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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 6529325" data-attributes="member: 29398">[MENTION=21379]goatunit[/MENTION] in post 20 and  [MENTION=6702445]jayoungr[/MENTION] in post 42 have summed up my take quite well, no need to retype it all here.The trick is not to view death as a punishment after the fact but as a warning before the fact - if you're gonna do something stupid, consequences will happen.  If death has no consequences at all then like it or not playstyle will almost certainly drift toward gonzo pretty quickly...which can be fine, but probably doesn't suit the story-driven type of game where this issue seems to arise.This is one reason I'm not a fan of canned adventure paths, at least the way the published ones so far have been set up, where they assume the party will be at certain levels at certain points.  Now that said, most published APs have been written for 3e or 4e or a variant thereof, and in both those editions it helps if the party is both a) very close in level and b) levelling up quickly.  What's needed is an AP design where assumed advancement is much slower and variance within the party is taken for granted.  To explain the difference:H1 Keep on the Shadowfell is listed as being for levels 1-3; what it means is characters are all expected to be level 1 going in and level 3 coming out - the adventure even has built-in advancement points for those DMs as needs 'em.  B2 Keep on the Borderlands is also listed as being for levels 1-3 but the implication there is the party's level range will be 1-3 throughout.  A better example of the latter is WGA4 Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, for levels 5-10...that sure as hell doesn't mean you're expected to be 5th level going in and 10th level coming out! <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=":)" />An example of an adventure path that does work is the A-series Slavers modules.  The level *range* goes up by about 1 per module, but the ranges of each module overlap with the next (2-5, 3-6, 4-7 etc.).And how does this all relate to character death?  Simply that bringing in a replacement character at a lower level than its predecessor shouldn't be discouraged by the system, which APs-as-system tend to do.  I don't agree with always bringing rookies in at 1st level once the party average gets up over 3rd or so, but I set a floor.  In my current game where the active PCs are all 6th-9th level the floor is 5th, and that's what new characters come in at; I have one party on hold at the moment where the level range is 5th-8th, and the floor for that one is 4th.A nice side effect of doing it this way is it slows down the overall level advancement, which in turn makes the campaign last longer.Lan-"and what do you do when a character simply retires from adventuring or leaves the party due to in-character reasons"-efan</blockquote>

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