your penalty for character death

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Death has to be unpleasant in order to be meaningful. Otherwise you'll get players hiding behind the stack of dead Bards.

I find its pretty much inevitable that if death carries no penalty, that you end up with some sort of metagaming, whether its 'mound of dead bards', 'zerg rush', 'suicide looting', or 'reincarnated serial psychopaths'. I also find that addressing in game issues as if they were out of game issues tends to be escalating the problem and not descalating them.

I do not agree with this sentiment anymore. I've stripped away the "death tax" now for at least seven years. There was a point prior to that that I would have agreed with you wholeheartedly. It was also a phase in my DMing style where my relationship with my players was very adversarial.

I'm much more forgiving now and seek to toe that razor's edge, providing a meaningful challenge while not looking to necessarily cause character deaths. I also make sure players are happy with their character choices and allow them to rework their character if something didn't pan out the way they imagined it would.

Death's penalty in my games is losing a character you worked hard on, as I encourage my players to try a new race and class if they have need to bring in a new character, and possibly failing whatever mission or quest the characters have chosen to follow. My players have responded in kind to my relaxation by not pulling the metagame antics you describe.

It depends on the players' style, their relationship with the DM, and possibly even maturity or social issues. You have to be able to feel out your players and react accordingly.

 

[Janx]

to sum up the lessons from the thread:

since the OP was allegedly a better participating player than another player in the group, yet he got a worse penalty for PC death than another player, having a consistent and rational policy on replacement PCs is a good idea.

GMs should review their policy and consider the issues raised with various methods

Players should ask about the policy and discuss issues before the matter comes up.

GMs should devise a policy that doesn't penaliize good behavior (like heroic getting screwed).

Players should establish their own in-game team rules that they endeavor to help each other (as Celebrim described it). They should also establish a practice for handling PC death in game (do we honor a will, do we bring his gear back to his family, do we loot him and screw up the wealth by level budget so the GM can hose us later).

Key items for the policy to consider:
xp/level penalties should probably be calculated from the dead PC for the replacement PC, and NOT based on the party in any way. making the penalty equivalent to what raise dead does (-1 level) or a getting a henchment (-2 levels) is probably the fairest.

New PCs getting to cherry pick the magic item list should be discouraged. Dying should not be an upgrade. If the party runs at a lower wealth level, than replacement PCs should be in that same scale. Additionally, since most of the items PCs have were DM chosen or randomly rolled as monster treasure, the same should be true for replacement gear. One method would be to make the player create the PC with mundane gear only. This reveals what kind of basic gear they would use. Then upgrade the main weapons and armor to be level appropriate (like what the rest of the party has). then roll up some random other non-weapon items to use up the remaining "wealth by level" budget. Starting the PC at lower on the "wealth by level" would also make sense (since he's likely to join a party that just split up the dead guy's gear, and maybe they should give it to the under-equipped new guy).

Suiciding PCs is a different problem. The player could be stupid, reckless, not happy, gaming the wealth by level system. I think the GM will need to be watchful for it, and have to consider the causes.

Rewarding good players vs bad players is another problem. Taking the OP at face value, it is NOT in the GMs best interest to retain the bad player at the expense of the good player. His basic decision pattern rewards the loser and discourages the guy he really should keep. This drives the good player away. That's just stupid. Regardless of what practices a GM follows, he should avoid getting into the scenario I just described. Never reward the bad and punish the good.

I think then, that regardless of all the ideas folks have for consequences for dying, realism, fairness, the chief goal should be "how do I get the player back into the game and invested in it and having fun"

 

[Celebrim]

The problem didn't have anything to do with inflexibility in the adventure plot... It had to do with the fact that we were playing through an adventure that was widely considered a meat-grinder with a DM who considered it his duty to kill the PCs, using any and every method at his disposal (he told us this once).

A DM's duty isn't directly to kill the PC's, but a DM does have a duty to play ruthless and intelligent bad guys in a ruthless and intelligent manner. If I find out the DM is pulling his punches for metagame reasons, I'm probably going to find a different DM sooner or later. The game doesn't have much meaning of the DM is all the time fudging to save you. Why bother rolling dice then? Let's just agree to what happens and do it? That would sure make the game go faster.

Over the course of that year, we averaged one character death per session, and we only had one original character survive from beginning to end. Side quests would not have helped, not only because it was not in the nature of the DM to provide such resource-boosting assistance, but also because he would have planned them to be just as deadly as the main adventure.

We've sort of changed topics here. As I understood it, your point was that a 'death tax' created a situation where the party as a whole was not advancing in level even though the enemies were becoming more and more challenging. If that was really the problem, then a side quest with CR more appropriate to character level would have allowed time for the party to level up as a group.

However, now it sounds like you are saying that your real problem was the DM's ego, and if that is the case then I don't think you can say that there is anything wrong with the 'death tax' based on the ancedote. Because if the problem is DM ego, then it wouldn't have been solved by replacing dead characters with ones of equal level and equipment as the DM still would have been more ruthless than you desired. Indeed, if he really was as bad as you suggest, then it stands to reason that he'd always arrange the EL of the situations to be well above party level so as to insure his ability to dominate the party and enforce his will upon the game.

I dunno... We've not had a problem with it, since I started using it. Most of my players have enough time and energy invested in their characters that they go to great lengths to keep their PCs alive. If it ever gets to the point where the character isn't working out (for one reason or another) they let me know, we talk it over, and if necessary, we just find a way to retire the old character and introduce a new one.

How many PC deaths do you average per session? If PC's never die, then how you handle it isn't very relevant. If PC death is very rare, then death is itself its own penalty. However, rare PC death is a fairly new phenomenom.

A PC dies simply because of bad luck on dice rolls... It's not the player's fault, so why penalize him?

I have never lost a character and felt I was being penalized or punished.

As for dying a good and heroic death, often that is also its own reward. Finding a way for a character to complete his story in a way that is appropriate is a real gift. As for a pointless heroic death, well, don't die.

Maybe he's bored with the adventure? Maybe he doesn't like his character as much as he thought would and wants another? Maybe he prefers a more action oriented game than what you're providing?

Often as not, that's just the way he rolls. Changing to a more action oriented game probably wouldn't change the way he plays. I've got one of these now. He's bored when he's not killing things and looting the bodies. But when he is killing things and looting the bodies, he tends to want to wade recklessly into the situation. His reward - the thing he's enjoying the most - is recklessly wading into a situation and then triumphing like a Barbarian conquerer. On the other hand I have a player who is hyper cautious and whose reward he is playing for is to handle everything I throw at him and to still come out alive. Surviving despite all odds is the big thrill he's going for, and not shining moments of awesome. One guy is as thrilled by running away successfully, and the other guy is thrilled by charging in headlong regardless of the odds.

One way or the other, 'death tax' or no 'death tax', one player is going to see me as rewarding the other guys RPing style. Truth of the matter though is that I'm not punishing anyone. Death - 'losing' - is what makes both styles of play thrilling, but no one can actually be put out of the game much less am I making some decision to 'punish' anyone as if by playing the way they wanted to play I was disapproving. Nor am I 'forgiving' them. Judgement on my part of that sort doesn't even come into this. This isn't an adversarial decision. I'm an adversary of the PC's only in the sense that to enjoy the game, they need an active and imaginative adversary. But despite my ruthless play of the NPC's, I'm stacking the odds in the favor of the PC's and rooting for them to win every single time. When the PC's don't win, no one suffers more than me because no one at the table has invested more than me in terms of time put into the game. We're about 25 4 hour sessions into a campaign (characters are about to hit 5th level), and we just recently had our first character deaths - three way split party divided into a situation over its head with lots of warning that it might be a bad idea. Death wasn't a punishment for those choices, nor was starting over with 800 less XP a judgment on my part handed down because of poor play. It just was, because if you can't die in that situation, really, why are we rolling dice?

 

[HalfordAskold]

I have the player of a deceased character make up a new character. Then the player has to wait until I can provide a situation that allows the new character join the group, which may mean the next session depending on when in the current session the previous character died and what sort of location and situation the party is involved in.

Wow, a lot of different ways of doing things. I guess I am way old school. Back after the original white box, I started DMing with the hard back books. Usually the groups were pretty much hack and slash. Either they all lived or all died. That was simple. As I matured so did my games. There were no 'rules' on what happened. If you character died, and he was low level, you rolled up a new one and waited for the DM to work you into the plot. After that, it was understood, by the party, that if your body could be recovered you would be resurrected or reincarnated. The PCs decided among themselves.

With Pathfinder out, and me loving D & D and not liking 4th, I am working on DMing again. Its been a while, but how to handle a party death IS an important question. I know one of my best friends, who I nudged into gaming, goes to great lengths on character background. So, what to do is now something I am looking at.

If coming back from the dead was easy then the characters wouldn't be suitably cautious. Also, I am a DM that is an "us verses them" way of playing, BUT, the one rule that supersedes even that is the story. While I don't plan on killing anyone, my monsters and NPCs are not flat card board NPCs. I play them. That's how, as a DM I have fun. No, it doesn't mean that I am going to kill the party. But it does mean I will use everything (legally) I have to win while I am playing the dragon or the Orc commander.

I have never had a complaint about killing a character, as I make sure the players know its fair. And after, usually it was some battle, so there may be some down time for the players to grab a snack, bathroom break or work on their characters for xp or treasure. Then I either work with the newly deceased or if they are very experienced, they may sit out the game working their character up. Luckily the people I have played with have been mature enough. As I have gotten older, I have gotten picky on who I play with.

Now for me, if I die playing a character; I don't throw a fit unless its a stupid death or the DM lied or mis-played something. Luckily, as stated before, the party usually has a death clause; we will use the party treasure to resurrect a deceased comrade before we split the treasure. You can buy the item for yourself, and that money goes to the temple/resurrection.

At Gen Con once, when it was in Milwaukee, I ran into a player who had a very interesting outlook. he said you never talk about the character that made it to 25th level, married the princess, had kids and his holding is expanding, his kids are good and that hes playing them now. That's kind of boring to listen too. No, you talk about how your character died. Either from doing something stupid or doing something bravely, but ultimately fatal. THOSE are the characters that live on in the songs of the bards around the fireplace. I thought about it, and in my opinion, he was right.

In short, maybe I have just been lucky as a player and as DM when it comes to this - lookey there... made my save.

 

[S'mon]

I find its pretty much inevitable that if death carries no penalty, that you end up with some sort of metagaming, whether its 'mound of dead bards', 'zerg rush', 'suicide looting', or 'reincarnated serial psychopaths'. I also find that addressing in game issues as if they were out of game issues tends to be escalating the problem and not descalating them.

I tend to think that letting them sit out the game for an hour or two is penalty enough. Right now I'm leaning towards no level penalty for replacement PCs, but less starting gear.

 

[Pbartender]

A DM's duty isn't directly to kill the PC's, but a DM does have a duty to play ruthless and intelligent bad guys in a ruthless and intelligent manner.

Agreed.

If I find out the DM is pulling his punches for metagame reasons, I'm probably going to find a different DM sooner or later.

Agreed.

The game doesn't have much meaning of the DM is all the time fudging to save you. Why bother rolling dice then? Let's just agree to what happens and do it? That would sure make the game go faster.

Agreed. But that's not what I was suggesting, anyway.

Whereas, a game in which the DM is always fudging to save the lives of the PCs is no fun, likewise, a game wherein the DM is constantly stacking the deck to kill the PCs is just as unfun.

But, as you said, that wasn't exactly the point of my original post...

We've sort of changed topics here. As I understood it, your point was that a 'death tax' created a situation where the party as a whole was not advancing in level even though the enemies were becoming more and more challenging. If that was really the problem, then a side quest with CR more appropriate to character level would have allowed time for the party to level up as a group.

However, now it sounds like you are saying that your real problem was the DM's ego, and if that is the case then I don't think you can say that there is anything wrong with the 'death tax' based on the ancedote. Because if the problem is DM ego, then it wouldn't have been solved by replacing dead characters with ones of equal level and equipment as the DM still would have been more ruthless than you desired. Indeed, if he really was as bad as you suggest, then it stands to reason that he'd always arrange the EL of the situations to be well above party level so as to insure his ability to dominate the party and enforce his will upon the game.

Right, but... My point was that that particular situation exacerbated and highlighted the problems of a "Death Tax", as you so eloquently put it. Think about what happens when you implement the "Death Tax" upon a character's death:

One player-character falls marginally, but noticeably behind in experience, power and wealth. Likewise, the party's experience, power and wealth take an equivalent hit.

The DM now has to take the disparity into account with regards to encounters... Either taking it easy on the higher level PCs or having monsters avoid the new PC. Either way, then it stands to reason that he'd always arrange the EL of the situations to be slightly below party level so as to insure the new PC's ability to survive the encounter and live to catch up to the power level of the other PCs.

So, what's the point of having a "Death Tax" at all? If you use it and don't adjust encounter levels to compensate, then you risk running into the sort of extreme level stagnation death spiral that my group experienced. If you use it and do compensate, then there's really no point to it.

How many PC deaths do you average per session? If PC's never die, then how you handle it isn't very relevant. If PC death is very rare, then death is itself its own penalty. However, rare PC death is a fairly new phenomenom.

We've had between one and three character deaths per year, playing weekly 4-hour sessions. In recent memory, that includes a four-characters-dead near TPK. We have "near death experiences" (a character goes down and survives, but would not have without active help) perhaps once a month.

So, while character death (or the threat of it) is not exactly common in our group, neither is it rare.

As for dying a good and heroic death, often that is also its own reward. Finding a way for a character to complete his story in a way that is appropriate is a real gift. As for a pointless heroic death, well, don't die.

That, I certainly won't argue with.

One way or the other, 'death tax' or no 'death tax', one player is going to see me as rewarding the other guys RPing style. Truth of the matter though is that I'm not punishing anyone. Death - 'losing' - is what makes both styles of play thrilling, but no one can actually be put out of the game much less am I making some decision to 'punish' anyone as if by playing the way they wanted to play I was disapproving. Nor am I 'forgiving' them. Judgement on my part of that sort doesn't even come into this. This isn't an adversarial decision. I'm an adversary of the PC's only in the sense that to enjoy the game, they need an active and imaginative adversary. But despite my ruthless play of the NPC's, I'm stacking the odds in the favor of the PC's and rooting for them to win every single time. When the PC's don't win, no one suffers more than me because no one at the table has invested more than me in terms of time put into the game. We're about 25 4 hour sessions into a campaign (characters are about to hit 5th level), and we just recently had our first character deaths - three way split party divided into a situation over its head with lots of warning that it might be a bad idea. Death wasn't a punishment for those choices, nor was starting over with 800 less XP a judgment on my part handed down because of poor play. It just was, because if you can't die in that situation, really, why are we rolling dice?

Look, I'm not saying that there shouldn't be any risk of death in D&D. As a DM, I'm all for killing a character, should that be the way things work out, I play each of the PCs' enemies with the appropriate amount of cunning and ruthlessness, and I'm utterly against pulling punches.

I just no longer understand the point of the "Death Tax"... What does it accomplish, that couldn't be done better using means more positive and entertaining for the players?

 

[billd91]

I do not agree with this sentiment anymore. I've stripped away the "death tax" now for at least seven years. There was a point prior to that that I would have agreed with you wholeheartedly. It was also a phase in my DMing style where my relationship with my players was very adversarial.

I've come around to the idea of no death tax as well, for the most part. Being raised may still impose a negative level (I use PF) and cost money, but that's enough really and both can be ameliorated through in character play if they desire.
I also try to avoid an excessive 'death benefit' of bringing in a new character with chosen WPL-gear, better coordinated than their peers.

Death's penalty in my games is losing a character you worked hard on, as I encourage my players to try a new race and class if they have need to bring in a new character, and possibly failing whatever mission or quest the characters have chosen to follow. My players have responded in kind to my relaxation by not pulling the metagame antics you describe.

We also post dead characters up on the wall for everyone to see their fame (or shame as the case may be). And if I score a TPK, I do my Dance of Triumph on the table.

 

[Umbran]

Now my character has come in with no background or connection to the campaign and is the weakest party member.

Am I right to be a little miffed at this? How would you handle it?

If your GM had discussed how he handled death, and this wasn't it, then he basically broke an agreement, and yes, you've a right to be miffed.

If he'd discussed it, and this was it, then no, you have no such right.

If he didn't discuss it, and you didn't think to ask, then you can only be as miffed at him as you are at yourself, as you're both at fault for not meeting your expectation.

As a DM, I'm all for killing a character, should that be the way things work out, I play each of the PCs' enemies with the appropriate amount of cunning and ruthlessness, and I'm utterly against pulling punches.

In a game where you have a good, solid encounter design system, with a good measure of the threat your NPCs and monsters pose, and what the PCs can take, I largely agree.

Note that most games don't have that - they have the GM's knowledge of the system, and "feel" for the characters. In most systems, it is pretty easy to under- or over-power your encounters. I don't mind the GM making runtime adjustments for such.

I just no longer understand the point of the "Death Tax"... What does it accomplish, that couldn't be done better using means more positive and entertaining for the players?

I understand one argument for it that I don't hold with myself: Survival and gaining treasure is a "carrot". The Death Tax is the "stick" that drives your players to gain system and tactical mastery.

I think this only works for players who also get much of their fun out of specifically playing the tactical skirmish wargame rules, for players who like gaining system mastery. If you're in the fights more for cinematics, for example, the stick is probably not going to work well as a motivator.

 

[Argyle King]

I'm not really sure if I have a 'penalty.' I just have the player make a new character at whatever the original character point total was for the campaign. While this might mean you have less points than other characters, that's not typically a big deal since there aren't levels in the game I'm currently running, and while points can mean more power, that's not always the case. Still, I suppose that might be viewed as a penalty because it would be akin to starting at a lower level.

However, I am also someone who is very willing to work with a player during character creation. Without actually being there and seeing how it played out in person, I can only guess, but it sounds as though you roleplayed your character very well. As such, I would be open to working with you on your new character to better fit you into the game, and perhaps grant you something like a hero point.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Although it isn't specifically applicable here, I'd like to mention one of the charming aspects of the Bushido RPG. When your character died, you totted up his Karma (which depended upon such things as his level, his honour, the circumstances of his death) and this then went towards your replacement character, making him better than normal in one way or another (IIRC it may have been ability points in that system).

It certainly took the sting out of death, especially heroic death and most especially it meant that sometimes Seppuku was the 'right' thing to do both in terms of the story and the game system.

Cheers