D&D 5E Why penalize returning from death?

[5ekyu]

This was your response to Celebrim saying:





And I'm telling you this is false, because the widely accepted and proven studies of human behavior state that almost everyone will. Not "some". Your comment was completely dismissive of the actual science behind human behavior. I've never denied that there may be an exception here and there, but we're not talking about exceptions. We're talking about how things may affect human behavior on a whole. And something like a death penalty will have an affect. We have plenty of evidence of this. You have not provided any evidence that D&D is somehow exempt from this, other than to say "I haven't seen it, and this other guy isn't sure."

Anecdotal evidence is not evidence. Sorry.



More irony. The only person here refusing things is you refusing to admit how basic human behavior works; a topic that has been widely studied and theories proven over literally centuries.



And I'm telling you it's almost all. A universal truth that has been proven scientifically. Not "some". When talking in general, it's the accepted default.



Ad hominem aside.. What murders talk? The part where I said killing the actual players? That wasn't much more hyperbole than you saying to not allow players to play the game again until the next campaign. I.e., neither scenario actually happens, neither is part of the actual rules about penalties for PCs dying, therefore both are ridiculous examples that shouldn't even be considered and certainly don't "cheapen the death of a PC in the game."



Yes! Well, ignoring your hyperbole strawman again that is (I said the behavior changes, not that they instantly go "video game resave crazy"). I said that way early in this thread:

"IME, players are a lot more cautious in 1e. It's not because character creation takes less time, it's because it's actually an accomplishment to make it to 4th or 5th level. And with so many save or die, traps, and whatnot, the players are a lot more cautious in 1e. Also, a mid to high level PC like a MU or thief could die in one round from "regular' monsters like an owlbear or ogre since HP were much less. You don't see very many groups with 10ft pole in 5e describing in great detail how they are approaching that chest, where that's pretty much the default in 1e."

So the behavior of the players has changed to be less cautious when the risk to the PCs has been reduced.



The studies of risk v reward is well documented. Here's a basic google search with thousands of articles for you to read. I don't know why you insist on the qualifier for a specific study of death taxes in a TTRPG. That infers that you think that TTRPGS are exempt from this very common and basic aspect of human behavior. I'd love to see your actual evidence as to why the basic human behavior of risk v reward that applies to everything else doesn't apply to RPGs.

Again, a general foundation in a broad subject of risk v reward cartot v stick does not domehow turn into proven fact that a specific carrot and stick has impact on changing behavior of a concrete discrete and extrene result.

People on the whole tend to eat more ice cream when its hot as a truth - does not mean a heat wave drives almost all people to extremes of ice cream gorging.

Just like removal of death tax does not drive almost all players to video game resave play that they did not do before.



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[Sacrosanct]

Ok so anyone with more than a passing interest in sociology or scientific methods and group studies would be lol at this.

You example is practically meaningless because the samples are not selected by fair means.

True statistic - kidney donors lifespan is higher, significantly, than average lifespan.

Thats donor. Not recipient.

That does not mean giving up your kidney makes you live longer.

Neither does folks playing game a behaving different than folks plsying game b is DUE TO a rule being different changing folks behavior.

Google please causation and correlation.

Both the kidney example and the two games have selection criteria bias. That throws things way before folks start getting mind twisted by exposure to death tax inside the game.

In the kidney example, general in US docs wont accept donor, living donor, ehose health is not meteting high standards, so when you compare that pool results to average pop redults - wow giving up kidney makes you live longer... Well if you just jump the shark and call it science.

Same with foljs who choose to play one game vs folks who play another game. Results show the kinds of players the game attracts, not comparative *change in behavior* caused by exposure to the rules.

That kind of conclusion requires a much,more specific kind of controlled study than "i saw how folks played" to be consideted evidence - beyond the tinfoil hat crowds who like to use such "obvious reasoning" everytime a mass shooter has DND books on his shelf.

Really, it does.

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Don't use terms like correlation does not equal causation if you don't know how to use them. Your analogy is...horribly off. You clearly don't have any idea of what you're talking about.

In my video game example, even with the same people, the way they play each game (in terms of planning, being cautious, etc), is different based on something like how frequent save points are vs. games where there aren't. This is not rocket science, and I can't believe I even have to explain it because it's so painfully obvious.

In a game like Ninja Gaiden where if you die you're done and have to restart the whole game, you're going to play more cautiously than a game where you have a ton of save points frequently throughout the game, because if you die, you don't have to redo everything all over again.

And again, you have yet to provide a single shred of credible evidence that D&D is exempt from risk v reward impacting how a person makes choices, which is true of every other context.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Just like removal of death tax does not drive almost all players to video game resave play that they did not do before.



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I never said it makes them go to "resave video game play". I said it makes players less cautious in their choices. Which it does. Which the evidence clearly supports not only in observed behavior of this specific topic, but in the way human behavior works in general. I'm not talking about a correlation like you keep trying to minimize it as. I'm talking about widely proven scientific theory, and provided literally thousands of articles for you to read that backs that up. This isn't an analogy of correlation; speak directly to the topic if you can.

Here's some advice. If you have to constantly resort to strawmen and the occasional ad homimen to try to make your point while being unable to provide a single piece of credible evidence that supports your position, then you may want to rethink said position.

 

[5ekyu]

Don't use terms like correlation does not equal causation if you don't know how to use them. Your analogy is...horribly off. You clearly don't have any idea of what you're talking about.

In my video game example, even with the same people, the way they play each game (in terms of planning, being cautious, etc), is different based on something like how frequent save points are vs. games where there aren't. This is not rocket science, and I can't believe I even have to explain it because it's so painfully obvious.

In a game like Ninja Gaiden where if you die you're done and have to restart the whole game, you're going to play more cautiously than a game where you have a ton of save points frequently throughout the game, because if you die, you don't have to redo everything all over again.

And again, you have yet to provide a single shred of credible evidence that D&D is exempt from risk v reward impacting how a person makes choices, which is true of every other context.

Again, you grossly misunderstand the science you claim to respect.

First, i never ever said anything close to dnd being exempt from effects, thats your made up thingy.

I said the claim anout players going to video game resave without death tax was going to be true of some, not of others.

You are the one throwing the "almost all" vs "some" fit.

But for your most recent attempt at science, you fail to account for the wide variety of difference in the games.

Are you saying the only difference between those games was the death result? No?

There were significant differences on top of the death save thing?

Hmm... Ok... Well if so, then...

Are you claiming that statistical normalizations were done to isolate your evidence down to results caused by death save and those from other differences?

If not, you really really really should not be trying to reference this and science, sociology and evidence in a thread together.

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[Sacrosanct]

If you continue to say that only some people will change their behavior, despite that not being true of any other context or topic and flies right in the face of sociology and human behavior, while still not providing an ounce of evidence to support your position, then I guess there is no point in me trying to continue. If you never said D&D is exempt, then why are you arguing that D&D players would act differently than any other person when faced with a reward vs risk decision? Because if only "some" D&D players would change their behavior, that is very different than any other person in any other context of risk v reward.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Or its possible to play a character whose flawless knowledge of goblin power and capability and approximations are not gifted at birth who cam as a low level adventurer make a guess, wind up getying unlucky and suffer for it.

You could certainly play a character who isn't aware of how dangerous goblins are, but that character is highly likely to die to a goblin. If low-level adventurers were not supposed to know how dangerous goblins were, as a general truth about how the world works, then there would be very few adventurers who survive to high levels.

If instead of goblins, it was an ancient riddle box and each wrong guess kills a character, is his "replacement" character supposed to know all the wrong answers too, just like this new character wont repeat that goblin mistske? Cuz, its learning roleplaying if he does?

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?

We're probably not playing in a world where ninety percent of starting adventurers are killed, because that would be a terrible world to live in and few players would want to spend an afternoon there. Therefore, we are probably playing in a world where those answers are common knowledge.

Part of Roleplaying is separating player and character knowledge, or so i always thought.

Certainly, which is why you want to avoid putting players into a situation where the player and character are working on different information. Keeping that knowledge separate can take a conscious effort, and is prone to overcompensation; consider the question of what an uninformed wizard would cast when faced with a troll. There's not much to be gained from playing a character who doesn't know as much as the player does about how the world actually operates, and it would be a lot more work to keep all of that information straight, but certainly YMMV on that one.

 

[5ekyu]

I never said it makes them go to "resave video game play". I said it makes players less cautious in their choices. Which it does. Which the evidence clearly supports not only in observed behavior of this specific topic, but in the way human behavior works in general. I'm not talking about a correlation like you keep trying to minimize it as. I'm talking about widely proven scientific theory, and provided literally thousands of articles for you to read that backs that up. This isn't an analogy of correlation; speak directly to the topic if you can.

Here's some advice. If you have to constantly resort to strawmen and the occasional ad homimen to try to make your point while being unable to provide a single piece of credible evidence that supports your position, then you may want to rethink said position.

You claim to not be talking about resave video play but... You jumped in when i respobded to just such a claim and even requoted that recently.

Since i have not claimed the broader carrot stick nonsense you keep inventing and you now seem to want to step back from the extreme reference my "dismissal" (i think you called it) was aimed at, serns like progress has been made. Glad to see you dont now think that post referencing not having death saves leading to resave mode applies to more than some.

Welcome home.

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[5ekyu]

You could certainly play a character who isn't aware of how dangerous goblins are, but that character is highly likely to die to a goblin. If low-level adventurers were not supposed to know how dangerous goblins were, as a general truth about how the world works, then there would be very few adventurers who survive to high levels.

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?

We're probably not playing in a world where ninety percent of starting adventurers are killed, because that would be a terrible world to live in and few players would want to spend an afternoon there. Therefore, we are probably playing in a world where those answers are common knowledge.

Certainly, which is why you want to avoid putting players into a situation where the player and character are working on different information. Keeping that knowledge separate can take a conscious effort, and is prone to overcompensation; consider the question of what an uninformed wizard would cast when faced with a troll. There's not much to be gained from playing a character who doesn't know as much as the player does about how the world actually operates, and it would be a lot more work to keep all of that information straight, but certainly YMMV on that one.

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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[The Crimson Binome]

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

That seems like an unlikely situation, for someone without specific knowledge to underestimate the power of a goblin. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but you'd need to really sell your setting as grim and gritty, with a level 1 barbarian being barely above a peasant with a pitchfork, and D&D doesn't really do that.

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.

In this specific situation, it sounded to me as though the player thought the goblins would be chumps, and was surprised at their base power level, such that their overperformance was lethal. Had the player been better-informed, the barbarian would have raged. That the goblins got lucky does not make that assumption less correct; it only increased the consequences of failure.

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

If it happened frequently, then tales of the sort would be widespread. Not every low-level adventurer goes on to become world-famous, but if more than half of them died to goblins, then the survivors of those battles would spread the word. Caution to not underestimate goblins would be common advice that higher-level adventurers offer to newbies.

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.

That would require a character to survive making a bad call in a hard fight, which doesn't seem likely. I mean, if they survived, then it must not have been that bad of a mistake.

 

[Schmoe]

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.

Heck, even in 3rd edition I joined a group of mostly 6th-7th level characters with my 1st level Ranger and was able to contribute. After one session I was 2nd level and it wasn't even really a factor after another three or four sessions. I can only imagine that 5th edition makes this even easier to do.