D&D 5E Why penalize returning from death?

[iserith]

But, if you have fun playing a game with no consequence for failure, then rock on.

There are more consequences to failure than dying. It's often the default result of failure in a combat challenge, but exploration and social interaction challenges can have many other outcomes if the PCs fail. Some may even be worse than death! I've seen plenty of times where the players were more anxious in non-combat challenges because they really cared about the stakes.

 

[Wulffolk]

Very true

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Most games have some kind of penalty for failure.

 

[Wulffolk]

Yeah, but your location says you're in Detroit. You guys are hard core, with roving bands of dogs attacking people and facing death every day. It stands to reason why you'd have a hardline stance

Well, it's not quite that bad all the time. I say Detroit because that is the only area of Michigan most people know. I am actually from just north of the city. Other than packs of rabid dogs (which we try to rescue) there is also massive urban blight, crushing poverty, abysmal education, and tragic levels of unemployment. But you can't forget about Flint's lead-flavored water or the nuclear/chemical/biological waste that Canada exports into our beautiful state.

The silver lining is that Trump has appointed Jared Kushner to solve all of the world's problems. I am sure that everything will be better by 2018. Sarcasm? Not me, never! Well . . Maybe a little.

 

[RangerWickett]

Resurrection mechanics in D&D suffer from trying to maintain the conceits of earlier generations of the game.

Think of any other game. If you're playing Chess and you lose, you can just set up a new game and play again. There's no punishment in your next game. No one else playing in the same room has to stop their game and wait for you to set your next game up.

If you're playing Metroid and your character dies, you can reload your last saved game. You might lose a few minutes of playtime, but you learn from what beat you and you can try again. Ditto any modern RPG, with the exception of a few 'hardcore' games.

Think of any story you read or watch. Characters generally don't die unless it's good for the story.

Why do we let D&D create bad stories?

The game should have failure states that don't end the story. You should never be able to die from things that aren't intentional by the GM or yourself. Any other failure in combat should at worst result in you being defeated but not dead.

 

[Morrus]

Yeah. I’m in the death needs some cool consequence camp. Otherwise there’s just no threat; it’s just communal storytelling (which is fine, but there’s the “game” part of the name). What else are we rolling those dice for?

 

[Yaarel]

There are different ways to resurrect a character.

Revivify, for example, is only a 3rd level spell, and the character resurrected enjoys the lack of penalties.

Resurrection, by contrast, is a high level 7th level spell, and causes the resurrected character to suffer penalties.

The real reason for the difference is tradition. The older editions made Resurrection painful, while the newer editions made Revivify painless − adding it while minimizing complaints from grognards by leaving the older versions alone.

Now the defacto situation is, the game punishes players for failing to resurrect the dead character soon enough. Either ‘pop up’ the character while still dying at zero hit points, or revive immediately after combat. If days pass, there will be pain.

I feel the older spells are no longer worth their high spell levels, because the newer spells at low levels are so much more powerful.

But the narrative of wait longer, suffer more, doesnt bother me too much.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[5ekyu]

Resurrection mechanics in D&D suffer from trying to maintain the conceits of earlier generations of the game.

Think of any other game. If you're playing Chess and you lose, you can just set up a new game and play again. There's no punishment in your next game. No one else playing in the same room has to stop their game and wait for you to set your next game up.

If you're playing Metroid and your character dies, you can reload your last saved game. You might lose a few minutes of playtime, but you learn from what beat you and you can try again. Ditto any modern RPG, with the exception of a few 'hardcore' games.

Think of any story you read or watch. Characters generally don't die unless it's good for the story.

Why do we let D&D create bad stories?

The game should have failure states that don't end the story. You should never be able to die from things that aren't intentional by the GM or yourself. Any other failure in combat should at worst result in you being defeated but not dead.

I am in this camp.

last fantasy game i ran, between death and return i did for each character a "between arc" set of scenes in the afterlife where they did a little journey and usually met ancestors and always had a tough choice presented at the end with reasons to go back or stay (dead.) They also usually got some nugget of the future.

Additionally, i had cults that either saw those who had been brought back as "blessed by the goddess of death" and treated them as gifted or oracles as well as cults who believed this was an affront to the natural order and hunted them down to send them back "where they belong."

i even added a special ability tree they could develop based off their brush with death including some divinations and such - even speak with dead if they needed - as rituals and the like.

i actually had one character who said after the game he was partly disappointed that because his character was built for optimizing survival and he always played cautius and never died - he never got an "after death."

OBVIOUSLY, the treatment of death is a core element of a setting - whether it be death of "extras" or of "names" (NPCs of note/import/meaning) or of the stars (PCs). Decisions on how that is treated will be a foundation element of your game.

But it certainly doesn't **have to be** drastic or the game is meaningless or any sort of the usual hard core. look at how many myths and legends have a death as a key plot element - spawning a trip to the underworld or some such.

FOR GAMEPLAY, i do not need death as the price of failure for my players to see a loss as meaningful.

I tell them day one - you will not die by dice. You may die by excessive stupidity (usually repeated), by neglect (others don't try to save you) or you may die by your own intent. But you wont die by dice or by DM fiat.

That has not prevented very serious investment in characters or setting by my players or them feeling loss when it hits home and they fail at important things (or even when they pass up on important things.) More than a few times they have seen cases where they passed on "opportunities" only to see later on someone else took it and made good from it.

I find that when Gm tends to overemphasize death as "losing" with penalties and such like "you start back at first while we are all 10th" that also tends to make characters focus more or focus only on their survival as key. They become very invested in the survival and combat cuz it costs you most everything you have accomplished. Risk a years play and rewards for stealing a bauble that looks life-or-death... why would someone do that if that bauble isn't worth everything you have and will do?

My general rule for bringing in new characters is you come back at the level of the others (starting - no Xp) and your gear value is roughly half what would be expected. i don't care if that is due to death or due to preference and agreement with me on character change.

failure is IMO not to be feared, but is definitely a case where the direction of story goes not the way your character wanted. its a different story, not a punishment. For my players, that loss of influence is more than enough a bad thing for them to not want it to happen.

yeah, i rambled.

 

[Arilyn]

The problem with the resurrection spell in all DnD games is that it has never made much sense, from a story point of view. In earlier editions, you came back weaker, or died from shock. A deity has intervened to bring you back from the dead, but leaves you weak, or just lets you immediately die again? Costing money kind of works, I guess, but feels like deities need to be paid, which could work for some, I suppose.

I much prefer consequences that are more story driven. Maybe you have been returned to complete a task, but then die. You could owe the deity a big debt. Some other deity disapproves of your return, so now you've got some brand new opponents to deal with. There are tons of possibilities.

There should always be the very real possibility that the spell just fails, because I don't think most deities will continually pop people back to life, especially if all you need is money and access to an appropriately levelled cleric. Can you imagine what effect this would have on society? And its doubtful that whatever death God you have in your campaign would put up with these shenanigans.

Having said all this, death is a boring consequence in an rpg. I would much rather make my players squirm with guilt, or get captured, or blamed, or exiled....If a player character dies, it should have meaning, and be the logical end of their own story arc. I have found frequent deaths in an rpg can also remove the bite of consequences, as players just make a new character, engage in "Bob the Second" behaviour, and do things like not even naming their character until 3rd level.

My players know that they will not die from a random Kobold or trap, yet they experience tension, are fully engaged and suffer horribly from bad decisions. They don't feel immortal and throw themselves heedlessly into danger, cause they know, if they behave like that, I will just let them die. And the gods won't look kindly on such foolishness either...