NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="R_Chance" data-source="post: 7991407" data-attributes="member: 55149">One thing about party size, a large party is more survivable but it also lowers the experience gain per character which increases the time to level up which balances out the higher lethality of smaller parties <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> My players weren't too fond of henchmen because of the experience loss. The problem was finding the sweet spot between party size and experience gain. Sometimes that depended on the classes the PCs played. A dungeon heavy in undead favored Clerics back in the day thanks to "turn undead". A dungeon with areas wider than the typical 10' wide corridor needed more fighters, etc. As for character generation time, that's really more about game design imo. In original D&D in took very little time. PCs died, 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    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> But, they were easy to generate. I noticed how long it took to generate a 3E character, but they were much more survivable. I prefer somewhat faster character generation with significant chances of death. It's a balance. I loved Traveller. It kind of evaded this issue. It combined very lethal game mechanics with a character generation system that was fun if fairly involved. You didn't notice how long you were out of  the game, because you were having fun making a new character <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> I run a sandbox game. It is moderately lethal, but character generation is relatively short. I've had players plow through several decent characters in fairly short order, then hit a character who just seems to click and survive. Sometimes PC death is about the player / play style as much as the game. When they find the "right" character for how they play they tend to survive. As for "imposed stories", well as I said my game is a sandbox. There are adventures / story lines buried in that sand but I don't force my players hands. They choose their course. So, no story reason to keep them alive <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> Or kill them either.</blockquote>

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