D&D 5E Why penalize returning from death?

[Arilyn]

Why are you playing D&D?

I play a variety of role playing games. DnD is not my favourite, but 5e is fun, and can support a variety of game styles these days.

One more point. Narrative games are not "easy, nothing bad can happen, and characters get everything they want, and live happily ever after", type of game. Horrible things can happen, mistakes have consequences. Characters have triumphs, but can also suffer terribly. It does mean that a few unlucky rolls or routine encounters are not going to end your character's career.

If you do get brought back from the dead, there will be interesting story consequences. It's not a free reset button.

This is one style of play, and would certainly not sit well with many DnD players. I'm not trying to convince anyone, just clarifying my preference.

 

[Lanefan]

There's an underlying question here being ignored by some (all?) in this discussion: which story is more important, that of an individual character or that of the party as a whole?

In my view it's obviously that of the party, and thus of the campaign. A TPK (probably) ends that story; an individual character death, be it temporary or permanent, does not.

So why penalize death? (and note it's the death you're penalizing, not the return as the thread title suggests)

Quite simply, because death is one form of "losing" at D&D and if it's not penalized somehow then what's the consequence of losing? Out-of-character, sitting out as a player isn't much of a penalty in 5e given as you'll probably be Revivified before you've had time to grab a beer from the fridge. Your PC likely won't lose any xp, given as 5e promotes either group xp or DM-fiat/milestone levelling, so no penalty there either. In-character, you drop dead from some massive blow then less than a minute later you're set to go with no lasting consequences - no penalty there either.

That said, the negative consequences of a PC death have become less and less over the editions. In 1e (and 2e I think) a revived character had to make a resurrection survival roll based on Con in order to come back to life at all, and if successful would find itself alive but forever down one point of Con. 3e dropped the resurrection survival roll and brought you back with a negative level on you...which, if memory serves, could be removed over time (or was that 3.5?). In 4e revival was automatic if attempted provided the PC wanted to return but still needed a 9th-level caster; 5e lowered the level at which parties potentially had revival available in the field, and also greatly lowered the monetary cost/sacrifice required.

Another factor was PC level. In 1e and 2e getting to 9th level and thus having access to Raise Dead in the field was a big deal. 9th-level in 3e comes much faster; in 4e faster still, and 5th-level in 5e comes in a couple of heartbeats by comparison.

So, revival has by RAW become both easier to accomplish mechanically and less taxing (both physically and monetarily) on the character as time has passed. A good thing? Not in my estimation.

If you have an ancient riddle box that kills ninety percent of starting adventurers, then either those riddles pass into common knowledge, or ninety percent of starting adventurers are killed. Given that one of those two things has to be true, which one do you think it is?

The dead 90%.

DCCRPG codified this as the 'funnel method' of PC generation.

Lan-"I revive again a long-ago quote from one of my players: 'Dungeons without mortality are dungeons without life.'"-efan

 

[Iry]

For me, the most important consequence of dying is no longer getting to play a character I love. All the months or years of plot threads, careful planning, and friendships have to be set aside. Now I have to build new connections from scratch.

 

[5ekyu]

Part one - false logic lack of knowledge of goblins does not equate to underestimating them, so it does not result is deaths necessarily.

Also there is a big huge difference between knowdge of and ptedictive accuracy. Knowing everything there is to know about goblins does not mean you know these two are about yo get lucky and overperform.

Characters, adventurers, and the players who run them tend to take educated risks. Sometimes those rosks bite you and especially at low levels with fewer recovery options that can be lethal.

So, again, equating a took two bad beats and died with disagreement vetweeen player knowledge and character knowledge deserving of porting that lesdon into the brain of the next character as roleplaying is a stretch.

Second point - as cirvular a logic bendy as i have sern. Well done. But how does a box kill 90 percent if the riddles are widely known?

Looking back at the goblin example, again, no evidence of 90 percent likely, just got two hits in for higher than average and... Bad outcomes.

Or in you games does every low level adventurer killed by goblins become a thing ofvlegend told throughout 90% of the mands?

A character who fights a hard fight, makes bad call and lives *should* carry forwsrd into his futute fights that experience and knowledge - that is roleplaying.

A new character who hapoens to be playef by a player who lost a character to abc somehow also having the knowledge of that prior chsracter... Not so clear.

One of the consequences of death is you and your knowledge is gone too, barring various magical options.

Nothing ay all wrong with a srtting where like Buffy when one dies the power, experience etc passes to another. Even rituals to call up specifics and dialog. That would be fine for a game where "dead guy lessons pass on" is a thing.


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Ok so what if it had been one goblin who hit once with a regular strike, the PC rolled a 1 then the goblin got a crit. rolled max and... barbie died.

Would that also be "the player did not roleplay the characters knowledge right" or is there some point at which you think "yeah, it was an appropriate in-character roleplaying call but it just did not work out?" and it was not a failure to roleplay?

Players take educated risks all the time and this is really one of the first times i have seen a more or less "if it fails it was bad roleplaying" slant on the outcome of "i took risk for reasons and it went bad" follow on with "so my next character gets my last characters info."

i too remember the old 1e (and earlier) days of "my character's will leaves all my stuff to my next character" just maybe not as fondly as some do - or as clearly - white brain matter being what it is.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

This could be a general question as well but let's go with 5e because it is the newest and most modern version of D&D.
So why penalize returning from death from a game design perspective? It used to be poorly defined 'loss of level' in previous editions, now it is only the gold cost.

So many people look at the loss of a level from being raised purely from the perspective of a PC. Now, I'm talking 1e AD&D here. Other versions have had different takes. When looking at rules and reasons for 1e, you should look at it from the perspective of "the campaign as a whole and from the viewpoint of a commoner". If you do that as a DM, you can adjudicate ANY situation with more and more ease as you get used to the system and the world.

Ahem. Now. The "loose a level" thing. From the perspective of a commoner...even if you are a noble and have tens of thousands of gold to bribe/convince a high enough level cleric to cast Raise Dead on your recently departed, it won't work. This is common knowledge. Oh, why, you ask? Commoners...from the beggar to the rich noble, are "0-level". Then don't have a level to loose so Raise Dead would automatically fail.

THIS is why there was a "loose a level". It reinforced the concept that if you were a "classed" character, you were special. Period. Oh, that captain of the watch is "only" 4th level? Guess what? if he dies, he CAN be raised from the dead. The 50 men-at-arms under his command? Nope. Not them. They die, they stay dead.

This whole "look at it from a campaign and commoner perspective", and, as far as I remember, every so-called 'arbitrary' rule in 1e suddenly makes sense. But that's for another thread probably.

In most games I've played (maybe it is a regional thing) if your character died and there was no option to somehow return them to life you just created a new character who would be at the same level as the others and would gain the appropriate starting money based on the wealth by level tables. So if you died there were two options:

• Raise you character from the dead: Lose a lot of gold (and perhaps levels) thus be weaker than other characters, be grateful to a random cleric (or your party's cleric) and even have an obligation to that cleric to go on a random adventure which may or may not distract the campaign. Additionally you might need to roll up another character anyway for the duration of obtaining a sufficiently expensive gem for the spell.
• Roll a new character: Who could have exactly the same stats, abilities, items and personality as your previous one with a different name, no questions asked.

So my question is: Why is the hassle needed to return from the dead? By dying you potentially lose a lot of game time spent building up that character also adventure hooks etc. It would be much more fun not penalizing character death to this extent.

Obviously I understand that sometimes you want to end playing with your character and move on in which case this rant is pointless because if the player wants their character die they don't have to continue playing with him/her.

As others pointed out...starting a new character at the same level as the other(s) is very much a house rule. As far as I can tell, in 5e, if you die, you roll up a new character at 1st level. Doesn't matter if everyone is 4th, 14th, or 24th. Your new PC is 1st level.

After about a year of playing 5e, I house ruled that new characters were 3 levels lower than the average PC level (rounding down), but never higher than 3rd!. So as soon as the PC's had an average party level of 6th or more, your new PC was starting at 3rd. You got to start with 100gp worth or equipment per level. So 100, 200 or 300 gold pieces with which to buy your equipment. No magic items. My reasoning was that 1st and 2nd level zip by so dang fast in 5e...especially if the other PC's are higher level...that starting at 1st seemed like a waste of time if after one encounter the PC is either rocketed to 3rd level, or dead.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Lanefan]

i too remember the old 1e (and earlier) days of "my character's will leaves all my stuff to my next character" ...

Yeah, that sort of thing is why every DM has a smackdown hammer in her toolbox and has to be willing to occasionally use it...

 

[Leatherhead]

I think the real question here is:

Whom is death a consequence for, the player or the character?

 

[Grainger]

What would **you**consider slow leveling to be in terms of say a group which runs one three to four hour session per week?

One level a month? Two months? Three months? Year?

Not disagreeing but "slow" is basically meaninglessly unspecific. What would be slow for you?

Also, am not assuming its a clock. Could be milestones such as quest ends etc. But you reference time so regardless of the trigger, am curious as to what rate you picture when discussing the benefits of slow leveling.

As a reference, in my current game, we play most weeks one session of three hours and leveling rate currently is one level every two months roughly. The system is somewhat close to the milestone referenced in XGTE - not tied to experience points for monsters and all that.

In a previous game, supers, advancement was much slower akin to a level a year but characters started higher of course.






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We have been playing since 5e came out, and my players are now 6th level. However, we did take nearly an entire year's break from playing.

"Slow" is to taste, really, but I just meant much more slowly than the default suggested by 5e's official campaigns (1st to 20th level in what, a couple of years?). In my view, there are various problems inherent in levelling at that speed, not least game-worlds being full of superheroes and, combined with the fast heal, progress being absurdly rapid.

As a DM, my philosophy is to play out each level fairly slowly. To be honest, even at the rate given above, I'd do it a fair bit slower if I was starting again. This would let the players really get to know their abilities. As it is, my players - who are not ones to min-max, pore through rulebooks or look online for killer combos - really don't know the extent of their characters' abilities. If your players are much more fules-focussed, though, they may get bored, so I can see why faster levelling helps maintain interest in that situation.

 

[Grainger]

How it generally works in my experience is the character contributes just fine due to the game's math, but is more fragile, so they have to play smart like being choosy when to get into melee. I've DMed for 1st-level characters going along with up to 8th-level PCs more than a few times. The low-level PC ends up at 4th-level by the end of the first session and catches up to the rest of the party quite quickly.

Fair enough. I personally don't like people going up multiple levels at once for in-game and meta reasons, but I suppose if your players are comfortable with the rules, you at least avoid the inevitable administrative headaches from this situation ("how many spells/feats do I have again?").

 

[lowkey13]

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