D&D 5E Where does the punitive approach to pc death come from?

[Primitive Screwhead]

I tried to catch up on the thead, so I might have missed this. One major problem I have had with bringing in replacement PCs an 3x and later has been magic items. Often the party would strip the dead PC of its gear while the new character would come with magical gear of its own...

Since 2e I generally brought replacements PCs in at one-level down. That changed in 3.5 when I was running adventure paths and ditched counting XP.

I think PC death, and how players react to it, is primarily about expectations. I have always run a 'grim n gritty' style where PC death hovered in the wings ready to leap out and take the unprepared or foolish.
I also made if clear that when a PC died, there would be a series of player choices that lead to that result.
For instance, running Ravenloft and the Paladin decided to investigate the crypts on his own and against the advice of the group...
Or the fighter in full plate mail that walked into the swamp...

Pointless deaths? yup. They didn't advance the story and in both the above cases the player was rather upset, while the rest of the group was asking 'how many warnings do you need pal? the DM stated out loud that your character would likely die if you did that...'

So what about the story? Well... I think the story is in the hands of the players and sometimes PC deaths, even pointless deaths, can make the story better.
Example: Deserts of Desolation run in 2e. I had twisted the start and end with a magical portal from the PC's homeland depositing them at the start of the adventure and the only way back was to complete the adventures.
The journey was epic, difficult, arduous, and filled with memories. Out of the 7 PCs that started the adventure, only 1 survived the entire trip.. the druid and his pet weasel. Well, actually the weasel died in the final combat after surviving months of hellish desert lands.


The group picked up random adventurers that were along the trail. Sometimes previous monsters and other times survivors of destroyed caravans, and yet others some poor prisoners.

Not a single player felt punished by character death, and the story was made much better by the challenge of the game.

Some of the deaths became stories in their own right. Like the Barbarian who died in the depths of a pyramid in the middle of the scorched desert... by drowning. Face down in an inch of water a couple hundred yards away from the room where the rest of the party had decided to rest in. He had decided to scout ahead on his own, chose to try to climb up a bat-infested cliff-face that required climbing gear {which he didn't have}, and then chose to not retreat when vampiric bats attacked him.
He lost his grip {failed climbing check} and fell {failed dex check}. Failed his stun save and was knocked out. Rolled % under 10 to determine if he landed in the small stream.. he did. Rolled % under 5 to determine if he landed face down. He did. Rolled % under 2 to determine if his face was in the water... it was.
Party found his bloody corpse the next day.

Mind you, this game ended over 20 years ago. The druids player still has a copy of his character, the barbarian's player still laughs about drowning in the desert, and tales of that adventure are one of the groups favorites.

My point, after rambling on.. even seemingly pointless death can be part of the story, more so if that story is supposed to be about overcoming lethal and deadly obstacles.

Its hard to have 'lethal' and 'deadly' if nobody can die from them....YMMV

 

[mlund]

Death penalties (punitive mechanical consequences like lose a level, lose Con, roll a new level 1, etc.) exist in direct relationship to the idea that people are "keeping score" in a game. Hedges against characters dying pointlessly to random neck-arrows and "crit happens" events are all well and good if you're playing for something other than "score" in D&D. You don't have to lose anything by taking the random and ignoble demise off the table, since death isn't necessary (or in some cases even relevant) to maintain dramatic tension and risk in playing the game. Considering the number of spells that negate death anyway, it seems like a player should be much more concerned about failure. There are many worse things than death - both for the players and for the characters themselves.

That's one of the things I really like about 13th Age - there's an emphasis on the consequences of failure outside of death. Campaign Failure is a thing. The analog that keeps coming to mind is the back half of Final Fantasy VI (3 on the SNES). The party ate one too many campaign failures (scripted, but that's besides the point here) and STUFF happened. It wasn't "Game Over" because that's utterly boring, but it was definitely something the characters and players were not happy about. It was much worse than losing a couple of characters tragically (or even ignobly).

Meanwhile, death is a lot more relevant to the characters because simply having Clerics and Diamonds and chunks of the body doesn't mean characters can come back. Restoring someone from death is tampering with fundamental forces of the universe. Not only does it require uncommon power, but the price of doing so rapidly escalated to equivalent exchange (or worse!). It's a good system to hang a "death flag" on or something similar. It's kind of baked in.

So, no, dead characters and lost levels are strictly necessary for dramatic tension or game risks. It's just a very tidy and pat resolution mechanic, kind of like how par-boiled and unseasoned pork is a perfectly serviceable food item. That's fine and all, but I'm not going to sit down at a table to order that. There are plenty of other places that'll serve ham, bacon, sausage, Italian stuffed pork roast, or at least attempt to chicken-fry it.

It's all about going to the place with the right cook in the kitchen.

Marty Lund