Which is better: Character death or item destruction?

[lukelightning]

I'd much prefer to lose magical equipment. Equipment can be replaced. Life is sacred.

You got that backwards. It's often easier to replace a character than replace their equipment, unless the DM purposely awards treasure to make up for the lost equipment.

And if you have to make your magic items, then forget it. Just commit suicide and make a new character. The XP cost of crafting all those items would be ridiculous.

 

[lukelightning]

Items can be replaced. Personalities of my PCs cannot.

What, you can't just make Bob2 when Bob1 dies and roleplay him exactly the same way?

 

[lukelightning]

When character death means 'generate a new character' it is a bit different than 'lose a 5000 gp diamond and a level'.

Which leads to a different discussion; is it better to make a new character or raise the old one? It's often better to make a new character, in my experience. Why go through all the trouble of losing money and a level when you can make a new character who is virtually identical to the old one...but better optimized?

 

[Li Shenron]

Seriously, unless I'm roleplaying an "uncle scrooge"-type of character who would rather die than losing his property, I value survival more than equipment 100% of the time.

And I do not assume resurrection is a valid option just because there are spells in the phb...

 

[Plane Sailing]

Character death is, ironically, easier to recover from (especially after 17th level, when death becomes barely a speedbump!)

- unless anyone has published

5th level "Recover Items", 7th level "Rebuild items" and 9th level "True Rebuild Items" spells to do for equipment what the raise dead/resurrection line does for death

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

Which is better?

Both!

 

[Numion]

I voted death.

There's usually no reason for someone to destroy my PCs equipment rather than destroy my PC. Maybe if the DM had an unusually good excuse for it, but I've never seen it. Most of the time it's just the DM making some contrived reason up because he awarded too much stuff earlier.

Now, I provide a lot of reasons for the DM to have the enemies to off my PC.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

And if you have to make your magic items, then forget it. Just commit suicide and make a new character. The XP cost of crafting all those items would be ridiculous.

Hardly. At 1/25th the base price, that's 2,000 XP for a typical 10th-level PC with 50,000 gp worth of gear. FAR less than the XP hit from being raised from the dead.

Item creation feats are great. You can get exactly what you need without magic shops, and you can replace your gear if it is lost or destroyed.

It seems to me that a major reason people choose "death is better" is the assumption that they can come in with a fully-equipped character of comparable level. This is a new assumption in 3rd Edition, and it's one thing that makes me wish I was running Iron Heroes or Conan. I'm not even sure it's necessary in D&D. If the party still has access to the dead PC's gear... why allow the new PC any magic items at all? Introduce them as a prisoner or something, and they can then be kitted out with the dead PC's gear. Sure, it'll be sub-optimal, but the party had a member DIE -- this should be a bit of a setback.

Just browsing to see what it was like in previous editions... 2E DMG has some rules for allowing new PCs to be higher than level 1, but recommends no higher than 4 unless the party is "very powerful" -- and even then, NO magic items. It was my experience that high-level groups often had a few spare items floating around.

 

[werk]

Item destruction, no thought required.

 

[Shade]

In most cases, I choose death.

Death can come with significant financial hardship, and losing XPs isn't fun. But...that really cool item that can't be duplicated easily by the local wizard's shop might be next to (or even) impossible to obtain again. At least when you die and are brought back, everything lost can be reclaimed. And best of all, you're ready to go again just as soon as you are healed up. If you lost significant items, you'll be suboptimal for as long as it takes to either accumulate enough treasure to get back to the level of wealth assumed by the rules for you level, or to find comparable replacements.

But even worse than both of these is permanent loss of abilities that can't be reclaimed. If you're hit by a lavawight (ELH) and lose hit points, you're never getting them back. This scares the bejeesus out of me.