and the game part. I love imagining a character different from myself and react to situations as this character would. In fact, my fellow gamers have put me deeply into the storyteller/method actor camp. I hunger for narrative consistency. But I deeply enjoy testing this consistency in the harsh winds of fate. Die-rolling is always a game of chance, no matter how good or bad your chances are. I like that with a +15 on my Diplomacy roll, I can still roll a 1 and give a meagre performance. That even a lowly orc might just get a swing at my character and drop it - and that in fact my character can get a swing at the BBEG and drop him. Adapting the narrative to the die results - that's the challenge of a good DM, and a good group of players. And that's what I enjoy, or else I'd be off writing shared-world novels instead of gaming.So to me death must be possible if my character takes a seemingly deadly risk. Without the off-chance of dying, living is not difficult. In fact, I am strange in a way that I give the DM absolute narrative freedom - unless he rolls dice (or tells us to roll them). Then they dice take over, and the DM and the players must make the best of their fickle favors. If the DM describes a combat without rolling, I'm fine with whatever result he decides upon, but if he rolls for damage, I don't want the roll to be adapted to my current hit points so that I don't die.Together with the fact that I like heroics, and grand scenes, that means I go through a lot of characters. As our group is on level 8, this is my sixth character, but not all of them died. Two died (one rather ignominously), and a third could have been resurrected, but I was unhappy with the character (playing a druid isn't something I'll try again). One left because the story demanded it, and the fifth character got put away because the whole group was restructured, and the remaining characters hated my wizard to the bone, while he was on friendly terms with those who left - so he left with them.Does that mean I don't get attached to my characters? In a way, yes. As I don't play that long with them, I naturally couldn't temper my attraction to them in the flames of yearlong campaigning. That doesn't mean I don't like them, or know them. In fact, I pine for several of those who went before my current archer, and I will likely pine for him, as well, when his time comes. But in the end, the character is just a means to an end. The end: Fun for the whole group. The means: an imaginary character, with full-fledged background story, preferences and habits, strengths and weaknesses. Something fun to get into, and something memorable to portray. But at the end of the day, the character is just a sheet of paper, filled with numbers. Everything that makes the character really fun or memorable comes from myself, and if needed, I can fill a new sheet of paper with numbers, and pour something of myself onto it. Perhaps something different, perhaps something very much alike.So the point of my ramblings is: When a character of mine dies, and there's not really the need for resurrection, then I roll up a new one. I don't like being resurrected unless there's an immediate incentive or reason for it. I already made up a good character, so I'll likely be able to do it again, explore new venues of the game, and role-play along new roads.After all, I'm a role-playing gamer, and that's what we do.Isn't it?</blockquote>

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