Why does epic level play entail treating death as a "speed bump"?

[pemerton]

If you remove raise dead then a string of unfortunate rolls could kill your character...then it's game over, make a new one.

any game like D&D absolutely needs a "get out of death free" card, in the form of resurrection (et. al.) because you will, absolutely, without fail, be betrayed by dice if you play long enough at those levels facing those kinds of destructive forces.

There are ways of designing an RPG so that this is not the case ie losing because of bad dice rolls does not result in PC death. The E6 Death Flag is one example. The Conan RPG is another. And these are both RPGs that are "games like D&D".

 

[Falling Icicle]

If the rules grant the DM authority to veto a player's ability to resurrect his own character?

In a heartbeat.

edit: barring mutually agreed upon house rules restricting resurrection magic, of course.

Well then get ready to ebay your books, because who else decides if the character has a "destiny" worthy of being resurrected, if not the DM?

 

[Hussar]

I just banned death in my last game. Worked out quite well!

I banned the spammy little prat as well. Kept trolling all the threads.

 

[Hussar]

Well then get ready to ebay your books, because who else decides if the character has a "destiny" worthy of being resurrected, if not the DM?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but, at 20th level, the player chooses his epic destiny, same as he chooses his Paragon path. So, it looks like the player has at least some say in things.

 

[charlesatan]

Because the "resurrecting from the dead" (especially at the brink of death) can be quite cinematic/impressive.

In mythology, we have the phoenix motif. Or Isis reviving her dead husband.

In literature, we have Gandalf.

In movies, you can think of it as the main protagonist knocked out of his senses so much that he's having a flashback sequence reminding him what he's fighting for and then raising himself so that he can get back into the fight.

In anime, it could be Rurouni Kenshin/Dragonball Z's fight with the big baddie where they are almost defeated or previously thought "dead" yet revive themselves to finish the battle.

 

[JesterOC]

Doesn't 3E give the DM authority to veto a player's ability to resurrect? I thought all RPGs had that...

Yes it does. And same with 2nd and 1st. D&D's rule 1 is the DM makes the rules and everything else is a guideline. So I can choose to remove the raise dead guideline. Of course being a good DM, I would tell the players first before it is an issue. Doing otherwise is just being a bad DM.

The funny thing about this whole thread is that it is based on one lousy quote "Once per day when you die..." Thats it!

Who knows it may say something like this. "Once per day when you die, you automatically go to at 0 hit points"

 

[Green Knight]

"Once per day when you die..."

There's only one single Epic Utility Power that you pick. No Epic Encounter Powers, nor Epic Daily Powers. Just one Epic Utility Power. How much does anyone want to bet that "Once per day when you die..." is one of the choices? And seeing as how there's all of one choice, it's pretty much unlikely that you'll be able to get a second or third similar power.

I'm looking forward to it, though. This is something that I've wanted for YEARS in order to recreate the Green Knight in D&D terms. I'm not kidding about that, either. I've been at it since 2nd edition! First I started by using the Birthright rules. Some of the Blooded character abilities were suitable, but it would've taken making an enormously powerful Blooded character to get what I needed (Not to mention that the character would've had to have been Blood of Azrai).

Then in 3E I tried to find a way to slap a character with Regeneration. No luck, though. There was never a suitable template or Prestige Class, and I could never bring myself to suggest a character with Regeneration without some actual rules to back that up.

But with this... fantastic! Go ahead, Gawain. Chop my head off, I dare ya!

 

[Truth Seeker]

You are not off the mark, I have told by a few, in the industry...that impression is very solid.

Second, on the 'speed bump' note...when someone dies (PC or NPC) and it is done in a great way (flare).

No need on the coming back, it defeats the purpose of the cycle, of Birth, Life and Death.

Why does 4e treat death as a speedbump? Because WotC suspects that will appeal to their target audience, todays youth. And, they are probably right.

I know the 'it's a video game' mantra is seen as teh debil™, but think about it. Are there any video games anymore where you have only x number of chances and if you fail, that's it? Game Over. Start from the beginning again. I can't think of any off the top of my head. Absolute worst, in a CRPG you back up to your last save point and try again. MMOs, you simply respawn and try again. It's a fact of gaming culture, death just means you try harder next time, it rarely slows you down for any length of time.

So, that's why. D&D is, in fact becoming more like a video game in this and other respects. Is that a good thing? Remains to be seen. For the sake of the hobby and the trademark, I hope it is a gamble that pays off.

 

[Wormwood]

Well then get ready to ebay your books, because who else decides if the character has a "destiny" worthy of being resurrected, if not the DM?

It hasn't been a DMs decision in 30 years.

If my character dies and a cleric casts Raise Dead, *I* decide whether or not to come back. If the 4e designers made the baffling decision to allow the DM to override my choice, I'd be shocked.

But I'm fairly certain that my books are safe.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Without having seen any of the Epic Destinies or their implementations, here's one guess:
If you had an Epic Destinly like, say... "Green Knight" or "Lich" or "Immortal" or "God", maybe a self-ressourection power is exactly what you'd need to implement such a Destiny.

As someone else pointed out, it's funny to see us 4E apologizers/fanboys using "it has always been this way" to explain why this is still in 4E.
I am not sure if it gets less funny if I point out that D&D always had stuff that worked well and stuff that worked less so.

Death-as-Speedbumb at lower levels is a bad concept. You don't really get a feel of "mundane heroics" if you can raise the dead for some gp early on. In a "world-building" context, previous raising mechanics also changed the nature of common tropes, like assassination attempts. They didn't always make them impossible, and you could find counter-measures. It's still imperfect. Raise Dead spells are already a counter-measure, and most of the time, counter-counter-measures are a bad idea.

Still, Death-as-Speedbumb is an interesting concept, and why not make it a part of epic games? Each of the 3 tiers present different styles of storytelling and adventures..
It's not just "You fight Goblins like at 2nd level, but this time, they are Goblin Fighter10!". (I am not saying that this couldn't be fun, too. D&Ds E6 was created for a reason). The nature and impact of Death in a game can considerably change the tone of the game. And the tiers are there to change the tone, so it stands to reason that changing the impact of Death should be part of the tiers.