What happens if, in Wrath of the Righteous, a character dies after you've started adventure deck 2? Is the character actually supposed to start from scratch, with no feats and no mythic paths? That doesn't really seem viable. The Wardstone Fragment doesn't necessarily help, if, for example, the dead character has it in his deck. If you're really supposed to go on like this, the game will probably become unbeatable in the long run. So, that can't be right, can it?
Your best bet is to catch replacement characters up by running them through the earlier adventures/scenarios (I'd ignore the B adventure/scenarios).
One way to do this is to run replacement characters through concurrently, keeping them "caught" up so they can drop into the party when someone dies.
Alternately, you can start from the beginning and get them caught up to the main party.
There are pros and cons to both methods, as well as limitations (i.e., you can't really keep a batch of second stringers caught up when you have a party of six).
In our online gaming group, we use the following rules for death:
The character that dies is out for the rest of the adventure path. That player gets to choose a new character and gets the feats that the rest of the characters have (so they are not too far behind) but their deck is created from cards that are no higher than AD-2.
An easier "cheaty" way is to have any new characters come in with the same level of feats as existing characters.
This won't work for OP. But its just like running a proper RPG, having a new person join in with a character at a level greater than one.
They'll start of with a poor "basics" only deck (or current scenario -2 if you like) - and if you really want to have an additional penalty, maybe they get one less feat than the rest of the party.
I've done the back-up characters thing for my gaming group's run through Skull & Shackles with the following special rules for my "second stringers":
- They don't remove Basics or Elites. That way I don't have continuity nightmares trying to maintain two different boxes for each group, and cards we could've sworn we'd disposed of don't pop back up again.
- They don't play with cards first stringers already own. We've had players join our group and need a back-up character only to discover that a first stringer and the incoming second stringer character have the same single card in their decks. (An exception to this rule is loot, but in that case I just note which card it was that the loot card replaced, and if there's a conflict, the second stringer can regress to the previous card they had. But see the last point about loot.)
- They can't really die. This is just a matter of practicality. There's not much point trying to figure out how to replace a character you plan to use to replace one of your main characters. They just get knocked out for the rest of the scenario, but they can improve their decks at the end of the scenario.
- They can't really lose. We have had scenarios in our main game that we've had to play a few times. It would take more time than I have to run a game for my second stringers more than once to keep them up to date. I try to win with my second stringers, but if I don't I just move on. If they fail, they don't get plunder or loot, but they always get their feats, since that's the big thing to keeping them ready to step in if Damiel blows someone up accidentally. Again.
Simple answer, you will ascend to heaven or decend down to hell.
What direction do you prefer?
I am a good guy, so always ascending ... What are you?
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What my group has done with death is that the person who died rolls a d6+adventure deck number. They banish that many cards at random from their deck. They then get to draw from the box appropriate cards so they still have all the cards they are supposed to in their deck. They can only get cards that are AD-2 to replace the ones they lost. This lets them still keep the same character and there is some penalty for death, but they don't have to start a character from scratch or keep a second character running. Obviously this will not work in organized play.
The way we handle dead characters is my group (nothing official) is the same for any adventure.
AFTER all surviving have rebuilt their decks using the standard rules
a) You take a blank character card (the same as the one before if you want.
b) You CHOOSE the cards to make your initial 15 cards hand as long as they are AD-2 (AD = level of the scenario that killed you) and no loot.
c) You can trade cards with the other characters before starting the next scenario (thus, if your teammates were nice enough to keep your good stuff when rebuilding their own decks, you can improve yours).
d) From now own, anytime you win a scenario, you will win additional/alternative rewards until you are "fully back".
"Fully back" means you have just ONE feat less than you would have had (winning the same scenarios) if you didn't die.
Note that in all cases you cannot :
- win 2 feats of the same type during a single "in between games",
- end up with more feat of a certain type that you would have had (winning the same scenarios) if you didn't die,
rewards in excess of those two limits are lost.
Precisely, anytime you win a scenario :
- If you don't have a role card: in ADDITION to the scenario reward, you get one feat.
- If you do have a role card: INSTEAD of the scenario reward, you get one of each (skill, power, card) feat.
Rewards for adventures/adventure paths are not changed
Works very well.
What happens if, in Wrath of the Righteous, a character dies after you've started adventure deck 2? Is the character actually supposed to start from scratch, with no feats and no mythic paths? That doesn't really seem viable. The Wardstone Fragment doesn't necessarily help, if, for example, the dead character has it in his deck. If you're really supposed to go on like this, the game will probably become unbeatable in the long run. So, that can't be right, can it?
The path and role aren't addressed by RAW; it only mentions feat and card rules. The exception is OP, because those are tied to the Tier System, and rerolling is covered by it.
If you're just playing casually, I suggest rerolling with a default deck (AD-2, with 0 = basics) and feats / path / role as appropriate. With regard to the Knights of Kenabres boon (end-AD2: five skill feats,) you get what the party got. This simulates the process of working a new character through the AP up to the respawn point, which saves days to weeks of time in exchange for a weaker card profile.
The tradeoff for that time savings is that you don't get better cards (whether lucky finds or Loot cards) in this manner.
The problem with that is that you take risks because it does not matter if you die or not. It eats away tension and it is not important to take Great care that characters don't die.
I prefer that when you die, you start new character because the character you did play did die. It is finish, caput, adios and so on...
In society game there is that use three dice pump, so you have to spent resources that could help you, you give tribute to temple. It is not bad at all, but there has to be that kind of resource and when those dice pumps has gone, the next death will be real thing!
In my experience, character death is pretty rare once you start gaining feats and upgrading your deck. I think I've only seen one character die in RotR (Valeros hit 2 different Sirens at 2 different locations on 2 consecutive turns with his final ally in the top 3 cards of his deck, leaving him with only 3 cards left when he reset his hand). I don't believe I've seen anyone die in Shackles. With Wrath, I've seen several deaths during the B scenarios, but none after that.
I kind of like what Paizo and Obsidian did with the Digital game.
There's no harsh penalty for dying (unless you're playing permadeath mode which ends up being just like the tabletop game), you even get to keep all the cards you had up to the point you died. The penalty is if the rest of the party actually goes on to win the scenario, the dead character gets no reward from that win state, whether that was picking a card or a skill/power/card feat. So you do have a chance to fall behind if the party pulls out a win and you were dead. If the party was nice you could just re-do the scenario so the character(s) that died can get the bonuses. Since you can't get rewards for re-playing a scenario, you'd need patient friends. :)
The dead character CAN then come into the fray when building decks after the scenario. So they can trade cards with the rest of the party just like always. So if someone got a crazy good animal ally and you were playing Lini who died, you can still get that ally from them in deck building after the scenario.
I think this is basically just called you got "knocked out" and you didn't actually "die".
As far as I understand this behaviour is a bug not a design choice (the not ever being able to get the scenario reward part in particular). The "bugs" section on the forum officially tells people to forfeit if a character dies.
I'm also someone who thinks a proper penalty for dying is a good thing. It's not that hard to avoid, honestly. If you have less than your hand size left in your deck and no armour then don't explore. There's a handful of deck-damaging banes you need to look our for so you act carefully around them. I've never had someone die in the cardboard game because I've never put myself in a situation where it was possible. I have had a character die in the app though (and I have perma-death on) because I was playing super-sloppy, and it served me right.
Playing with no penalty or reduced penalty for death is playing on easy mode, not so much directly from the lack of penalty, but more because you're free to explore into the villain on an 80% roll with no cards in your deck and most of the time get away with it. If the 20% was a proper character death you wouldn't do it. To me this is a big balance issue, I've failed multiple missions I might have won if I hadn't cared about character death.
For me, dying is its own penalty. I don't like having characters die. I take personal affront. I played 100 games of Runelords without killing a character, but killed one in the app just 10 or so scenarios in (through careless play and a bad roll).
Permadeath is a waste of my time. My time is more valuable than that.