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<blockquote data-quote="TwoSix" data-source="post: 7287964" data-attributes="member: 205">Depends on the game type.&nbsp; In your classic dungeon-crawl, no death penalty becomes an issue because it obviates the challenge of the dungeon.&nbsp; You can simply go through the dungeon room by room, clear what you can, and spend whatever time you need figuring out how to get around traps by throwing yourself at it enough times.&nbsp; In a more modern game, like an adventure path or a sandbox, easy ways to bypass death can hamper verisimilitude.&nbsp; If the PCs can come back to life because of a 1st level cost-free ritual, you have a world-building issue based around the fact that people never die.&nbsp; (Restricting the ritual to only work on those who died of trauma or disease could alleviate some of those concerns, maybe.)There are certainly ways around these issues if you really don't want a death penalty.&nbsp; Maybe the characters are under a holy geas, and their bodies always recreate at dawn if they are killed.&nbsp; Maybe raise dead is cheap, easily available spell, which is reflected in the setting.&nbsp; (See Brust's Vlad Taltos books.)&nbsp;&nbsp; The main reasons to add harsh consequences for death are fundamentally verisimilitude (death is a pretty harsh consequence in real life, after all) and a desire to encourage careful, cautious play (which I personally don't like, which is why my characters die so often. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />&nbsp; )</blockquote>

[QUOTE="TwoSix, post: 7287964, member: 205"] Depends on the game type. In your classic dungeon-crawl, no death penalty becomes an issue because it obviates the challenge of the dungeon. You can simply go through the dungeon room by room, clear what you can, and spend whatever time you need figuring out how to get around traps by throwing yourself at it enough times. In a more modern game, like an adventure path or a sandbox, easy ways to bypass death can hamper verisimilitude. If the PCs can come back to life because of a 1st level cost-free ritual, you have a world-building issue based around the fact that people never die. (Restricting the ritual to only work on those who died of trauma or disease could alleviate some of those concerns, maybe.) There are certainly ways around these issues if you really don't want a death penalty. Maybe the characters are under a holy geas, and their bodies always recreate at dawn if they are killed. Maybe raise dead is cheap, easily available spell, which is reflected in the setting. (See Brust's Vlad Taltos books.) The main reasons to add harsh consequences for death are fundamentally verisimilitude (death is a pretty harsh consequence in real life, after all) and a desire to encourage careful, cautious play (which I personally don't like, which is why my characters die so often. :) ) [/QUOTE]

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