Over at his site, JD Wilker mentions that he's running a group through the WotC "Adventure Path" that starts with The Sunless Citadel. He mentions a few things that I have also noticed, and so thought I'd bring up.
The way a group of players attack a situation has a direct result on the amount of XP their characters will receive, and as such, how quickly those characters will advance. JDW writes: ...the PCs haven't always visited every "experience point generator" in the adventures, and thus missed out on the vital experience they needed to progress to the levels recommended by the adventures.
In the groups I DM, the players tend to be more "conscientious" about mapping every room and overcoming every obstacle. However, in the game I play in, we tend to accomplish our mission and leave the rest of the encounters for the next adventuring party to tool around with. I have often wondered what we're missing in these circumstances, but I don't care enough to change my style of play. My character is an "in-and-out" kind of guy, and if that means he misses some XP, then so be it. However, that means the DM has to work even harder to insert side adventures so that the PCs advance to a level where they have a reasonable shot at overcoming the encounters / adventures he has planned down the road.
Your classic "dungeon crawl" seems to avoid this, as most old-school modules are very linear. You move from start to finish, through all intervening encounters, and when you come out the other side you've seen everything the writer put to paper. However, more and more adventures are moving away from a linear approach, and so a party is not guaranteed to visit every encounter in an adventure.
If you're writing an adventure that is supposed to take a party from 3rd to 5th level, how do you ensure that they visit enough of those "experience point generators" without railroading them into it?
Personally, I'm a big fan of the format many of the Planescape adventures used. In The Eternal Boundary, for instance, Baker sets out a handful of useful encounters the DM can throw at the party, giving likely reasons and times when those encounters might crop up. However, the order of the encounters is driven by the actions of the party, not a pre-set linear path that the DM has to steer the party into. I find this approach to be more organic and flexible - allowing the DM to better tailor the adventure to the decisions the players make. I believe it also allows the adventure to be "runable" for a wider range of groups, who might have different playing styles.
However, this style of encounter development is an skill that I have not mastered yet. If you like this type of element in an adventure, I'd sure like to hear about it - and how you do/would go about implementing it in an adventure design.
JDW writes: But a slightly less obvious problem is that the high number of undead in some adventures means more checks for permanent loss of levels to energy-drain effects, and the lethality of some encounters has ensured that some characters have had to be raised more often than I'd prefer.
You can't remove the threat of level-loss from the game. It's part of the danger of the undead - and therefore, part of the fun. However, it needs to be factored into our design decisions. Creating an adventure that is sure to drain the life out of a party might be memorable, but it doesn't support the idea of a party that will grow up together, fighting evil and saving the world.
But what do we want? If the adventure is challenging, but beatable, does it matter if half the party loses a level in the process? Don't the game mechanics already work to remedy that by giving lower level characters more experience for overcoming encounters?
I'd say it matters in two ways. First, if the party is losing characters / levels so often that it gets in the way of fun, it's a problem. Second, potential loss of significant party strength and ability needs to be timed so that it doesn't make the adventure unbeatable.
But how do we do that when designing an adventure? We can't stay away from encounters that are deadly - that would be no fun. Can we mitigate those lethal / draining encounters in such a way as to give the party a reasonable chance to recover? Failing that, can we give them an alternate path to success?
Some of this is obviously up to the players. For instance, the party in which I play has an average character level of 10th. Just this week we were on a mission to take out a spellgaunt. Those nasty critters feed on magic items and casters like a child in a candy store. Most 10th level parties have a sizable investment in magic items. The thought of losing valuable itmes to this overgrown spider just wasn't something we were happy about. We chose to go in without any of those items. It all turned out well in the end, but that was our choice. Still, losing a valuable magic item is almost as bad as losing a level. (BTW - we fed an evil artifact to the dumb beast and it exploded.)
Anyway, I'm way long on this post and I haven't touched on everything I wanted to. Check out JD's post if you like. I'd love to hear your comments. That said... How do we design an adventure that given reasonable assurance that the characters will visit enough "experience point generators?" Is the question of level loss something we should consider when designing adventures, and if so, to what degree?
Creative Director
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For the Adventure Paths we run in Dungeon, we generally fill them with enough XP so that if the PCs do EVERYTHING in that adventure, they'll get about 125% of the XP they need to go to the next in line.
In the end, though, for an adventure path I'm almost of the opinion that handing out XP for individual accomplishments and monster kills is archaic and pointless. You know what adventures you'll be running, and you know what levels the PCs need to be. Just tell them to level up when you start a new adventure, or at the half-way point through an adventure.
Of course, this plays a little havoc with PCs who use XP to build magic items or cast powerful spells, but that's a whole seperate problem. The concept of "losing experience" for successfully learning how to build a magic item never really made sense to me, logically, even if it DOES make sense to me from a game balance point of view.
And it should go without saying that it makes players feel good to get numbers of XP at the end of a session. Makes you feel like you did something. So I guess I'm not endorsing a "get rid of XP" stance as much as a "don't worry about the minutae of XP" stance. Of course... it's also late and I got poisoned by a Pizza a few days ago...
he's running a group through the WotC "Adventure Path" that starts with The Sunless Citadel.
Sadly, not the best Adventure Path. It tries too hard to both be a set of stand-alone adventures and a linked story. Still, that was a reality forced by the way it was published.
Quoting here:
JDW writes: ...the PCs haven't always visited every "experience point generator" in the adventures, and thus missed out on the vital experience they needed to progress to the levels recommended by the adventures.
End quote...
In the Design and Development column on Wizards.com, they discussed much the same issue. One solution they came up with is to drop the PCs in the middle of the map, and cluster the tougher encounters at the corners. To get to the tough stuff, the party must work their way through enough "XP generators" - while still being able to choose their own path.
I think something similar can be done without such cheats, provided the "adventure flowchart" is constructed with enough care. Simply ensure that every path from beginning to end provides enough exposure to "XP generators" to advance theparty as desired.
But the reality is that side-treks are likely to be essential in some cases.
Quoting here:
JDW writes: But a slightly less obvious problem is that the high number of undead in some adventures means more checks for permanent loss of levels to energy-drain effects, and the lethality of some encounters has ensured that some characters have had to be raised more often than I'd prefer.
You can't remove the threat of level-loss from the game. It's part of the danger of the undead - and therefore, part of the fun. However, it needs to be factored into our design decisions. Creating an adventure that is sure to drain the life out of a party might be memorable, but it doesn't support the idea of a party that will grow up together, fighting evil and saving the world.
But what do we want? If the adventure is challenging, but beatable, does it matter if half the party loses a level in the process? Don't the game mechanics already work to remedy that by giving lower level characters more experience for overcoming encounters?
End Quote...
Hmm, perhaps it is time for permanent level loss to go away. Or, alternatively, rule that a character who has suffered permanent level loss regains XP at twice the normal rate until he catches up (because it's easier to do something a second time than it is the first time).
As for the returning from the dead thing, that appears to now be a fact of D&D life. If the DM doesn't want that to be too common, he simply has to tone down the lethality of encounters.
Quoting here:
Some of this is obviously up to the players. For instance, the party in which I play has an average character level of 10th. Just this week we were on a mission to take out a spellgaunt. Those nasty critters feed on magic items and casters like a child in a candy store. Most 10th level parties have a sizable investment in magic items. The thought of losing valuable itmes to this overgrown spider just wasn't something we were happy about. We chose to go in without any of those items. It all turned out well in the end, but that was our choice. Still, losing a valuable magic item is almost as bad as losing a level. (BTW - we fed an evil artifact to the dumb beast and it exploded.)
End Quote...
I like your tactics!
There are certain "character spoilers" that a DM can throw at the party with tend to cause great annoyance. Permanent level loss is one, Rust Monsters another, being thrown overboard while carrying all your gear is a third. Essentially, what all of these do is take from the character something they feel is hard-won and earned.
DMs have to be very careful about using such things. They generate a lot of anger, but they can also provide a great deal of excitement in the game, which even character death doesn't really provide. The answer, I think, is that such encounters should never be sprung upon the PCs - they should be well foreshadowed so that the players have a choice whether to proceed, and risk the danger, or whether to run away. Ideally, such threats should also be avoidable, although preferably with cost. ("We can fight our way through three caves filled with Troglodyes and Rust Monsters, or we can try to sneak past the entire Orcish army...")
Edit: Something went wrong with the grey boxes! I've tried to mark where I'm quoting, but it still looks a little confusing. Sorry!
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Creative Director
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Actually, in every one of the long-running campaigns I've played in (including ones I've run) the level-loss from death rule has been houseruled away in some manner or another. It is, in my opinion, a poor rule, one that punishes unlucky players and disrupts campaigns far more than providing any actual useful game play enhancements. It's bad enough that your PC died and you sat around for 3 hours doing nothing and then had to pay a mountain of money. Having to lose a level on top of that (and thus increase the chances of having another death hit you) seems petty.
Spells like close wounds and revivify go in the right direction.
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I nixed Raise Dead altogether and made Resurrection into True Resurrection. If a character dies he can be brought back with reincarnate (without level loss) or run a cleric from the church doing the Resurrection and guide the party to whatever quest item is needed to perform a Resurrection (as stated by the DM). I wanted death to be a real fear and I feel that the current rules treat death as an easy thing to avoid or rectify.
Death should be a huge ordeal to overcome, not a minor inconvenience, in my opinion. I find these changes have injected a bit more grittiness to my campaign and a bit of fun (I always liked Reincarnate but players almost never use it for fear of losing a racial modifier or having to play a less powerful race. I like the roleplaying opportunities that Reincarnate present.). Level drain I changed to Con drain with the amount determined by the power of the original level drain.
I have also been toying with the idea of finding a way to eliminate Spell Resistance and replace it with certain spell immunities. Still playing with that one yet.
FH
It's a crazy, radical notion, but maybe there should be a radical rethink of the role of character death in the game? Specifically, maybe it simply shouldn't be possible for PCs to die unless
1) The player states that he wants to end his character to bring in a new one
or
2) The player leaves.
Instead, perhaps the game should award full XP for a defeated opponent, some % XP for survival of the encounter, but no XP for a character who "died" in the encounter?
While we're at it, perhaps it's time to ditch healing spells (from any class, but not from magic items), and instead institute some sort of faster healing mechanic? Oh, and some sort of spell-power system so that the party casters don't cast all their spells for the day in the first encounter, and then require the group to rest for 23 hours until the get them back?
Of course, that's a fairly massive (and radical) change to the structure of the game.
...In the end, though, for an adventure path I'm almost of the opinion that handing out XP for individual accomplishments and monster kills is archaic and pointless. You know what adventures you'll be running, and you know what levels the PCs need to be. Just tell them to level up when you start a new adventure, or at the half-way point through an adventure....
That is pretty much the way we run it in our campaigns. The Dm knows how much experience there was to "harvest" in the adventure, and also what the goals and objectives are for that adventure. He also knows (if he has been planning) what level the next adventure is designed for.
If the PCs hit all the objectives and goals for the adventure, but didn't reap all the EXP potential in the adventure, I generally just fudge it and have them level up. Afterall, they did everything I wanted them to in the adventure, with the exception of some sidequests.
Now I don't tend to give "extra" loot out in this fashion, so while the PCs stay on track with their levels for my campaign plans, their "GP:EXP" ratio will fall behind the curve if they don't occasionally seek out those extra sources of experience. But that is the benefit of finding all those sidequests and optional encounters, IMHO.
Spells like close wounds and revivify go in the right direction.
I've said this so many times it's almost become a mantra:
Revivify is the best thing since sliced bread. :)
It's a crazy, radical notion, but maybe there should be a radical rethink of the role of character death in the game? Specifically, maybe it simply shouldn't be possible for PCs to die unless
1) The player states that he wants to end his character to bring in a new one
or
2) The player leaves.
Instead, perhaps the game should award full XP for a defeated opponent, some % XP for survival of the encounter, but no XP for a character who "died" in the encounter?
While we're at it, perhaps it's time to ditch healing spells (from any class, but not from magic items), and instead institute some sort of faster healing mechanic? Oh, and some sort of spell-power system so that the party casters don't cast all their spells for the day in the first encounter, and then require the group to rest for 23 hours until the get them back?
Of course, that's a fairly massive (and radical) change to the structure of the game.
I'm not saying there couldn't be some changes to the game structue, but taking away the potential of death?
Where is the fun in that? Where is the risk?
Sure, the DM can "adjust" the lethality of game in various ways, but removing the possibility of character death is like playing a FPS on God Mode. Or using a Game Genie to "uber" your characters in a 16-bit RPG. (Nope, I never did that as kid in Final Fantasy ;-) ).
If you take away the risk, you take away the sense of accomplishment. What is to stop my Fighter 1 from taking on a giant? Or a Dragon? Or a Balor?
I'm not saying there couldn't be some changes to the game structue, but taking away the potential of death?
Where is the fun in that? Where is the risk?
Sure, the DM can "adjust" the lethality of game in various ways, but removing the possibility of character death is like playing a FPS on God Mode. Or using a Game Genie to "uber" your characters in a 16-bit RPG. (Nope, I never did that as kid in Final Fantasy ;-) ).
If you take away the risk, you take away the sense of accomplishment. What is to stop my Fighter 1 from taking on a giant? Or a Dragon? Or a Balor?
That's all true. However, when all it takes to get back on your feet is a True Resurrection, where then is the fear of death? Really, all death achieves in a high-level game (where, oddly enough, it seems most common) is it forces the player to sit out the rest of the game until the party can get him brought back, and draining the party of 25,000 gp (which then 'need' replaced to keep level with the Wealth by Level guidelines).
Honestly, what does character death _really_ add to a campaign?
(Although, I'll grant you, I'm probably in a minority of one on this point.)
For the Adventure Paths we run in Dungeon, we generally fill them with enough XP so that if the PCs do EVERYTHING in that adventure, they'll get about 125% of the XP they need to go to the next in line.
That squares with my experiences of running the AoW.
For the AoW, I've been meticulous about handing out XP after each two-hour gaming session. I've been generally pleased with how the timing of the characters' leveling up has matched the level of the encounters.
I feel that character death is something that needs to be in the game, I also feel that the threat of permanent level loss, permanent ability score loss, the possibility of losing your nifty toys etc. needs to be in the game... with out that stuff there is tension, no feeling of gratification after over coming the obsticales, no reason to play.
that said, I think that besides the threat of charcter death the rest should be used somewhat sparingly... and even though the possibility of character death is always there... ie. I am not going to cheat to save a character, in actual practice few characters die in my games (even my current 1e game has only seen 1 character death, and 1e tends to be much more lethal then 3.x) In my 3.x greyhawk game one character (elf Wizard) has died twice (once he died in the course of saving a 17th level cleric who had been imprisoned by an evil wizard, and was thus able to get a true resurection spell out of the deal, and the second time he was raised by a simple raise dead spell and took the level loss with no complaints). Another character (Paladin) died very dramatically, rended limb from limb by an awakened dire ape chef... but since his player was leaving the campaign anyway, he chose not be resurected. I turned one character cohort to stone with a Gorgon, but he was able to be revived quite easily... There is one character named Ward, who I have come close to killing several times, but never actually managed to finish the job.
For the Adventure Paths we run in Dungeon, we generally fill them with enough XP so that if the PCs do EVERYTHING in that adventure, they'll get about 125% of the XP they need to go to the next in line.
I hadn't thought of this, but it's a very good idea - something that I think I'll keep in mind while designing adventures in the future.
In the end, though, for an adventure path I'm almost of the opinion that handing out XP for individual accomplishments and monster kills is archaic and pointless. You know what adventures you'll be running, and you know what levels the PCs need to be. Just tell them to level up when you start a new adventure, or at the half-way point through an adventure.
I have done this for the group I am running through the Shackled City AP. When they level, they end up half way between their new level and the next. Even characters that use XP to build magic items or cast powerful spells aren't harmed, as they still have that XP cushion to play with and advance with the rest of the group.
DMs have to be very careful about using such things. They generate a lot of anger, but they can also provide a great deal of excitement in the game, which even character death doesn't really provide. The answer, I think, is that such encounters should never be sprung upon the PCs - they should be well foreshadowed so that the players have a choice whether to proceed, and risk the danger, or whether to run away. Ideally, such threats should also be avoidable, although preferably with cost. ("We can fight our way through three caves filled with Troglodyes and Rust Monsters, or we can try to sneak past the entire Orcish army...")
A very good suggestion. What makes roleplaying so fun is the freedom of choice each player has on behalf of their character. Not all options a party faces will be easy or healthy or nice - but they are still choices. For instance, I had a samurai character in one of my games flattly refuse to hide or disguise herself under any circumstance. This made it difficult for the party when they wanted to infiltrate an enemy stronghold. Eventually, they came up with a workable solution, but it was difficult. However, these little bits of "drama" are what make roleplaying fun.
We... are still searching for the right game mechanic to model character death and the subsequent requisite return from the dead. The ideal system will a) treat returning from the dead with the respect and relevance that it is due and b) have some sort of permanent character penalty other than level loss. Currently the permanent loss of a constitution point is working well for us...
I can see you and I have many of the same hesitations when it comes to character death. It should be a BIG DEAL, and it should be handled properly. If you don't, your roleplaying starts feeling like a video game. Players start taking chances with their characters they never would - not because the character would or it would make a good story, but because they know they can just "respawn" and pick up where they left off. Character death can totally mess up game play if it's taken too lightly just as much as if it's too devastating.
The question is, how do we design adventures with this in mind? If a character goes down during the climatic scene of an adventure, it's not that big a deal. Regardless of how your group handles it, they can always raise them later and get them up to speed before the next big adventure. However, what if that character goes down just before the climactic battle with the BBEG? The momentum of the story would be killed if the DM allowed the party to just retreat and regroup. I'm not saying that shouldn't be allowed, only that it's something to consider.
For instance, let's say a party of 7rd-level PCs are trying to stop a group of monsters from sacking the village of Lostland. They engage the monsters and the party cleric bites the dust - so the party withdraws and tries to bring their pious friend back to the land of the living. Of course, doing so means they have to abandon Lostland - which means a lot of innocent people are going to get hurt and the monsters will only grow stronger. Sure, the party can come back later to finish what they couldn't before, but now they have other "issues" to deal with. These type of dramatic elements are things that should be in our adventures - but the "where" and "when" of including them is something I'm trying to master.
In the end it's about fun. Death and dismemberment is only fun when it's plot related. Otherwise it's a game mechanic that should be balanced against everyone's enjoyment.
When I play, I love character death if it happens in a cool way. If my ranger falls to a group of zombies because he's covering the rest of the party as they withdraw? Cool. Roll up a new PC and hope the DM is smart enough to use my zombie-ranger against us the next time the party heads this way.
That said, I hate it when it's pointless. That's when the enjoyment gets sucked out.
I feel that character death is something that needs to be in the game, I also feel that the threat of permanent level loss, permanent ability score loss, the possibility of losing your nifty toys etc. needs to be in the game... with out that stuff there is tension, no feeling of gratification after over coming the obsticales, no reason to play.
Ditto.
I turned one character cohort to stone with a Gorgon, but he was able to be revived quite easily... There is one character named Ward, who I have come close to killing several times, but never actually managed to finish the job.
Poor Ward and Bing. My buys just catch all the breaks, don't they? :)
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Anyway, it seems that the discussion has come to center on character death and level loss. The question I want to know is, can we design adventures with these elements in mind? If so, how? Do we time the tough encounters differently? Do we even care?
I have a sort of personal rule that I won't let a character die unless they're fighting the last boss of a dungeon or someone else important or they dos omething incredibly stupid and it seems like they want to die.
I've come up with a new rule for my game that I have yet to implement (as noone has died yet), so I'm not sure how well it'll work, but here it goes: If you die and are raised by anything that would cause you to lose a level, you instead take a negative level. Your XP stays the same, and this level can't be removed by any means. Once you level up, the negative level goes away, and you get your new level. I think this balances making death important, but doesnt screw the player too badly.
You guys are clearly missing the appropriate solution. Kill the other PCs too and then you dont have a balance issue :)
Clark
I've come up with a new rule for my game that I have yet to implement (as noone has died yet), so I'm not sure how well it'll work, but here it goes: If you die and are raised by anything that would cause you to lose a level, you instead take a negative level. Your XP stays the same, and this level can't be removed by any means. Once you level up, the negative level goes away, and you get your new level. I think this balances making death important, but doesnt screw the player too badly.
We tried a rule similiar to this one before in the past (playing Against the Giants/Descent/Drow updated to 3.5) and it worked fairly well. The negative level was enough of a penalty that you didn't want to die, but you weren't totally screwed if you did die and then were ressurected.
I started out the Age of Worms by killing off everyone's character at least once. This has allowed me to tone the encounters down/fudge the rolls a bit to keep them alive, while still maintaining the illusion of danger. All of my players just *know* that i'm willing to kill their characters (since I've done it in the past, right?) on even trivial encounters, so they tend to be a bit more careful in their planning and execution.
Sadistic? well, maybe. but it's worked so far..
I started out the Age of Worms by killing off everyone's character at least once.
It's not just you. The Whispering Cairn was a very deadly adventure. When I ran it the first time, four of the five initial characters bit the dust. I chalk it up to a few things, but in the end the adventure is just deadly.
Actually, in every one of the long-running campaigns I've played in (including ones I've run) the level-loss from death rule has been houseruled away in some manner or another. It is, in my opinion, a poor rule, one that punishes unlucky players and disrupts campaigns far more than providing any actual useful game play enhancements.
Just out of interest, James, what sort of penalties do you administer for dying if not level loss?
Adventure paths can be used in two ways, and those uses determine how you award experience.
First as an actual adventure path, like James said, XP is almost useless and archaic.
Second, mining the adventure path for locations and ideas and maybe an individual adventure can be quie fun. In this case XP is useful.
I am a Rat Bastard when it comes to death. If I were playing an normal open ended campaign I require the players to start over at level 1 with their current party. This creates a good spread of levels that makes the game more interesting and offers incentive to get the other guy raised.
In a path situation, I am not as sure. I feel that everyone should have a character die in the course of a campaign (hey as DM almost ALL my characters die, spread the love). In a path situation though, it is hard to not bring back the dead character. I think I would stick with the rules of level loss. As the song says "let the bodies hit the floor." I think AoW is way cooler if the party cycles through 12 characters trying to stop the age of worms. Given that if I were playing an AP straight through, I would for the rest of the adventure have a raised or replacement character start one level behind the party, but then bring them up to equivalent number at the start of the next adventure in the series.
I play an Eberron and I think the death penalty is my game is pretty harsh. The chances of a player getting raised, or resurrected are essentialy nil. Even if a player character reaches the level to cast the spells they won't know how. Short of going to the leader of one of the churches and agreeing to a life of indentured servitude or someother great cost you aren't coming back.
So I try not to kill the characters, at least from dice rolls. If they die through bad decision making, well then that's the way the cookie crumbles, but I won't kill them because of bad dice rolls. I want to tell a story, one in which the players pay the central part. It's a bad story where every other chapter someone dies and another random person just happens to want to join the group.
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Creative Director
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Just out of interest, James, what sort of penalties do you administer for dying if not level loss?
In my Saturday campaign, I've eliminated raise dead and resurrection. Wish, miracle, and true resurrection work as written, and can bring a dead character back without level loss. For lower level characters, you have to be more on the spot with spells like close wounds and revivify to save people from death as it happens. I've also instituted new items & spells to aid in bringing back the dead. For the most part, the only real penalties for comming back from death in my campaign are financial; it still costs a lot of expensive material components to cast true resurrection, for example. Dying is enough of a penalty in the first place (as in: you don't get to play the game for a while) that I don't feel the need to punish a PC further. Actually... that's not quite true. The goddess of death in my campaign world is the one who gets to decide, in the end, if someone gets to come back to life. If you raise someone from the dead without securing her permission first, she smites you (although the resurrected person still gets to come back to life). Spells like revivify and cure mortal wounds (see below) take place soon enough after death that you can bring someone back with these spells before Turthonir cares to notice they've died; she only gets angry if you resurrect people who've been dead for more than a minute, essentially.
Some of the alternate "save a PC from death" items and spells I've come up with for my campaign include:
Draught of Life (Minor Artifact): This elixir, when poured onto the remains of a dead creature, restores that creature to life as if by true resurrection.
Cure Mortal Wounds
Conjuration (Healing)
Level: Clr 5, Healing 5
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Target: Creature touched
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Will negates (harmless) or Will half; see text
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless) or Yes; see text
This spell cures 5d8 points of damage +1 point per caster level (maximum +25).
Unlike other cure spells, cure mortal wounds can bring recently slain creatures back to life. If cast upon a creature that has been reduced to –10 or fewer hit points within the last minute, apply the healing from this spell to the creature. If this brings the creature up to –9 or fewer hit points, it comes back to life and stabilizes at its new hit point total. If the healing fails to bring the creature's hit point total up past –10 hit points, the creature remains dead (although further castings of cure mortal wounds could still save the creature, as long as its allotted minute has not passed).
Creatures slain by death effects cannot be saved by cure mortal wounds.
Cure mortal wounds deals damage to undead targeted rather than curing them.
(The nice thing about this spell is that since it's a cure spell, clerics can swap out 5th level spells to cast it, freeing them up from having to "lose" a spell slot on [i]revivify or raise dead.)[/i]
Wow...I really like cure mortal wounds. I think I'm going to have to try that in the next campaign I'm starting up!
I like that spell, a lot. hmm... my players are only level five...
goodbye raise dead, hello cure mortal wounds. :D
I imagine we'll be seeing that in 4E :)
[ducks]
As a DM I like the existing rules and spells concerning raising from the dead. I don't think I would want to see them changed.
I feel that PC death needs to be a very significant penalty, rather than an inconvenience. If this is not the case, I think a lot of the tension from PC fear of death can be lost and this is detrimental to gameplay.
There is a link in the first post. And it's WIKER.
Nice spell! I may have to steal it for my own game.
The Draught of Life is similar in function to an item I believe is from The Complete Book of Eldritch Might, a red gem which gives a single use of true resurrection but must be coated in the blood of a slain NPC of equal or higher level.
Could someone tell me what book I can find the spells revivify and close wounds in, and/or put the effects up here? I've never heard of them before.
Oh, and smeghead, it amuses me that I came up with the exact same ruling, working the exact same way as yours, in my SC campaign without having seen these boards beforehand. It works fairly well, although I've been thinking of making it a -2 to all rolls instead of just -1. -1 doesn't suck that badly, expecially at higher levels.
Could someone tell me what book I can find the spells revivify and close wounds in, and/or put the effects up here? I've never heard of them before.
They are both in the Spell Compendium.
PS: I'm embarassed that I spelled JD's last name wrong. Wa!
Death is an incredibly potent motivator in my games, just like in real life. I don't ban death, I ban resurrection/raise dead. Death is really the only punishment for poor play in a fantasy game. "Banning death" and levelling everyone up at the same time completely destroys any individual sense of accomplishment and leads to lazy, whiny players who chafe at the slighest hindrance and complain about every obstacle. It leads to many players who do little but coast on the accomplishments of a few active players. It may be a necessary evil in MMORPGs, where customer sales are paramount, but it's an unnecessary evil in tabletop rpgs.
It's your character and your wits against the challenges of a fantasy world. If your GM levels everyone up at the same time and on a regular basis regardless of your actions, and fudges the game continually to keep players alive, then there can be no individual accomplishment. Just like in real life.
Death is an incredibly potent motivator in my games, just like in real life. I don't ban death, I ban resurrection/raise dead. Death is really the only punishment for poor play in a fantasy game.
If death only occurred as a result of bad play, I would agree it was a sensible punishment. However, when hit with a save-or-die spell, it becomes a punishment for bad luck, which is hardly the same thing.
In any event, I wasn't really serious when I suggested death should be removed from the game. I do think, however, that it should both be less common and less easy to recover from. (I really like the Revivify/Close Wounds/Cure Mortal Wounds spells, althouth the window of opportunity on Revivify is too short currently.)
Character death has two aspects to it: the game aspect, and the story aspect. The current paradigm sucks on both fronts. From a "playing a game" point of view, character death knocks a player out of the game until either the DM can bring in a replacement character, or the rest of the party can have the character restored. Either way, the player is sitting bored for potentially hours.
From a "telling a story" point of view, character death sucks because it's so easy to recover. It's like those episodes of Star Trek which kill off a major character for the emotional shock, only to have everything back to normal by the end of the episode. It all cheapens death.
I don't have a real solution to this problem. But I am sure that something should be done; the current arrangement doesn't really satisfy either the game or story aspects of D&D.
"If the healing fails to bring the creature's hit point total up past –10 hit points, the creature remains dead (although further castings of cure mortal wounds could still save the creature, as long as its allotted minute has not passed)."
Reading this, I had a vision of a cleric casting Cure Mortal Wounds on a dead PC over and over again, shouting "Clear!" each time.
I like it. :)
Death is an incredibly potent motivator in my games, just like in real life. I don't ban death, I ban resurrection/raise dead. Death is really the only punishment for poor play in a fantasy game. "Banning death" and levelling everyone up at the same time completely destroys any individual sense of accomplishment and leads to lazy, whiny players who chafe at the slighest hindrance and complain about every obstacle. It leads to many players who do little but coast on the accomplishments of a few active players. It may be a necessary evil in MMORPGs, where customer sales are paramount, but it's an unnecessary evil in tabletop rpgs.
It's your character and your wits against the challenges of a fantasy world. If your GM levels everyone up at the same time and on a regular basis regardless of your actions, and fudges the game continually to keep players alive, then there can be no individual accomplishment. Just like in real life.
Basically I agree with you - though I also think that its not always poor play that gets a character killed - sometimes its just bad luck. Even so I have no problem with that - bad luck happens and characters die from it. I will say though that my experience is that death is not purely random - bad luck does not strike all equally. Experince and planning escape routes plays a big part. Certianly I've noticed that its often the player that decided to forgo a feat that allowed him or her to deal an extra 2 points of damage to instead get one that allows them more and faster mobility is also the player that has the most chance of staying alive. I find that there is a relationship between the players most likely to be attempting to gain the best possible AC, the greatest hps and deal the most damage and the character most likely to die - this character is actually the most likely to die - its most likely to be the worst screwed when the encounter goes sour and its time to get the hell out of dodge. Basically something like the 'run' or 'sprint' feats really have a place - they just might save your life.
In my campaign I mitigate death somewhat by allowing the players to have more then one character in the campaign at one time. This means that they can bring in one of their other characters when this one bites the dust. Its very similar to what was being utilized in 2nd edition Dark Sun which is were I stole the idea from.
I've found that PC death rules need to be laid out to the players BEFORE you start a campaign. Once they understand the mechanics then things are generally smoother. If you plan to make changes to PC death, then you should fully inform your players so they can adjust their playing style accordingly.
In the past, I've handled it a variety of ways and most PC's that died in my games either died through their own sheer stubborness (or stupidity) or very heroically. I found I rarely needed to fudge die rolls except in the early lvls of the game and eventually I just started PC's at 3rd lvl and found I didn't need to fudge die rolls at all then.
Bottom line is trying to give the players a chance to enjoy their characters without worrying that an evil wizard's familiar will ambush them and kill the with its vicicous bite and claw attack.
For the AoW AP, I'd start the PC's at 2nd lvl after all I've read on this site. It seems to strike balance between its deadliness and the ability of the characters to survive a single encounter.
I'm not a fan of raising happening in the first place in my games, being a fan of the notion that death should be rare but tragic. To offset the shortage of raising magics in worlds I run, I replace -10 as the death point with negative Constitution plus twice character level. (Example: a 7th level character with an 8 constitution dies at -22HP rather than -10.) This keeps raises from being needed quite so routinely as the high damage spells start flying.
I also don't particularly like the death rules. When I had a TPK in my first campaign at 4th level we had to end the campaign due to the death of the characters.
Then I bought Ghostwalk, and it was so awesome that I immediately started trying to implement the rules into most of my campaigns. At its core your PC gets an extra life. Dying due to bad luck sucks, but if you have a second chance at least you can take some time to ressurect yourself and get back into the swing of things. To explain why not everyone comes back as a ghost when they die in every campaign setting I simply state that the PCs are special and their 'unfinished business' tie them to the world. Eidolon and Eidolancer make fun optional classes while the PCs are dead and I have yet to hear my players complain.
Boy, what a morbid crowd we are--this endless discussion of death! ;-)
Character death can be a real disruption to the campaign and to the enjoyment of the players, depending on what kind of campaign one is running. The various house rules posted here, and the new Spell Compendium spells (and James' excellent house rule spell--thanks for sharing!) do give DMs lots of options for modifying their game. I think my preference is to stay fairly close to the RAW, which I can trust to be reasonably balanced, but to design adventures that have just the right element of danger to be fun without resulting in TPKs.
In my home-brew campaign, when deaths do occur, it's pretty easy to alter the path of the campaign to accommodate, as I don't have things planned out in great detail beyond the next level or two on the XP chart. When running an AP, it's a bit different, and depending on the needs of the player group and the story my tendency would be either to have backup characters and/or raise dead opportunities (or other suitable magical solutions for specific deadly effects) readily available, just to keep things on track and keep the party from losing focus on the "quest."
At high levels, inexperienced players (and DMs) tend to kill off a lot of PCs, and instant death is frequently possible. It is a good idea to do a little rules education at this stage, especially with inexperienced players playing spellcasters--their characters would know a bit about how to use powerful divinations to anticipate threats and powerful protective and restorative magic to counter them. While it's true that the fighter might get unlucky on that will save or die effect (or even the fort save or die), on the whole, the party should have done a better job in that situation of learning about the threat and preparing for it. High level casters have lots of offensive spells, but they also have powerful defensive spells like death ward, spell immunity, antimagic field, and so forth. And any high level wizard or cleric worth his salt will carry scrolls of key restorative spells like stone to flesh, greater restoration, break enchantment, raise dead, etc., and perhaps prepare them if the known threat warrants it. Players of these characters might need to be encouraged and educated about these options, which can be deployed to take the sting and disruption out of level drain, petrification, and yes, even death. If you, the DM, know that a certain aspect of the upcoming adventure has the potential to instantaneously ruin one or more PCs' life, make sure they have a chance to know the threat and make choices about it. If players have opportunities to ascertain the nature of the threat and fail to act on them, well, that's another story, and a good object lesson (properly debriefed by the DM) will instill better play in the future.
All of this being said, I have been known to fudge the occasional die roll, especially in lower-level play where a stupid orc's greataxe can take the party fighter from 10 to -10 with a single crit. I don't do this invariably--but rely on my instincts as DM for when the death serves a purpose (lesson that needs learning/makes the story heroic/advances the plotline of the campaign), and when it's pointless or inconvenient.