Raise dead :Sean said it best”http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2kkid&page=2?Raise-Dead-and-the-Diamon d-Thing#82
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For people who can teleport across the world, literally travel to Hell and back, and conjure deadly fire and stone out of thin air, death is a trivial obstacle.
In terms of game math, the 5000gp cost for the spell also encourages metagaming, which is bad. See, if you have a party of 3 live PCs and one dead PC, they have two options:
1) Scrounge up 5000gp (either from the dead PC's stuff or from a group donation) and have the dead PC raised. Net result: party has 5000gp less than before and two more negative levels than before.
2) Leave the PC dead, divide his stuff among the PCs or sell it, have the dead PC's player bring in a new character (who has full gear for his level, and no negative levels). Net result: party has X more gp than before (where at worst X is half the expected wealth for a character of their level) and no extra negative levels.
In other words, it's better for the party to bring in a new PC than to resurrect the old one. Which is lame. In a "roleplaying" game that barely encourages roleplaying at all, costly PC death actively DIScourages roleplaying someone who's compassionate about a fallen ally, and ENcourages you to be a mercenary metagaming player who's only interested in the wealth and damage output of the group.
I don't like the expensive material component for a spell that is critical and necessary to the typical game experience, and I don't use it
My thoughts on it are: don't have the gp cost, don't have the negative level be permanent. It sucks to die, it sucks that one of the PCs has to use a high-level spell to fix the problem. We grew up playing video games where you die, hit Continue, and keep playing. These costs are among the last "DM vs. players" mentality of the old style of gaming, and I don't play that way."
And for those DM’s that want to “have death mean something” here’s what I said:
Players: “Hey Bob, we have to go on a quest for about 4 nites of gaming in order to raise you, so I guess you can just stay home or you can play my Mount.”Bob: “yeah, sounds like real fun. Look, instead- here’s Knuckles the 87th , go ahead and loot Knuckles the 86th body. He's got some cool stuff."
The whole idea of “death should mean something” becomes meaningless when we all realize that D&D is a Game, Games should be Fun, and in order to have Fun you have to Play. Thereby, when a Player’s PC dies either you Raise him or he brings in another. Raising is preferable story-wise, and costs resources. Bringing in another costs continuity and actually increases party wealth. Not to mention, instead of an organic played-from-1st-PC we have a PC generated at that level, which can lead to some odd min/maxing.
The third alternative is “Sorry Bob, Knuckles is dead. You’re out of the campaign, we’ll let you know when the next one is starting, should be in about a year or so.’ Really?”
So, let’s have some debate here: how do you handle PC death? Ring it up, bring in a new PC, dump the player, or what?
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By modern standards I'm unspeakably evil as a GM, because I don't give you replacement characters of equal level to the APL when your character expires and raising isn't an option. What I'll do is one of these:
1. You can 'animate' one of your henchmen, established family members, or heirs.
2. If your party has cultivated an ally sufficiently, sometimes I'll let you 'animate' that ally. NPC reflagged to a PC.
3. Your party can attempt to recruit someone, you get to play that someone. This usually results in you being a few levels lower.
If none of these are true, you can make a PC at whatever level PC's are started at in this game (usually 1, but I've been known to do as high as 3rd).But I run sandbox, not AP or the like. Such environments are more forgiving of a level spread in the party.
Pathfinder doesn't have an XP chart like 3.5
Under leveled players will never catch up.
Your not evil. You just don't care about inter-party balance or everyone contributing equally.
I take the dead PC's sheet, add up his valuables, subtract 10,000 gp from that total, and let the player create a new PC with this amount of gold. I also insist that the dead guy's gear must go to the rightful heirs or whatever (so the group doesn't just get it). If the situation warrants the group getting that gear, it essentially replaces however many upcoming treasure rewards until things balance out (this isn't exact, there will occasionally be loot found in adventuring, just a lot less for a while).
The players understand it's a balance issue. The 10,000 gp "tax" is to encourage careful play over reckless and/or to encourage roleplaying the actual raise dead because it's cheaper.
But frankly, it hasn't ever really come up - my players always seek to raise their fallen allies, at whatever cost, because they play heroes and that's what heroes do (we're contemplating an evil campaign coming up, so that story might change). Sometimes, instead of a 5k gp diamond, they perform a side quest for the church in question, therefore the only thing lost is time dedicated to the main story (and I can usually make the side quests fun too, so really, nothing is lost).
He'll always have that XP gap.
3.5 didn't have that. The chart was more complicated, but it was also self correcting. Lower level PC got MORE xp than higher level PCs not just relatively more.
<lots of stuff> ... So, let’s have some debate here: how do you handle PC death? Ring it up, bring in a new PC, dump the player, or what?
It honestly has never been an issue in all the groups I have played with. Since we treat the characters as living breathing beings in the game world instead of metagaming WBL issues, we ususally go for raising them from the dead if at all possible.
In the occasions where it is not (usually the lower levels, under 6) their wealth, whatever that might be, is handled according to the PC's wishes before they died. If they have family then it is sent to them. If the PC had never specified then their useful items are split amongst the party and any cash wealth is used for their burial plot and headstone and any rituals needed to assure they don't rise as undead.
Monies in excess are portioned amongst the players. If the character was particularly devout and the party knew it sometimes the cash will be donated to the temple of their faith in their remembrance.
Usually though if the means are available we ressurect them. It is not illogical to think that if you have traveled long enough with someone and fought beside them you may have developed some sort of emotional bond (like war veterans) and you might want them back even if it means your financially inconvenienced. They are your friend.
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Our group hides XP from the players and has all PCs be the same level.
There is no reason to see your own XP anymore. It's a DM tool for pacing.
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Why "making death counts" is always associate with "bothering to hell the players who just died"?
Generally speaking, having to start with a new char means you lose all past connection, all friendship you builded during your adventures, and all the fame and notability you got from all the accomplishment you had.
And even more importantly, you get secluded during those recurring in character moments of "guys, do you remember when we did that..."
If in your games there is nothing like that, but only door smashing, then i question wether there is really the need of making death relevant.
So, those DMs that punish the player for having the gall for allowing his character to fail his save or even die does something incredibly heroic, how does that make the game go better?
Oops, I better play a flying spellcaster with greater Invis, instead of a Conan type as I don't wanna be hit with a loss of a bunch of levels or wealth.
Does that really improve the gaming experience? Or would it be better to reward acts of heroism and bravery rather than punishing them?
One very nice solution would be to arrange a solo session for the dead player to take place between sessions of the regular game; there'd be a few evocative scenes in the afterlife, generally culminating in the PC demanding to be sent back (for revenge, to complete a task, whatever) and the Powers That Be arranging things to make it so. Not necessarily without a price, mind you - that would be passing up an opportunity that GMs don't get very often. ;)
That would also mean that the player has had a little in-game time to reflect on whether his character would try to return, or remain in the afterlife - rather than making this admittedly major decision on the spur of the moment.
This would work. But it depends on how much of that nights gaming the player will lose. On some marathon all day games I think it'd be better to have a quick side bar.
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Ideally, at least in my mind ...
Character death should be a rare thing, and should occur at appropriate dramatic times in the story. Holding off a big monster so your friends can escape. Putting yourself in the path of the knife that's about to kill the virgin sacrifice. Throwing yourself into the portal from Hell to shut it. It should be a moment of emotion, drama, and gravitas. THIS makes death matter.
Not "Well, Bob lost another one."
By the same token, character resurrection should be even rarer, if not outright impossible. Just dropping a few thousand gold and using a spell slot ... no. An actual quest, to find some forgotten mystic artifact, or going to another plane to recover him ... that's how it works in fantasy literature.
If you want death to matter, you can't have a revolving door.
One of D&D's biggest flaws, that PF has inherited, is that frequently the only way to fail is to die. In my experience, that results in worse RP and zero character investment; everybody's a lame stereotype, because nobody's going to spend any time coming up with an interesting background and personality when they know they're probably not going to live long enough to explore it. If the player knows this character is theirs for the long haul, they'll be more apt to make it interesting.
The idea of the PC being a disposable resource is one of the worst things that ever came out of any game system. The rumor is that Gygax himself once told people not to even waste time naming a PC until 5th level. That's bad for RP, as I said above. And this is supposed to be a role-playing game.
Why "making death counts" is always associate with "bothering to hell the players who just died"?
Generally speaking, having to start with a new char means you lose all past connection, all friendship you builded during your adventures, and all the fame and notability you got from all the accomplishment you had.
And even more importantly, you get secluded during those recurring in character moments of "guys, do you remember when we did that..."If in your games there is nothing like that, but only door smashing, then i question wether there is really the need of making death relevant.
I think you hit the nail on the head.
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Before this past May, I've run various D&D editions for the past 20 years and never had a PC death. In that same time frame, I've run dozens of campaigns in dozens of other RPGs as well, and only had deaths in those in which death was supposed to happen (Godlike and Legend of the Five Rings, for example, or the "transitional death" in many World of Darkness games where you die but remain playable and get supernatural powers).
That said, it may seem that I'm a pushover, but that's not actually the case.
For one, I never fudge rolls and, in my games, there's no resurrection. If you're dead, you're dead forever, and I make sure to impress this on the players. They take it to heart, and play careful and smart--and when they don't--when they rush in and do something risky and walk out again a winner, they feel all the more glorious and awesome.
It has always worked--the fear of perma-death is there--they feel it--and we have a great time. So how come people aren't dying in my game like they are in, what seems like everyone else's?
I actually didn't know until recently, as I alluded to above, when I first encountered PC death in D&D. In all my years GMing, I had never used anyone else's material--I ran everything from my own head. No modules--hell, I barely used the monster manuals. I've heard such great things about APs, though, that I decided to give one a try, and well, three deaths in the span of maybe 10 sessions. It was unbelievable. But I learned from it.
I learned that other people actually use all that stuff I've always thought was BS and assumed everyone scoffed at and left out (stuff like instant death effects, permanent penalties like negative levels or attribute drain, etc.), and that, because the default game assumes death is just a speedbump/money sink, modules have no qualms about throwing extremely swingy situations at the PCs--and they seem so cavalier about the fact that some of them might die. The attitude of the game appears to be that death doesn't matter, so, well, it doesn't.
Needless to say, I do not enjoy running modules and I had the right of it all these years afterall...
Ultimately, the way I handle PC death is by keeping the threat of it real, while removing the situations where it's basically just a coin flip away, so they have to earn that death. The PCs can die if they do something stupid--but they cannot die from a fluke because I don't use flukey enemies.
It solves the situation significantly better than taxing death ever could.
Death is a speed bump for higher level players. Low level players will just stay dead. This is a feature not a bug.
Death is a speed bump for higher level players. Low level players will just stay dead. This is a feature not a bug.
It is not "a feature" so much as it is a chicken and egg arms race.
At high levels, death is often a matter of a coin flip (or die roll, as the case may be). This means death has to be a speed bump or we'd be playing Paranoia. Of course, the fact that death is a speed bump not only enables tails-or-die situations, it requires them, because death becomes a "lower tier" challenge.
In fact, I'd wager a high level character in a typical game would rather die than be robbed, since dying only costs 5k but being robbed can cost 10s, even 100s, of thousands of gold.
I recognize it is a part of the game, but I'd call it a feature as much as I'd call a crappy menu interface in a video game a "feature." Just because it's part of the game doesn't mean it's a good part, that it should be there, that being there is required for optimal fun. Game designers make mistakes--especially when they are using someone else's work and are only allowed to change so much of it.
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Does that really improve the gaming experience?
For some people, yes, absolutely. And that's enough justification for GMs to play that way for those players.
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I don't like characters rotating in and out of my games. I want people to be attached to their characters, and keep them around so that I can plan ahead for them.
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This is my three part plan to make death safe, legal, and rare. Wait, I mean, meaningful, rare, and part of an interesting story.
No random death.
I'm not a fan of having PCs die random, ignoble deaths, so I just fudge the results if a death would be too stupid. I don't fudge anything that has to do with the plot, just stupid random stuff. (Random encounter, tiger, charge, pounce, roll nothing below an 18 for a total of 5 hits, two are crits? Nope! Didn't happen. Kitty clawed the PC until he stopped moving, and will now move on to a different target. Yeah, PC is at -5 and got his butt kicked by a critter, but he isn't dead.)
Defeat doesn't necessarily mean death.
Enemies don't chase PCs down and kill them without a very good reason. I try to leave retreat as a viable option whenever it's reasonable. "Save or Die" traps are usually "Save or Lose" instead, like petrification, polymorph, etc. If the PCs make an enemy, that NPC won't assassinate them, he'll undermine their mission, ruin their reputation, or humiliate them, not murder them in their sleep.
Death is a transformative experience.
When death does occur, I like to roleplay a post-death experience with the character. This is something gauged to the player as well as the character, and should result in some kind of change to the character: alignment shift, religious shift, mission from god, a vow, a new direction, maybe even a small character rewrite.
(You died and get resurrected? How did you like meeting your god? Oh, it wasn't the god you thought it would be? Are you going to stand by the god of your youth, or dedicate yourself to the one who resurrected you from the dead?)
Summary: Death is always significant.
This is how I run my PCs in my worlds.
I hate the idea of everyone starting at the same level, it always seems too contrived for me. At character creation and in front of me, the player rolls a d2. They get to start at first or second level. Upon death, the player rolls a d4 to a d6 depending on the level of the party and sometimes even higher die values based on the ECL of the party. The player then rolls a character of the ECL minus the value of the die.
I implemented this due to my players throwing away characters a tough challenges. In their minds, they would just reroll. This death tax not only broke them of their habit, but also made them invested into their characters.
To fair to my players, they are all new to roleplaying for the most part. To also get them to get them more attached to their characters, I reward them for writing character backgrounds. Depending on the starting level of the character, this can be a bonus trait, a bonus feat, bonus starting gold or even bonus experience. The level of the reward is based on the detail of the background. They know my nuances and have begun writing more in depth backgrounds. After all, they're players and want the "fat" rewards.
Thankfully, none of them have figured out min-maxing/power gaming yet. We'll have to cross that bridge when we come to it.
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The problem with PC death is that it tends over time to greatly unbalance parties in my experience. When things go wrong more often then not it is the melee guys who suffer because they don't have an out. This leads to them making new characters while the old guys dice for your gear. Yeah they tend to help the new dude get set up so they aren't useless in combat, but unless you make the same sort of character over and over again chances are a good portion of your old gear just isn't going to help.
Alternatively the GM will the new guys the appropriate WBL to start, but the old group still has no reason to share the procedees of the last meat shield with the guy they just met at a bar and is more employee than partner. Thus the group gets taxed on the WBL payouts but the casters feel less sting.
...and that's not getting into the fact that the longer a game goes the bigger the power gap gets before gear even factors in.
The thing about video game metaphors is that there are very few where death isn't followed by 'reload'. Anyone played Skyrim in 'Iron Man' mode where if you die even once you delete all your save files? It increases tension by giving death meaning, if that's what you're looking for.
The most popular way to play games is with death (even TPK-style death) carrying virtually no penalty beyond wasting a few minutes of your time. It's odd that hardly anyone plays tabletop RPGs this way.
I'd find it odd if the majority played TTRPGs in Iron Man mode.
Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if less people played if it were the norm.
Having your pc die is bad enough. You don't need to be punished for it. If a gm thinks he has kill my pc and punish me for it I just quit. As a working guy my game time is too scarce to play unfun games.
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Something is only punishment if you view it as such. Different people like/hate different things.
Permanent Death
In a world like this, the sting of death carries its full weight. I've liked these games because there is a real sense of peril and, therefore, glory. What good is bravery in a world where death is simply an inconvenience?
In these games, we become very attached to our characters. When one dies it is a major event followed by funeral rites, storytelling, and mourning.
The player's new character isn't "punished" by being lower level or having less equipment when she starts. Instead she must earn the trust of the group and overcome her outsider status to become a real member of the family.
Standard Death Rules
We also call these "Order of the Stick" rules. If you read that comic, it does a great job discussing a world where Raise Dead exists.
Here, the heroes have a puzzle when fighting powerful villains. If you capture them and hand them to the authorities they will likely escape. If you kill them their allies can bring them back from the dead.
Real victory comes from defeating their plans and causing them to fall upon each other. If you disgrace the evil cleric when defeating him, his cult will then refuse to bring him back. Things like this.
These games are fun because you get to play with the conventions of an alternate world and figure clever ways to "game the system."
Charmed PC Rules
In some games the DM won't kill a PC for anything trivial. Death, if it comes at all, is reserved for dramatic moments. You will never be killed by a random encounter or a bandit ambush. Instead if you are defeated you will likely be captured and then have to escape.
These games are fun because the story aspect comes to the fore. PCs will be with each other for a long time and can truly bond.
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There's something to be said for all of these approaches. In the end, you just have to find a table where everyone agrees on what is best for them.
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We just roll new characters at the level the character died at and try to find reasonable ways to bring the new character into the story.
The last time a DM tried to have a drawback for character death was during a total party kill. An enemy cleric had a scroll of save-or-die and a couple of unlucky rolls laid everyone out.
He said we had to make new characters at one level lower and rerun the same encounter. We collectively said 'no' and that was the end of drawbacks for dying.
Maybe some people find that fun or normal but I can't wrap my head around it.
different strokes for different folks. In my group recently I asked what they thought about me allowing death spells. One half said they were fine with it because it would add tension to the game as long as they were given a heads up about it first and it not just appear outta nowhere and the other half stated they didnt want their charecter death to be decided by 1 roll. An arguement brought out by one side stating the other side was against their charecters dying in battle or by bad mistakes in which the other aide stated they had no roblem with their charecters dying in battle from taking dmg or enemy outsmarting them just not with death from just 1 roll from full health in safety to the next moment dead. In which the arguement ended quickly and apologies were made and some laughs.
I then asked the group again how they felt about their charecter dying and everyone stated like they did before the game was started way back, that they had no roblem with their charefter dying in battles and such bc either their charecter wasnt a hero yet overshadowing the danger to the world yet so they could easily roll another class and something freah for the group. Or if they were the heros and they died, their deeds would have inspired others to take up the cause and they would be able to roll such a charecter.
So by itself, a charecter dying is not a epunishment but something that happens, but I believe it is both the eplayer and the dms job so that the downtime is as short as epossible and that the flow/transition is as smooth as it needs to be. Charecter death doesnt mean the end to a eplayers story or contribution to it, it just means a different road/epossiblity/addition to the story they are contributing to.
Now if a dm tried to epurposely ekill ur charecter because hes got beef with the eplayer then yes thats epunishment. If a charecter ran head first into a dragon without waiting for backup and half their health...well thats just how it goes.
My own rule is this.
I make scrolls of raise dead available to the party as loot. Not a lot but enough that a death here or there doesn't end that players night (or weeks on end). My games and players are roleplayers so they're attached to their characters and I weave personal storylines for each character as well.
If a player does not wish to return that is his choice, though I typically like an in story reason. He may bring in a new character at APL-2 and appropriate wealth per level. This is done to cancel out the effects of both the dead characters gear as unintentional loot and the new characters gear being tailored to his build.
The new character after a few sessions remains with a one level gap behind those who do not rebuild typically because of the relative xp.
As an aside, for all of you who feel that a death must only occur at a "dramatically appropriate" point in the story. Half the time, the fact that someone died makes that scene dramatically appropriate. You've got your chickens and eggs reversed.
I mentioned one of my players lost their character a few sessions back. It wasn't a random encounter, but it was a room they never needed to go to. Wouldn't have even found but for some thorough searching. They didn't even have to face the guardians in the room that killed her. But, one of the players decided their careless character would turn the key to wake the clockwork soldier. And then his friend the rogue died with a halberd through the chest.
Now, after fighting to return the body to civilization, and ultimately their fallen comrade's friends, this character has used the death of a friend as the catalyst to question their tom-foolery in the face of death.
This random death (and death is rare in my games) turned into a plot-point for the characters. Two of them proved they'd defy their allies and risk both ogres and a raging river to bring the body back home for burial. The one responsible for the death has reflected on his own role in the death, and his mistakes that caused it.
And yet, it was all the product of some chance events and a few bad dice rolls.
(emphasis added)
I'm one of those who posted that I don't agree with random deaths. But I don't consider that death to be random, trivial, or dramatically inappropriate at all. That death is, in fact, exactly the kind I like!
- The deadly situation occurred because the PCs made a choice to enter an unnecessary area. (Another common example is starting a fight with a powerful enemy who's willing to talk.)
- The death was a result of roleplaying on the part of a player. (A careless character pushed the big, red, tempting "do not push" button.)
- The party worked to haul the body home. (Death is more dramatic when it makes you change your plans.)
- The death caused a change in at least one character. (In this case, the character who caused the death.)
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There are some people who believe that moderating the frequency or causes of death is somehow cheating. Remember that we all play Pathfinder under a constant, 100% contrived set of conventions that make the game fun rather than realistic. (Our characters fight goblins at first level, ogres later, and Jabberwocks much later. Our parties frequently come together with nothing in common but the desire for adventure. We're repeatedly in the right place at the right time to rescue villagers, prevent invasions, and save worlds.) When, as GMs, we make situations slightly more or slightly less contrived to make death a little more or less common, we're making a very small change to the game overall.
There are some people who believe that without frequent, or at laste occasional deaths, games are too easy or lack a sense of danger. My experience tells me otherwise. I don't kill PCs lightly, and I've run a horror game in which I received player comments like, "This game is scarier than any horror movie I've ever seen." and "I have to sleep at my boyfriend's house after this game, because I'm scared to be alone in the dark by the time we're done." I've also run a D&D game which prompted the comment, from a US Army Sergeant and pretty tough dude, "Usually I play D&D to relax, but when we're done playing your game, we go get beers to wind down. The world is ----ing dangerous!"
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You're not anywhere near as evil as Gary "New PCs Start at Level 1" Gygax, when you refer his response to this question.By modern standards I'm unspeakably evil as a GM, because I don't give you replacement characters of equal level to the APL when your character expires and raising isn't an option. What I'll do is one of these:
1. You can 'animate' one of your henchmen, established family members, or heirs.
2. If your party has cultivated an ally sufficiently, sometimes I'll let you 'animate' that ally. NPC reflagged to a PC.
3. Your party can attempt to recruit someone, you get to play that someone. This usually results in you being a few levels lower.
If none of these are true, you can make a PC at whatever level PC's are started at in this game (usually 1, but I've been known to do as high as 3rd).But I run sandbox, not AP or the like. Such environments are more forgiving of a level spread in the party.
And this is one of the reasons I would never want to play in any game that Gygax ran, if I ever had been given the opportunity. I respect the fact that he essentially birthed the whole hobby with Arneson, but from all that I've read of his gaming philosophy, I'd take the worst DM I've ever had over him, any day.
So, those DMs that punish the player for having the gall for allowing his character to fail his save or even die does something incredibly heroic, how does that make the game go better?There's a whole separate thread for the subject of "punishing" players pro/con. Suffice it to say that most of that discussion would hold that the rules as written do not constitute a punishment.
I was talking about the DM’s that have posted here, that bring in new PC’s at 1st level, or 90% party level, or with $10000 less wealth, and so forth.
Having them (or the party) need to pay out 5000 gps is not a punishment. Coming back at 1st when everyone else is much higher is indeed, 'a punishment".
And this is one of the reasons I would never want to play in any game that Gygax ran, if I ever had been given the opportunity. I respect the fact that he essentially birthed the whole hobby with Arneson, but from all that I've read of his gaming philosophy, I'd take the worst DM I've ever had over him, any day.
Wow. Redonkulous. It would be like passing up a one-on-one game of hoops with Michael Jordan. Sure, you are almost guaranteed to lose, but the experience alone would make it worthwhile.
Gary might have been ruthless with characters, but I've played with DMs who had my 1st level 12 Str fighter throwing an entire crowd around with a DC 3 Str check, who giggled over the thought of orc boobs and who according to the sergeant on CQ who he annoyed with his stories, was actually just plotting to make us all watch his DMPC be amazing and follow her around.
That's boring. Not only would letting Gary (or Dave or Ed or Monte or Skip or Rob) run a game be awesome just for the experience, but I bet it would be exciting.
The best DM I ever had probably chewed through ten-fifteen level 1-3 characters before we got our best campaign underway. Saying you wouldn't game with Gary because you don't like dying boggles my mind.
And this is one of the reasons I would never want to play in any game that Gygax ran, if I ever had been given the opportunity. I respect the fact that he essentially birthed the whole hobby with Arneson, but from all that I've read of his gaming philosophy, I'd take the worst DM I've ever had over him, any day.
I met Gygax, and played a few times with Arneson. OD&D was a different animal entirely. Really, PC’s didn’t die that often. Dave had a incredible imagination, and the couple games I had with him I cherish.