OK it had to happen, we lost the paladin against some ogres. The rest of us managed to finish and win the scenario though.
Now what ?
What happens at the end of scenario is pretty clear (other characters can use the paladin cards to rebuild deck, the paladin's player has to restart a brand new character - paladin or not - with basic equipment and no feats at all)...
OK but if he joins the party "at the scenario level" wher the party is, then he will never catch up in terms of power feats, card feats, skill feats... Not cool for the player. In a real RPG (incl. PFRPG), there is always a mechanism to ensure that catching up...
OK, the other players can help the new character's lifespan a little by trading with him non basic equipment from scratch, but that won't help in the long run.
I don't think the intention of the game designers was to "force" the player to replay solo all previous scenarios while the others are just bored watching, or to have everyone restarting from the first scenario each time someone dies, or worse to force a PLAYER to leave the group.
On top of that, if characters keep on dying from time to time, we may end up being altogether way underpowered for the adventure.
So is there an official answer to that from Paizo or do we have to house rule something ?
Personaly, just to keep the game fun, I would suggest that if a PLAYER has been in a group that has WON all scenarios up to number X, then if that PLAYER has a character that (because of previous unfortunate death) does not have all the feats (power, skill, cards and role) that would normaly have been acquired at that scenario's level, he gets to win one of those (in addition to the normal reward) each time its party wins a new scenario.
That way death is still really best to be avoided (since you really restart "basic" with no feat), but you do catch up over time.
Official answer anyone ? Reaction ? Idea ?
I guess it's material for a FAQ if not a full rule addition.
Thanks from France.
Officially: They start a new character the next scenario with no skill feats, power feats, or card feats. It can be the paladin again, but all feats are gone. If you started Hook Mountain Massacre, they can choose cards from decks B, C or 1 instead of just basic cards. And if you've started Fortress of the Stone Giants, they can also choose from deck 2. And if you've started Sins of the Saviors they can also choose from deck 3.
If your character dies, start a new character for the next scenario. Choose a character card (it can be the same character who just died, though you do not get any of the feats that character previously earned) and build a new character deck as described in Build Your Character on page 4, choosing only cards with the Basic trait. If your party has begun the adventure The Hook Mountain Massacre, you may ignore the Basic trait restriction; instead, you may use any cards in the box from the base set and the Character Add-On Deck, as well as any cards from an adventure deck whose adventure deck number is at least 2 lower than that of the adventure you’re currently playing.
It sounds like you might be on Hook Mountain Massacre, since you mentioned ogres. You actually might find that the ability to choose from all the non-basic cards and deck 1 pretty powerful.
Unofficially: That is up to you. The high cost of dying is supposed to make the game harder by making less willing to take risks. If there is no penalty for death, risky play won't be risky and the game would get easier.
But at the same time, no one wants you and your friends to not have fun, especially the folks behind the game. So, if you want to come up with a penalty that is enough if a deterrent but didn't ruin the risk, go ahead. Maybe make them forfeit 1 skill feat, 1 power feat, and 1 card feat or something like that.
But by all means, have fun.
An unoffical suggestion would be as follows.
Basis - You get to draw cards from two senario levels less than you are at once you get to Hook mountain massacare.
Unoffical rule - Give the replacment caracter the feats (power, skill, cards) of a charactor two senarios behind where you are. Plus the role card if the other players already have that.
This gives the player some feats but not all of them
First, thanks for both answers - I guess we are all going in the same direction.
Unofficially: That is up to you. The high cost of dying is supposed to make the game harder by making less willing to take risks. If there is no penalty for death, risky play won't be risky and the game would get easier.
I fully agree that the deal is to balance/combine 2 ideas :
- Dying should really really be costly/a pain.- On the long run, if you died long ago (maybe just bad luck), at some point it should no more be a penalty/pain when playing with your friends.
So to summarize easily : real high cost/pain, but disappearing totaly over (quite some) time (the whole "catching up" idea.
Thus my proposed way of playing it :
1) For cards/equipment, follow the official V3 rules as above (if it ain't broken...).
2) For feats, erase all (as per the official V3 rules) but add my house rule above.
In game for example, if a character was to die during the "Under Jorgenfist" scenario of "Fortress of the Stone Giants", the replacement character would join to start the "The Ancient Library" scenario lacking in comparison 5 Skill feats, 5 power feats, 4 card feats and 1 role feat.
I. e. 15 missing feats.
That plus the loss of equipment, I guess the per-the-official-rules penalty is hard enough to make players cautious not to die.
My idea would be that for each subsequent won scenario, the character recovers 1 of those feats. It would still take 15 scenarios to catch up (thus more than the 11 remaining in the AP), so I guess this would be seen as a real pain, but more fun/acceptable than the official rule where you keep that 15 feats gap with the rest of the players.
Anyway, just my €0.02
A suggestion: The only penalty for a character dying is that the game is now harder to win. When the game ends, the "dead" character is saved and if the group was victorious, he or she even gets the reward!
That's the only fun way to handle a character's death for my group of players.
Maybe not enough of a drawback (could even push some players to "sacrifice" characters in some situations).
But I agree it solves the potential lack of fun issue.
Something less harsh than my above proposition could be "When you die, you lose X feats. You will win back half of them (rounded up) at the end of the current adventure (not scenario) and the other half at the end of the next adventure)." Where X could be 1d4, or the number of the adventure, or anything that would make sense and balance.
And your two times the value of lowest measurable local currency is the only opinion that matters. In terms of the other house rule penalties for death I have seen, yours seems pretty reasonable to me.
I would suggest you make him build the deck from only basics, but let him keep his feats. It still sucks on major levels, but he can eventually catch up that way. It also avoids the cheese of just getting great cards simply becuase you're far in the game; I don't like that rule, it's so strong. We stick to basics when drawing from the box between scenarios in my group.
In my group, we simply rule that death = failed scenario. Not really much different than going, "Oh, wait guys, I'm about to die - lets run out the blessings deck." Plus that way you have the whole group berrating him for making them redo the scenario. This is the one house rule we use that doesn't make the game harder, but it's needed I feel for my group.
I would suggest you make him build the deck from only basics, but let him keep his feats...
Simple and efficient.
Thanks all. I'm really glad to see that I'm not the one to beleive that there is just ONE (well done Mike!) rule missing (i. e.just one house rule needed) in the game.All your suggestions make sense. I think I will get our group to vote on one.
In my group, we simply rule that death = failed scenario... This is the one house rule we use that doesn't make the game harder, but it's needed I feel for my group.
Personaly I will avoid this one, because we had a heroic case where we did win the scenario on the last blessing on the deck after the paladin died. Feels wrong to consider it a failed scenario.
So I prefer the idea of "punishing" temporarily the dead player/character but not the group as a whole.
Still, just my ideas...
And your two times the value of lowest measurable local currency...
:-) We use Euros as copper pieces. As you know, no one uses copper pieces anymore in Pathfinder. That pretty much tells it all.
As per the OFFICIAL rules - are you allowed to go back to the beginning, and solo a new/replacement character through the intervening secnarios, in order to be back up to speed with the party?
obviously this would be a time-consuming option, I was just curious as to how it was viewed by the designers.
I've not yet had anyone die further in than Poison Pill (it took me a while to get the hang of the game), but I figure I out to consider the options fully before I do.
As per the OFFICIAL rules - are you allowed to go back to the beginning, and solo a new/replacement character through the intervening secnarios, in order to be back up to speed with the party?
obviously this would be a time-consuming option, I was just curious as to how it was viewed by the designers.
I've not yet had anyone die further in than Poison Pill (it took me a while to get the hang of the game), but I figure I out to consider the options fully before I do.
Yes, you can play catch up.
Strategy: Advice for Solo Play
Solo play is particularly good for quickly completing scenarios to advance your character if you want to catch up to other players.
Personally, I find the idea of house rules that diminish penalties and make things easier on the players to be abhorrent...
Get me right, I fully agree that well deserved penalties that exist in a game if they make sense and preserve the fun should never be reviewed by house rules.
This said I'm a quite old DM (don't ask) and there is a truth that I learned over time : it's fun for a player to have for a while a character that has some hinderance, pain, conflicts, strong weaknesses and so on. It is NEVER fun if it last forever.
Had a DM that somehow was following the PFACG rules : you are dead, you restart from scratch and never catch-up. The DM though it was 1) right 2) by the book 3) realistic and 4) fun to play.
Guess what : since this character became the weakest in the group... he was the first one to die again. Which means he restarted with even more lost levels, and so on.
Ultimately, the player quit. No fun.
At the end of the day, the DM was wrong on all accounts.
I usually summarize my laws of RPG and equivalent (including this game) this way :
Law #4 The game rules are the rules, obey them, unless it breaks law #3.
Law #3 If it ain't clear, logic and simple, fix it, unless it breaks law #2.
Law #2 If it ain't broken, don't fix it, unless it breaks law #1.
Law #1 If it ain't fun, fix it. It's a game!
But that's just me.
To me, the fun in any kind of RPG (card, tabletop, videogame) is to build up my character to match a play style I like whilst becoming incredibly powerful (even if the enemies are growing as well). Any sort of permanent damage to this is fun-wrecking for me. Costs you gold? Fine. Causes you some type of nuisance, like having to go back for your stuff, or repair it, or whatever? Fine. Levels down your character? Not fine. If I wanted to start over, I'd start over.
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Our current rules are that the character is dead, no-one can select that character for the rest of the Path.
New character is build with the same number of feats, but cards drawn only from 2AP numbers below.
They have to play one scenario before they are part of the group, so no trading cards at the start of the adventure etc, has to be done either in situ using usual rules or after their first adventure together.
Not changing this for our current playthrough but may consider a loss of 1d6 feats divided as evenly as possible with regaining one per scenario for the next play-through.
Alternatively, we've been considering that when S&S comes out, we could have a "backup party" running through RoTR at the same time, and just port characters across to S&S when required (allowing them to keep gear from RotR, but it goes back to its original box set when banished/Returned to the box.
In my group if we have a character die, we immediately end the scenario. This in effect is rushing that person to a healer or what have you. This means that we cannot get the rest of the boons from the locations, and do not receive the rewards for completing. This for our group makes it important to keep each other alive. We also do not trade cards with the character that died. so they reset their deck as best they can, but cannot trade with the characters that lived.
I think that this is a good way to handle character death, because it is punishing, but not crippling. getting rid of a character is rather crippling, however. It is also a pain to go back and complete the previous scenarios just to get the feats.
To note, we used to play it so that we would kill off the character and rebuild it with cards that we 2 adventures lower, and give the character all of the normal feats, but that just seemed to hurt the overall group too much, and the next couple of scenarios seemed needlessly more difficult.
Thanks all for your feedback. Bottom line the verdict is that indeed the base rules may be missing something to handle that but that's OK, we can do without with whatever suits you best.
Thanks all for your feedback. Bottom line the verdict is that indeed the base rules may be missing something to handle that but that's OK, we can do without with whatever suits you best.
There are a number of ways to handle character death in a cooperative game, just like there are a number of ways to handle it in a tabletop RPG. I doubt that we'll change the rulebook, since a single clear answer there has a lot of upside, and the answer we chose is both intuitive and matches the 'default' answer of the tabletop pathfinder RPG. That said, we've used different rules ourselves sometimes, and so long as they don't break your group, they don't break the game, either.
The suggestion I usually give people who hit an accidental death is basically what Orbis said above: build a new character with the same number of feats as the old character, but with a starting deck (using the rules in the book). This is good for covering truly exceptional situations, I believe. That said, it's important for some groups (I would say "most") that character death not become part of a strategy, and so I recommend caution and deliberation when using this lighter death penalty.
I hope that helps, and thanks for playing!
I remove cards that have a higher adventure deck number then the scenario I'm playing.
And cards like Mercenary get increased by the adventure deck number of the current scenario. So what ever the number on the scenario is.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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If you play an earlier scenario, do you remove more advanced cards back to the ones originally allowed during that scenario? Ie, remove 1,2,3 when playing Poison Pill? I would think if you were soloing, it would be harder if you didn't, but if you played with the party it would be easier if you did.
When I had a death in adventure 2, I left all the cards in when I played my new character back up. Sure it gave me access to some better stuff but there were also tougher banes.
I remove cards that have a higher adventure deck number then the scenario I'm playing.
And cards like Mercenary get increased by the adventure deck number of the current scenario. So what ever the number on the scenario is.
i think the game's easy enough, and your character should be pretty powered up, so I leave everything as if it was a new scenario. I play with tough monsters and the mercenary is the strength of the highest adventure reached. That's just me though.