D&D 5E Why penalize returning from death?

[Arilyn]

I think you're being excessively reductive.

When you play Halo, you can get beaten, but then you try again and keep playing until you win. If you're playing Dark Souls and you die (and you will), you try again. The damage you take tracks how well you're playing, and having multiple moving parts in the game mechanics gives you more options to meaningfully respond to the challenges you face. "Have everyone roll one die"?! That's not at all what I'm calling for.

What I'm saying is, if you run a normal game of D&D, and the party loses a fight, usually that means the whole campaign comes to an end. If this were any other narrative genre, they'd be captured, or left for dead, or there'd be some dramatic intervention that kept the bad guys from executing them, but in a good story the failure still has narrative consequences.

We're playing a game, so we want victory to be earned, not presumed, and we want failure to sting, but if you were playing Legend of Zelda - Breath of the Wild, and the moment Link died you had to return the game to the store and never play it again, that'd be kinda stupid.

I'm not saying death shouldn't be possible. I'm saying death shouldn't be the most common failure state. When you fail in an RPG, the assumed consequence should be a setback that you can recover from. Actually having a character die should be much rarer. And actually having the whole party die should basically never happen unless it's intentional. Like, there could be mechanics so a player gets knocked to 0 HP, and you say, "Okay, you're beaten and will be rendered incapable to keep fighting, unless you choose to Risk Your Life. Do you want to accept defeat, or do you want to Risk Your Life for a chance to still win?"

Something like that.

This philosophy is becoming more common in rpgs, FATE being an obvious example. It's especially appealing to those of us who want a more narrative style of play. There are still high stakes, plenty of suspense and failure. Most new players I meet are looking to mimic their favourite movie, book or tv show, and random, meaningless death doesn't make sense. Yes, in real life, death can strike anytime, but we are not doing real life. Dresden Files is not going to change to Martin Files, cause Harry got torn apart by ghouls in book 2.

As you say, death is not off the table, but it needs to be meaningful.

That's how we like to play. Obviously, not everyone agrees.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think you're being excessively reductive.

When you play Halo, you can get beaten, but then you try again and keep playing until you win. If you're playing Dark Souls and you die (and you will), you try again. The damage you take tracks how well you're playing, and having multiple moving parts in the game mechanics gives you more options to meaningfully respond to the challenges you face. "Have everyone roll one die"?! That's not at all what I'm calling for.

What I'm saying is, if you run a normal game of D&D, and the party loses a fight, usually that means the whole campaign comes to an end. If this were any other narrative genre, they'd be captured, or left for dead, or there'd be some dramatic intervention that kept the bad guys from executing them, but in a good story the failure still has narrative consequences.

We're playing a game, so we want victory to be earned, not presumed, and we want failure to sting, but if you were playing Legend of Zelda - Breath of the Wild, and the moment Link died you had to return the game to the store and never play it again, that'd be kinda stupid.

I'm not saying death shouldn't be possible. I'm saying death shouldn't be the most common failure state. When you fail in an RPG, the assumed consequence should be a setback that you can recover from. Actually having a character die should be much rarer. And actually having the whole party die should basically never happen unless it's intentional. Like, there could be mechanics so a player gets knocked to 0 HP, and you say, "Okay, you're beaten and will be rendered incapable to keep fighting, unless you choose to Risk Your Life. Do you want to accept defeat, or do you want to Risk Your Life for a chance to still win?"

Something like that.

I get what you’re saying, but there’s a degree of hyperbole in your argument that doesn’t help your case. Death is a relatively common consequence of failure in combat in D&D, but there are a lot of fail states that don’t end in character death (the villain got to the McGuffin before you, now you’ll have to infiltrate his fortress to get it back; you failed to pick the lock on the chest, now you’ll miss some optional treasure; these enemies are too powerful for you, you’ll have to retreat). And even when failure does lead to character death, it usually doesn’t lead to the campaign ending, unless it was a TPK. That’s the thing, Breath of the Wild is a single-player game with one protagonist. In D&D you play only one member of a party. It’s more like if your teammates dying in Dragon Age meant you couldn’t use them again, and the game had a limitless supply of just as well developed characters to replace them. I don’t know about you, but I would find that rad as hell!

 

[Fanaelialae]

I think it's very much a play preference.

I have one player who loves hardcore style video games. He never takes issue with losing a character.

Another player is one of the finest roleplayers I've ever had the pleasure to game with. He takes character death pretty hard (in a mature way).

I remember back in 3e, one of us died (I don't recall who) and was given the opportunity to be resurrected by a lesser Titan whose aspect was death, at the cost of a boon. That boon ended up costing us dearly, as the Titan ended up asking us to kill a godling who we also owed favors to (owing favors to dark entities isn't a good idea, but it was a tough campaign and we needed all the help we could get). We ended up pulling it off via a bit of time travel (which the DM hadn't actually intended for that purpose) but it cost us two party members, one of whom died as a result of the battle, and another who sacrificed himself to seal the paradox we created (we could have opted to avoid the sacrifice, but it would have put the entire party at risk of a tpk).

In that same campaign, that second player I mentioned kept losing character after character. Mostly because he prefers making fun and interesting characters over optimized ones. We could tell that he was seriously frustrated as a result, so we (players) ultimately helped him build a virtually unkillable monster, and he put an amazing RP spin on the character. It worked, and that character ended up epic (both in level and personality) but I do still sometimes wonder whether it was the right thing to do. I mean, a large part of the beauty of RPGs is getting to create and play your own character. As great as that character was, we'll never know what he might have done without our intervention.

I also disagree that you can't kill characters in 5e, unless it's a tpk. I'll agree that if you play CaS rather than CaW, it is unlikely. However, in the latter case it can (and likely will) happen. In a 5e campaign,the first friend I mentioned was playing an illithid (Homebrew class/race combo). We were around level 10, and he had previously drawn one of the enmity cards from the Deck of Many Things. The DM rolled a double nat 20 for a random encounter (worst possible result) and determined that the card's effect had come up, and we were ambushed by a gith hunting party. It was a hellish fight. Focus fire took the illithid out in the first round or two. The gith offered to let us withdraw as long as we left the illithid, but we refused. I almost turned the fight around with a hypnotic pattern, but the dice did not favor us and most of them saved. Ultimately, we were forced to retreat and they plane shifted away with their trophy. Not only was he dead, but completely unressurectable (at least by the means available to us). There was talk of a rescue mission, but after extended investigation we deemed it too risky, and that was that. (That player, meanwhile, deemed it a fitting end and happily rolled up a new warlock.)

We've used various options in the past, but presently we allow the player to reroll with full XP but only a small amount of treasure for the new character. It's generous, but we've had issues in the past with level disparities diminishing some players enjoyment of the game, and for now this has been working fine. It isn't as though there aren't downsides. All of the previous character's accomplishments are lost to the player. NPCs who were happy to help the old character have no such attachment to the new one. While they'll likely be amicable to the new character simply by association to the party, they certainly won't feel they owe him anything. In a very real sense, the player is starting from scratch, despite that his character sheet is largely equivalent. (Obviously this doesn't apply to all players out there, but it does with my table.)

I've considered alternatives. I find the concepts in the Phoenix Dawn Command RPG interesting. Therein, your soul is bound to an ancient artifact. If you die, you will return to life the next morning, and moreover your experiences in the artifact grant you more power each time. In other words, dying makes you more powerful. The catch being, it can only bring you back seven times (after that your soul is permanently bound to the artifact).

It's a tricky thing IMO. The most frequent source of single character death that I've seen at my table (apart from occasional unwise decisions or absurdly bad luck with dice) is the one player who nobly sacrifices their character to save the rest of the party. Personally, I think that's the sort of thing a player ought to be rewarded for, but I haven't come up with a good way thus far.

Overall, I don't really think that there's a right way or a wrong way to handle it, assuming it works for the table and the player.

 

[Sunseeker]

IME, it's part "don't be stupid" and "get gud scrub" mentality.

IMO: I don't feel that expending resources is a punishment. That's simple economics: you pay for the things you want. On that note however, I do wish there was a way to bring someone back with no level loss for an increased resource cost. Maybe double, or triple the standard gold/item cost. Maybe it requires an extra special item that's super rare. I add these sorts of elements in my own games, but it would have been nice if there was something there in the rules. I do feel that a resource cost is important to make death matter, I also agree that in large part death doesn't matter in most games.

Realistically, few tables do anything significant with dead PCs, they usually loot the body and then move on, eventually meeting Backup #5 in the next inn or tavern they crawl through. There's rarely any heroic parades through town, any grand statues erected to the lost player or even a simple funeral and I don't think I've ever once seen a party seek out a dead PC's family (assuming their backstory wasn't an orphan *eyeroll*) to give them the news that their child is dead.

However, keep in mind that the -1 level "punishment" was often taken in comparison to the alternative: roll a new level 1 character. Often a -4 or great level punishment! Going from level 8 to level 7 is a lot less of a punishment than going from level 8 to level 1! Also, there are often lower-level spells that can be cast quickly after the time of death that have no level-loss.

I think if there was more role-play engagement with death at the average table, then there would be less need for mechanical costs because players would feel the loss and recognize it as something real, without the need for a mechanical punishment to constantly remind them.

 

[24Fanatic365]

As a new player who died fairly quickly when I began playing, I think death should have a penalty. My wife and I always play together, and BOTH of us died the first time we played. We had both invested several hours into backstories for our first level characters. In our second encounter, we both got wiped out by goblins. She died because she's a wizard and hadn't yet learned melee is BAD. I died because I'm a barbarian, and figured, "It's only a few goblins. I only get two rages, so I better save my last one." The DM rolled really well on two attacks in a row on me, and rolled decent damage. If I had raged, I would have survived. The DM knew how much time we had spent making our characters, and allowed us both to sell our souls to be resurrected. (Being all first level, and this being the first adventure we went on, paying monetarily for resurrection was out of the question.) We both learned our lesson, and have become (a bit) more careful, and more cognizant of how to use the resources available to us more efficiently in combat.

That still didn't stop me from looting a mummy's tomb the next week, though! LOL! I got a raging case of mummy rot that cost my entire party all of their money to cure. But I got a +1 magical greataxe that has helped with smashing ne'er-do-wells ever since. We're all level 3 now, and getting along quite nicely. And the deity owing storyline should keep things interesting in the future!

 

[abirdcall]

As you say, death is not off the table, but it needs to be meaningful.

Death is always meaningful. A character dying has a huge and meaningful impact on the story.

The only time the cause of death wouldn't be meaningful is if it happened off camera.

 

[5ekyu]

As a new player who died fairly quickly when I began playing, I think death should have a penalty. My wife and I always play together, and BOTH of us died the first time we played. We had both invested several hours into backstories for our first level characters. In our second encounter, we both got wiped out by goblins. She died because she's a wizard and hadn't yet learned melee is BAD. I died because I'm a barbarian, and figured, "It's only a few goblins. I only get two rages, so I better save my last one." The DM rolled really well on two attacks in a row on me, and rolled decent damage. If I had raged, I would have survived. The DM knew how much time we had spent making our characters, and allowed us both to sell our souls to be resurrected. (Being all first level, and this being the first adventure we went on, paying monetarily for resurrection was out of the question.) We both learned our lesson, and have become (a bit) more careful, and more cognizant of how to use the resources available to us more efficiently in combat.

That still didn't stop me from looting a mummy's tomb the next week, though! LOL! I got a raging case of mummy rot that cost my entire party all of their money to cure. But I got a +1 magical greataxe that has helped with smashing ne'er-do-wells ever since. We're all level 3 now, and getting along quite nicely. And the deity owing storyline should keep things interesting in the future!

And there we have the illogic of the desth meets git gud mindset.

Your first x level character did not know how to manage rages and died. So your second did better cuz... Roleplaying... Somehow *that* character new better than the other.

See, it makes sense if the barbarian had lost but survived that he wpuld have learned the lesson. But now your image of "x level" has changed to include "they know better than what i thought the other guy would".


Cuz you know.. Role playing game.

Sent from my VS995 using EN World mobile app

 

[Stalker0]

Death is always meaningful. A character dying has a huge and meaningful impact on the story.

The only time the cause of death wouldn't be meaningful is if it happened off camera.

Cleric casts Revivify: "Dead....psh! Get up you pansy!"

Or

Cleric: "Hey guys, why don't you take a short rest. I'm going to get Ed back into action" (Cast Raise Dead). Ed...get up your Pansy!"


If death only means that your character skips out on 1 short rest....it really loses its sting.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Your first x level character did not know how to manage rages and died. So your second did better cuz... Roleplaying... Somehow *that* character new better than the other.

See, it makes sense if the barbarian had lost but survived that he wpuld have learned the lesson. But now your image of "x level" has changed to include "they know better than what i thought the other guy would".

The character should have known better. That they made such a mistake can be attributed to poor (unskilled) roleplaying. The player didn't have the character act in accordance with the character's understanding of the world, because the player didn't understand as much as the character did about how the world actually works.

I don't mean that as a slight against the player at all. Roleplaying is a learned skill, and the specifics are different for every game. You have to know a lot about the world and how things work in that world before you can say with confidence how a character living in that world would act. The first few sessions are bound to be rough, until everyone figures out what they're supposed to be doing.

 

[Ahriduz]

Cleric casts Revivify: "Dead....psh! Get up you pansy!"

Or

Cleric: "Hey guys, why don't you take a short rest. I'm going to get Ed back into action" (Cast Raise Dead). Ed...get up your Pansy!"


If death only means that your character skips out on 1 short rest....it really loses its sting.

I'm assuming you're talking about the function of these spells in 5th edition, as that's what the OP stated. Revivify can only be cast on a creature that has died within the last minute, it's a clutch spell with a material cost of diamonds worth 300gp. It's very situational, in a combat situation you've got ten rounds to get the character that can cast Revivify into touch range of the recently deceased target; on top of that the character with Revivify needs to have the diamonds on them (300gp worth of diamonds should be pretty costly for a 5th level character). Additionally, usage of Revivify takes up a third level spell slot - a pretty powerful slot for characters of that level.

Raise Dead costs, at minimum, a diamond worth 500gp. The character casting this should be at least 9th level, since that's when they get the spell slot. Characters of this level are beginning to enter a stage of power and ability beyond the comprehension of an average creature. I mean, they're not quite at 20th level but they're still quite powerful. Even though it's quite a powerful spell slot, Raise Dead has its own set of limitations. First of all, the creature has have been dead for no longer than 10 days and can't have died too violently. The spell closes mortal wounds, but it doesn't restore missing body parts or organs. If a character suffered a particularly brutal death in which they now lack an organ or body part necessary for survival, you simply can't Raise Dead them. The spell automatically fails.

I agree that playing in a particularly high-death campaign can mean that death loses it sting, but it completely depends on the player. I, for one, start to lose my immersion when a fellow player has died five times and somehow finds a way to weave their new character back into the party. Death, for people like me, is a massive punishment in and of itself -- I put massive amounts of work into each character, losing them is like throwing dozens of hours down the drain. I must have a connection with my character to be immersed. It would be easier for me to play in a campaign where player death is taboo, but I feel that that would be equally immersion breaking in the end.

Anyway, without going on a tangent, I feel like you're purposely minimalizing resurrection spells - Revivify has a very short time span in which it must be cast and a rather high material cost barrier for it's level. If your party is at the point where they are dropping Revivify's left right and centre in combat, they're probably at a high enough level where you could expect a character of their power to not simply succumb to death like a normal person. They're beyond that stage. If you don't want to roleplay them as being beyond such petty things as death, you don't have to accept resurrection spells. You have the final choice of whether someone can resurrect your character, not them. The same goes for Raise Dead, but in a different way.