"Permanent" Death system?


Pathfinder Online


So we all know that, in Pathfinder, death is only as permanent as your resources decree. Any "Permanent" death system would obviously have a Raise Dead, etc. system attached to it.

This is what I propose: To add an extra bit of risk and thrill to those bigger PVE encounters (i.e. Dungeon bosses), make character deaths permanent insofar as the character will not get the benefit of an in-town res and will need to procure his/her restoration to life after the combat- assuming the body can be recovered!

I would not want to see this system allowed for PVP UNLESS it was strictly consensual ("consent is sexy" and all that jazz).

I like the idea of permanent death because it will make players think twice about attacking the bigger and badder bosses of the game- especially the ones that, once killed, will not re-spawn!

Goblin Squad Member

If you want permanent death, when your character dies, then create a new one.

As for me, I want to enjoy the game, and spending lots of time and effort to create a character, I don't want to waste it all.

Scarab Sages Goblin Squad Member

That would certainly make places like the Emerald Spire more risky / thrilling / scary. I'm not so sure that's a good thing, though. I get the feeling that once it exists, Goblinworks will want the Emerald Spire to draw people in, not scare them away.

Goblinworks Executive Founder

So, a small chance of losing a customer, in exchange for causing content to have less value? That seems like a poor design choice.


GarinT wrote:

If you want permanent death, when your character dies, then create a new one.

As for me, I want to enjoy the game, and spending lots of time and effort to create a character, I don't want to waste it all.

I think you misunderstand. Death would be permanent only if you can't afford to pay for a raise dead. So, before you go fight the dragon, you would want to think carefully and plan carefully, asking if it is worth the risk and if you can afford the loss.


KarlBob wrote:
That would certainly make places like the Emerald Spire more risky / thrilling / scary. I'm not so sure that's a good thing, though. I get the feeling that once it exists, Goblinworks will want the Emerald Spire to draw people in, not scare them away.

As I understand, some dungeons are meant to despawn once they are cleared. For something everyone would go to, I think you are right, this is a bad idea. But for the dungeons that are more like one-shots, I think it would make things more interesting.

While the extra risk wouldn't be for everyone, I could see a certain kind of player enjoying the thrill.

And again, death here would only be permanent if you, your company, or your settlement are not willing/able to pay for a raise dead spell.

Goblinworks Executive Founder

sspitfire1 wrote:

So we all know that, in Pathfinder, death is only as permanent as your resources decree. Any "Permanent" death system would obviously have a Raise Dead, etc. system attached to it.

This is what I propose: To add an extra bit of risk and thrill to those bigger PVE encounters (i.e. Dungeon bosses), make character deaths permanent insofar as the character will not get the benefit of an in-town res and will need to procure his/her restoration to life after the combat- assuming the body can be recovered!

I would not want to see this system allowed for PVP UNLESS it was strictly consensual ("consent is sexy" and all that jazz).

I like the idea of permanent death because it will make players think twice about attacking the bigger and badder bosses of the game- especially the ones that, once killed, will not re-spawn!

To kill the biggest bosses, you will have to use powerful stuff. So you will have risk anyway.

Goblin Squad Member

One of the premises of the Marks of Pharasma is that the bearers can not be permanently killed. If there were a way around that, it changes the story significantly.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Guurzak wrote:
One of the premises of the Marks of Pharasma is that the bearers can not be permanently killed. If there were a way around that, it changes the story significantly.

There's also the potential for player shenanigans to consider as well.

Goblin Squad Member

We all get raised from the dead as soon as we die , you cant raise dead twice so I don't get what you want to change to the system that is being used. If you want it to cost more some of the gear you die with can be destroyed.

Scarab Sages Goblin Squad Member

Notmyrealname wrote:
We all get raised from the dead as soon as we die , you cant raise dead twice so I don't get what you want to change to the system that is being used. If you want it to cost more some of the gear you die with can be destroyed.

I think sspitfire1's idea was that some fights would be extra dangerous because the re-spawn mechanic would be suspended for those fights. If a random goblin killed you, you'd still respawn at a Shrine of Pharasma as usual. If Raid Boss Super-Goblin killed you in the final room of a dungeon, on the other hand, you would only respawn if someone were willing and able to reach your body and cast Raise Dead.

I'm not sure how that's intended to interact with dungeons disappearing after a short time. Maybe if your buddies didn't reach you by the time the dungeon disappeared, that character would be deleted from your account.

I really don't think this is anywhere near GW's intent for PFO. I like GarinT's idea: If somebody wants to implement their own Hard Mode, they can delete a character from their own account after a boss monster kills it.

Edit: Heck, you could simulate your own permadeath game by deleting your characters every time they died. Of course, then you'd probably be making first level characters pretty often, especially if your company was involved in a feud, or your settlement was at war.

Goblin Squad Member

I guess my point is that permadeath would scrap some core game features so it wont work. I understand the idea that loss makes for a greater challenge , the devs could make PVE hard core areas that have great risk vs reward but that is way in the future. Like the Gobbies eat your toes and you are permanently slowed down after you rez ,errgh. Just kidding ,that is too hard core.

Lantern Lodge

I would advise against any perma-death because the risk of lag interference and issues out of the player's control could take effect. I played an old game ultima online and quit right after dying and losing all my gear due to a random lag spike lol.


So I think this idea has been permanently killed :P

Goblin Squad Member

Rather definitively, yes.

Goblin Squad Member

This thread may be a disguised necro of many others which have been killed many times.

I suspect it will rise again. It is a minor interest that does not visit the previous discussion. THat is why it is disguised and not true necro.


I read half of this thread without realizing it was referring to pathfinder online. I was thinking how dumb the idea was the whole time and then I realized I was the dumb one.

Goblin Squad Member

When I played D&D PnP, when a character died it was generally permanent. Even if our DM allowed for a resurrection spell to be available, it usually took weeks to get around to it.

The most significant difference between PnP and PFo is that PFO is not free to play.

Goblin Squad Member

I'm utterly perplexed by how robust this idea is. As Decius points out, it's a terrible design choice. And it's never going to happen, because it's such a terrible design choice. But like a slasher in a movie, no matter how many times you think this is idea, it just pops up again.

Goblin Squad Member

It buys a rez every time we put it back in it's grave. Somehow players who want to be considered 'hardcore' feel that having to start over from scratch will make things meaningful.

Scarab Sages

I think it's a nono.

Goblin Squad Member

Mbando wrote:
I'm utterly perplexed by how robust this idea is. As Decius points out, it's a terrible design choice. And it's never going to happen, because it's such a terrible design choice. But like a slasher in a movie, no matter how many times you think this is idea, it just pops up again.

It is not a terrible design choice if the game was designed from the beginning to be built around permanent death. It is a different design choice, nothing more or less than that.

I see the main hindrance to the design choice being the payment model of PFO (and most MMOs). It is a better design choice for games that are free to play, such as other MMOs and PnP RPGs. However, there are some players who are willing to pay to play with such high stakes.

The easiest solution in not having permanent death as a game mechanic is to self impose the penalty for death of a character. I would actually respect the inherent will power it would take to hold oneself to that standard.

Scarab Sages

That's bring me the question:

What is about the Pharasma Mark (and twice marked)?


*sigh* I am amazed at how so many people seem to misunderstand the concept I am proposing (and no longer fighting for, I might add!).

No one, in their right mind, would self impose "permanent" death on their character by, say, deleting the character after it got killed- at *any* point in the game.

All I was thinking about here was making certain, rare PVE encounters higher stakes, but *still* allowing for the character to be raised after the fight. As has been pointed out, really, this mechanic would just end up making the fights higher cost.

--------

Bluddwolf wrote:
It is not a terrible design choice if the game was designed from the beginning to be built around permanent death. It is a different design choice, nothing more or less than that.

Thank you Bluddwolf. I agree. This is not a terrible idea, but rather a mis-applied one.

Goblin Squad Member

If you had any idea how common death will be you would recognize that having to buy a rez would quickly become prohibitively expensive. There would be no point to building an economy, whatsoever, save for the benefit of the only moneyed role: the Cleric.


Not advocating for this idea, but you're still misunderstanding his suggestion. He was suggesting this ONLY for certain dungeon fights, not for every PvE death and not for any PvP deaths.

Goblin Squad Member

It would not be unreasonable to have certain kinds of encounters cause greater or even complete equipment damage on death.

Goblin Squad Member

Leithlen wrote:
Not advocating for this idea, but you're still misunderstanding his suggestion. He was suggesting this ONLY for certain dungeon fights, not for every PvE death and not for any PvP deaths.

I see, thank you for pointing out what I overlooked.

The only way I see that as a useful feature is if there is a very interesting story it supports. It would be useful in a single player game where you had the option to reload a saved game.

Goblin Squad Member

Kemedo wrote:
What is about the Pharasma Mark...

From the Quick Start Guide:

How To: Quick Start wrote:
The most surprising thing is that some of these people, and all our heroes, have discovered they have the Mark of Pharasma. Those bearing the Mark are able to return from the dead when killed, but they are barred from leaving the area by magical fields of force which block their exit. Small shrines to Pharasma dot the land and when a person bearing the Mark dies, they find themselves restored to life at one of these shrines automagically.

Twice-Marked, we don't yet know.

Goblin Squad Member

Bluddwolf wrote:
Mbando wrote:
I'm utterly perplexed by how robust this idea is. As Decius points out, it's a terrible design choice. And it's never going to happen, because it's such a terrible design choice. But like a slasher in a movie, no matter how many times you think this is idea, it just pops up again.

It is not a terrible design choice if the game was designed from the beginning to be built around permanent death. It is a different design choice, nothing more or less than that.

I second this, I don't understand the need to impolitely bash ideas without adding anything useful to the discussion.

Bluddwolf wrote:
The easiest solution in not having permanent death as a game mechanic is to self impose the penalty for death of a character. I would actually respect the inherent will power it would take to hold oneself to that standard.

The only problem I have with this, is the inequality of position between someone who can just suicide-kill you then be back over and over again, while you can't take those risks. Permadeath I think would be have for everyone or at least those involved in it have to be dealing with the same degree of risk for it to work.

Goblin Squad Member

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Guurzak wrote:
It would not be unreasonable to have certain kinds of encounters cause greater or even complete equipment damage on death.

Well if it is a PVP death ,the winner will loot you and you lose it all, so as it is now the PVE death is less of a loss than a PVP death . Your non-threaded gear could be put on a timer and it is gone if you don't get back to it , simulating the mobs taking it.Or for hard core the boss mob could have a spell that breaks threads ,so if you die you lose more gear. I'm not against the idea of some PVE being higher risk encounters, its a good idea but it does have to make sense .

Scarab Sages Goblin Squad Member

I think the best clue we have about Twice Marked is an old statement from GW that creating a new respawn point will require a Twice Marked character.

Scarab Sages Goblin Squad Member

sspitfire1 wrote:
Death would be permanent only if you can't afford to pay for a raise dead... the character will not get the benefit of an in-town res and will need to procure his/her restoration to life after the combat- assuming the body can be recovered!
sspitfire1 wrote:
All I was thinking about here was making certain, rare PVE encounters higher stakes, but *still* allowing for the character to be raised after the fight. As has been pointed out, really, this mechanic would just end up making the fights higher cost.

I think the reasons that this thread continues to draw responses are the if clause and the assuming clause in the first quote. Those two phrases don't just make resurrection cost more, they also introduce the chance of true and permanent death on the "deleted character" level.

The if statement suggests that a "down on his/her luck" character might not have enough money, in which case, the player would lose the character. The assuming statement suggests that in some cases, recovery might be impossible, and in those cases, the player would lose the character.

The second quote suggests that those two clauses were just meant to sound vaguely ominous, not to be actual potential outcomes of the system. Vaguely ominous clauses sound exciting, and they might seem harmless, but we have a history of taking proposals literally, and spinning out their consequences way beyond the author's intention. (The folks at GW can probably attest to that. We've been picking apart their every word for a couple of years now.)

"Some PVE boss fights involve more risk"? No problem. We just have to decide what the risk is.

"Some PVE boss fights involve a real possibility that your character might be deleted"? That's the non-starter.


Yeah and if I could go back and edit my original post, I would have done so long ago. I agree that my initial effort to communicate my idea is not aiding the issue any.

Scarab Sages Goblin Squad Member

sspitfire1 wrote:
Yeah and if I could go back and edit my original post, I would have done so long ago. I agree that my initial effort to communicate my idea is not aiding the issue any.

It happens sometimes.

I do like the idea that the toughest PVE battles might involve a little more risk than run of the mill fights. It would help to differentiate challenging an ogre warleader from stomping a random goblin.


Not to mention make the PC victors seem more like epic heroe(ine)s!

Goblinworks Executive Founder

KarlBob wrote:
I do like the idea that the toughest PVE battles might involve a little more risk than run of the mill fights.

Well if they're harder, you'll die more.


Hmm... I'm sure that simply making the fight harder is the same thing as making it higher risk. If there are consumables involved, then to a degree, yes. But it is not the same thing as risking loosing your armor or weapon, or some such other way that is more costly to the player.

This is just a commentary on what "risk" entails in a game like this; I'm not advocating for anything in this thread anymore....

Goblinworks Executive Founder

Yeah, but actually, you are always at risk of losing losing your equipment, in this game.

The harder the boss is, the more powerful equipment you will have to use, and you can't thread everything. So you will indeed have bigger risks.

I know I have a tendency to bring up EvE lot :p, but it is again a good example : I loved escalation & lvl5 missions, but I didn't know a lot of people willing to do it because well, the NPCs were very powerful, we were forced to use expensive ships, and we had always the risk of messing-up and exploding (because we were normal players not roxxing that much), or being attacked by PvPers...

Seriously, I lost a T3 cruiser once, because my healer had a disconnection. Believe me, it wasn't a very nice thing to live.


So how does death work in PFO? I'm an avid eve onliner and from the kickstarter descriptions.. this game is being heavily influenced by what CCP has done right with EVE.

But it sucks when you lose something that has real world value that has taken real time to build... but it's good for the econmy.

Goblin Squad Member

DBNova wrote:
So how does death work in PFO? I'm an avid eve onliner and from the kickstarter descriptions.. this game is being heavily influenced by what CCP has done right with EVE.

For starters, you have two types of stuff in inventory: "threaded" gear, and unthreaded stuff. The idea is that the magic of Pharasma allows you to tie some select items to you with "threads", even through death. I think all threaded gear must be in equipped slots. You might not have enough threads to tie everything; higher tier gear takes more threads.

When you die, 25% of your unthreaded items are destroyed. Gone. The rest of the unthreaded items stay on your corpse. (Which your killer can loot, if he isn't driven off). You respawn with your threaded items, but they will take incremental damage with each death so eventually will need to be repaired or replaced.


http://paizo.com/people/Urman

okay that sounds pretty cool. I have no idea if Goblin Works team has any idea or desire to implement this, but one of the things I do when I run my "sandbox" is that I tell the players that their characters will age and eventually die from age in due time. This not only make the immersion of pnp feel more realistic but it allows the players to have more fun making goals for their characters as opposed to just meta gaming. If they could implement something along the lines of that based on how many times your character died that would be very interesting.... for instance and old spell caster based on stats could be much more potent than a pup and like wise an old grizzled warrior would not be as strong or quick as they once were..

I'm very excited to this game come full circle I love Eve but i was about 10 years to late to get into it. so I'm totally jumpin on board for this bad boy soooo excited. :)


The way I usually go about doing it is that their is an allowed amount of mandatory downtime per experience pool. so that by the time a human is 20th level they will be about 80 years old or so... well on their way to retiring. the benefit to this is that once that is accomplished if your character has had children or through bad ass role playing you can start another character but be better.. maybe have a template tossed on their or hell be the heir to a kindom. I mainly do this because your characters are bad asses but have lives as well. And in a pinch it's real easy to say the dude you pissed off at lvl 3 has kidnapped your daughter.


Oh yeah Urman I have a lot of questions about the game mechanics such as how death works and stuff is their an all in one site that I can find that stuff out at? so I'm not posting in 50 different threads?

Goblin Squad Member

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I'd recommend reading through the Blog as a basic primer, though some of the information there has been superseded.

As far as aging to death, that's basically a nonstarter for an MMO. Not only would it put an ultimate XP cap on characters (something we currently do not have), but it means that hitting the level cap means death and the loss of *years* of effort. That said, if you want to roll up a new character, twink it with resources from the higher level, and delete your old one for your own reasons, by all means, go for it. =P

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